 
### GODTIME

75 Biblical Meditations on Time and History

by Edwin Walhout

Published by Edwin Walhout

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Edwin Walhout

Cover design by Amy Cole

See Smashwords.com for additional titles by this author.

Biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Chapter 67 Chapter 68 Chapter 69 Chapter 70 Chapter 71 Chapter 72 Chapter 73 Chapter 74 Chapter 75 About the Author

1 IN THE BEGINNING

" _In the beginning_

when God created the heavens and the earth,

the earth was a formless void

and darkness covered the face of the deep."

Genesis 1:1-2 *

Of course Moses wasn't there when time began, so how did he know what things were like way back then?

He is writing the things that God enabled him to understand. Moses did not have the benefit of hundreds of years of modern science, but he did have the best education that the royal court of Egypt could provide at that time.

So that is something we need to take into consideration when we read Genesis One. We do not need to evaluate everything Moses writes by twenty-first century standards. We need to recognize that Moses is writing the best he can in the early times of human thinking. And if we can do that, we may well recognize that what Moses is getting at in Genesis One are some of the most profound and insightful truths that anyone has ever written.

So here, for example, in the very first sentence. Modern science can talk about the Big Bang as the beginning of the universe, but they cannot, and do not, say anything about what caused that to happen. Moses does not know anything about the Big Bang, but he does recognize that the world had to be caused by some Power larger than the world itself.

So right here, right at the beginning of the Bible and at the beginning of time we need to learn from Moses how to be _theists_. We need to learn how to understand life and history and time as things God has created and that he is in charge of. We need to learn how to be God-centered. That's theism. So everything that happens in the world, and everything that ever happened in the past, is under the control and supervision of the God who created it all.

Theism means we need to understand that what happens in our own lives is not the most important thing to deal with. Of course we need to deal with our own thoughts and attitudes and behavior and problems, but all of that in turn needs to be seen from the point of view of God, theistically. God is working out his own plans and purposes in our lives individually, and his own goals and purposes are much larger and broader than ours.

Every age and every century and the life of every person is part of the developing plan of God. It is impossible for any one of us to see clearly exactly what that plan is, any more than Moses could at the time he wrote Genesis One. But even though our insights are limited we can get some idea of what God is doing from the Bible and especially from Jesus.

God created time and he created people and he controls history. We need to do our best to live in such a way that what little we do know about God's purposes also controls our lives. That's what it means to live by faith, what it means to live as Christian theists.

That is the most important thing we can learn from Genesis One. We exist as creatures in the overarching plan and purpose of God.

* All Bible quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.

2 THE FIRST DAY

" _And there was evening and there was morning,_

the first day."

Genesis 1:5

This is the way Moses begins his description of the process of creation, and by the time he finishes that story he has seven days. Six of the days saw the process of making the earth ready for humans to live in, and the seventh day was a day of rest when the process was completed and God could stop creating.

So now, what about that? What about these days? There was evening and there was morning, each time for six days.

Modern science shows that the universe is as much as fifteen billion years old, and that it took all of that time for humans to appear on planet Earth. Obviously this is vastly different from what we read in Genesis One. So how do we reconcile them?

Theologians have invented several ingenious ways of fitting these two accounts together. You can take your choice. Six days, but separated by billions of years. Or, a day in the Bible is the equivalent of a billion or more years in science. Or, days are evolutionary periods. Maybe there are other explanations as well. Take your choice.

But, regardless of how you choose to explain the days of Genesis, it is important to see that the main point is not the length of these days but the fact of development from one day to the next. There is progress, step by step, from the chaos of the very beginning till the final appearance of humans on earth.

Try to put yourself in Moses' mentality when he was writing this superb document of Genesis One. He wants to explain as best he can how the world started and what the purpose of the human race is. So he sees that there has to be a definite process of getting from the chaos of the beginning, through the development of the universe in such a way that the earth appeared as a separate planet, and that conditions on the earth were such as to make human existence possible.

Moses does his best to put this all in a reasonable and understandable sequence. Work backwards in your mind. Humans need to have food in order to live, so we have to have plants and animals. We need to have dry land to live on, and water to drink. Plants need sunshine and rain. So there has to be a sun and clouds. And so forth, step by step all the way back to the original chaos of the beginning, a recognizable process, moving closer and closer to making the world suitable for humans to live in.

So that's Moses' main point and we don't need to get all worked up about the language of days that Moses uses to describe this developing process. Accept simply that Moses is doing his best to make sense of what he sees. What he sees is one of the most important and profound insights that any ancient philosopher ever made, much more significant than the pre-Socratics of Greek history: development.

And then we can recognize that what Moses was getting at is exactly the same as what modern science is discovering: process, development, movement from chaos to organization.

3 ONE DAY LIKE A THOUSAND YEARS

" _But do not ignore this one fact, beloved,_

that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years,

and a thousand years are like one day."

2 Peter 3:8

According to our scientists, it took God about fifteen billion years to create the universe the way we see it today. That's a long time. And it makes us wonder how to understand what we read in Genesis One where it took God only one week to do it. That isn't a very long time, seven days.

There is this obscure passage in Peter's second letter that may help us understand the situation a bit better. Peter writes that for God one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day. Apparently time is not as important to God as it is to us.

We get antsy when too much time passes to get something done. A farmer wants to get his hay baled; it's all ready in the fields, but it starts to rain and he has to wait. An investor wants to get a quote to buy some important stock, but his computer goes out temporarily and he misses his chance. A teenager needs to get to school by eight-thirty, but he oversleeps and is charged with a tardy slip when he does get there. A cook is timing a dinner on the stove, but the phone rings and she forgets the food and lets it burn.

We are very conscious of the pressures of time and of getting things done efficiently. We are bothered when too much time elapses and not much gets done. Factories do time studies, trying to get a handle on how much time it takes to do some particular job on the machine. They pay close attention to the time when employees punch in and punch out. Politicians promise great things before they get elected, and seem to dawdle in getting them done afterwards.

But we need to understand that none of that time pressure bothers God. If he wants to take a hundred and sixty thousand years to create human beings, what does that matter to God? If he wants to let the descendants of Jacob become slaves in Egypt for a couple of hundred years before he gets them out, what does he care about that? If he sends his people off into captivity for seventy years, he doesn't mind the wait until he lets them go back to Jerusalem. If seventeen hundred years pass after he calls Abraham and before he sends his Son to save people, that's his decision and the length of time means nothing to God; the timing has to be just right.

And so it goes. God takes all the time he needs to get things done the way he wants them done. He has his reasons for taking as long as he does. But we get impatient. We want things done today, and if not today, tomorrow. We can't wait hundreds of years.

The point that Peter is making is that we Christian people need to understand that it may take God a thousand years to accomplish what we would like to see done in one day. And when we understand that, we will not be so impatient but be content to live each day in the faith that God knows how to take what we do and work it into the design of his own purpose. We will live and work steadily, faithfully, patiently, confidently, in the full assurance that God is doing everything he wants to do in the world and in our lives, and that he is doing it exactly the way he wants to. God is never off schedule.

4 AND GOD SAID

" _Then God said, 'Let there be light,'_

and there was light."

Genesis 1:3

Nine times in the first chapter of the Bible we read, "And God said." Each time something new is introduced into the world that God is creating. Nine stages, so to speak, by which God slowly and gradually shaped the universe into the condition he wanted.

One thing leading to the next, just as our modern scientists are discovering. From a condition of chaos to a condition of being just right, very good. "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good."

What we sometimes overlook, however, is what it means that God created all these developmental stages by speaking, by his word. "And God said."

The entire universe, and everything in it, is the product of God speaking, of his speech, of his words. We must understand that this is how God has spoken. When we listen to God we are listening to what he is saying in the world of nature.

And, interestingly, that is what science really is, listening to what God is saying in the world he created. Scientists are constantly learning new things about how the world works. What that is, is listening carefully to God. When scientists discover something new about how the world works, they are discovering something God has put into operation long ago when he created the world.

It is important, therefore, that we pay attention to what they are discovering. I have in mind what they have discovered about the age of the universe, the formation of planet Earth, how the human race began, and similar matters.

During the time of the Reformation scientists were making stupendous discoveries about the world, such matters as the shape of planet earth, not flat, and the orbit of earth around the sun, not the sun around the earth. Church leaders at the time were appalled by these discoveries and did their best to suppress them.

But today we accept them as proven facts, and we have adjusted our theology accordingly wherever necessary.

So we need to come to grips honestly with what the scientists of today are describing. We must not reject anything that has been adequately substantiated. When certain items are no longer in the realm of theory, but become established fact, as Christians we do not have the choice of rejecting them. We must accept them.

It may well be that certain of our cherished doctrines need review and possibly changes because of the discoveries of modern science. We should not be afraid to do that, for we are listening to what God is telling us in the world of nature. Far better to do that than to find ourselves defending positions that are clearly based on error.

We listen to everything God says, no matter how or where he says it, and we adjust our thinking and theology accordingly. That is something we learn from the fact that God created everything by repeatedly speaking his word in the beginning.

5 IN HIS IMAGE

" _So God created humankind in his image,_

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them."

Genesis 1:27

This important passage does not use the term _time_ , but it does have something to do with time. God is telling us what to do with our time: the way we use our time should show that we are created in the image of God.

Everybody knows humans are different from other animals. We have larger brains. We can communicate with one another much more efficiently than animals. We can study nature and understand how it works in ways animals cannot. We can utilize what we learn from the study of nature to manufacture various things that make our lives more interesting, safe, and pleasant.

If we were to take all these items that differentiate us from animals, and lump them all together, that would go a long way toward defining what it means that human beings are created in the image of God.

It means that humans are something special in the world that God created. Humans appear at the very climax of the story of creation in Genesis, which suggests to us that in some sense this is why God created the world to begin with. God has some purpose for human beings that cannot be achieved by lesser forms of animal life.

But even so, we should recognize that humans are not understood simply as a higher form of animal life. That certainly is true, but it does not sufficiently say what Moses says in Genesis. Moses writes that we are created in the image of God, not in the image of animals. We are to compare ourselves to God, not to lower forms of life on earth. We are images of God and we are called to live as images of God.

Of course, then, we need to have suitable ideas about God. If we are to be like God, and if God were a bully, then we would need to become bullies also. Something like that was happening all over the world in ancient times because they had inadequate ideas about God. All those ancient peoples were polytheists, meaning that they understood the gods to be competitive and power-hungry. So if the gods are like that, we should be also. And they created civilizations that were based on that competitive and power-seeking way of life.

So we do need to be careful to begin with that we think about God. We need to think the way God really is, not the way some of his enemies might describe him.

If God is honest, we should be honest. If God is patient, we should be patient. If God is fair, we should be fair. If God is forgiving, we should be forgiving. And so it goes with all the things we can say accurately about God. We should imitate God in the way we live, and we capture that idea by saying that we should be godly persons in our daily lives. God put us on earth so that we could do on a finite level what God has been doing on an infinite level. We are called to be and to live as images of the Creator of the heavens and the earth.

6 SUBDUE THE EARTH

" _God blessed them, and God said to them,_

' _Be fruitful and multiply,_

and fill the earth and subdue it;

and have dominion over ...

every living thing that moves upon the earth.'"

Genesis 1:28

This insightful passage teaches us something enormously important. God wants the human race to subdue the earth and have dominion over it. That's God's creative purpose. The very first thing we need to know about ourselves is that God made us to be his image. The next thing we need to know about ourselves is the plan of God for us, that is, how to exercise the image of God in us.

God commanded humans to fill the earth and subdue it. That is the way God defines for us what we should be doing with the time he gives us. It is what we must do with time and history.

At one time in the development of life on earth huge beasts dominated the land, dinosaurs and mastodons and other unbelievably enormous creatures. Most of them are now gone, extinct. Now humans are the dominant form of life on earth, and that is precisely what God is commanding us in this passage we call the Cultural Mandate.

But what does that mean for the way we go about our daily work? We do our work as best we can in a godly way, whether that is on the farm, in the classroom, at the office, in the kitchen, on the road, wherever.

But Moses is asking us to raise our sights a bit, not only how we do our daily chores, but how the human race as a whole is functioning. How is the human race – this translation uses the term "humankind" – doing its work? How have the Aztecs, the Incas, the Mayas, been doing their work? The Chinese, the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Hindus? Or, looking to the origins of western civilization, how have the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Jews, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, been doing in the light of what God says here in Genesis? How do the Islamic countries rate using Moses' standards? And western civilization as a whole?

It is one thing to dominate the planet's forms of life, but it something else again to do it right. We can look back on the history of civilizations and see that they were often cruel, unjust, discriminatory, just plain evil. One group would gain control over another group, oppressing and exploiting and enslaving them. This is not imaging God.

God wishes them and us all to gain our supremacy over the earth in such a way as to demonstrate that we are images of God, that is, that we reflect in our civilization the godliness of respect, cooperation, love, peace, progress, happiness – a condition well defined by the Hebrew word _shalom_ , people living in godly harmony.

So that is the way we need to understand our human part in time and history. God is slowly, century by century, shaping human civilization to become what he intends it to be. That is the purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to accomplish what the Creator has in mind from the very beginning of time.

7 DEATH

" _And the Lord God commanded the man,_

' _You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;_

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

you shall not eat,

for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.'"

Genesis 2:16-17

Adam lived to be 930 years old. So obviously he did not die "in the day" that he ate the forbidden fruit. So what must we think about this warning from God? God did say, "In the day that you eat of it you shall die." But Adam didn't die then, not on that very day. He died a near millennium later.

In the Bible the term "death" carries two very different meanings. One meaning is very similar to our English term, indicating physical death. The other meaning is more symbolic, indicating failure to be what God created us to be; or we might say spiritual death.

Although Adam did not die physically at the moment he disobeyed God, he did die that very moment to the kind of life that God created him for. Disobedience, in this sense, is the same as death. Sin is death, the death of obedience, the death of true life.

In several of his letters, the Apostle Paul uses the term death in this sense. For example, he writes to the Christians in Rome that they "must consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." He does not mean physical death but a stoppage of sin. Paul goes so far as to say they "have died to the law," to the Torah.

So this is how we must understand God's warning to Adam about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God does not mean physical death but spiritual death, death to the kind of life that Adam would have had otherwise. Paul puts it this way, "The wages of sin is death."

It is one thing to understand the Bible correctly, it is another to understand what that all means for us living now in the twenty-first century. So the Bible says Adam died on the day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So what?

So we should not do that either, or we will die too.

We understand that the Hebrew word _adam_ means simply human. When we read these stories about Adam in the book of Genesis we need, therefore, to think that what he does as one individual is meant to show what every human does. Adam represents all humans. We all do what Adam did.

We all are tempted by the devil. We all figure that disobeying will be to our benefit. So we all disobey, we all sin. And we all die at the very moment.

God created us to be his images in the way we live, in the way we go about our daily duties. When we refuse to live that way we die to the image of God, we die to the kind of holy life that we are intended for.

And that is why we need Jesus, so that in him our sin may be forgiven and reversed. As Paul puts it, we Christians must regard ourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. We live the way our Creator wishes us to live. In Jesus is life.

8 OUT OF THE GARDEN

" _Therefore the Lord God sent him forth_

from the garden of Eden,

to till the ground from which he was taken.

He drove out the man."

Genesis 3:23

Why did God drive Adam out of the garden of Eden? Because Adam had disobeyed God's command not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God sent him out of the garden so that he could not "reach out his hand and take also from the from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever."

What? If Adam and Eve would eat from the tree of life they would live forever, without ever dying?

A problem arises, however, from two concerns. First, it does not seem that human beings, by definition, could be immortal, never dying. If that were the case, that nobody ever died in the garden of Eden, wouldn't it get filled up pretty soon?

And the second concern: modern science cannot detect any period of ancient history, or prehistory for that matter, in which genuine human beings were other than highly developed animals. They died as all animals died.

For that matter, it is highly doubtful that we should consider Adam and Eve to be real historical persons at all. The discoveries of modern science are making it very difficult to fit the Biblical story of Adam into any recognizable period of human pre-history.

The Apostle Paul writes that Adam is a _type_ of Christ. This tells us that the important part of the Genesis story is to be found in its typology, not in its literal history.

This insight may be difficult. We are so accustomed to think of Adam and Eve as the first humans, the first parents of the human race – all of this taken literally – that we recoil in fear from Paul's suggestion that typology is the important factor in our connection with Adam.

I do not want to unnecessarily offend Christian believers, but we do need to be honest with what God is saying to us in nature as well as in the Bible.

Scientists are in the business of discovering what is actually there in the world of nature, so they are discovering what God has put there. We cannot ignore science, and if we need to review our way of understanding the Bible because of it, we should not be afraid to do so.

So this account of God sending Adam out of the garden of Eden should tell us simply that when we sin, when we disobey the commands of God, we are thereby choosing to live outside of the kingdom of God, outside of Eden. We are choosing to live in violation of the human nature that God has created. And this can only result in disappointment, failure, and unnatural lifestyles.

It is by faith in the Lord Jesus that we can once again find access to the tree of life, that is, find the kind of human life that God created us to have. We lose our lives in Adam, when we live in sin; we find our lives in Jesus, when we live by faith.

9 HEAD AND HEEL

" _I will put enmity between you and the woman,_

and between your offspring and hers;

he will strike your head,

and you will strike his heel."

Genesis 3:15

Here's a picture of the future, a picture of what time looks like from God's point of view, a picture of what history will show as the centuries roll on. Enmity between the serpent and the woman, meaning enmity between the devil and the human race, enmity between sin and people.

Contrast that view with what has just happened. The devil has tempted Eve and Adam, and has succeeded. He has, so to speak, won over the humans from obeying God to obeying sin. There is no enmity at that point between the serpent and the woman.

But God is saying, That will change. It may be, you sly serpent, that you can nip at the heels of my people, but only so that they can crush your head and trample you down. That will be what the future holds for you, you deceiver of mankind. The time will come when the victory you now see in Adam and Eve will disappear, and their descendants will treat you as their sworn enemy. That's what God is saying to the serpent, the mouthpiece of the devil.

We may wonder about this prediction. For example, we might ask, Why didn't God create humans to be obedient, without going through all that agony that history shows us? Wouldn't it be so much better if God created us to live in heaven right away, rather than putting us through all this temptation and sorrow and sin from the devil? All that misery that history shows us: disease and war and poverty and troubles too numerous to mention. Why do we have to go through all that in order to get to heaven? Wouldn't it have been so much better to bypass all of that and take us directly into the life of heaven?

Couldn't God have created Adam and Eve in such a way that they didn't have to go through that temptation to begin with?

Well, the answer to that is rather simple. Then we wouldn't be humans at all. We would be robots. Or we would be animals without moral responsibility. But God created us in his image, and that involves the exercise of our will – one way or another, either for obedience or for disobedience. Without that necessity of moral choice we would not be human.

So we do need to take this vision of the process of human history very seriously. What history is all about is the slow and often agonizing process whereby the human race learns how to find its best and true life, not from the blandishments of the devil but from the steady truth of God who created us all.

We know today that the process that God is directing moves through Noah and Abraham and Moses to the nation of Israel, and then in time to Jesus and the disciples and the Christian church. It is important for us to know that this process of history is under God's control and direction, and that it is God's way of getting the human race to trample on sin and Satan, in spite of constant attacks on the heels of humanity.

Each of us needs to do his or her part faithfully and courageously as our share in the purpose of God and in the life of humanity, crushing the head of the serpent in our daily walk of life.

10 GOD IS SORRY

" _So the Lord said,_

' _I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created –_

people together with animals

and creeping things and birds of the air,

for I am sorry I have made them.'"

Genesis 6:7

Here's a real conundrum. God is sorry that he made us; not only us but animals and birds as well. All living things. Really? God is sorry he created life? How so?

It's hard to imagine God being sorry for something he previously described as very good. "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." But now, after some history has passed, he is sorry. Why? Why decide to wipe us all out?

As it turned out, God did not "blot out from the earth" all the human beings he created, even though this text in Genesis says he will do that. So we need to take such language in the Bible with a grain of salt, as we say. Not exactly literally. God did save Noah and his family. And some animals and birds as well.

And when the whole episode of the flood is finished, God established his covenant, not only with Noah, but also with "every living creature" including birds and all domestic and wild animals. A catastrophe like that will never happen again.

So, in the Biblical narrative of ancient pre-history, why is this story of Noah and the flood included? What are we supposed to learn from it?

