Archive for February 6th, 2009

Burying Your Treasure

Friday, February 06th, 2009 | Author:

Matthew 25:14-30

 

Jesus told a story.  It was a story about buried treasure.  A man decided to take a trip abroad.  Before leaving, he called three of this slaves and gave them various amount of money to use while he was gone.  When he returned, he found that two of the slaves used the money in the pursuit of profit and they returned the master’s money along with the excess.  Both were commended for their efforts.  But the third slave took a different approach.  He buried the money, believing that protecting the assets was more important than risking it for gain.  He proudly presented the original amount to the master, claiming that he knew the master’s character and he had taken measures to not lose any of the treasure. 

 

If we capture the mood of this story, we will see that Jesus turns the tables on the expected outcome.  We are ready for the master to say to this third slave, “Good job.  You minimized the risk and protected my money.  You didn’t loose a single cent.”  But this is not what the master says at all.

 

The master is irate.  He says, “You don’t even know my style.  I expect my investments to return gains.  I am in the habit of reaping where I did not sow and gathering where I did not toil.  You have wasted my treasure.  You had the opportunity to do something with this and you chose the safe route of inaction.”  The story concludes with a dire consequence.  Jesus says that the master took the money from the one who had tried to protect it and gave it to the one who risked it in profit making.  Then the master threw the third slave out into darkness.

 

How many times have we heard this parable used as the basis for a sermon on our talents?  Has God given you the gift of music, of evangelism, of preaching, or consolation?  Use your God-given talent for Him or suffer the consequences.  Has God given you the gift of prophecy, teaching, giving or showing mercy?  Use these “talents” for His kingdom.  But even though this exegesis is well intentioned and the thought is correct, Jesus’ story is not about our God-given talents.  It is about money, plain and simple.  I suspect that we have allowed this confusion because we grew up with King James English.  In the King James Bible, the Greek word huparchonta is translated “talent” – an old expression for a sum of money.  Unfortunately, our modern word “talent” has nothing to do with money, so away we go with everything but the intention of Jesus’ parable.  Huparchonta means “things which someone possesses, goods”.  In this story, it clearly means physical assets.  And if we read the story on this basis, we see something quite unusual.  God is not interested in risk reduction.  He actually punished the one who reduced the risk to zero.  God is interested in gains and gains can only be accomplished by taking risks.  Profit is the result of risk-taking.  Burying your treasure is the result of fear.

 

Today I see the Christian community obsessed with risk.  But, like the third slave, the Christian community is worried, fearful, that taking risk might result in loss, so they systematically bury God’s treasure.  It’s called assets.  Buildings, land, vehicles, equipment, bank accounts, CD’s, and a host of other forms of property (“things which one possesses, goods”) are buried away from useful production.  The cry to be debt free is a cry of fear.  Oh, what if this happens or what if that happens?   Did we forget that the Master expects to receive gains on all that He has given to us?  Or did we think that He would be happy to see a big edifice of brick and mortar without a mortgage, sitting there as a monument to our foresight?  Not producing a thing.  “I expect to reap where I did not sow,” says more than use your musical talent to play hymns in church.  It says that we should understand Who is in charge of the universe and take some risks because He expects us to.  It says that if we really believe that He has given us all these possessions to use while He is away, we had better put them to use rather than bury those potential assets in the ground. 

 

When will Christians become known for the risks they take rather than the fear they show?  Is God in charge of the financial world or not?  Sometimes I think that you could never draw that conclusion from the way that Christians act.  How long will we go on asking people to give us money to take care of our business instead of taking care of our business so that we can give money back?  We need to read this parable again and remind ourselves that God’s attitude toward risk-taking on His behalf is very different than the way we normally think.

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Oswald Chambers October 28

Friday, February 06th, 2009 | Author:

For those of you not familiar with Oswald Chambers, I would highly recommend this tiny devotional. Almost every day I do find something in his writing that is right on target. In fact, some days I find myself wary of reading it simply because it is so penetrating.

The last two days have been exactly like this. In the midst of all the turmoil of deciding what to do in my circumstances, Chambers simply points me to the fundamental truth that my success or failure in life’s ventures is not the final issue. I would like to share his words with you.

“We are acceptable with God not because we have obeyed, or because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and in no other way.”