This story shows that disobedience to God is not merely a matter of ruining our personal lives, but that it ruins the life of humanity as a whole. The way human life developed after Adam and Eve shows the entire human race embroiled in evil so bad that God's purpose for creating us isn't working.

That's what it means that God is sorry for having created us. The beautiful life that God envisions for us simply isn't happening, because people do not consider their responsibility to their Creator, seeking their own future without caring for the right way of doing it. Personal ambitions that trample on the lives and hopes of others. Policies that result in one nation despoiling another nation. Violence and warfare to achieve partisan glory. God is sorry all that is happening.

That is what that ante-diluvian history shows, the setting of the story of Noah. And it also shows how God begins to deal with the situation: selecting one family for special attention to achieve true humanitarian godliness. Out of that one godly family will come the practices and policies and morality that in time will redeem the human race.

We might call it the beginning of particularism, God choosing one particular people for special care, but with the ultimate goal that the entire human race shall be saved. What we are today has been determined to some extent already by what God has done in saving Noah. The promises made to Noah are still valid today.

11 AN EVERLASTING COVENANT

" _I will establish my covenant between me and you,_

and your offspring after you throughout their generations,

for an everlasting covenant,

to be a God to you and to your offspring after you."

Genesis 17:7

Abraham was raised as a Babylonian back in his home town of Ur (in modern Iraq). That means he was raised as a polytheist, a person who believed in many gods.

So it took quite some thinking and exceptional will power by Abraham to reject all of that and come not only to a belief in one supreme God but to abandon his own countrymen and family in the process. He set out on his own, a wealthy and successful businessman, to become a wandering sheik looking for a place to settle down and begin a whole new kind of lifestyle.

What Abraham was doing was starting a new covenant with God, or to say it better, God was starting a new covenant with Abraham. A new covenant meant a new relationship with God, only one God this time for Abraham, a relationship that would produce a new and better way of life for his family and descendants.

Back then one nation would become wealthy and powerful and would attack weaker and poorer neighbors to make them slaves or tributaries. Usually a few people would prosper, but at the expense of making many others slaves kept under unjust and inhumane conditions. The rich overlords would squeeze every advantage they could out of the impoverished and subdued nations.

Abraham could see how that went, and even on a lower level, how greedy merchants would sometimes cause all kinds of suffering for others if they could get a profit from it. Abraham finally came to see that it was because people were imitating what they saw among the gods.

Babylonian stories about the gods showed them always fighting among themselves for supremacy, even killing a grandmother or grandfather god. So Abraham wanted out of that kind of life and turned to the Lord. He received this new covenant in which God promised to bless him and his descendants with a better life of peace and justice.

But note that God describes this covenant as an "everlasting covenant." Part of that covenant with Abraham involved circumcision of all males in the household. Another part of the covenant was to possess the land of Canaan forever. So what do we make of those requirements and promises, especially since they are "everlasting?"

Everlasting means in force until God sends his Son Jesus to sort out what will remain of that old covenant and what will be added or modified in another new stage of the covenant. Not every feature of the covenant with Abraham remained in effect after Jesus came, but only those aspects that God determined were still useful. Some items were replaced, for example circumcision was modified into Christian baptism. And the land of Canaan was modified into the gospel for all the earth.

So we need to understand as best we can that God is always in the process of doing what he must in order to bring us more effectively into his kingdom, changing or modifying whatever is in his purpose.

12 GOD INTENDED IT FOR GOOD

" _Even though you intended to do harm to me,_

God intended it for good,

in order to preserve a numerous people,

as he is doing today."

Genesis 50:20

We hear people complaining all the time about how bad the world is. You can't trust politicians. Even preachers are sometimes hypocrites. If that's what it means to be a Christian, I don't want to be one. The United States is going downhill. Jesus will have to come back soon to set things right.

We hear things like that altogether too often. Seldom do we hear something like what Joseph said here to his brothers. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

If anyone could complain about things going bad, Joseph could. His own brothers, all eleven of them, thought so little of him that they consented to sell him as a slave and tell their father he was dead. Then when things seemed to be going well even as a slave, all of a sudden he found himself sent to prison on false charges. What a combination of things going wrong!

But Joseph, in spite of all these setbacks, kept his own integrity before God, simply doing his best to be a godfearing person in whatever situation he was in. And now, after God had raised him to a very powerful position in the government, and when he had a wonderful chance to retaliate at his brothers for their abuse, he didn't do it. Instead he forgave them and reminded them that God is in control even of their perfidy. God intended it for good.

That's the way we all need to think about things going bad. So they go bad. So we have to undergo hatred, discrimination, misunderstanding, loss of prestige, failure – whatever.

God is in control even so. He knows what he is doing, even when we don't. God knows why he lets wicked people seem to get away with sinful behavior, and why he sometimes lets good people not get the credit they deserve. We may not understand this at all, but God does, and we can be content that in the end God's will will be done. God always, without fail, brings good out of evil.

It may not happen in our lifetime, as in the case of the thousands of martyrs that church history documents. But God's purposes are larger and more distant than any of our lifetimes.

So we shouldn't be complaining about the world going bad. How could it when God is in control? The bad things that happen, even to good people, will never have the last laugh. God is able to take any bad situation and make it come out right. Not only able to do that, he always does do that. Joseph's words ought to govern our attitudes always, especially when things are going bad. God means it all for good.

13 WE WILL DO

" _So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people,_

and set before them all these words

that the Lord had commanded him.

The people all answered as one,

' _Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.'"_

Exodus 19:7-8

I have sometimes wondered why God didn't just let the descendants of Jacob stay in the land of Canaan, rather than have them move to Egypt and later to be enslaved there. It would have avoided a lot of trouble and all the difficulties of getting the people out of slavery, through the desert, and back into the land where their forefathers came from to begin with. It doesn't seem a very efficient way to run history!

I do know, of course, that God knows what he is doing and why he is doing it the way he is. And so I tell myself that I need to think about why God did allow the Israelites to become slaves in Egypt, and why he forced them to go through all that trouble of getting out of Pharaoh's clutches and eventually back to Canaan. Why?

So far as I can tell, it is to persuade the people that God is a powerful God, and that they should be willing therefore to do everything God asks of them. How else would God persuade them to give unconditional obedience to that comprehensive set of laws that Moses provided at Mt. Sinai?

The people were at their lowest in the misery of slavery, but God managed to get them out, to liberate them. Psychologically this made the people ready and willing to follow God everywhere and do anything he required.

That's important. Extremely important. In a sense it is the reversal of Adam's sin in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve chose not to obey God. Now an entire nation chose to obey God. Never before in human history had that happened.

The people as a whole left Egypt under a miraculous set of circumstances that only God could have arranged, and now they were no longer compelled to live by Egyptian rules. Nor were they compelled by any human force to live by God's rules. They themselves saw the power of God at work in their national life, and they voluntarily accepted it and pledged to serve the Lord faithfully.

This, of course, is what the Creator wants from all his human creatures, free and uncoerced obedience. Only in that way will the human race come to the shalom that is perfection. And note well, this is true not only for us as individuals, but it applies to nations as well, indeed, to the human race as a whole.

But how does God get people to recognize that their own best interests are to be found in unconditional obedience to the laws that the Creator has set? Sometimes, as in the case of the ancient Israelites, is is by bringing them into intolerable conditions of life and then showing them the way out.

Jesus is the perfect example. Jesus was brought into the degradation of a despicable death, only to be brought out by the power of God. We then need also to see ourselves, apart from faith, in ruinous degradation from the devil, and to find in Jesus the Way out. Out of sin into obedience, out of death into life.

14 LONG IN THE LAND

" _Honor your father and your mother,_

so that your days may be long

in the land that the Lord your God is giving you."

Exodus 20:12

This is one of the famous Ten Commandments (decalogue). I remember what I used to think when I was a boy and the minister read the Ten Commandments in church. I thought, If I want to live to be an old man I have to honor my mother and my father.

But as I grew up a little and noticed that sometimes people die at a young age, I wondered if that was true. Did these people all die because they dishonored their parents? And, for that matter, I also wondered about all the people that are old; did they grow old because they honored their father and mother? So for a long time I didn't quite know how to figure that out.

I think, now that I am indeed an old man, I have it figured out. For me, honoring my parents doesn't have much to do with my having a lot of birthday anniversaries. They have been dead for a long time. And, to be honest, when I was a teenager I didn't always honor them the way I should have. But I have lived a long time in the land even so.

Moses is giving these Ten Commandments to the people of Israel, shortly after God took them out of slavery in Egypt. The people wanted to get out of Egypt and get back to the land where their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had lived, the land of Canaan. They are on their way out of a land of slavery into a land of promise, described as a land of milk and honey.

So now God is saying to them, through Moses, If you want to get to the new land, and if you want to live there a long long time, this is something you have to do. You have to honor your father and your mother.

But how does that work? What's the connection between honoring our parents and living a long time in the land? It does not mean you as an individual, that you will live to be an old man or an old woman. This commandment does not mean that. It means Israel will remain a nation for a long time.

We need to understand that God is giving all of these Ten Commandments to Moses in order to make them into a well-organized nation, not merely a crowd of newly emancipated slaves. The whole decalog has that purpose. If they did not get a good national organization – we might call it a Constitution – over time they might all be assimilated into the pagan nations that were already there in the land of Canaan, thus losing their national identity. So that is what was happening at Mount Sinai: God was giving them the laws that would weld them together as a new godly nation.

A big part of that is developing a healthy respect for parents and for the heritage that has made them what they are today. A country that has no respect for the past and for the wisdom of the elders will not last long. That's the meaning of this commandment. Not only individuals loving their parents, but a national spirit of respect for the past and for the traditions that have made them the nation that God wants them to be. Sustained obedience to God by the whole nation, generation after generation. That's the secret of a viable country.

15 COUNTING OUR DAYS

" _So teach us to count our days_

that we may gain a wise heart."

Psalm 90:12

Some years ago a young pastor introduced me to his congregation with a comment that implied that I was an old man. Which I was, of course, even then. Considerably older than he was. But as soon as he made that comment he was embarrassed and began to apologize for what he thought was a kind of insult.

Should I be insulted to be old? I'm a lot older today than I was then. And frankly I'm not the least embarrassed because of that. In fact, the opposite. I'm a little too proud of being as healthy as I am at my really advanced age. I'm even older than what Moses writes in this psalm, seventy or eighty. I am very thankful that the Lord has given me all these years to live and I am not the least embarrassed when others notice how old I am!

But Moses means more than just getting old when he writes that we have to learn how "to count our days." Moses is praying to God about this. He is praying that God will teach us how to do that. Does God have to teach us how to count our birthdays? No, that is not what Moses is praying for.

Moses wants God to teach us to understand the meaning of our lives. If you take a good look at Psalm 90, you will notice that the first half is all negative, for example, "All our days pass away under your wrath." "Their span is only toil and trouble."

But the last half is all positive, "Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us." "Prosper the work of our hands." "So that we may rejoice and be glad all our days."

We all know that life brings a lot of trouble. There might be war, there might be financial problems, there might be family stress, there might be disease or accident, there might be failure of one kind or another. One after another sometimes, such afflictions come. We know that and sometimes we can't seem to handle the pressures.

But Moses is praying, and we should too, that God will help us break through to the last part of this psalm, to the joyful and thankful part. We don't have to let our constant troubles get us down permanently. We can learn from God that there is a way to handle negative things and to let the Spirit of God create in us a cheerful and positive attitude.

Actually we know more than Moses did how this goes. We see Jesus on the cross, and we see him raised from the dead. And when we truly believe in Jesus, something like that happens to us also. We rise out of our sin and out of our sorrow, into the new life of the Holy Spirit, where there is joy and peace and contentment.

If this is not happening in your life, you need to follow Moses' example, and pray that God will enable you to be glad all your days. It's possible. Pray for it to happen. Count your days.

16 NOT CHANGE HIS MIND

" _God is not a human being, that he should lie,_

or a mortal, that he should change his mind.

Has he promised, and he and will he not do it?

Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?"

Numbers 23:19

How would Balaam know this? Here is this foreign prophet, hired to pronounce a curse on the people of Israel, and he says he can't do it. Why can't he do it? Because God has blessed the Israelites, and Balaam cannot change God's mind.

But couldn't he curse Israel anyway, just as King Balak was bribing him to do? Why does he say God does not change his mind, especially since he won't get paid for it? How does it happen that this foreign prophet who has no love for Israel to begin with, how does it happen that he refuses to curse them? How would Balaam know about the God of Israel, and that this God will not change from blessing to cursing his people?

We do not know any more than we are told by Moses in the book of Numbers. We know only that God told him in some way that he would not change his mind about Israel, and that therefore Balaam must not lay a curse on them. How did God talk to Balaam? We do not know. We know only that he did, and that Balaam obeyed that voice of the Lord.

So that is important. God is not out of communication with people. It isn't that God speaks only to the people of Israel and lets other people go their own way without divine guidance of any kind. We recall that God brought the whole world into existence by speaking, so that the entire world of nature speaks the word of God. This includes everyone.

The voice of the Lord is everywhere. It cannot be avoided. People can choose to ignore that voice but they cannot avoid hearing it. You cannot live in the world that God created without hearing in some way what God is saying by means of that world. So that would tell us something about how Balaam might have heard what God was saying about his people Israel.

But we can extrapolate from this curious incident even farther. Balaam is saying simply, in this local showdown, that he knows God will not change his mind about Israel, will not change from blessing them to cursing them. But the principle involved applies to everything God does, not only to Israel but to the entire human race and to the entire world. From the very beginning of time and history God does not change his mind.

We know from Genesis One what God's purpose is with regard to the human race. We know God created us in his image and requires of us that we reflect this image in the way we live, in the way we subdue the earth and gain control over it. This requirement, this purpose of God, never changes.

It is important for us, therefore, to understand the purpose of Christianity in the light of this creative purpose of God to have a human race living in a godly way precisely in the middle of the civilization they are creating. This insight must not be ignored or bypassed. It gives meaning and purpose to everything we do as human beings, especially to us who are Christian human beings. From the very beginning of the human race on earth, God does not change his mind. Even Balaam, pagan that he was, reminds us of this.

17 SECRET THINGS

" _The secret things belong to the Lord our God,_

but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever,

to observe all the words of this law."

Deuteronomy 29:29

We can only go by the things we know. We do not know everything there is to be known. Future generations will be discovering lots of things that we cannot even imagine. The early colonists who had to travel unpaved roads by horse and wagon would have had no idea whatsoever about how easy it is for us to get around, even travel around the world.

So there are things that are still hidden from us, and there are things that have come to be known. There are secret things and there are revealed things.

But Moses has something more specific in mind. Moses is near the end of his life and he is doing what he can to get the people of Israel to think seriously about what the future might bring. He is particularly interested in reminding them that God has revealed certain things to them and that these things must be front and center in their lives for centuries to come.

Moses is talking about the Law of God, the sacred Torah, the set of rules and regulations that, taken together, would make the people of Israel into a godly nation.

Moses is saying to Joshua and to the tribes of Israel, God has given you this Torah for you to observe, you and your children forever. This much you know and it is enough for you to go by. You do not know what the future will bring. God knows, but for you it is God's secret. As time passes your children will have more of God's secrets revealed, but for now make sure you accept what God has given you, and be confident that whatever you do not know, God does. Just make sure that you and your children forever observe all the words of this law.

We today in the twenty-first century know a great deal more about God's will and how God is working out his purposes. But there are still secret things that only God knows, and there are things that God has revealed. We can only go by what has been revealed, and we need to trust that it is sufficient for us for now.

We may likewise be assured that God will continue to reveal more and more of his methods, his plans, his purposes, as time and history move along. And that means that we must hold what we know with a certain degree of tentativeness. We are always subject to the way God gradually reveals his purposes, and we need always to be responsive to his revelation.

For example, we know that God's first covenant, the one with Israel, has morphed into a second one, the one in Jesus Christ and for the Christian church.. This transition was exceptionally difficult for the Jewish people to accept, and they still have not accepted it to this day.

But we need to be alert and faithful, listening carefully to what God reveals for us, with the confidence that what still remains secret for the future belongs to God and will in his own good time be revealed to our descendants.

The secret things belong to God, but the revealed things belong to us to live by.

18 CHOOSE THIS DAY

" _Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD,_

choose this day whom you will serve,...

but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."

Joshua 24:15

Choose this day. Choose today. Choose now. Make an important decision right now.

That's what Joshua was challenging the tribes of Israel to do. Why right now, today, this day? Because they had succeeded finally in forcing their way into a country already occupied by lots of people, and Israel must decide whether or not to be absorbed into the Canaanite way of life.

Beginning already with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these tribes of Israel recognized one God and one only: Yahweh (translated in our Bibles as LORD). A nation guided by one God only will be considerably different from a nation guided by a pantheon of competing gods. So the Israelites must choose.

Joshua has led the people successfully in their campaign to find room to live in the land of Canaan, and now he knows very well that when the people settle down they will be attracted to the way the other people in the land live. They will want to learn how to farm the land, how to care for cattle, how to become merchants. The Israelites didn't know anything about such matters, having been slaves in Egypt and nomads in the desert.

What might well happen is that the Israelites would not only learn such things but also adopt the religion of the peoples around them. And if they did this, the whole monotheistic experiment beginning with Abraham would disappear and God's covenant would be broken.

So now, when Joshua's main work was done and he knew his lifetime was coming to an end, he challenged Israel to make a tremendously important decision: how are you going to guide your future? By the gods of the other nations, or by the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Choose this day, choose right now which way you will go.

Israel chose that day to serve the LORD. This choice had been made earlier at Mount Sinai, but it needed to be repeated by this new generation, and it will need to be repeated again and again in the future by each succeeding generation. Israel's leaders must see to it that this decision remains valid and operative, repeated as each new generation of children comes to maturity.

The same is still true today. Every new generation must make a very real and very profound decision. Will I, will we, serve the LORD or will we let ourselves be absorbed by godlessness? Will we follow the Lord Jesus or will we follow the sinful lifestyle of others?

As we know, the Israelites couldn't sustain the decision they made under Joshua. After several centuries, little by little, their commitment to Yahweh grew weaker and weaker until at last the LORD had to send them off into exile to teach them a hard lesson. So we need to understand clearly that we cannot ride on our ancestors' coattails, thinking what our parents did will carry us through. Our children need also to hear Joshua's challenge: choose this day whom you will serve.

19 IN YOUR BOOK

" _In your book were written_

all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them yet existed."

Psalm 139:16

On one occasion David was described as "a man of blood." Because of his being a soldier and a person who had lived by the sword in defending Israel against her enemies, David was denied the privilege of constructing a beautiful temple for the Lord.

But elsewhere David is described as "a man after God's own heart." And because of this basic piety he received enormous blessings in his life from the Lord.

But we might wonder, How can this be? How can a man whose life is characterized by bloodshed and violence be at the same time a pious Godfearing person with the approval of God himself? One would think these two characteristics would cancel each other out rather than existing simultaneously in one person.

In the passage quoted above we can get a clue to the thinking of David. He acknowledges that before he was even born God knew the plans he had for him. He knew, looking back on his life as an old man, that his military career, bloody and violent as it was, was pre-planned by God himself.

That is interesting and important. It is precisely because he believed and trusted in God that he is able to rest in his soul with the kind of life God had called him to. It wasn't that David was a bloodthirsty villainous sadistic soldier bent on killing people he didn't like. It was that David knew himself summoned by God himself to do the things necessary for defending and protecting God's people Israel.

God called David to meet violence with violence, to fight against and defeat those who were fighting the Israelites in an effort to destroy them. God gave him immense success in this military calling. David's life work saved and protected God's people from annihilation and assimilation by their polytheistic neighbors.

If we criticize David for doing that we are in reality criticizing God for it. That's the theistic rationale for David's life. David did faithfully and obediently exactly what God called him to do, what God planned "in his book" long before David was born.

We, all of us, need to acquire the same kind of theistic compulsion that David had. God knows what the structure of our life will be long before we come into this world as a baby. Every day we need to remind ourselves that the Lord has a purpose for us, a duty, a responsibility, a life pattern.

Whatever it may be that the Lord gives us to do, whether driving a truck, assembling automobiles, calculating expenses, raising children, doing algebra – whatever, we need to understand that God has this all written beforehand "in his book." Each of us lives constantly under the loving and watchful eye of the Creator of the world and of the God who sends us to do his work in the world.

20 SINKING IN THEIR OWN PIT

" _The nations have sunk in the pit that they have made;_

in the net that they hid has their own foot been caught."

Psalm 9:15

Did you ever bait a mousetrap and while you were setting it got your own fingers caught in it? Snap – and your fingers tell you you made a mistake!

Well, that is exactly what David is saying here in Psalm 9. Only for David the importance is much greater. Not a mere mousetrap but entire nations. He uses two analogies. First, some rascal digs a pit, covers it up, and waits for some unwary traveler to fall into it, only to stumble into it himself. Second, somebody deploys a net to capture an elusive animal, and carelessly gets himself snared in his own net.

David uses these analogies on an even larger scale than individual persons. He applies them both to entire nations and the policies they devise to enhance their own prosperity. But what is David trying to prove? What's the point?

Let's back off a bit and come at it from a different point of view. We often wonder, do we not, about wicked people doing wicked things and seeming to get away with it? Honest people sometimes suffer for being honest, but dishonest people as often as not get away with it and seem to get unfair advantage from it. How just is that?

So the question David is confronting here in this psalm is the same problem. Does God really punish the wicked? Is he really just in his judgments when good people suffer unjustly and bad people smirk as they get away with their deceit? If God does punish the wicked, how does he do it?

That's what David is getting at. In the very next verse of the psalm he writes, "The LORD has made himself known, he has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands." How does the Lord execute judgment? By causing the wicked to be snared by their own deeds. They fall into the same pit they dig for others. They get caught in the net they intend to use to capture others.

Perhaps we can put it this way: sin is its own punishment. We can see people ruin their own lives by excessive use of alcohol or debilitating drugs. We can see young people become so obsessed with guns and violence that they go out and kill others in a wild rampage. On a national level we see the former atheistic USSR imploding upon itself.

All such people, lacking a sense of their responsibility to their Creator, deny their own basic humanity with inhumane orgies. They destroy themselves.

It may be less obvious in other cases, as when seemingly good citizens "get away with murder," as we say. We do not always see such persons brought to justice in real life. But even so, simply because they are living a lie, living hypocritically, they are failing to be the kind of person God wishes them to be. So even when we can't see it clearly, we can have the assurance that God knows what he is doing and we can let our doubts and questions rest with him.

What we can see is that every time we sin we destroy something good in ourselves. We need to be in constant prayer for strength to obey and grace to continue.

21 NEVER FAIL A SUCCESSOR

" _Therefore, O LORD, God of Israel,_

keep for your servant, my father David,

that which you promised him, saying,

' _There shall never fail you a successor before me_

to sit on the throne of Israel,

if only your children keep to their way, to walk in my law

as you have walked before me.'"

2 Chronicles 6:16

Solomon had a lot of respect for his father David. He knew his father was a man of God in spite of his calling as a warrior responsible for the protection of the people of Israel. So now, right at the beginning of his own reign, Solomon begins with a prayer to God. He wants to keep faith with his father David in maintaining the same faith and trust in the LORD.

Among the things Solomon prays about is this promise about successors to sit on the throne of Israel. Nobody knows exactly what will happen in the future, but Solomon knew about this promise of God to his father. He prays that God will keep that promise for the long stretch of time that Israel would remain in the kingdom of God.

So Solomon not only thinks about himself, but thinks about the future, about all the other men who would occupy the throne of Israel after he too was dead. He knows what he does now will have some influence on what is carried on generation after generation, and he wants to continue the tradition of godliness that David started.

But Solomon knows also that it could be otherwise. He knows that God's promise is conditional. "If only your children keep to their way, to walk in my law." Solomon knows each person who becomes king must make that choice, whether or not to walk in God's law.

This was all at the beginning of Solomon's reign. He began well. But the Bible tells us how this original piety gradually frittered away, so that by the time he died the people were so disgusted with him that most of them refused to accept his son Rehoboam as their king. Ten of the twelve tribes split off into their own kingdom under Jeroboam.

It's a little difficult for us today to understand exactly what happened to Solomon. Perhaps he was so successful in leading the people of Israel into prosperity that wealth and fame and success gradually eclipsed his sense of dependence on the LORD.

The surrounding kings that he kept in subjugation would send him their daughters for the purpose of cementing Solomon's good will. Eventually he had so many of them he couldn't keep count. But all of his success gradually dulled the sense of godliness with which he began his reign, and the godliness he prayed for slowly evaporated.

The stories of the Old Testament kingdoms of Israel and Judah need to teach us also the lesson that constant vigilance is necessary if we wish to bequeath Christian faith to our children and grandchildren. We cannot, of course, control what they do, but we can do our best to maintain a vital and attractive life of faith on our part. And then we can trust the Lord to keep his promises for all our descendants to be their God and the God of their children as well.

22 NEITHER DEW NOR RAIN

" _As the LORD the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand,_

there shall be neither dew nor rain these years,

except by my word."

1 Kings 17:1

Prophet Elijah is talking to King Ahab of Israel. Ahab, though a decent enough administrator in some respects, had little use for the religious observances that God had given to his people in the Torah. He not only married a polytheistic woman from a neighboring country, and allowed her to set up her religion in the palace, but occasionally joined her in it. So, as king of Israel, he was sorely lacking in the piety that characterized King David a hundred years earlier.

So God wants to get Ahab to take his responsibility more seriously. He sends Elijah to Ahab with the message that it would not rain again in Israel until Elijah says so.

What's going on here? Elijah can say it won't rain until he says so? Would Ahab believe that? Would you believe someone who says authoritatively there will be a drought for as long as I decide? But that is what Ahab heard Elijah say, and he dismissed it as the raving of a madman.

The problem for Ahab, however, was that it happened. Exactly as Elijah said. Year after year it didn't rain in Israel. The people were concerned. What can be done about it? Ahab finally had to remember Elijah's words, being forced to consider that it was God who was sending this dreadful drought, and that God was thereby disapproving of Ahab's impiety.

So what now for us? Are we to think that when a serious drought occurs that God is telling us that we are living in sin? Should we generalize Elijah's words to apply to us in this way? Or, for that matter, when any great calamity occurs in nature, like tornadoes, hurricanes, volcano eruptions, tsunamis, floods, disease, and similar things, that these are all warnings from God that we are living wrong?

Well, two things. First, there is no need for us to conclude from natural disasters that they are necessarily punishments for our sin. Such disasters affect godly people as well as ungodly people.

But second, we do need to understand that such events are nonetheless all in God's hands and that we live in God's world and that we need to conform ourselves always to his requirements. Ahab and Jezebel would not recognize and accept this responsibility.

God is indeed in charge of everything that happens, including all those things in nature that cause hardship, danger, and death. God is what he is, and the world is what he created it to be, and we need to accommodate ourselves to those realities. We may not like it; some even may complain that it doesn't seem right for a loving God to send such disaster. But who are we to question the ways of God?

In all those cases we need to submit ourselves to the often inscrutable ways of our Creator, whether or not we understand the reasons for them. They remind us that we all are called to serve the Lord in faithful obedience, something Ahab never learned.

23 A TIME FOR EVERY MATTER

" _For everything there is a season,_

and a time for every matter under heaven."

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Why does the writer of Ecclesiastes say this? There's a time for every matter under heaven. What's the point?

Everybody knows there is a time when babies are born, and there's a time when old folks die. There's a time when farmers plant their crops, and there's a time when they gather the harvest. There are times when we laugh and there are times when we weep. And so on. The author goes on for eight verses detailing such items. But what's his point? There are lots of different things we do, and there's a right time to do them, but what is he getting at by reminding us?

In verse 11 he summarizes, "God has made everything suitable for its time." So he is reminding us that time itself is in God's hands. God has made us and he has made time, and he does this knowing that we will do different things at different times. But the question is still there, is it not? What's the point? So we know God created us and he created time, but what are we supposed to do about it?

He goes on to say, even when we know this much, we "cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." The author wants us to think about time, all the way from the beginning of time to the end of time. What is God doing from the beginning of creation to its ultimate destination? Does what we do in our lives make any difference in what God is doing with the world he made? That is what the author of Ecclesiastes wants us to think about.

So the point is that while we go about the various things we do, that is, using the time that God gives us, we need to realize that the meaning of it all is in God's hands. What we do with our time is not the final meaning of our lives, but what God is doing.

We may have our goals and may revel in our achievements, but when our brief period of time is over, what does all that mean? God's purposes will keep on going. They began when he created the world and saw to it that humans appeared on it. God has his purpose in the way he is guiding human history, even though it is really quite impossible for us to see it from beginning to end.

We need, the writer of Ecclesiastes is telling us, to get a theistic view of time. God created time. He guides history. We each play our little part for a little while, but God's purpose is larger and more comprehensive. We are born; we die. There's a time for all of that. But the real meaning is in God's mind and in God's purpose. That should guide everything we do and say, and should control the goals we set and the relationships we make. God knows what he is doing from the beginning of time, even if we don't. That's the message here of Ecclesiastes.

24 THIS TIME

" _Therefore I am surely going to teach them,_

this time I am going to teach them my power and my might,

and they shall know that my name is the Lord."

Jeremiah 16:21

Interesting! This time! This time, what? This time I'll teach them something they should have learned from what I taught them before. They didn't learn what I taught them earlier, apparently, so I'll have to do it over, and this time in a way they will have to learn.

So what is that all about? Jeremiah is telling the people of Judah what God is saying. God has been watching to see if his people have learned what they were supposed to learn, and watching to see if they are living the way God had been teaching them.

They haven't. They have not learned what God has been telling them, and their lives show it. So what all is involved in this threat?

Centuries earlier, by means of Moses at Mount Sinai, God had given his people the Law. All the laws we can still read in Exodus and Leviticus. Laws about how to worship with the desert tabernacle, laws about how to punish criminals, laws about daily behavior. The Ten Commandments that define basic principles of human behavior. God intended all these laws to show the people of Israel how they ought to live as one nation under their Creator.

That was five or six hundred years earlier. For a while these instructions worked fairly well, under kings David and Solomon, for example. But little by little influences from outside began to creep in, like turning to Baal for agricultural blessing. People could be greedy and unjust and unloving and just plain wicked.

By the time of Jeremiah ten of the twelve tribes of Israel had been carried away into captivity as punishment for their apostasy from the Lord. Now Jeremiah is warning the remaining two tribes that it could happen to them as well if they neglect to live by the Law, the holy Torah of God.

We today can see how that worked out. God sent Judah also into captivity, and after a couple of generations let some of them return. Who would return? Only those people who had a deep deep love for God and for God's Torah. Never again in Jewish history did the people relapse into idolatry. Captivity in Babylon taught them that lesson. That's how God taught them "this time."

We know, of course, that still more needed to be done for God's people. Even though they now held the Torah sacred above all, the passing of time degraded their obedience to mere outward behavior, obedience to a huge set of religious rules. God would have to teach them again, another "this time."

And that happened by means of Jesus, teaching us all that mere outward keeping of religious rituals is entirely insufficient. Rather that God's laws need to be written on our hearts, not merely on tablets of stone or inked on papyrus. God's law needs to penetrate to the deepest parts of our being, shaping and forming us from deep within. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, who is now our guide and leader.

25 A NEW COVENANT

" _But this is the covenant that I will make_

with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord.

I will put my law within them,

and I will write it on their hearts;

and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

Jeremiah 31:33

The old covenant was not working very well any longer. It was well intentioned, well constructed, very comprehensive and very powerful. And it did work fairly well for a long time. It did keep the people of Israel from being assimilated by the pagan religions of their neighboring tribes, but obviously by the time of Jeremiah its shortcomings were becoming very obvious.

What shortcomings? The external observances that the Torah required did not always get into the hearts and minds of the people of Israel.

Even outright idolatry was accepted by the public. Can we imagine it? People taking little idols representing the Queen of Heaven right into Solomon's temple? A father insisting on violating the intended bride of his son before giving approval to the marriage? Merchants cheating a poor widow out of her inheritance when her husband died?

In order for God's law to work the way it was supposed to work, people had to let it penetrate deep into their hearts. They had to learn, from those external religious functions, how to serve the Lord God in sincerity and truth. Their entire lives, with all their goals and habits and conversation and business dealings – all of it had to be done from a deep down devotion to the Creator.

But this was not happening, generally speaking. Jeremiah did what he could to change it, but what can one man do when public opinion is overly tolerant of just about anything?

So Jeremiah heard God telling him that the time would come when God would set up a new covenant, a new way of training and developing a godly nation.

Specifically, Jeremiah writes, this new method will do what the old method could not do. The old method emphasized external rituals such as circumcision, sabbath observance, kosher foods, regular feast days and temple ritual conducted by priests.

This will all change sometime in the future, writes Jeremiah, because God cannot be satisfied with the way people are violating the purpose of the old covenant. God will do whatever is necessary to get people to do what is right, not because there are some laws requiring it, but because they know it is right and because they love the Lord enough to want with all their heart to do what their Creator wishes them to do.

It took another five hundred years for it to happen, but when the time was right God sent his Son Jesus, and Jesus sent his Spirit to do precisely and exactly what Jeremiah predicted long centuries earlier. As Christians in the twenty-first century we do well to make sure we do not allow ourselves to relapse into a style of living and worship that relies on externals, but does not touch our inner motivations.

26 SUCH A TIME AS THIS

" _Who knows?_

Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for such a time as this."

Esther 4:14

We go back to ancient Persia for the setting of this interesting passage. The Persians had by this time in history gained control over the near East countries like Assyria and Babylon. There were a good many Jewish people living in the country at the time, descendants of the people who were transported in the Babylonian Captivity of 586 BC. Jewish people were none too popular even then, probably because they would not worship the way the other citizens did and because they would not adopt the same kind of lifestyle as their neighbors.

So, when Mordecai, this one obstreperous Jew, refused to honor a prominent politician by the name of Haman he got the whole population of Jews into trouble. Haman figured out a way to do what Adolf Hitler tried to do a couple of millennia later: wipe them all out. The day was set, and Mordecai had to form a plan to thwart Haman's plans. He went to Queen Esther and said, "Perhaps you have come into the kingdom for such a time as this." He wanted her to do what she could to save the Jewish people.

Why would Mordecai go to Queen Esther to do this? Because she was a Jewess herself and would be killed along with all the rest. Plus she was Mordecai's niece. But what could she do against such a powerful politician as Haman?

Mordecai believed in God and he believed the Jewish people were God's people, and he believed that his niece Esther was put in position by God precisely to deal with this threat to Jewish existence. Like all good Jews, Mordecai was a thoroughgoing _theist_. He believed God not only created the world but that he was in charge of the way history moved along from one age to the next. So he believed that making Esther the queen of Persia was God's doing, and that God had a purpose in doing that. "Who knows? Perhaps God has put you in position to do something about this threat to our existence."

So Esther did what she could. She informed her husband, the king of Persia, about what was happening, and they figured a way out. And, as you know, the tables were turned with respect to Haman and Mordecai; the Jewish people escaped the threat of annihilation, and Haman was hanged on the gallows he constructed for Mordecai.

Likely none of us will ever have that much influence over public affairs as did Queen Esther, but there is a sense in which God puts each one of us into life for such a time as this. Each of us as Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, is called to live and act and speak in such a way as to promote truth and goodness and justice and shalom.

God gives us each certain capabilities and responsibilities, and even if they are not hugely important in public affairs, taken all together they form a powerful witness for the gospel of Jesus Christ. So each of us should be asking all the time: "Who knows? Perhaps God has put me in this country for such a time as this."

27 A TIME, TWO TIMES, AND HALF A TIME

" _He shall speak words against the Most High,_

shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High,

and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law;

and they shall be given into his power

for a time, two times, and half a time."

Daniel 7:25

This strange passage is part of a vision in which Daniel sees a pattern of the future, a sequence of events that will lead up to some kind of climax in the plan of God.

Some evil person, Daniel predicts, will appear sometime in the future, and he will oppose the Lord God of Israel openly and brazenly. Daniel sees this evil person as being very successful. Everything that God has been doing for the people of Israel will be challenged, be given into the power of this evil ruler. The sacred seasons and days of religious renewal that are part of the Jewish heritage will be challenged and changed. The very Torah that forms the heart of God's will for his people Israel will be forgotten and no longer used.

And this condition, Daniel observes, will last "a time, two times, and half a time." Interesting. But what in the world does he mean?

Biblical scholars have different ways of explaining Daniel's terminology, tied usually to the actual centuries that came directly after the time of Daniel. There would be a time when one country would become supreme in the mid-East, then another, to be followed by still another. Empire would follow empire, and scholars try to figure out from what actually happened to the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, just what Daniel may have had in mind.

Perhaps they may be right, or even partially right, but I think Daniel simply means that the cause of the Lord God will not have an easy time of it as the centuries pass. There will always be powerful countries or religions or dictators who oppose the truth of God, who try to eliminate whatever progress the work of redemption has made, and persist in trying to eradicate the gospel and Christianity.

We see this for, example, in the crucifixion of Jesus. Powerful forces both within the Jewish nation and outside it combine to thwart the work of God; but God raises Jesus from the dead. The Roman Empire is another example. There were several emperors who made it their life's ambition to eliminate Christianity from the empire. But in spite of all their devastating persecution they failed, and Christianity survived to become the official religion of the empire.

In our day we see powerful opposition to Christianity especially from Islamic sources. There are Moslem leaders whose stated purpose is to eventually destroy Christianity and the entire civilization that Christianity has constructed.

Whatever precise explanation of Daniel's vision one might adopt, this much will remain true, that Christianity never has an easy time of gaining ground or of keeping the gains it has made. We need to be in constant vigilance to listen carefully to the ongoing speech of God as he leads his people century after century into the future that only he knows. We may be confident that the Lord will know how to confront and ultimately defeat the forces of darkness.

28 NOT RETURN EMPTY

" _So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;_

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it."

Isaiah 55:11

Said and done. That's what Isaiah is saying about God. When God says something, it is done. Without fail. Always. It could not be otherwise.

That's interesting, because it is so different from ourselves. We cannot do that. Simply say something and it is automatically done. Let there be a new carpet on the floor. It doesn't happen. Let there be another thousand dollars in my bank account. Let me get an A in the final test. Let my vision become 20/20. Let my candidate win the election.

Those things don't happen just by our saying so. But Isaiah wants to assure the ancient Jews that they can rely on what God says, that it will surely happen exactly as God says it will.

Of course Isaiah is not speaking in a vacuum. He is speaking to a very definite condition that the Jews are in. It is soon after some of the Jews returned from exile for the purpose of rebuilding Jerusalem and its temple. Isaiah speaks for God as he promises that the time will come, off in the far future, that the kingdom of the Jews will prosper and life will become wonderful.

When God says this, it will surely happen. That's what Isaiah assures the people. Just as surely as rain falling from the clouds will cause crops to grow, so surely God's word for the future will cause Jerusalem to prosper.

It seems that the good Old Testament people were much more attuned to the reality of God speaking than we are. Moses was much concerned in Genesis One to explain that the entire world is a matter of God speaking. The Old Testament prophets were constantly listening for the voice of Yahweh. And here is Isaiah writing so confidently about God in the act of speaking. The Apostle John describes Jesus as the speech of God.

We, on the contrary, seem to limit God's speaking to the Bible itself. We call the Bible God's Word. But we do need to recapture the old Jewish recognition that God is always speaking. He is speaking in the world of nature. He is speaking in human history. He is speaking always and everywhere.

More specifically, we need to understand that it is not enough to believe that God is everywhere, that he exists everywhere. He does more than simply exist. He speaks. Always and everywhere God is speaking, and wherever he speaks things happen. Said and done.

His word is living and active. It does things. It accomplishes something. God's word and God's actions go together. Whenever God does something, it is because he is saying it. Whenever God says something, something happens.

That's the kind of sensitivity we need to cultivate as Christians living in time and history. God is not just a Being out there somewhere watching what is happening, what we are doing as human beings. He is the Sovereign Lord of time and history, speaking his will daily and continuously. It is well for us then to listen to what he is saying in our time and in our history.

29 FROM NOW ON AND FOREVER

" _And as for me, this is my covenant with them, says the Lord;_

my spirit that is upon you,

and my words that I have put in your mouth,

shall not depart out of your mouth,

or out of the mouths of your children,

or out of the mouths of your children's children,

says the Lord, from now on and forever."