“I am not saved by believing; I realize I am saved by believing. It is not repentance that saves me, repentance is the sign that I realize what God has done in Christ Jesus. . . . I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my sin, not because I have repented, but because of what Jesus has done.”

It is often very difficult for me to grasp the true significance of this. I grew up believing that doing well was the mark of worthiness. Often I think that the success emphasis of our culture leads us to believe that somehow we are better if we succeed than if we fail. But that just isn’t true. Failure is the grist out of which I learn the truth that God’s care for me is utterly independent of my success. If I were never to fail, what would have ever brought me to my knees, facing my own unholiness? Failure is such an important part of living – without it I would not recognize the hand of the divine guiding the circumstances of my life. We are so fortunate to have failed so that we might yet succeed, knowing all the while that who we are, to ourselves, to each other and to God, is not the least bit conditioned by our circumstances.

Chambers says, “I am not saved by believing.” How often have I misunderstood this! My salvation does not depend on me. It does not even depend on me believing. Salvation is not a part of my success story. It belongs to my failure.

Salvation depends on only one thing – the already accomplished death of Jesus on the cross. God is not waiting for me to believe in order that salvation may be mine. Jesus has already taken care of everything about my salvation. And my believing or not believing will not alter that finished work. My act of believing is the act of illumination that accompanies realizing I have failed. Jesus died for my failure. He did the work necessary to place me before the Father. Believing is waking up to that fact. Believing is not figuring out a way to add some points to my moral balance sheet so that I look better before God. Believing credits me nothing. It is not about credit. It is about understanding that I have nothing to offer at all.

If you are like me, you have spent countless hours trying to be good enough for God. You and I have suffered over the guilt of sin. We have agonized about our past. We have knelt in pleadings, searching for that magic formula of faith that will make us OK. Even if we have acknowledged Christ, we still operate as though we need to get God’s attention by working the faith. More prayer. More fasting. More church time. God, fix my problems. Can’t you see how hard am I trying to be good? We have not discovered the rest that Jesus promised. “Come to me and I will give you rest.” All we did was transform pre-conversion striving into post-conversion striving. We changed language games. We did not change our understanding of life. We did not accept failure as the fundamental fact of our lives.

These days God is pressing me to realize that rest is His plan. Oh, there is a lot to do for Him. But it is not frenzy. It is not stress. It is not obligation. It is appreciation. It is worship – that act of self that cries out, “Lord, I am grateful. You did it all. I was a failure. You rescued me.”

You cannot be free until your life rests on failure. God is not in the remodeling business. He is in the regenerating business. He does need you to be a spiritual success. He just wants you to wake up to the funeral – and let Him start over.

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Buried Away

Friday, February 06th, 2009 | Author:

“and even if our gospel is veiled” 2 Corinthians 4:4

Months have passes since I had my first taste of a Job crisis. God forced me to confront my trust in false security and selfish independence by stripping away the financial storehouse of my existence. Since that day, I have committed myself to a passionate pursuit of knowing Him. He has given me a peace that I cannot explain. When everything in my world appears to be falling apart, my confident expectation in His faithfulness keeps growing.

But I am nothing more than a disciple and all disciples must learn.

A few days ago I wrote about the Hebrew word ma’ aklete, the knife that Abraham took to slaughter Isaac on the altar. That image points toward the requirement for each one of us to place our future on God’s altar and sacrifice our vision of what we will become in order to accept God’s vision of what He wants us to become. I thought I knew what that meant for me. After all, all of my future plans prior to Job’s visit have vanished in my financial loss. But those plans were not my offering. There is a big difference between an offering of sacrifice and an awakening from disaster. It seems that God often needs to bring about crisis before we can offer sacrifice.

Over the months since my awakening, I have struggled with plans to rebuild my finances. My goal was to implement a process that would allow me to develop my commitment to God’s direction and provide needed income. My plan was to combine what God wanted me to do with what I thought I needed to accomplish. Even though I wrote about the lesson in the knife, that lesson was not yet a reality for me. Yesterday, all the plans that I thought could be combined with God’s direction were halted. They simply fell apart.

Oswald Chambers’ devotional is a daily routine. He often says that a man in obedience to the Lord will strike out on a path that seems right. If it is not the right way, God will check. I am reminded of the picture of the Hebrew view of the future – rowing in a small boat. My back is to the future and I spent most of my time looking into the past and making small course corrections. That is what rowing really is. Holding to a steady point on the distant shore and making corrections.