Isaiah 59:21

"From now on and forever." That's a long time. Do you suppose that means even through the twenty-first century? God's spirit and God's word will not depart from them – from now on forever. Do you suppose God's promise to the Jews is still in force today, two and a half millennia later?

But if that is true, then how is it that the Jewish people rejected Jesus when God sent him as their messiah? If God's spirit and God's word will never depart from out of the people's mouths, then why did those mouths cry out, "Crucify him"? Isaiah's prophecy does not seem to be all that convincing, at least not to us today.

At first sight. But if we think about it more carefully, it just might make sense after all.

Because God's spirit and God's word are indeed still in people's mouths and in their hearts. Where? In whose mouths and hearts? Yours and mine. The promises that God made to the Old Covenant people of Israel are now functional in New Covenant Christians.

Notice that contrast: old covenant and new covenant. What was a vital part of the old covenant is now a vital part of the new covenant. Some things change from one covenantal stage to the next, some do not. For God there is only one purpose, one heart of the covenant even though some secondary aspects of it change from time to time. This part does not change: God's words and God's spirit.

For the ancient Israelites God's words were cut in stone, but in the new covenant God's words are inscribed by God's spirit on hearts of flesh. "This is my covenant with them, says the Lord." The Jews may have rejected Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, and they may not have lived by the spirit of God, but God found a way to keep his words in the lives of other people who would then be able to live in God's spirit.

The Apostle Paul described it in an analogy. The Jewish people of the old covenant were like a tree, but when branches died they were cut off and new branches were grafted in. So Paul is showing that the heart of the old covenant remains intact, but that certain other changes take place in secondary matters.

So we as Christians in the twenty-first century must learn to distinguish between what carries over into our lives from the Old Testament (old covenant) and what does not. What carries over, according to this prophecy of Isaiah, are God's words and God's spirit.

Jesus is God's word in our flesh, and his spirit is God's spirit. The work of God's Holy Spirit is precisely to shape our lives by the eternal word of God deep in our hearts and minds and souls. This work of God will continue forever.

30 AFTERWARD

" _Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;_

your sons and daughters shall prophesy,

your old men shall dream dreams,

and your young men shall see visions.

Even on the male and female slaves, in those days,

I will pour out my spirit."

Joel 2:28-29

Most of the prophets in the Old Testament had a tough time of it, frustrating. Prior to the Babylonian Captivity the prophets had to warn the people about their neglect of God's Law. For the most part their warnings fell on deaf ears, though once in a while a good man would become king and do what was right, like Hezekiah and Josiah.

During the time of captivity the prophets would have to keep alive the hope that God would some day bring the people back and start the kingdom all over again. But a lot of the people found life not too bad out there and chose to stay in Babylon even when it was OK for them to go back to Jerusalem.

After the return from Babylonian captivity the prophets had to keep the people upbeat. The people became discouraged when they saw the heap of stones that Jerusalem now was, and they had to figure out how to make houses and a temple out of all that destruction. Especially when time passed and enemies around them started giving them trouble.

So in this passage Joel is trying to get the people to look far into the future. But what he is saying seems so unreal and vague. What the Jews wanted was not people who were dreamers or visionaries or even prophets. What good is all that?

What they wanted was assurance that God will enable them to get the kingdom going again, and in time to rival David and Solomon in power and wealth and glory. Restore Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah to its height of independence and stature among the nations. That was their dream, not the dream of pouring the spirit into slaves.

So whatever the people might have thought about this message from Joel, it was certainly submerged into more prosaic and concrete visions. Visions of earthly power and wealth and glory. They did not yet get the point of what God was in process of doing, creating a people who would serve him from inner conviction.

But we today need to make sure that we get the point. What Joel is predicting here is something we know has been effectuated by Jesus when he managed to get his disciples into his Spirit, or as we usually say, get his Spirit into the disciples on the day of Pentecost.

It's interesting also to note the various categories that Joel mentions: sons and daughters, old men, young men, male and female slaves. Obviously Joel means everybody, with no distinctions of age or gender or social standing.

Christians do not need special people in special classes to tell them what God is saying. They hear it directly deep in their hearts because that is where the spirit of God is. Old covenant people needed priests and prophets and kings to guide them, but new covenant people need themselves to become prophets and priests and kings. This is what that old covenant prophet Joel wants us to see today, long afterward.

31 OVER ALL THE EARTH

" _And the LORD will become king over all the earth;_

on that day the LORD will be one and his name one."

Zechariah 14:9

If you have ever read through the minor prophets – well, the major prophets also! – you may remember how difficult it was to follow their train of thought. Part of that problem was that their allusions and figures of speech are so different from ours. We have a very hard time making sense of what they say and seeing how it makes any difference for us in our world.

So here, for example, just what does Zechariah mean by saying Yahweh will become king over all the earth? He says it will happen "on that day." But what day would that be? And even if we think we can answer when that day will be, just how will it happen?

Zechariah is one of the prophets of Judah after they returned from captivity in Babylon. The people are now struggling to make a go of it back in Jerusalem, trying to make that ruined city livable and trying to do this in healthy respect for the Law of God. They want to do right and they are trying their best, but it is so difficult. Is there any hope that the newly restored nation would become successful and prosperous?

Zechariah writes much about the "day of the LORD" that is coming. It's a day when all their fondest hopes will be realized. He is promising great things for the future. Here is one, for example. "Thus says the LORD of hosts: In those days ten men from nations of every language shall take hold of a Jew, grasping his garment and saying, 'Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'" People from all over the world will see in Jewish life the great benefits of the blessing of God, and they will want to come along, sharing in their excellent life.

Well, that would be very encouraging for those beleaguered people, but what are we to make of it? It is very difficult for us today to see people flocking to the Jews for the benefit of their lifestyle. The opposite seems to be true. Throughout history people have been persecuting the Jews rather than admiring them.

We need to see this prediction, and many like it in the Old Testament, as a messianic prophecy, fulfilled not in the Jewish people per se but in that one Jew, Jesus of Nazareth.

No one in Zechariah's day knew just how these words would be fulfilled. But we today can see well enough that people are not grasping on to Jewish garments and begging to be part of their culture. What we can see, however, is that people all over the world are touching the robe of Jesus Christ to be healed of their addiction to sin. This is where we see Zechariah's prophecy make sense.

So when we do read the minor prophets we should remember that God's purpose is connected to the entire human race. The LORD will become king over all the earth, is what Zechariah is predicting. Not that the Jewish nation will dominate human civilization, but that through the Lord Jesus, that one great Jew, the entire human race will find its future. God who is Creator of all is shaping us into his image as we learn how best to dominate and use the rest of the natural world.

32 WHO CAN ENDURE?

" _But who can endure the day of his coming,_

and who can stand when he appears?"

Malachi 3:2

Malachi is the last of the writing prophets, and he has some really serious warnings. By this time in Jewish history the message of the earlier prophets had taken hold in the hopes and aspirations of the struggling Jewish nation. What the people heard from those earlier prophets was that glory days were coming for them. Off in the future some time. Glory days like those of King David and Solomon.

God would, sometime in the future when conditions were right, send a messiah to take charge of the country. This messiah would re-establish the glorious throne of David, restore the nation of Judah to world prominence, and thus demonstrate that the God of Israel is greater than the gods of the nations.

How would this coming messiah accomplish all this? Well, the only way the people knew, by force of military arms. Just like David. That was how they understood the message of the prophets, and that became the all-inclusive hope of the Jewish people in those long-gone days.

So it isn't clear that Malachi's warnings took hold in the mentality of the people. "Who can endure the day of his coming?" What's to endure? Of course we can endure it; we want him to come and we will support him all the way when the Lord sends him. We will raise the funds to sustain an army, our young men will join his service and fight alongside him. We will do whatever is necessary on our part to help our new David to establish Jewish hegemony.

However, when we see what actually happened, the people of Jesus' day did not understand at all what God's messiah would be doing and how he would do it. Malachi's warning did not resonate with them.

So when God actually sent Jesus, the people saw that he had no intention of being the kind of messiah that was expected. Jesus did not organize a secret army, did not raise funds to pay the soldiers, even though in other respects he demonstrated that he had the power to do amazing things. Those powers that Jesus possessed would go a long way to enable him to drive out the hated Roman soldiers. But that was not what was in God's mind and that was not in Jesus' mind either.

So, the people could not endure the day of his coming. They could not stand when they finally were convinced that Jesus was not going to re-establish a throne of David in Jerusalem. They rejected him and killed him. They did not stand when he appeared. Malachi's warning was, sadly, fulfilled when they crucified the messiah God sent to them.

Malachi's warning needs to be heeded still today. We need to be clear about what Jesus came to do, and especially how he does it. He came to establish the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of the Jews or the kingdom of the church. And he does this by means of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God working deep in the hearts of believers to bring them to honest repentance and to humble obedience. His ultimate goal is that the entire human race shall become part of this universal kingdom of God, imaging their Creator in the way they go about making a godly civilization.

33 THE FULLNESS OF TIME

" _But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son,_

born of a woman, born under the law,

in order to redeem those who were under the law,

so that we might receive adoption as children."

Galatians 4:4-5

The fullness of time. What does that mean? How can time become full? I know how a cup can become full, just pour coffee into it until it won't hold any more. But what about time; how can you fill time up?

Paul means to say simply, When the time was right. When in the course of history circumstances were just right, God caused Jesus to be born. Circumstances were not just exactly right a hundred years earlier, and they would not have been right a hundred years later.

We are not exactly sure what year that was in the way we make our calendars. Some scholars say it was about 4 B.C. That would mean Jesus was born four years before – before what? Before Christ. Christ was born four years before Christ! Whoever made our calendars seems to have made a little mistake in calculating the year Jesus was born.

But that doesn't really matter much. What's important is what was happening in the world at large. Circumstances in the nation of the Jews and in the Roman empire were just the way God wanted them to be so that Jesus could do what God sent him to do in the most efficient way possible.

Jesus was born "under the law," writes Paul. This means he was a Jew, living under the ancient Law (Torah) of Moses. Jews were the only people in the world who worshiped only one God and who were doing their best to be the kind of people God wanted them to be, who lived by the rules and regulations in those Old Testament documents.

Paul has an interesting play on words. God sent his Son, why? So that we could become sons. God sent his Son Jesus to redeem people under the law, for the purpose of making them also children of God. The purpose of God's child was to make other people God's children, have them adopted into the family of God.

But why would the Jewish people, already living under God's Law, need to be redeemed? Weren't they already doing their best to be obedient children of God? Weren't they already in God's family because they lived obediently under the Law?

Paul is saying they needed to be redeemed from the way they were obeying the Law. The way they were obeying did not come from their hearts; it was simply a matter of performing certain religious activities. Outward behavior, not inward conviction. Do what the law says regardless of what your real desires and motivations are. You can be greedy and merciless all the while you are making sacrifices in the temple. You can have a godless heart all the while you are doing religious things according to the Law. That is why they needed to be redeemed from the Law. They needed to be saved from that legalism.

So now God sends Jesus precisely at the right time for him to challenge that legalism, and to open up the way for, not only Israelites, but Gentiles as well, to find the gloriously free life that only the Spirit of God can provide. Not only Jews, but all who believe, become children of God.

34 SON OF GOD

" _The Holy Spirit will come upon you,_

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;

therefore the child to be born will be holy;

he will be called Son of God."

Luke 1:35

The Bible tells the story of Jesus' birth in two places, the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke. In both places the emphasis is upon the fact that Mary was a virgin, such that Jesus did not have a human father but a divine father.

There is no way that we can explain this scientifically, so we must simply accept it at face value, understanding that God is able to do that.

Skeptics call attention to the fact that the virgin birth of Jesus is not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament; and they use this observation to downplay the importance of the event. So we can indeed ask the question: Is this doctrine of the virgin birth important, or can we simply ignore it?

The doctrine enables us to understand who Jesus is. He is at the same time the Son of God and the son of a woman. This does not mean, as some of the very earliest theologians thought, that Jesus was half God and half man, a sort of tertium quid (third substance) halfway between divine and human.

It does mean that from the moment of his conception the "power of the Most High" was at work in Jesus' life. That power is what caused him to be conceived in Mary's womb, and that power is what continued to function in him his entire life. It is what enabled him to work miracles when as a thirty-year-old he began his public mission.

Luke calls attention to the importance of this virgin birth of Jesus by mentioning two items: it makes Jesus a holy child, and it requires us to see that he is the Son of God.

To say that Jesus is holy is to say he is sinless. Elsewhere in the Bible we are taught that Jesus is like us in every respect except for sin. Jesus' sinlessness, in turn, is important for us because it tells us that Jesus is the epitome of what a human being ought to be. A sample of perfection. The ideal toward which God is shaping the entire human race. That is what time and history are all about, making us into the kind of humans that Jesus was.

The term "Son of God" is also interesting. When we believe in Jesus we too become children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus by faith, with him calling God our Father. Abba, Father.

The term "Son of God" as it is used in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, almost always refers to human beings. There is only one God, so the term cannot mean another god alongside of the Most High, as it does in polytheistic religions. Adam is referred to as a son of God (Luke 3:38), and in other places the term is used to describe Solomon, an unnamed king of Israel, and the entire nation of Israel ("Out of Egypt I have called my son.")

So, to sum up, the doctrine of virgin birth should impress upon us that the same divine power than made Jesus what he was is now working in all of us who believe, to make us also children of God.

35 THE LOGOS [WORD]

" _And the Word became flesh and lived among us,_

and we have seen his glory,

the glory as of a father's only son,

full of grace and truth."

John 1:14

When God created the world he did so by speaking. When God spoke, as Genesis records it, things happened in the universe that gradually, step by step, resulted in the planet earth becoming a suitable place for life to begin and humans to exist. All of that is the product of God speaking, of God's speech, of his Word.

Judging by the first verses of this Gospel, this is what the Apostle John has in mind when he writes that the Word now became flesh and lived among us. Obviously he means Jesus. Jesus is the product of God speaking. He is, in his entire existence, the model of what God's Word accomplishes in human existence.

Adam and Eve were created in the image of God. But that fact did not keep them from choosing wrongly in the Garden of Eden. From those insights we too must recognize that our origin as images of God is in itself insufficient to guarantee that we will live accordingly. We all know we don't live that way as we should.

But Jesus did. Jesus was completely holy, sinless. Everything that God intended Adam to be, Jesus was. Paul calls him the Second Man, the Last Adam.

So the description that the Apostle John gives us here that Jesus is the Word of God in human flesh means that Jesus is the paradigm, the model, the sample, the original, the blueprint, of what all humans ought to be. And at the same time Jesus is also the picture of what God is doing by means of the gospel to shape the rest of his humans. This is the goal of time and history, that toward which the gospel of Jesus Christ is directing human life and civilization.

In the beginning God spoke the entire universe into existence. Everything in it is the product of God's speech, and everything in it is therefore God's message to us.

When his work with the people of Israel was finished God spoke again and brought his Son Jesus into the world. Jesus is the culmination of the old covenant with Israel, the ideal product of all that Jewish history; and he is at the same time the beginning of the new covenant, the epitome of what that gospel covenant is working to achieve as time moves on.

John writes that "we have seen his glory." He means himself and all the other disciples, as well as all the people associated with Jesus while he was on earth. They all saw his miracles, those stupendous events that demonstrated that the power of the Most High was working in him.

Paul says it this way, that the fullness of the deity was at work in Jesus. The fullness of God's power in Jesus was what made him the fullness of what a human being ought to be. That same power, that same Spirit of Holiness, is at work in you also if you truly believe in the Word of God incarnate.

36 HE HAS SPOKEN BY A SON

" _Long ago God spoke to our ancestors_

in many and various ways by the prophets,

but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son."

Hebrews 1:1-2

When we today ask how God speaks to us, we immediately say, In the Bible. We call the Bible the Word of God.

However, when the writer of Hebrews wrote about how God speaks, he says, It used to be that God spoke to us by the prophets. But he speaks to us today by means of Jesus, his Son.

Perhaps the writer of Hebrews, whoever he was, maybe Apollos, perhaps he has in mind the time when Jesus was transfigured in the presence of Peter, James, and John. A voice from heaven announced, "This is my Son, listen to him."

The disciples, of course, were listening to Jesus all the time. They heard him preach in the synagogues, in the open air, from a fishing boat, as well as in private conversations. But God from heaven had something a bit different in mind when he said, Listen to my Son. He wanted the disciples not only to hear what Jesus said but to understand it.

That's what the disciples just could not get through their heads. They heard Jesus talking in parables, but they never got the real point. They kept thinking Jesus was talking about what things would be like once the revolution was successful and the Romans were sent packing and the disciples were ruling the people alongside King Jesus.

As long as Jesus was with them on earth, right up to the time he ascended into heaven, the disciples were waiting for Jesus to get the revolution started. Not until they finally realized that would not happen, after he ascended into the clouds, did they begin to think about the things Jesus had been trying to teach them and finally begin to see the point. The kingdom of God does not come with observation, that is, by great battles and magnificent palaces, but it is within you.

So the writer of Hebrews is trying to explain some of that to his readers, probably Gentile Christians. If you really want to know what God is saying, listen to Jesus. If you really want to know what life is all about, listen to Jesus. If you really want to know where history is going, listen to Jesus. That's how God speaks now.

And that is how we need to read the Bible also. God is still speaking to us as Christians by means of his Son Jesus, just as this is recorded for us in the Bible. We will have all kinds of problems and differences about just what some Bible passages mean, but if we do our best to listen to what God is saying to us by means of Jesus, then we shouldn't go far wrong. Jesus wants us to disciple the nations, and thus to fulfill the purpose of our being children of God. This is, indeed, what God keeps saying, that we live daily as images of God right within the godly culture we are trying our best to create.

37 IN THE TIME OF KING HEROD

" _In the time of King Herod,_

after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea,

wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking,

' _Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?_

For we observed his star at its rising,

and have come to pay him homage.'"

Matthew 2:1-2

It's interesting that the Gospels take pains to locate Jesus in time. They did not have calendars such as we have today back then, so they described events in terms of who was the ruler at the time. It would be like our saying something like, This happened when Andrew Jackson was President. So that is what Matthew is doing here, This incident I am about to tell you about happened when Herod was king of the Jews.

But what is even more interesting is what Matthew says about the Wise Men. We saw a star a while ago, back home in Babylon, and we concluded that it pointed to the Jewish nation, and that it meant a baby was born who was destined to be a great leader of people. We have traveled all the way here to Jerusalem to check up on our observations, -- so, where is this baby boy? We would like to give him gifts and honor him.

How would these foreigners know about the birth of Jesus? Why would they even care? Something very unusual was happening in their study of the stars, something that in their astrological calculations meant that a stupendous event was happening that would have huge consequences for the future of the world. It was so important that they knew they had to follow up on it to see if their calculations were correct.

But the question we raise about this story of Matthew is why it is even included in the story of Jesus' life. Is it that important for understanding who Jesus is and what he came to do? What would we be missing if Matthew had not included it, as the other Gospel writers did?

The story of the Wise Men broadens our understanding of the purpose of Jesus' life and of the scope of the gospel of salvation. When we read the story of the Israelites in the Old Testament we tend to forget the rest of the world, or if we do think about those nations we think of them as the enemies of Israel that God wants to destroy.
Other nations were indeed, often, the enemies of Israel, but not that God wanted to destroy them, as he did the Amalekites in David's time. On the contrary, the gospel goes out to these "enemy" nations and draws them into the circle of the people of God. God's concern is not to destroy the nations but to convert them. So this story of the Babylonian Wise Men is one way in which the Bible shows us that God is as much interested in the other nations as he is in Israel.

The function of Israel was to be a separate theocratic nation, that is, one ruled directly by God by means of his Holy Spirit, but always with the ultimate purpose of drawing the entirety of the human race into his loving and liberating embrace. Whatever we might conclude about the details of Matthew's story, we do need to see that God's concern is for all people, not just Jews and not just Christians. He wants all people to become his children by faith in his Son Jesus. And this is what the ongoing process of history is all about, and the story of the Wise Men is one such instance.

38 THE MESSIAH

" _He first found his brother Simon and said to him,_

' _We have found the Messiah (which is translated Anointed')."_

John 1:41

How excited Andrew was after spending some time interviewing this newcomer in Galilee, only a few years older than himself! The Messiah! He's the one! Simon, come see him! We've found him!

So just what was going through Andrew's mind? Why would he have thought this young man, this carpenter from Nazareth, was their Messiah? After just a few hours of conversation, and already he concluded that this Jesus was capable of becoming their Messiah? How so?

We today need to be very careful not to read into the situation the things we know but Andrew did not know at the time. What the term Messiah means for us today is vastly different from what it meant for them then.

Popular opinion about a Messiah among the Jews of that day came from prophecies like that of Amos, hundreds of years earlier, "On that day I will raise up the booth [tent, or tabernacle] of David that is fallen. ... I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them. ... I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them, says the LORD your God."

Somebody will come and lead the people into that promise. Judas Maccabeus tried to do it a couple of hundred years before this, and had some temporary success, but now the despised Roman armies were holding the people down. The promises God made are not yet fulfilled, and the Jewish people were at a fever pitch of looking for just that right man to do what God promised.

Andrew and John were convinced that this unknown visitor from Nazareth was the man. So they went home and told their friends they had found the Messiah, the man who would drive out the Romans, restore the throne of David in Jerusalem, lead the nation into independence and, hopefully, into national dominance. We have found the Messiah!

Did Amos and the other prophets mislead those ancient Jews? Did God deceive the people? No, of course not. But God did have in mind a fulfillment of this prophecy that went far beyond the things that Andrew and John thought. But for the time being, what these young men believed was enough to get them associated with Jesus, and when the time came for them to be disillusioned, they would have enough loyalty to weather the disappointments that came with Jesus' crucifixion.

Is it possible that God is doing something like that with us? Bringing us into the kingdom expecting certain things to happen, but in time planning to lead us into unexpected things? The last week of Jesus' life on earth was enormously difficult for the disciples – Judas didn't weather that storm at all – but could it be that something comparable might be in store for us? We need to understand that God's ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts, and that just maybe he will do something in the future that we can't imagine.

39 TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL

" _Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan_

and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,

where for forty days he was tempted by the devil."

Luke 4:1-2

What was Jesus tempted to do? We don't like to think Jesus could really be tempted to do something wrong. What could it be that the devil wanted Jesus to do and that would be contrary to what God wanted him to do?

Remember, Jesus was up to this time just a carpenter or a mason who earned his living by working on construction projects. He has just been baptized by his cousin John the Baptist and he is, as Luke puts it, "full of the Holy Spirit." That means he was greatly impressed in his own thinking and feeling that God was calling him to do something more than build buildings. He would be asking himself, What is it that God wants me to do? Especially now after he had committed himself to God's work by being baptized.

We should understand that Jesus did not yet know what God wanted him to do, what changes he should make in his life, how he should get started on whatever it was that God was preparing him for. I've been baptized, Jesus would have been thinking, where do I go from here?

This kind of personal problem is what drove him into the wilderness, the spirit that he was full of. What do I do now? He went into the desert to figure things out, to listen for the voice of God telling him what to do. But before he could hear clearly what God was saying he had to listen to what the devil was saying. He had to sort out the various options that presented themselves to him as to what course of action he should take.

If God is really calling me, I should be able to change this rock into a loaf of bread. But no, that can't be what God is telling me. I should be able to jump off a high tower and trust that God will send angels to keep me from being crushed. But no, why should I think God would do that for me? I could even be the messiah that everybody is talking about, drive out the Romans, and become the actual king. I could do that, I think, with God helping me. At least I could try.

But no, none of that makes sense. None of that is what God wants. But what does make sense for Jesus? He still does not know. He does not know how to get started on the project that God is setting for him.

What does all this have to say to us now in the twenty-first century? First, we can make sure that we too are full of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus was. That is, make sure that we really do want to know what God is calling us to do, and sure that we're willing to do whatever that might turn out to be.

Second, we can confront all the alternatives we can think of for not doing the thing that God wants us to do. Honestly confront the reasons we don't want to do it, or the reasons why we can't, or the reasons for wanting to do something else.

Third, we can come away from all of that, still not knowing, but waiting for the time when it all becomes clear and God gets us started. That's what Jesus went through, and that's a pretty good pattern for us to follow.

40 MY HOUR

" _When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him,_

' _They have no wine.'_

And Jesus said to her,

' _Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?_

My hour has not yet come.'"

John 2:3-4

Mother Mary must have known there was something special about her son Jesus. He was born without the paternity of a human father, direct from God himself. We may speculate on whether or not the young Jesus was doing extraordinary things prior to this incident at the wedding in Cana, things that only Mary would know about.

Legend has the boy Jesus doing all kinds of wonderful things. He makes clay pigeons at the seashore, waves his hand over them, and they fly away. His mother hangs out his diapers to dry, sick people happen to brush against them and are instantly healed. Did things like that really happen so that Mary could see her son growing up to be something special? We simply do not know.

But Jesus is now about thirty years old. He has been baptized by cousin John. He is inwardly struggling with how to get started on some kind of public ministry. But he doesn't know how to do that. He attends a wedding with his mother. He even says to Mary, who is expecting him to do something about the wine running out, "My hour has not yet come."

He means, I haven't yet figured out how to get started on the special task God is calling me to. Jesus doesn't know. But God does. God is bringing him to this wedding and into a situation where he can do something to get started, to call attention to himself in a public way and thus to get started on his divine mission. God knows what he is doing even when Jesus and Mary do not.

Jesus thinks his hour has not yet arrived, but God knows that it has. So the Gospel of John tells us about the first public miracle that Jesus did, turning water into wine. And then John continues in the rest of his Gospel, telling us about how people became excited about the things Jesus was saying and doing, and eventually about all the things that led up to his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. His hour came when God enabled him to do this first miracle.

Don't expect that God, when he summons you to do his work, will enable you to do miracles such as those of Jesus. That was special for Jesus. Yet we do want to do the things God asks us to do. Littler things. But nonetheless really important things to demonstrate our faith and trust in God.

You befriend everyone you know. You go out of your way to help someone in difficulty. You contribute money to Christian causes. You respect the church and the elders. Maybe you become an elder or a deacon. You train your children to be good Christians. You are honest and trustworthy at work. Things like that, all of them showing that the Spirit of Jesus is shaping your character and your entire lifestyle.

That is your Christian calling; your hour has come!

41 IN PARABLES

" _The reason I speak to them in parables_

is that seeing they do not perceive,

and hearing they do not understand."

Matthew 13:13

When we read the Gospels we are so accustomed to read about Jesus' parables that we simply take them for granted, and then try to figure out what they might mean for us today. We seldom think about what they might have meant for the original listeners.

But what Jesus is saying here is in answer to the question the disciples raised, "Why do you speak in parables?" Jesus was not speaking straight out. Maybe Judas thought Jesus was beating about the bush, as we say, not saying what he thought in clear language.

Obviously the disciples were trying to figure out what Jesus meant in terms of their own perceptions. If Jesus said the kingdom is like a mustard seed growing to a big bush, then they would understand him to say that we have to begin our new kingdom of Israel small but eventually it will grow big.

If Jesus would say the kingdom of God is like a farmer sowing seed, they would think he meant some Jews will support our revolution, some will be half-hearted, perhaps only a few will support us wholeheartedly.

If Jesus would say the kingdom does not come with observation, that is, with these big buildings here in Jerusalem. the disciples would have a difficult time figuring it out. But it might mean to them that it will take a long time to get things back to normal after a devastating war.

There must have been a certain amount of frustration for the disciples to hear Jesus talk in parables so often. But even so their confidence in their leader kept growing in spite of this indirection. His miracles did that. Jesus kept showing that he had the power to do it, the supernatural abilities from God that would enable him to lead a successful revolt against Rome.

But they kept pressuring Jesus to get the revolt started. Let's get going. Let's stop this dilly-dallying around. Let's get organized for battle, let's stock up on weapons, let's get the finances straightened out. So when do you plan to do this, Jesus? What are the signs that you are getting started? Why keep talking in parables all the time? Let's get going.

Jesus knew that the disciples, and the rest of the people as well, did not understand what he wanted to do. He knew they were processing everything he said and did within a wrong framework. He had to speak in parables to try to get them to see his purpose in a different light.

Jesus, as we know, was unsuccessful in getting the disciples to make that breakthrough. As long as he remained with them as a man among men they would continue to think wrongly. Jesus knew he would have to leave them in order to compel them to think again about what the kingdom of God is really like.

So Jesus is preparing them for the inevitable disillusionment when they finally know their expectations are wrong. It will take the coming of the Holy Spirit to enable them to make the breakthrough. The kingdom of God does not come with observation, for it is within you.

42 YOUR WILL BE DONE

" _Your kingdom come._

Your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven."

Matthew 6:10

What is Jesus really teaching us when he wants us to pray these two things: that God's kingdom will come and that God's will be done on earth?

Nothing different from what we learn already in Genesis One. God created humans to be his images in this planet and that requires us to serve him as our king and lord, as the one who exercises control over us and over the whole world.

So that is the background for Jesus teaching us to pray that God's kingdom will come. It isn't coming very fast, judging by our standards, but God is enabling us humans to make beginnings in the direction of establishing his kingdom throughout the earth.

Missionaries have been going out from the churches ever since Jesus instructed the disciples to go into all the world with the gospel and to disciple the nations. By means of this gospel the kingdom of God is being expanded still today to regions and peoples not yet in the kingdom. Real progress has been made in the past and real progress is still being made today.

But there is more. Jesus also teaches us to pray that God's will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. This is closely connected with the coming of God's kingdom, but it is considerably more explicit. Believing in Jesus Christ and establishing churches among new peoples is one thing, but teaching them how to carry over this commitment into the daily life patterns of their culture is quite another.

But that is what becomes necessary once people come to conversion. Not only must our individual lives show that we are doing God's will, but our national culture and civilization must show the same. God's will, from the very beginning of human existence, is that the human race as one entity reflects the goodness of the Creator in the way it functions.

And again, significant progress has been made in this respect. If you look at the countries where the gospel has held sway in past centuries you can see that the direction in which their cultures is going is toward betterness rather than toward evil, toward godliness rather than toward sinfulness.

That is what it means to say that western civilization is a Christian civilization. It is a civilization in which the gospel has been the main decisive force in the slow but steady movement out of barbarism into responsible godly progress.

When Jesus teaches us to pray both that God's kingdom come and that his will be done on earth, he is saying the same thing as when he instructed the disciples to disciple the nations by baptizing them and following up by teaching them to obey everything that God requires. And that in turn is exactly what Moses teaches us already in Genesis One about how we are to image God as we gain control over the forces of nature.

Jesus has come to enable the whole human race to move in the direction of God's kingdom and of doing his will on earth. As individual Christians this is our calling, to demonstrate and promote God's rule here on earth.

43 DENY THEMSELVES

" _Then Jesus told his disciples,_

' _If any want to become my followers,_

let them deny themselves

and take up their cross and follow me.'"

Matthew 16:24

I wonder how those original disciples of Jesus processed this saying. If anybody wants to follow Jesus he must deny himself, he must take up his cross, and he must then follow wherever Jesus leads. In the minds of the disciples this would all be about starting a rebellion against Rome, getting involved in some desperate fighting, and following Jesus as their general who is leading the battle. Deny oneself? What might that mean? Take up one's cross? How so?

Maybe the disciples were thinking that it takes very strong commitment to oppose the Roman armies, and that one's own concerns must be cancelled out, denied, in order to obey Jesus' commands in the coming warfare. Maybe some of us will be killed, maybe even captured and crucified by the Roman soldiers. Take up their cross, that way.

Of course that was not what Jesus meant, and Jesus knew full well that the disciples would have to go through some pretty serious stages of disillusionment before they really understood what it meant to follow Jesus.

But Jesus' words also come to us with the question of what does Jesus mean for our lives today? We do indeed want to become followers of Jesus, but just how do we go about denying ourselves and taking up our cross? How do we do that?

There were good Christian people in former times , both men and women, who gave up life in regular society, entered a monastery or convent, and took the vows of poverty and spent the rest of their lives there. Is that what Jesus meant by denying oneself?

Other men might decide not to pursue a lucrative business and instead become a priest, thus denying their own selfish interests for the sake of the church. Is that what Jesus meant?

So just how do we go about denying ourselves here in western civilization in the twenty-first century?

Jesus meant something a bit different. He meant that our self-centered orientation to life should be denied, crucified, and instead that we become God-oriented. We all tend to consider our own goals and interests and ambitions, and do whatever is necessary to achieve them. But Jesus wants us to forget that orientation to life, and instead to grasp what God is telling us what he wants, and then to pursue that vision.

It would mean, therefore, that we utilize our talents, our interests, our capabilities, our education, our resources, not to promote our own personal success but to promote the kingdom of God. Not by leaving society for a monastery or by entering the priesthood, but by promoting justice, truth, honesty, and all-around goodness in the work that God assigns us. Regardless of what results that may have in terms of our personal success or prestige or reputation. Crucify those things; follow Jesus.

44 TURNING BACK

" _I have told you that no one can come to me_

unless it is granted by the Father.

Because of this many of his disciples turned back

and no longer went about with him."

John 6:66

Lots of people followed Jesus in the beginning. They were impressed with his miracles. They were thinking, This man could really make a good messiah. All that hype made Jesus a very popular man.

But only for a while. Jesus was saying some rather weird things. He told people they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood. What's he talking about? "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?"

He told them he would be ascending to where he was before. What's that all about?

He said, "It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless." What is he getting at?

So the people who were first really impressed now began to question Jesus' sanity. What does all that nonsense mean for getting the Romans out of our country? What kind of messiah does he think he is? At this point many of them turned against Jesus in disgust, crossing him off as a false messiah.

Who knows, maybe Judas Iscariot began to have his doubts also about this time, while still continuing as one of the twelve loyal disciples.

Jesus challenged the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" Peter answered for them all, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life."

By this time in Jesus' ministry these disciples had seen and heard enough to be convinced that Jesus had the ability to be the messiah they were all looking for. Yes, he says some things hard to understand, but just ignore that and keep on working for the revolution to get started. Jesus, you can do it; we're here to help you.

John, however, tells us that Jesus did know already at this point that Judas would betray him soon. Jesus knew full well what was going on amongst the disciples, how they were thinking and what problems they had with the way Jesus was preparing the people for revolution.

Jesus knows that an even greater turning point in his popularity would be coming. Jesus knows that all of the disciples would have to face a really difficult time of disillusionment when they finally figured out that there would be no revolution, no armed rebellion against Rome.

These difficult teachings of Jesus are his way of forcing his followers to consider things that were not in their present way of thinking. They would not understand his point now, but later, after Pentecost, they would.

What do we learn from this today? That even when we do not understand why God allows things to happen the way they do, that he nonetheless has a purpose in it. We simply do not know everything God is doing in the church and with the gospel, but even so we need to continue with what we do know, facing the very real possibility that we don't have it all figured out exactly right. There is no turning back because of the things God is doing, or not doing, in the world.

45 THINGS THAT MAKE FOR PEACE

" _As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying,_

' _If you, even you, had only recognized on this day_

the things that make for peace!

But now they are hidden from your eyes.'"

Luke 19:41-42

Jesus is entering Jerusalem for the last time. Some of the people have prepared a ticker-tape parade to welcome him. Why? Because their future king was coming. "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"

But how so? He doesn't look like a king, riding on that young donkey. Not only that, but instead of waving his arms in delighted popularity, he bows his head and weeps. He saw the city, and when he did, he wept. Why weep during such a welcoming parade?

Jesus wept because the people who were even now hailing him so excitedly as their king did not know what was really going on. As Luke puts it, they did not know the things that made for peace.

Think about that: the things that make for peace. The Hebrew word would be _shalom_. The things that make for shalom. The people were so excited to see Jesus come to Jerusalem, expecting him to get the revolution started, the revolution that would drive out the Romans and install himself as the King of the Jews.

But Jesus knew differently. He knew he would not be doing that, and he also knew that when these same people finally realized it, they would turn against him with the same vigor as they now hailed him. So he wept over the city because they did not recognize what Jesus was trying to accomplish, to set up a kingdom of shalom, not a kingdom of military power.

Jesus knew full well that resorting to military means to drive out the Romans could only result in setting up a kingdom that depended on military suppression to preserve the peace. It would simply be substituting Jewish power for Roman power, similar to the kind of power wielded by David and Solomon a thousand years earlier. That is not what God wants for the human race, and that is not what Jesus came to do.

God wants people to live together in mutual respect, cooperation, love, and helpfulness. This kind of life depends on what goes on inside people's minds and shows itself in what they do with their wills. It does not depend on external compulsion, on legally enforced rules, on social status, or on any other stimulus that comes from outside. It depends, on the contrary, on people sensing they are creatures of God, dependent on his guidance, and then doing their best to to live with everyone else as equals under their sovereign Lord God.

That must also be the aim of the Christian gospel. There is a place for government and for armies and for the violence that armed conflict produces, but none of that can bring about shalom. It can do the defensive things necessary to set up conditions in which shalom can grow, but it can never do the ultimate job of creating genuine peace and mutual harmony among peoples. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can do that, working within the hearts of people and nations to create the inward peace that will then make its way into outward structures of civilization.

46 PARACLETE

" _Nevertheless, I tell you the truth:_

it is to your advantage that I go away,

for if I do not go away,

the Advocate [Paraclete] will not come to you;

but if I go away I will send him to you."

John 16:7

Some translations of the Bible use the word _Comforter_ instead of _Advocate_ in this passage. But neither of those terms really gets at the meaning of the Greek word _Paraclete_.

Consider what the word Paraclete means. It is composed of two parts: para, which means _alongside_ ; and clete which means _called_. So the literal meaning of the term is someone who is called to be alongside, or with, you.

And that is what Jesus is telling the disciples. Jesus tells them he is going to leave them, but not to worry, he will send someone else to be with them. Maybe that will be comforting to them, maybe not. If you were Judas Iscariot at this point, would that change your mind about betraying Jesus? If you were Matthew or Thomas or James, would you be comforted to have somebody else besides Jesus become your leader? So Comforter is probably not a very good translation either.

Notice how Jesus introduces the subject of going away. "It is to your advantage." You will be better off with me gone, and with a substitute taking my place. Wow! That must have hit the disciples like a ton of bricks. I can't imagine any of those men, who had been following Jesus loyally for three years, thinking they would be better off with Jesus gone. Are we supposed to transfer our loyalty to someone else? Who is Jesus going to send? Have we been wasting our time this past three years thinking Jesus was going to be our messiah?

The disciples did not know what would happen, but we do. Jesus left them when he ascended into the clouds, and he then sent his Holy Spirit to them on the day we call Pentecost.

But now, how about that? Are we better off with Jesus gone? Better off with the Holy Spirit instead of with Jesus? That's what Jesus said, so it must be true, but ... is it really so? What do you think, would you rather have Jesus here on earth, or would you rather have the Holy Spirit but with Jesus gone? Jesus said clear enough, you will be better off with me gone.

That should not be too hard to figure out. The disciples wanted Jesus to be their messiah, but for them a messiah was a revolutionary leader who would gather an army and drive out the Romans. The disciples were perfectly convinced Jesus could do this, what with his ability to heal the sick, raise the dead, walk on water, make a boy's lunch serve thousands of people. Jesus certainly demonstrated the skills necessary to do what a messiah was supposed to do.

But Jesus had no plans to do that. What he wanted was for the disciples to get into the kingdom of God, that is, to have God rule them from the inside. Not politically by force or by weapons, but by God's word and God's spirit. And Jesus knew very well that as long as he was with them physically the disciples would keep pushing him to get the revolution started. The only way he could counter that was by going away. So that is what he did.

And, like it or not, the disciples did come to see they were better off that way. We are too.

47 THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH

" _I still have many things to say to you,_

but you cannot bear them now.

When the Spirit of truth comes,

he will guide you into all the truth;

for he will not speak on his own,

but will speak whatever he hears,

and will declare to you the things that are to come."

John 16:12-13

This is easy enough to understand with respect to Jesus and the disciples. The disciples had no idea about what Jesus was really about, what he was planning to do. They thought Jesus was going to lead them into victorious rebellion against Rome, set up a vigorous Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem, declare himself king, and – not to be overlooked, appoint themselves to prestigious offices in his government.

So when Jesus says, I have a lot of things yet to tell you, but you won't understand them now, that's what he has in mind. He could say flat out, I'm not going to start a war against Rome, I'm not going to make myself king, I'm not going to appoint you to government offices. But if he said things like that, he would likely lose more than Judas Iscariot; maybe all of them would go home disillusioned.

Instead of explaining these things in so many words, Jesus would let events speak for themselves, and then let the Holy Spirit, his replacement, guide the disciples into figuring out what was going on. And that is exactly what happened, beginning on the next Pentecost holiday.

But now, what about us in the twenty-first century? Notice the last line, "He ... will declare to you the things that are to come." Jesus is saying to the disciples, there is a long future ahead of you and the Holy Spirit will be your guide as the years and centuries move along.

That is still true today, just as it has been during the many centuries since the time of Jesus. The Holy Spirit has been leading the church all the way, century after century, throughout its history and development.

But think, for example, of the awful things that have happened in church history, especially in the Middle Ages: the superstition and intolerance and heavy-handed church discipline of the Inquisition and the dreadful burning of heretics. Often enough, back then, church leaders were guilty of the same heinous crimes they were supposed to be condemning. Can we say the Holy Spirit was leading the church into all the truth during those pitiful times?

Well, yes. Not that such sins were promoted and taught by the Spirit, but that in spite of them the gospel still was doing its work in the peoples of Europe. Eventually the Spirit of Truth did lead the church out of that transition time, and is even now guiding the church through whatever shortcomings still plague us. That is what Jesus is promising. The Spirit is still declaring to us "the things that are to come," leading us to deal with the improvements we must still work at.

48 AUTHORITY

" _And Jesus came and said to them,_

' _All authority in heaven and on earth_

has been given to me."

Matthew 28:18

What a claim! Unbelievable! Incredible! All the authority in the whole world belongs to Jesus? What can he possibly mean? More authority than the United Nations? More authority than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? More authority than the President of the United States? More authority than the almighty dollar?

Jesus claims to have all authority on earth, but he isn't even on earth. How can that be? No wonder if unbelievers dismiss this as the boasting of a disillusioned has-been. So it will be useful for us to consider just what Jesus means.

Jesus means the power to be exercised by his Spirit when once he is ascended to heaven. That power of the Holy Spirit will be a force on earth, within existing society and culture and civilization, that will be more powerful than any other power on earth. The power of the Holy Spirit, exercised through faith in the risen and ascended Lord Jesus, will from now on control the development of human civilization on earth.

That's what Jesus is saying to his disciples, and that's what he is continuing to say to us today as we do our part in the ongoing plan of God.

Jesus has ascended into the clouds. We say he is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. He is therefore exercising his authority from heaven but on earth. He is exercising this authority by means of his followers proclaiming the good news of the kingdom to all peoples throughout the earth. He is making this authority felt by means of the Holy Spirit who persuades people of the truth of the gospel and who provides inner commitment and guidance and instruction for all Jesus' disciples.

This inner power of the Spirit is indeed overcoming whatever opposition the devil may invent. The opposition of the Roman Empire was quelled by the year 390. All of the barbarian tribes of Europe were drawn into the Christian faith by the year 1000.

The power of Christian faith is still giving shape and form to the new civilization developing in Europe and America. The gospel continues its slow but victorious path as it draws people all over the world into the loving embrace of the Spirit of Jesus, and shows itself in the slow but sure sanctification of human life wherever it is working.

Jesus tells us that he is exercising the ultimate power that shapes human life and development. This is the motivation for us all to conform ourselves to this faith and to live courageously and humbly in the work that God is doing by means of Jesus from heaven.

God is the sovereign over all of creation, including human civilization. And he has sent his Son to do what is necessary to direct us in the way we should go. The Spirit of Jesus is now the way in which Jesus exercises his universal authority, from heaven but on earth.

49 DISCIPLE THE NATIONS

" _Go therefore and make disciples of all nations."_

Matthew 28:19

Here Jesus is telling his disciples what they must do with their time. It is an instruction designed to cover everything that the disciples should be doing for the rest of their lives. And it is therefore also an instruction for all churches. It is what churches are called to do. We call it the Great Commission. Make disciples of the nations.

Recall that in Genesis One, God gave instructions to the human race as to how they should use their time: replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over it. Jesus is now telling his disciples how to do just that, how to get people to make their civilizations in such a way as to image their Creator.

So it is important for us to see that what Jesus says here is exactly in tune with what God said in Genesis One. God wants a human race that does its work as his image, and now he sends Jesus in order to make that happen.

Jesus tells his followers to make disciples of the nations, which means exactly what God commanded Adam in Genesis, enable people to show the image of God in the way they go about gaining control over the forces of nature, in the way they build their civilization. Make a godly civilization, a Christian civilization.

Jesus defined two steps in this process, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." Baptizing and teaching. First, persuade people to believe in Jesus, which is what baptism means; and second, teaching them constantly what it means to live as Christians, as godly people, what it means to demonstrate the image of God in their daily occupations. Bring people to faith, baptizing them, and then never stop teaching them how to obey the Lord. Two steps.

But there is another feature of this Great Commission that is sometimes overlooked because of the way it is translated into English. In the original Greek the words are "disciple the nations." Not get some individuals in the nations to believe, but get the entire nation to believe. The term "nations" is the object of the verb "disciple." Of course this process must begin with individual persons and groups of people within any given nation, but Jesus' intent is that the entire nation becomes godly and that the entire civilization reflects the attributes of God.

And that is what has been happening ever since. By the year 390 Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire – the Roman Empire had been baptized. After the fall of the Empire, all the barbarian tribes of Europe were converted and baptized by the year 1000. Then the Church began the second stage of the Great Commission, teaching the converted barbarians how to obey God, and out of that came what we call Western Civilization. Today we are learning, still learning, how to reflect in our culture the godly principles of truth, justice, mercy, love, peace and all the rest of the attributes of God.

50 THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES

" _You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky,_

you cannot interpret the signs of the times."

Matthew 16:3

Most television stations have reporters whom we call weathermen. They watch the weather out west and predict where and when similar conditions will arrive in our locality. Sometimes people become cynical about these conscientious people, especially when their predictions turn out wrong, but more often than not they are right and we honor them and make use of their attempts.

Maybe there were dark clouds forming in the distance and maybe someone had suggested they find shelter from the threatening storm. Be that as it may, what kind of sign were the Pharisees asking Jesus for? Matthew writes that they were asking for "a sign from heaven." So that is why Jesus replied this way, perhaps pointing to the threatening skies in the distance.

The Pharisees wanted to see a sign from Jesus that would prove he was really sent by God to be their messiah. They wanted Jesus to do something that would show he was getting started on – on what? On the mission they thought a messiah was supposed to do.

What was that mission? To get the Romans off their Jewish backs. A messiah was supposed to start a revolution that would gain independence for the Jewish people, and set himself up as the new Jewish king on the throne of David. But as long as Jesus didn't do anything to show he was about to get this revolution started, people would not be convinced he was the messiah. So, Jesus, they challenged, show us something that will prove you're going to get started on being a messiah.

Jesus used the occasion, as he often did, to get in a telling response. He replied, You don't know what to look for. You are looking for the wrong kind of signs. Jesus was not going to start a revolution to drive out the Romans. There would not be any signs like gathering weapons, finding funds for a long war, organizing a secret army.

What kind of signs did Jesus have in mind? The signs that were already there, like healing paralyzed people, curing lepers, exorcising demons, feeding five thousand people with a boy's lunch, walking on water, raising the dead. The miracles that we read about in the Gospels. Those signs. They were there to be seen; but they weren't what the Pharisees were looking for, so they demanded signs indicating a revolution in the making.

A few chapters later, Matthew will be describing in detail the signs that they should be looking for, and we will take a look at those in the next meditation. But the point here is that we today also need to be very careful about the signs we look for as evidence of the work of Jesus. They are what happens to a person when he repents and believes and begins to live a new Christian life. We become kinder, more loving, more patient, more considerate Christians. Those are the "signs of the times" that show the presence and work of Jesus.

51 THE END OF THE AGE

" _Tell us, when will this be,_

and what will be the sign of your coming

and of the end of the age?"

Matthew 24:3

Most people, when they read this chapter in Matthew, think Jesus is talking about the end of the _world_. But he isn't. He is talking about the end of the _age_. We would say, the end of the Old Testament age.

That's really what the disciples were asking about. When they pointed out the magnificent public buildings in Jerusalem, where Pontius Pilate was presiding and where the Roman soldiers were headquartered, they were implying that pretty soon Jesus and his disciples would be occupying them instead. Jesus would be leading a grand revolution, drive out the Romans, and set up a majestic throne in Jerusalem, right where Pilate was now holding sway. Of course, the disciples were suggesting indirectly that they would probably be having powerful offices in Jesus' government also!

So when Jesus calmly replied that all those magnificent buildings would soon be demolished, he was informing the disciples that their hopes were misplaced.

Well, disappointed as the disciple must have been, they wanted to know more. When will that happen? How? If you're not going to set up your throne there, where will you do it? How will we be able to tell when you're getting started? What are the signs that you're getting the revolution started? When will this time of preparation and waiting stop? That is what the disciples meant when they asked Jesus about the sign of his coming and of the end of the age.

Jesus tells them first what not to look for, and then what to look for. First, things that are not signs of his kingdom, and then things that are. Not the signs of a kingdom established by revolution and war, but the signs of a kingdom set up by repentance, faith, and obedience to God.

Among the negative signs are men who will claim to be the messiah, that is, men who incite the Jews to rebel against Rome and fight. Also "wars and rumors of war." Jesus' kingdom is not established by war. There may well be disasters of many kinds, but none of that has anything to do with how Jesus gets the kingdom of God going.

What are the positive signs? Jesus says, you won't be occupying prestigious offices in the town hall, but people will hate you and put you to death. All kinds of bad things will happen; the exact opposite of what you are expecting.

But there is still another positive sign. "This good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations." That's when the end will come, says Jesus. That's how this time of preparation will end. You may be persecuted but the gospel will prevail. When you see those signs then you will know how I am beginning the kingdom.

Then Jesus adds, "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." And indeed the disciples lived to see it happen, beginning on Pentecost. And we today also see it happening all over the world as the gospel reaches out to the nations and draws them into the kingdom of God.

52 THE TELOS (END)

" _But the one who endures to the end will be saved."_

Matthew 24:13

What do you make of this saying of Jesus? We have to endure to the end of the world in order to be saved? Doesn't make sense. What if the world doesn't end and we die before that? We're not saved?

The problem is that when we read this text we immediately think of the end of the world. That end. But the Greek word here is _telos_ , and besides meaning an end in the sense of a termination, it also means a goal, an end in the sense of something to work for. What end are you looking for by doing something? What's your goal, your purpose, your end?

So Jesus is not telling his disciples they have to survive to the end of the world in order to be saved. Rather they must survive to the goal, to the end for which Jesus came into the world. He has just informed them that their share in the kingdom of God will bring them dishonor and torture and even death. That's part of the "end," the _telos_ , of the gospel. Jesus is saying to them, if you can endure into that _telos_ , that end, you will be saved.

Instead of the glory and honor of an independent and prosperous Jewish government with Jesus reigning as king in Jerusalem, they will be hounded and debased just like Jesus would be in just a few days. Can they stand that? Judas Iscariot couldn't and he betrayed Jesus. Judas was not saved because he could not endure that end. But the rest of them did and they were saved.

The point that needs to be emphasized here, however, is that when the Bible uses the term _end_ it does not mean the end of the world. It means the conditions that exist as a result of the kingdom of God and of one's life in that kingdom.

We today in western civilization live in a vastly different world than did the first disciples. We are not persecuted as they were. Millions of us Christians try our best to give shape and order and meaning to the ongoing life of our nation. So it is within that context now that we must apply those words of Jesus.

Whatever the conditions of life happen to be in the world in which we live, as Christians we must find ways not only of surviving but of making the kingdom of God increasingly strong and decisive, and of expanding God's rule throughout the world. Conditions of "the end" will vary greatly from one country to another, but salvation means surviving, enduring, doing faithfully whatever the Lord may assign us to do.

53 GOOD NEWS OF THE KINGDOM

" _And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world,_

as a testimony to all the nations;

and then the end will come."

Matthew 24:14

We may miss Jesus' meaning when we read this twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew. We think Jesus is talking about the end of the world. He isn't. He has been mentioning things that will happen that are _not_ signs of his coming, like wars and rumors of wars and false prophets and false messiahs.

The context of this verse is the things that will happen that _are_ signs of his coming. The gospel will be proclaimed throughout the world. That is one of the signs of the times, one of the signs that the age of the kingdom of God is here, one of the signs that Jesus is establishing his kingdom.

But we make a sad mistake when we think Jesus is talking about when the world will end. He says, "And then the end will come." But the end of what? Not the end of the world, but the goal, the purpose, the intention of Jesus.

Jesus will not be establishing a throne in Jerusalem by dispelling Pontius Pilate and his Roman soldiers. He will, on the contrary, be establishing his kingdom by means of the Holy Spirit working within the hearts of people, from within not from without. That is Jesus' purpose, his goal, his intent, his _telos_ , his end. The sign of this end, this purpose, is that the gospel will be proclaimed throughout the world.

That's all it means. Jesus is not saying the world will end when once that is accomplished, as if we can predict the end of the world by how far modern missions have spread the gospel.

Jesus is saying to the disciples simply that if you want to know when and how I am planning to get the kingdom started, this is it. Not by rebellion and war but by suffering and gospel proclamation. When, Jesus is saying to them, you see that the gospel is being brought to the Gentiles in other parts of the world, then you will see my purpose, my goal, my intention, my _telos_. Don't look for grandiose buildings and rich coffers and military prowess; instead look for the opposite, especially the gospel being spread abroad.

So we had best get out of our minds any notion about Jesus predicting when the world will end. That was not the disciples' question to begin with and it is not Jesus' answer. We do better to be about the Father's work in the world, an essential part of which is to spread the gospel in such a way that it results in the discipling of the nations. In our twenty-first century this is a real beginning, and there is still a long way to go. But Jesus has promised never to leave us or forsake us, but to go with us century after century, so long as the task remains.

54 WITH YOU ALWAYS

" _And remember, I am with you always,_

to the end of the age."

Matthew 28:20

Here is another well-known passage that is translated _end_ but with a slightly different Greek word. "I am with you always, to the _end_ of the age." The Greek word here is _sunteleias_ , which is based on the word _telos_ , but with a prefix _sun_ , which means _with_. Jesus is promising his disciples that he will be with them through the age to come, till the time when the work of the gospel is completed.

I will never leave you nor forsake you, Jesus said to the disciples on another occasion. But he did, did he not? When he ascended to the clouds? Didn't he leave them then?

Yes, he left them physically, but he sent his Spirit to take his place, so he became present with them spiritually.

This may seem rather esoteric and abstract, but what does it mean in ordinary everyday language? It means that Jesus was unable, when he was physically present with them, to get the disciples into his own frame of mind, that is, into his spirit.

The disciples kept thinking in terms of physical events, like swords and spears and war, like rebellion and waging war, like gaining military success and getting the great buildings of Jerusalem, like which one of them would become Jesus' right hand man when he became king. Try as he might, Jesus was not able to get them out of that mentality.

If he told them outright he wasn't going to do such things all the disciples would desert him right away, because that was the only reason for following Jesus. That's what being a messiah meant for the disciples, and that mentality Jesus could not change so long as he was with them physically. Jesus' miracles confirmed that he was capable of doing what the disciples wanted; but his teaching and his parables did not get through to them about the true nature of the kingdom of God.

However, it is important to note what was happening during the three years of Jesus' association with the disciples. They became thoroughly convinced that Jesus was the messiah promised by God, even though their concept of a messiah was totally wrong.

And what happened at Pentecost and afterwards, the coming of the Spirit of Jesus, was their great breakthrough into the kingdom of God, their realizing finally that the kingdom of God does not come in physical ways but in spiritual ways. Jesus had to go away physically in order that he could remain with them spiritually.

And that is what this comforting promise of Jesus means. I am with you always, to the end of the age. As long as the ages last, so long Jesus will remain spiritually with us, helping us to develop the kingdom of God and to extend it to the all the nations of mankind.

55 NOW IS THE JUDGMENT

" _Now is the judgment of this world;_

now the ruler of this world will be driven out.

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth,

will draw all people to myself."

John 12:31-32

Go all the way back in the Bible to the story of Adam and Eve. Remember the promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head? That is what should come to our minds as we read this astonishing teaching of Jesus.

The "ruler this world" is the same as the serpent in the garden of Eden. Jesus is now saying this evil power is about to be driven out. He means the same as that ancient promise of God that the devil's head would be crushed. So how does this work out according to Jesus?

The world is about to render its judgment about the ministry of Jesus. This judgment is identically the same as that of Adam and Eve when faced with God's prohibition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their judgment was that God was wrong and the devil was right, so they disobeyed God and obeyed the devil.

Jesus is now saying the human race is about to render the same judgment about himself, that God's Son is wrong and the devil is right. Jesus, as a result, will be "lifted up from the earth," that is, crucified.

But there is much more to Jesus' meaning. The result of this judgment of the world about Jesus will be the opposite of what they expect, for the ruler of this world will be driven out because of it. And not only that, a defeat for the devil, it will produce a victory for Jesus because "all people" will be drawn to him.

So there is a double meaning in Jesus' teaching about "the judgment of this world." The world will render its judgment about Jesus, but God will then render his judgment about the world's judgment. Jesus is implying his resurrection.

The world defines its judgment in the crucifixion; God defines his judgment in the resurrection. God says to the world, You have judged wrong, this is the way you should judge. The way of Jesus is the right way; you must repent, change your judgment, and follow Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is God's judgment upon the wrong judgment of the world.

And that is the message of the gospel. The way humans have gone about trying to civilize the world, but making too much of a mess of it by not doing it God's way, is wrong. We have to repent of our mistaken judgment about God's commands, and we need to adapt our ways of living to his laws.

What all this comes down to is no different from what the Bible teaches us in the very beginning, in Genesis One. We need to become images of God in the way we subdue the earth. We need to construct our civilizations in a godly way, reflecting the goodness of our Creator in the way we utilize the wealth that we create in our work, and in the way nations work together for the benefit of all.

We need to put to death the judgment that ignores God and Jesus, and we need to bring to life the judgment that makes us into images of God and Jesus.

56 CRUCIFY HIM

" _Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again;_

but they kept shouting, 'Crucify, crucify him!'"

Luke 23:20-21

I wonder sometimes, if I had been there at the time, would I have joined the crowd in clamoring for Pilate to crucify Jesus? I can easily visualize someone like the audacious Saul of Tarsus, belligerent fanatic that he was, leading the shouting. But would I have joined in?

I suspect that, granting I did not know what I now know about the whole affair, that I would have joined in demanding Jesus be killed. But, knowing what I know now in the twenty-first century, would I have voted for crucifixion?

Well, on the one hand the crucifixion of Jesus is a notorious case of injustice. Jesus had done nothing whatever that deserved the death penalty, so Pilate was simply wrong in yielding to the pressure of the mob clamoring for his crucifixion.

But suppose, just suppose, that Pilate did release Jesus, and that Jesus did go back to Galilee a free man to resume his former style of life. He would not have died on the cross. But then what about our belief that Jesus' blood washes away our sins? If Jesus didn't die on the cross then our sins would not be washed away. What would that do to our faith?

I realize, of course, that this is speculation contrary to fact. But it does involve, for me at least, a conundrum. It was a gross miscarriage of justice that Jesus was crucified, yet if he wasn't crucified my sins would not be atoned for. So was it a good thing that Pilate ordered Jesus to be crucified, or was it a bad thing?

So how do I solve this dilemma in my own mind? I begin by thinking a bit differently about what it means that Jesus died for my sins: he died _because_ of my sins. Paul, reflecting later on Jesus' death, writes that Jesus died for our sins and was raised for our justification. Jesus died because of our sins, and rose from the dead to make us right with God. So the important decisive event is not the crucifixion but the resurrection.

When I sin I find myself in the company of those misguided people who clamored for Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus died because of that, because my sin puts me in the category of enemies of Jesus. So it isn't Jesus' death all by itself that overcomes my sin, it is what happened on Easter Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead. That's where the real victory is.

Was it really Jesus' death on the cross that enabled the disciples to overcome their sin? Suppose Jesus stayed dead. Would the disciples have changed? Would your sins be forgiven? Would you be able to live a good Christian life? No, it takes the resurrection of Jesus to accomplish that, and not only the resurrection but also the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Paul, in almost all of his letters, uses a profound analogy. He says we die with Christ and we rise with him. We are joined to him in the likeness of his death and also in the likeness of his resurrection. By faith. So we die to the sinful way of life, and we rise to a godly way of life when we believe in Jesus.

There is a real crucifixion going on in us, a putting to death of sin; and there is a real resurrection going on also, a rising to an entirely new way of righteous living. That's how the Holy Spirit works in us when we believe in Jesus.

57 IT IS FINISHED

" _When Jesus had received the wine,_

he said, 'It is finished.'

Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."

John 19:30

What was finished? Jesus' life. The work he came to do on earth. But not quite. He still would be buried, raised from the dead, speak with his disciples for forty days, and then ascend into the clouds.

But we can understand why Jesus would say, It is finished. His struggle to stay alive, to endure the excruciating pain of hanging on nails pinned to the cross. That was now finished and he gave up his spirit and died.

It is really difficult for us to know how much Jesus himself understood of how God would use his life and ministry. Jesus was a man like us in every respect, except for sin. So just how much of God's purpose did Jesus know at that point, hanging on the cross about to die? When he said, It is finished, did he have more in mind than simply that he was about to die?

Jesus knew that he was someone special in God's plan. God gave him the ability to heal the sick, to expel demons, to multiply food, even to raise the dead. Did he know whether or not he could simply jump down from the cross and keep on living, the way some of the bystanders taunted him?

We may never know. But we may discover more in Jesus' words here on the cross than simply he was soon to die. Regardless of how much Jesus himself knew or did not know, something more was finished than simply Jesus' life on earth. His purpose as it existed in the mind and plan of God – that was finished.

What was that plan of God? That God's kingdom would expand beyond the national boundaries of the Jewish people into the entire human race. God sent his Son Jesus into the world to set up a new covenant, one that transcended the nation of Israel and drew into it the entire human populace. The process of salvation that had begun among the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was now ready to explode into all the earth. Jesus' part in getting that to happen was now complete. It was finished.

And it reminds us that God's purpose in creating a human race, and also in the old covenant with Moses, is that the entire world, all the nations of the world, shall become the image of God, subduing nature, utilizing its powers, and creating a beautiful new world of shalom. Jesus stands at the transition point from the old to the new, from the nationalistic interests of Judaism to the humanitarian interests of Christianity.

Jesus' work is finished. But the work of his Spirit in the Christian church continues as the gospel slowly penetrates into the far corners of the world, drawing all people into the kingdom of God, into the bright future of a world of true godliness.

58 I AM ASCENDING

" _Jesus said to her, 'Do not hold on to me,_

because I have not yet ascended to the Father.

But go to my brothers and say to them,

" _I am ascending to my Father and your Father,_

to my God and your God."'"

John 20:17

Mary has just recognized the risen Jesus on that wonderful morning of his resurrection. We can visualize her rushing to hug him in astonished delight that he is no longer dead. But Jesus rebuffs her advances, holding her off and saying, "Don't do that."

Why not? Why chastise her for being happy he is now alive again? Was it so bad that she was overjoyed at seeing him alive after watching him die a couple of days earlier? Why hold her off on such a glorious day and for such an unexpectedly wonderful occasion?

And not only that, but look at the reason Jesus gave. Don't hug me because I am not yet ascended to my Father in heaven. What kind of reason is that? Mary certainly would not be able to hug him after he ascends to heaven. It's all a bit confusing, is it not? Don't hold on to me because I haven't yet ascended to the Father.

Jesus is telling Mary, intended as well for all the disciples and for us still today, that his relationship to them has changed. Prior to his crucifixion and resurrection Jesus was present with them all physically, as a man among men. Mary and the other women, as well as all the other disciples, were connected with him physically, being able to see him and talk with him, and yes, even to hug him. But that is all changed now. This is what Jesus is telling Mary and us.

He has not yet ascended. He will be leaving them shortly, leaving permanently. That is, leaving as a man among men, someone to be consulted and followed, someone to be their leader. That will no longer be the case after he ascends to the Father.

More specifically, the disciples had been following Jesus as their messiah, as the person who would lead them into battle against Rome. There would be armies, there would be battles, there would be soldiers wounded and killed, and when victory was achieved, there would be glory and power as the new Jewish government began to rule in Jerusalem with Jesus as the king and the disciples as government administrators. All of it involving Jesus being present as their physical leader.

This must now all change in the expectations of the disciples and Mary and us. They must now modify their expectations of Jesus to conform to Jesus being ascended to be with the Father in heaven. From heaven Jesus would send his Spirit to replace himself. They must now learn how to follow his leadership, not physically, but spiritually.

That would take a long time, and it would not come easily, but come it did, and we too follow that same path today. We follow Jesus in the Spirit, not in the flesh.

59 ALL FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT

" _All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit_

and began to speak in other languages

as the Spirit gave them ability."

Acts 2:4

What does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

It surely means more than becoming excited about religion. More than getting one's emotions all stirred up. There are people and there are churches that specialize in that sort of thing, using worship services to work up a really strong emotional state, resulting in all sorts of ecstatic contortions. That isn't what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. People doing that could just as well be filled with an unholy spirit as with a holy spirit.

Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit when he was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. For him it meant that he was intensely interested in discovering what it was that his Father in heaven was preparing him to do. It's like a college student praying sincerely that God will show him or her the right decisions to make.

Being filled with the Holy Spirit begins with being strongly impressed with one's responsibility to God. And then it continues with being willing to do whatever it may be that God is assigning to one. And then it finds expression in actually doing what the Creator God instructs.

In that original Pentecost when there was the sound of a mighty rushing wind and there were tongues like fire resting on their heads, the effect of this was that they all spoke in various languages as the Spirit gave them ability.

Good Christian people sometimes try to imitate this event, trying to work themselves up so that they too can "speak in tongues," as they express it. This is a sad mistake. You can't imitate the Holy Spirit. You can't work up your own emotions to simulate the power of the Spirit in you.

You have to let the Spirit do as he will in your life. Your total life, not just moments of religious ecstasy. When the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, this is what they began to do, precisely as the Spirit gave them the ability.

When you pray that the Lord will lead you, and that you are willing to do whatever that may be, what happens then? You do whatever God gives you, and you do it precisely as the Holy Spirit of Jesus enables you to do it.

The Lord gives you a job of driving a semi cross country; you do it as best you can and you remember that you are a Christian all the while you are doing it.

The Lord gives you the opportunity to go to college, and you do your studies "filled with the Holy Spirit," that is, just as a good serious Christian would be expected to do.

The Lord gives you children. So you do your best to train them in the faith of Jesus Christ, just as the Spirit leads.

That's the sort of thing that results from being filled with the Holy Spirit, not the emotional religious outbursts that are only counterfeits. Do what the Holy Spirit enables you to do.

60 WITHOUT SIGHT FOR THREE DAYS

" _Saul got up from the ground,_

and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing;

so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.

For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank."

Acts 9:8-9

What a let-down for this arrogant young man bent on bringing followers of the Way back to Jerusalem in chains! No one rivaled him in devotion to the Torah and in his zealous work on its behalf. But the Lord had ways of beating down his stubbornness, and of transforming it into true piety.

Ananias, instructed to visit this blind and broken specimen, complained, "I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints." But God replied, "I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."

Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul, became the most influential and effective missionary of the gospel to the Gentiles in the ancient church. But it did not happen overnight.

First there were those dreadful three days of blindness during which Paul had to recognize that the way he practiced his faith was totally wrong. Not an easy thing for an intelligent and headstrong young adult.

Then there were about three years before he dared go back to Jerusalem, now as a preacher of the gospel rather than a persecutor of it. What was he doing all that time? Figuring out in his own mind what was happening and how to understand the ways of God.

Nobody in Jerusalem wanted him around with his new commitment – some hated him for it and Christians did not yet trust him. So back home to Tarsus. Several more years of existence in no-man's land, so to speak. For maybe another seven years or so. What was he doing all that time? Learning on his own how to preach the gospel all around the area.

So here we see about ten years elapsing after Paul's conversion, and before God sent Barnabas from Antioch to invite him to become an assistant pastor, and then another year or two before the two of them decided to move out and begin their missionary journeys. It was about the year 45 when Barnabas and Paul began their first mission trip. Barnabas was considerably older, and Paul must have been in his early thirties.

When we study the life of this man of God, the Apostle Paul, we need to see how God was working out his plan to make him the effective messenger to the Gentile world that we read about in the book of Acts. God had to take Paul's innate abilities, allow him to develop on a wrong path, beat him down with a sunstroke, and then give him a decade of time to hone his message in a way that would best bring the gospel to Jews in dispersion and to Greeks at home.

Always study to see how God is doing his thing. Never be satisfied merely with analyzing human motives and psychology. Paul became a proper theist, understanding God's ways are above his ways; and we should do the same. God uses all the time he needs to accomplish his work in us and in the world.

61 THE RIGHT TIME FOR CHRIST TO DIE

" _For while we were still weak,_

at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ...

God proves his love for us in that

while we still were sinners Christ died for us."

Romans 5: 6-8

When is the "right time" for anyone to die? Age 70? 92? 65? Jesus was 33. Why was that the right time for him to die?

Well, the question misses the point. Paul is not writing about how old Jesus was when he was crucified, he was writing about the reason he died. He died while we were still sinners, writes Paul, while we were still weak. That has nothing to do with how old he was when he died. It has everything to do with the effect his death has on us, with the purpose of his death.

A little later in this letter (verse 18) Paul explains that Jesus' death has brought "justification and life to all." And then he goes on in chapter 6 to explain how this happens. He says that just as Jesus died, we too must die to sin; and just as Jesus rose from the dead, we too must rise to a life of righteousness. So the "right time" for Jesus to die means that he dies for the purpose of getting us out of sin into a life of righteousness.

Paul wants his readers then, and all of us now, to recognize that it is not enough to obey all the rules of religion. Some of the Jewish people of Paul's day obeyed the religious laws very carefully, but their hearts were far from devout and holy. They could combine good religious duties on the sabbath day with all kinds of unholy activities during the week. So Paul wants these people to be honest with themselves and recognize that they need to change, and that is the thrust of his explanation that "the right time" for Jesus to die was precisely that time when so many people were missing the mark in this way.

And of course something like that is still possible for us today. We can go to church on Sunday and be fine examples of church membership, but still in our minds and hearts not even try to carry over that faith into our workplace and into our dealings with other people.

I do not want to discourage anyone who is trying hard to serve the Lord faithfully, but we all need constant attention to how we think and the goals we set and the relationships we establish. We all need to be asking, do I really love my neighbor as much as I love myself? Is it even possible to love the people I find myself disliking intensely?

That's a lifelong struggle. To identify the attitudes we have that are wrong, the behavior patterns that are wrong, the wrong relationships we create. Jesus died at "the right time," that is, the right time for me and for you. For our sins and for the purpose of setting us straight. For creating a loving heart in us, a sense for justice and truth, a spirit of forgiveness and mercy, a relationship of encouragement and respect. Jesus is always working from heaven by his Holy Spirit to enable us to share the kind of life and holiness that he himself lived.

62 HE WILL HAVE THE WORLD JUDGED

" _He has fixed a day on which_

he will have the world judged in righteousness

by a man whom he has appointed,

and of this he has given assurance to all

by raising him from the dead."

Acts 17:30-31

When the Apostle Paul was preaching the gospel he had to figure out a way to do it that would impress the intelligent Greek philosophers in Athens. That is the setting of the passage quoted above. How could a Jewish foreigner get Greek philosophers to listen to the gospel? It wasn't easy.

So, in this speech, Paul begins by going back all the way to creation, all the way back to the beginning of time, to the Creator of the world. If he was speaking in a Jewish synagogue he would have gone back only to the time of Abraham and the beginning of the covenant with Israel. But he does get the philosophers to pay attention this way.

Now he is near the end of his speech, and he says this God who created the world and who created all the nations of the world does have standards of life that he requires of everyone. In other words, all of us humans have a responsibility to the God who created us, a responsibility to live good lives, not destructive or vindictive or dishonest or unjust.

That's what Paul is building on in this passage. God has requirements for us all, and he will see to it that all of us are judged by this divine standard of righteousness. Those philosophers in Athens would certainly be able to follow Paul's argument here. That makes sense. If God created all human beings, then it makes sense that he would hold us all to the standards of goodness that he built into the world, so that if anyone, or any nation, deliberately misses the mark, they will be judged by the Creator.

Paul goes on to say, God proves this by raising this one man from the dead. We have rejected and killed the man whom God sent to judge us, so we are in trouble. But, even so, Paul means to say, God raised this man from the dead and thus demonstrates that he has all the power in the world to straighten out the mistakes and sins that we make. All the evils we see in the world, even here in Athens, God is able to bring into judgment, but in such a way that what is evil will end up in good. God can make good come out of evil. The evidence, the proof, of this is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul would like his hearers to consider that all the evils that beset their society and their world can be overcome and made better by believing in and following Jesus Christ. That would be how the resurrection of Jesus would be carried over into Greek life and culture. But the philosophers would have nothing to do with it. They scoffed at the very idea of resurrection, and with that rejected also the idea that God is able to resurrect a flawed society.

In time we know the entire Greco-Roman culture would collapse under the judgment of God, to be replaced by a newly emerging civilization in which the gospel of the Lord Jesus would be the formative ingredient. We are today, in the western world, the beneficiaries of that renaissance of Christian civilization, and it is our duty to make it even better as the centuries pass.

63 ALL THINGS WORK FOR GOOD

" _We know that all things work together for good_

for those who love God,

who are called according to his purpose."

Romans 8:28

What Paul writes here does not always seem to be true. A child may contract a disease and die – is this working out for good? A drunken driver may cause an accident fatal to persons riding in another car. Is this working for good? A country may be forced into serious battle in which thousands of soldiers are killed. Is this for good? And how about that good Christian person who invests sums of money with a broker who turns out to be dishonest?

And so it goes. So many things happen in our world and in our lives that just do not seem to work out for good. So how can Paul say what he does?

To make sense of Paul's dictum we need to remember that Paul is an avowed theist. That is, he speaks and writes with the presupposition that God is in charge of everything that happens on earth, and that God's purpose for all of history is good. God is working in the direction of making our human civilization a godly, productive, honest, excellent project – good.

As a constitutive part of this plan of God, Paul is saying that being a Christian and living in faithful obedience to the Spirit of the Lord is the way in which God is developing his plan for time and history. The work of the gospel and of the church is where the evidence of God's good plan for humans is found. Paul writes that it is "for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."

God has a purpose and by the gospel he calls people to love him and live in Christ's Spirit. That is where we must look for the evidence that "all things work together for good."

Does this mean that Christian people never will suffer wrong or be disappointed, that everything will be just perfect in their lives? No, that is not what Paul wants to say.

Not everything went so well even with Jesus, did it? He wasn't very successful in getting his disciples to understand his purpose. People condemned him to a miserable death. Can we say all of that was good?

Paul himself was often in trouble. If not from the Jews who hated him, or from the Christian Judaizers who opposed his teachings, then from the likes of Felix and Festus and other Roman dignitaries. Legend has him being executed for being a Christian. Is that "good?"

So Paul is not thinking so much about how people feel, or about how successful they may be, or whether they never encounter something bad. He is thinking about how God works out his will and purpose by the lives of those who love him. Everything Jesus did, and everything Paul did, though both ended in ignoble deaths, contributed to the working out of God's purpose.

Likewise, we should understand our own lives as Christians in that light. Even though bad things may happen to us, when we live in faith and show through it all that we love God, all of that contributes to the working out of God's good plan and purpose.

64 PREDESTINED

" _And those whom he predestined he also called,_

and those whom he called he also justified,

and those whom he justified he also glorified."

Romans 8:30

We have a lot of difficulty with this term _predestined_. What is predestination and how does it work?

We can't very well deny that it is in the Bible, but when we think about it, it seems to take away all sense of our human responsibility. If God predestines us to be saved – well, that's it. No matter what we do or don't do. And if God does not predestine someone to be saved, there's no way that person can become saved. It sounds exactly like fatalism.

I once met a young father of two who was struggling with alcohol addiction. He explained to me that he believed God created two kinds of people, some to go to heaven and others to go to hell. He himself, he was convinced, was destined for hell so it didn't make any difference the way he lived now. He got that notion of predestination from the church of his childhood.

So what about that? What about predestination? Does it really cancel out our responsibility for the way we live?

Of course not. God created us to live as his images, and that requires of us that we exercise our will to do so. What then is Paul getting at in this passage about being predestined?

Paul wants us to know that as Christians we are being molded and shaped by God through the gospel of Jesus Christ and by the inner power of the Holy Spirit. We are to understand that God is doing this by calling us, by justifying us, and by glorifying us. All of this in our present lives (Paul employs past tense to say this has already happened if we are Christians). It is what Paul means by predestination.

Recall that Paul is a devoted theist. He understands everything that happens in the light of the plan and purpose of God. He wants his readers in Rome to understand that the work of the gospel is the way God is bringing the human race to actually live as God's image.

God has created humankind in his image, but we do not live that way, so the gospel comes to make it happen. That's the way God is working. The purpose of the gospel is to achieve what God desires in creation.

So we need to understand the term predestination to mean that God is in the process of achieving his purpose in creating humans. Through the gospel he is creating in us the desire and the will to live as the image of God that he desires.

This is an active work of God in present time. Do not think that our destiny has been fatalistically decided long ago. It is being worked out in present time according to the eternal plan of God expressed when he created humans a long time ago.

Paul wants us to know that what is happening now in our lives when we believe in Jesus Christ is exactly what God planned in the beginning. Don't push the doctrine of predestination any farther than that. Give thanks to God precisely for that.

65 WORK IT OUT

" _Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,_

for it is God who is at work in you,

enabling you both to will and to work

for his good pleasure."

Philippians 2:12-13

Here is another way of understanding predestination. It isn't fatalism, as if we have no responsibility for our lives.

Paul writes to the Christians in Philippi that they must work hard at living the saved life. Why? Because when they do they will understand that it is God who is at work in them exactly to do that.

Both to will and to work, says Paul. God enables us both to want to live right and then actually to do it.

Notice that Paul does not say that being saved is a matter either for God or for us. Sometimes we get the impression from theology that salvation is exclusively something that God does and that we are not involved in. This would be a wrong way to understand theology. For Paul salvation is something for both, something we do and something God does at the same time.

He insists that Christians must really work hard at being Christians in their everyday life, but at the same time understand that this is how God is doing his thing in their lives. So when I become willing to recognize my sins, and then become willing to repent of it, I must understand that this is the way the Holy Spirit is working in me.

It's not either/or. It's both/and. Both me and God. Being a Christian is not simply an arbitrary decision on my part, as if I choose to be a Christian instead of an atheist or a Buddhist. It is my decision, but it is also God's decision. It is the way God works. God works in my mind and will in such a way that I not only want to do his will but actually begin to do it.

Salvation is much more than merely believing that your sins are forgiven by the Lord Jesus. It is a matter of bringing your entire life and all your daily concerns into God's will, of conforming your total lifestyle to the lifestyle of Jesus.

It's something we need to work out "with fear and trembling" as Paul puts it. Because it is so important. It is so easy for us to become lazy spiritually and morally, living in such a way that we don't get bothered by occasional lapses into immorality. The devil never gives up on trying to deceive and destroy us, and we need to fight that battle every day.

Which we can do by prayer and receptivity to the indwelling Holy Spirit. It never hurts to think seriously about what this means: God is at work in me. It should produce a genuine effort on our part to respond in faithful obedience.

Think of it that way: God himself is working in you. He wants you to be the child of God that he created you to be. How can you not respond in gratitude and joy and then work hard at it?

66 SEATED IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES

" _But God ... made us alive together with Christ ..._

and raised us up with him,

and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

Ephesians 2:4-6

Here is a clue to understanding much of Paul's theology. If we understand what Paul is writing here we will get a good sense of how Paul thinks.

Jesus died. Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus ascended into the clouds. Jesus is now seated, as we say, at the right hand of God. Those are the basic facts of the end of Jesus' life on earth.

Now, what Paul is saying is that when we believe in Jesus something like that happens in our lives. God makes us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in our sins. God raises us up with Christ, and note the next item, God seats us with Christ in the heavenly places.

Note also the tense in what Paul writes. It's past tense, not present tense and not future tense. If you are a Christian believer, Paul is writing to the good people in Ephesus, this is what God has already done in your lives. God has already raised you from the death of sin. He has already seated you with Jesus in the heavenly places. Past tense.

You see how Paul is thinking. He begins with what God has done in Jesus' life, and he uses that as a pattern for what God does in the life of those who believe in Jesus. The death of Jesus corresponds with our death to sin. The resurrection of Jesus corresponds with our rising to a new kind of life. The ascension of Jesus corresponds to the way in which we gain control over our previous passions and sins.

What Paul wants all his readers to understand is that Jesus' life and mission is the pattern by which we should understand what happens to us when we believe. God takes us out of a life of sin into a life of goodness, just as he took Jesus out of the tomb into life at his right hand. So Paul wants us to see ourselves as already sitting with Jesus at God's right hand in the heavenly places.

Paul knows what he is talking about. He knows he himself was once "the chief of sinners" when he went about persecuting Jews who were part of the Way. Paul now looks at that time of his life as a time of death, spiritual death, and he looks at his conversion at Damascus as comparable to Jesus' resurrection. He had to die to his earlier form of life and rise out of that to an entirely new dimension of life as a preacher of the gospel. So he knows now that he has gained control over the devil who once controlled him; in other words, that he now sits with Jesus in the heavenly places.

So that also is how we need to see what it means for us to be Christians. The sins that could so easily ruin our lives are overcome. We rise out of that mess into the love and peace of the Lord Jesus. Jesus controls the way we live, not the devil. We, already now by faith, sit with God in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

67 A SHADOW OF WHAT IS TO COME

" _Therefore do not let anyone condemn you_

in matters of food and drink

or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.

These are only a shadow of what is to come,

but the substance belongs to Christ."

Colossians 2:16-17

We can easily become afraid of shadows. You're home alone at night and you see a shadow move across your living room window. What is it? Is it a burglar? Is someone out there up to no good? Is he going to break into my house? Should I call the police, 911?

Paul is not advising the good people in Colossae to cringe in fear for some shadows moving across their lives. He is telling them something, however, that some of them do not want to hear. Jewish believers do not want to hear it. Gentile believers would, though. What is Paul telling them?

He is saying that the important rituals of their Jewish religion are shadows, not the real thing, not the real substance. The real substance is Christ Jesus.

Jews at that time were very fussy about eating only kosher foods. They still are, for that matter. Jews will not eat pork, for example. But Paul is saying that custom is only a shadow, and that the reality is Jesus. Jesus invited the people to eat his flesh and drink his blood – that would be the substance, the reality behind the shadow of kosher food.

Ancient Judaism, as practiced since the time of Moses, made much of annual festivals such as the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Booths. Paul says these are shadows of a more substantive reality, namely the atonement of Jesus Christ and the shedding of his blood.

The sabbath day had become extremely important for the Jewish people by the time of Jesus and Paul. You can travel only so far on that day, for example. But Paul is saying now that such rules are only shadows, not the substance, not the reality. The real meaning and importance of the sabbath day is finding rest for one's soul in the Lord Jesus, the sabbath rest of the person who trusts wholly in the Lord for help and guidance. Something that continues every day.

This shadow teaching of Paul was extremely difficult for serious Jewish Christians to take. It was saying that almost everything that religion had meant for them was now abolished, cancelled. It seemed to some that Paul was destroying the very foundation of their lives as children of God.

But Gentile Christians welcomed Paul's teaching. They understood well enough that it would add nothing to their trust in the Lord Jesus if they adopted the rituals and customs of their Jewish fellow believers. What would they gain by observing the Day of Atonement when they already had the benefit of the death and resurrection of Jesus? What would be added to their faith if they began to observe the Jewish prohibitions about sabbath travel when every day they already had the peace that passes understanding in the Spirit of Jesus?

So we today need to understand also how to move out of the shadowland of the old covenant into the reality of the new covenant in the Lord Jesus.

68 ADAM A TYPE

" _Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses,_

even over those whose sins

were not like the transgression of Adam,

who is a type of the one who was to come."

Romans 5:14

The Apostle Paul explains that Adam should be understood as a type of Jesus. Just what does that mean?

Paul is writing about sin. In the Genesis story, sin came into the world by Adam. Then, Paul continues, as the human race spread, sin spread along with them. Until now at last Jesus has come to deal with that problem. Jesus has died for the ungodly, thus to undo what Adam had done, and to open the pathway to obedience and righteousness.

So how does that make Adam a type of Christ?

They both represent the entire human race.

Adam represents the whole human race with respect to sin; Jesus represents the whole human race with respect to salvation. Adam opened up humanity as a whole to the possibility of sin; Jesus opened up humanity as a whole to the possibility of righteousness.

But how does that fit into the context of what Paul is writing? He is writing about the period of time "from Adam to Moses." Death exercised dominion during that time. But not afterward? Was there no sin and death after Moses? How do we understand Paul?

Paul has in mind the fact that God gave Israel the Torah during the time of Moses, so the Israelites had a way of overcoming the pervasive power of sin. Obey God's law, the holy Torah. So in that sense death (that is, sin) did not exercise dominion for the Israelites after they received the Torah from God.

Still, Paul explains, the Israelites are guilty of sin just as much as anyone else, because they did not keep the Torah the way it was supposed to be kept, that is, from the heart. So Israelite sin is sin against the Torah, "not like the transgression of Adam" whose sin is against the natural law of God implanted in human nature.

If all of this seems too abstruse and irrelevant for our sensibilities, let us remember simply that our sins as Christians are just as serious as the sins of non-Christians. If we name the name of Christ in faith, but neglect to live the life of faith, we too come under the same judgment as those who do not profess faith in Jesus. The call of the gospel would then come to us with the same force and necessity as to the heathen in far off lands, for we would then still be in Adam not in Christ.

And incidentally, even if it becomes impossible for us honestly to think of Adam and Eve as real historical figures, we must still retain this insight of Paul. In the Bible the figure of Adam represents all human beings with respect to the prevalence of sin, and the real historical Jesus represents all human beings with respect to the love of God which transforms sinners into saints. We then need to take seriously that by faith we are no longer in Adam but in Christ Jesus. And live that way.

69 MAKING THE MOST OF THE TIME

" _Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders,_

making the most of the time."

Colossians 4:5

When Paul wrote these words, Christians were a small minority in a hostile environment. It would be somewhat similar to how Christians live in an Islamic country. Most Christians at that time were converted Jewish people, with a small number of non-Jewish converts.

Christians in the Roman empire at that early date were pretty much free to go about their business undisturbed, but as time went on their troubles increased. Paul himself went through a great deal of trouble, both from his Jewish countrymen and from Roman authorities. Christians were often unpopular people, and this became worse and worse during the first three centuries. By that time, say from 250 to 310, there were several Roman emperors who did their best to eradicate Christianity altogether.

It is in that setting that Paul counsels them to conduct themselves wisely. Paul explains just a bit more. He adds, "Making the most of the time." What is Paul's point? How do you make the most of time?

He means, Use your time wisely with respect to how non-Christian people watch how you live. If Christian people would keep on joining the drunken revelries of their unconverted neighbors, they would be using their time unwisely. If they cooperated with others in abusing slaves, they would be using their time unwisely. If they spent hours in the pagan temples, doing whatever the pagan priests and priestesses offered, they would be using their time unwisely. If they lost their temper when arguing with unbelievers, or if they were intemperate in talking about politicians, they would be using their time unwisely.

So Paul urges them in the next verse, "Let your speech always be gracious, so that you may know how to answer everyone." By choosing their words respectfully they would be using their time wisely. By their self-control and their attitude of contentment and happiness they would be using their time wisely. By their daily habits and loving actions toward everyone they would be using their time wisely.

We can be fairly certain that this kind of self-control and respectful behavior had much to do with the constant spread of Christian faith among the peoples of the Roman empire. Did you know that by the year 390 Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman empire? All the persecutions that previous emperors had made were not sufficient to overcome the steady witness of Christian people who lived conscientiously in the Holy Spirit of Jesus.

So when we today want to be faithful to the Lord, we do well to consider Paul's advice, "Make the most of the time." Live courteously and spiritually in whatever society you are in.

70 THE LAWLESS ONE

" _Let no one deceive you in any way;_

for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first

and the lawless one is revealed,

the one destined for destruction."

2 Thessalonians 2:3

Here in this letter Paul is reminding the Christian people in Thessalonica that the road to God's goal is not easy. They must not think that just believing in Jesus will make life easy. There is that "lawless one."

What these new believers were thinking was still in line with how Jewish people in general thought about the messiah. The idea was that when the messiah sets up the new Kingdom of Israel the fortunes of Jewish people will be guaranteed. We will be the dominant race instead of the Romans. They will send tribute to Jerusalem instead of us sending it to Rome. We will have the power and the glory, not them.

It was just as difficult for Paul to get them out of that way of thinking as it had been for Jesus to get the disciples out of it. So here, in rather obscure language, Paul is telling the people that the success of Jesus' kingdom doesn't come easily, but that a "lawless one" will have to be dealt with first.

Paul does not mean just the Roman emperor, he means Satan in all his trickery. Don't think only about overcoming the Roman empire, think about overcoming Satan. He must be destroyed before the kingdom of Jesus can take full effect.

So the people in Thessalonica need not worry about not throwing off the Roman yoke, or wondering if they were missing some of the benefits of Jesus' rule, or if believers who die don't get the benefit of Christ's victory. All of that is beside the point.

Your life, Paul is getting at, is lived every day in the inner power of the Holy Spirit, and that is the best evidence of the kingdom of Christ. You are not missing out on anything that Christ wants you to have so long as you live contentedly in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Theologians will be arguing forever about these obscure teachings in Paul's letters to the Thessalonians, but we can be content with simply recognizing that God is in charge of the way history is developing, and that we may find the comfort of our life in experiencing daily the power of the Spirit of holiness as he leads us day by day in living a godly life. This is the way God is dealing with Satan, and it will take a long long time until this lawless one is eliminated, until all people everywhere live in this kingdom of God, and the "day" of the Lord will come.

71 NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH

" _But, in accordance with his promise,_

we wait for new heavens and a new earth,

where righteousness is at home."

2 Peter 3:13

It's hard to know exactly what Peter had in mind with these words. If we take literally what he wrote just prior to this verse, we might well conclude that this present universe will be annihilated and a new one created. Perhaps something similar to another Big Bang that got our present universe started.

But it is very difficult to connect that interpretation with the gospel of redemption. Why would God decide to create an entirely different universe and still go through all the ups and downs of history, sending Jesus to die and letting the church go through all the agony that was in store for it? What purpose would there be in history and in the gospel if it will all be annihilated anyway for God to start over?

A better way to understand what Peter is getting at is to think of what the world will become as a result of the gospel. Prior to the coming of Jesus the world was steeped in sin and evil and cruelty. The powerful work of the Holy Spirit counteracts all of that wickedness, and slowly a new world emerges. A world where love and justice and respect and diligence and responsibility and honesty reign. In other words, a new order of human civilization "where righteousness is at home." That's the goal toward which the gospel is working.

Actually Peter is borrowing the term "new heavens and a new earth" from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Isaiah writes an amazing chapter (65) in which he rhapsodizes about what God will be doing in the future. He presents detail after detail about what life will be like as a result of what God is planning for his people, and he encourages the harassed Jews to "be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating."

Isaiah is promising glory days for the Jews who at that time were anything but. It's all couched in terms of God making Jerusalem and Judea a place of joy and peace and prosperity. Within the future. Within the bounds of real history. Something real to work for and to keep hopes alive.

But by the time of Peter it had become clear that Isaiah's predictions are not to be fulfilled literally in Jerusalem or among the Jewish people, but that they are now extended to the entire human race.

The new heavens and the new earth are thus to be seen as what happens as the gospel disciplines entire nations, the process that began with the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles already right after the ascension of Jesus.

The righteousness that will be at home there is the righteousness that is the gift of grace, and which we experience as Christians already now, through the Holy Spirit. The righteousness of faith which produces the fruits of the Spirit. That's what we are working and waiting for.

72 ALPHA AND OMEGA

"' _I am the Alpha and the Omega,'_

says the Lord God,

who is and who was and who is to come,

the Almighty."

Revelation 1:8

This is a rather odd thing for John to write, is it not, so near the beginning of this obscure book of Revelation? What does it mean that God is the Alpha and the Omega, and what is John's purpose in saying it?

Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet, the language John is using to write this book, and Omega is the last letter. So, John is saying God is the first and last letters of the alphabet. Obviously this is a figure of speech, so what does it signify?

The beginning and the ending. The beginning and the ending of what? Of time and history. By these enigmatic terms John is reminding us that God is at the beginning of everything, of the entire creation, and especially of our human life and history. But not only at the beginning, also at the end.

Right there is the main difficulty for us. We have no idea what the "end" of time will be like. God does but we don't. So just what does the Apostle John want us to learn by reminding us that God is at the end of all things as well as at the beginning?

It's a reminder that the entire process of time and history between the beginning and the end, between the Alpha and the Omega, is in the sovereign control of God. The Lord God is, as John writes, the Almighty. Whatever happens between the beginning and the end is in the direction of the Creator of it all.

John wants us to bear this in mind when we read all the symbolic visions that he is about to inscribe on papyrus. He has entitled his manuscript, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ," and all the visions are therefore intended to show us something about Jesus and the way he works now, after his ascension, when he is seated at the right hand of God.

God is in control of everything, and we may see just what this control is like by seeing how Jesus is now working from heaven by means of the gospel. God's sovereignty over time and history is exercised by Jesus from heaven as the Holy Spirit sends the gospel into the far reaches of the world.

We must not overlook the way in which God works. He works through Jesus at his right hand, and Jesus works through the gospel and the Holy Spirit to shape the course of human life and destiny. That's what the book of Revelation is all about, and we miss its intent if we find other ways of explaining its visions.

So we must learn how to live by faith, trusting that whatever is happening in the world today is not out of control, but is a vital part of the ongoing plan of God for the formation of the human race.

73 AFTER THIS

" _After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open!_

And the first voice, which I heard

speaking to me like a trumpet, said, 'Come up here,

and I will show you what must take place after this.'"

Revelation 4:1

Earlier, in chapter 1, John has seen a glorious vision of the Lord Jesus as he is now, resurrected, ascended, seated at the right hand of God. John now continues by saying, "After this."

God brings John by way of a vision into heaven itself. Why? Not only to see Jesus himself but also to see how Jesus is working from heaven.

God is showing John "what must take place after this." After what? After Jesus ascended into heaven, and also after Jesus has sent letters of encouragement and warning to all the churches there in Asia Minor.

John lived in a certain time and in a certain place. He would have no knowledge about what would happen years later and in other parts of the world. But God is now about to show him, by means of visions, just how the Lord Jesus would be using the gospel and the churches to work out God's plan for the salvation of the world.

It is a sad mistake when Christian people fail to see this. Somehow it seems that most Christians think about the end of the world when they read the book of Revelation. But that is not what it is about. To be sure there are some visions about that, but most of them are visions about how the gospel works as time goes on, showing John and us "what must take place after this."

The visions of Revelation are intended to help us understand how God is working out his sovereign will for time and history by means of what Christ Jesus is doing from heaven but on earth. John is invited to "come up here." He must learn to see things on earth from the viewpoint of heaven.

And so must we. It is not enough to observe what Christianity is doing in comparison to what other religions are doing, as if growing or diminishing membership tell us how successful we are. Statistics like that may be useful, but they are not definitive.

We need to understand as best we can from our unique stance in time and history what God is doing, how God is working out his original purpose for the creation and for the human race. And we need to join John as he is shown from the point of view of heaven what is taking place on earth.

So let us understand that the book of Revelation is not an eschatological depiction of the end of the world, but a valuable insight into the patterns that God is using to shape and form this present world as he sees fit. God has a purpose and our history as humans on earth is the locale in which that purpose is being played out and developed. The visions that John records must be seen as helping us see what God has been doing ever since Jesus ascended into the clouds.

[See the present author's book "Revelation Down To Earth" as a full commentary written in this perspective.]

74 THE TIME IS NEAR

" _And he said to me,_

' _Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book,_

for the time is near.'"

Revelation 22:10

How near would that be, do you suppose? It may have been about the year 95 when John penned these words. If you were living in Ephesus at the time, what might that mean to you when you read it, The time is near. How near? What is near?

Or suppose you were living in Geneva, Switzerland in 1550, the time of John Calvin, what would those words mean for you? What is going to happen soon, very near?

But now you are living in the twenty-first century, and you are still asking, How near? And in the back of your mind, perhaps, is the other question, What is supposed to happen in the near future?

The problem is that hundreds of years have passed and we don't see anything happening of the things we think are supposed to happen. We think Jesus is supposed to come back from heaven and put things on earth straight once and for all. But it isn't happening. So what are we to think about this communication from Jesus to John that the time is near? Near for what?

We don't want to think the Bible is wrong about it, but how else can we think? Or, just possibly, maybe we are wrong in expecting certain things to happen. The Jews of Jesus' day were wrong about what they expected the messiah to do, so maybe we are also. Maybe Jesus has something altogether different in his mind than what we expect.

Think, for example, of the time when Jesus told his disciples he was going to leave them and send them the Paraclete instead. That was something none of the disciples expected to happen. Jesus said we would be better off with him gone because the Paraclete would do the job better. So maybe Jesus has in mind, not that he will come back soon, but the time when the work of the Holy Spirit will be successful.

That's what the whole book of Revelation is about, how the gospel is made effective by the powerful presence of the Spirit of God. The work of the Holy Spirit in the spread of the gospel has been going on now for two millennia, very successfully. That is what we ought to be seeing in the book of Revelation and in this promise of Jesus to John.

The time is near, yes, as near as right now. Right now the Holy Spirit is doing the work of Christ Jesus and the work of God Almighty. The fulfillment is here present with us all the time as the Holy Spirit applies the gospel to the lives and hearts of millions of people all over the world.

"The time is near." Yes, as near as now. Every day. Every year. Every century. Every millennium. Jesus has been in the process of setting the world straight for the past two thousand years. That work is always as near as now.

75 SECRET FOR LONG AGES

" _Now to God who is able to strengthen you_

according to my gospel

and the proclamation of Jesus Christ,

according to the revelation of the mystery

that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed,

and through the prophetic writings

is made known to all the Gentiles,

according to the command of the eternal God,

to bring about the obedience of faith –

to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ,

to whom be the glory forever! Amen."

Romans 16:25-27

What a magnificent doxology to end the letter to the church in Rome! "To the only wise God be the glory forever, through Jesus Christ."

Here at the end of Romans Paul concludes by reminding his readers that there was a mystery that had been kept hidden for long ages. He means hidden during the time of the Torah, of the old covenant, when God's saving work was limited to the Jewish people.

What mystery has been revealed? Now it has been revealed that God is as much interested in Gentiles as he is in Jews. They are being grafted into the tree stump that is the left-over of Jews who believe in Jesus.

That's the way Paul sums up the main thrust of this epistle to the Romans. By means of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, God is drawing all peoples to himself in repentance, faith, and obedience. That is the secret, the mystery, that is now being revealed, writes Paul.

Paul is a committed theist, but he sees the really tense relationships between hard-nosed Jews bent on forcing everyone to keep the Jewish religious requirements and the believing Gentiles who see little value in them. Paul wants both sides to consider, not first of all what they think and believe, but what God is doing; and then come to some mutual respect and cooperation.

And for us it is a reminder that we too need to see our own activities and churches and doctrines in the broader light of the plan and purpose of God. We hold our beliefs and religious observances dearly, but so do other Christians in their heritage and tradition.

If we can get ourselves to rise above our own commitments to see in greater clarity how God is using others as well as ourselves, then we will come closer to being the kind of Christians God wants us to be. God may well be asking us, as he did those ancient Jewish believers, to modify our insights according to the mysteries, the secrets, of his own will that are being revealed still today.

The glory belongs to God, not to our traditions, and we must know that he is the only wise God. Through Jesus Christ we are called to conform ourselves to the mysteries of God's will that are still being revealed as time and history move along, and in that way to give glory to him! Amen!

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edwin Walhout is a Minister of the Christian Reformed Church, Emeritus, currently living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has five academic degrees, two from Calvin College, two from Calvin Theological Seminary, and one from Andover-Newton Theological School. His professional experience is in high-school teaching, pastoral ministry, editing, and writing.

If you are interested in reading more of his work, you may consult Smashwords.com, where you will find more than two dozen of his books made available as e-books.