Now I see that my plans need to be made an offering. This is an opportunity for me to deliberately put my version of the future on the altar and let God show me His version of my future. My sight needs to be firmly focused on the past, that point of faithfulness that I use to make course corrections. I don’t need to see where I am going as long as I concentrate on what I am leaving behind. God has my future in His thoughts.

And His thoughts quite often turn out to be very different than mine. Do we really live in ways that turn our plans over to God or are we more inclined to pray, “God, help me make my plans come to pass”? The difference is more than one of perspective. One is an attitude of ownership; the other an attitude of servitude. It is very difficult for us to really become servants of God. We are much more inclined to think that God is somehow the power source for our designs on the future. But God is asking us to join Him in His purposes as servants. That means He decides what we do, not the other way around.

Paul helps me understand the tension between present and future in this small phrase from his second letter to the Corinthians. The word that he uses for “veiled” is the Greek word is kalypto. You will recognize the root in the word “apocalypse” – a Greek word that means, “to uncover”. In a general sense, kalypto means “to cover or hide”. Its original meaning was associated with burial. The earth covered those who were dead. It hid them in a secret world. Here Paul uses this picture to draw attention to an essential element of Christian living. There is a part of what we are doing that is buried away.

Paul is really saying, “and even if our gospel is buried away from sight”. In this passage, Paul remarks that the good news of Christ Jesus is buried away from the sight of unbelievers. They do not see what is offered because their minds have been blinded by the appeals of the world. In the true sense of the word, they have been buried away from reality. We would say, “They have their heads stuck in the sand”. The gospel is hidden from their sight because they refuse to see.

It is important to notice that Paul never argues that unbelievers are simply ignorant. Their inability to see the truth is not because they have not been educated. The blindness is morally culpable because they have refused to honor what they did know, and as a result, their blindness intensifies.

While this passage is part of Paul’s message about the universality of sin, it also contains a truth that I need to incorporate into my life under God’s care. Many times the gospel for me, my personal good news, is buried from sight. The fact that I cannot see God’s good news for me does not invalidate the truth of His provision and protection. In fact, if I act as though my inability to see God’s care means that it is not real, I am in no better position than those people Paul addresses. I have my head stuck in the sand. I am spiritually culpable for my unbelief.

This is really the battle that I fight, almost daily. It is the battle of trusting God’s word without the physical evidence that I have become so dependent upon. When I trusted in my own resources, I could consult the bank statement. There were the numbers in black and white. I could look in the garage and see the cars. I could look in my closet, my living room and my kitchen. All around me was the physical evidence that things were good. Life was full of possessions. I came to believe that the presence of these possessions was the essence of security. I forgot that all of these things are nothing more than illusions of permanency. In a moment, they can be swept away.

Yesterday there was an earthquake on an island where we have some property. In less than one minute, all of those “permanent” possessions were reduced to rubble. Useless. Junk. One minute – everything was fine, secure and comfortable. The next minute – nothing remained. That earthquake was a reminder that human life is a fragile balance between the travail of the earth and the inevitability of the grave. We are so tenuous. We are so vulnerable. Perhaps that is why we put so much effort into masking of our true dependence.

God keeps His good news veiled. He does not do this to be capricious or vindictive. He does it in order to lead us to the truth of dependence. More than anything else, God desires to be the provider to His children, but most of His children are running around madly scrambling to re-organize the world in support of self-independence. God shakes His head (and the earth trembles) over this intentional stupidity. No man is in control of his destiny. The smallest shift in a geological plate can topple any man’s effort to be in charge. A little too much wind, a little too much cold, a few degrees of extra heat, a few too many days of rain and our world is thrown into chaos. Our storehouse of “security” plummets into the abyss. You would think that we would have realized by now that life cannot be lived on our terms.

The Bible tells us that only one thing is absolutely permanent. It is the spoken word of God (rhema). The permanence of God’s word means much more than temporal endurance. The permanence of God’s spoken word means that what God says is utterly reliable. It will not change because of circumstances, time or geography. It is the “flat-out” truth.

This is something that I must know. And if I really know that God’s word is His permanent declaration of the substance of what really counts, I can stop struggling with my quest for security. God is my security. Why? Because He tells me that

1. I can throw my cares on Him because He cares for me (1 Peter 5:7)

2. I can stop being self-concerned about life and let God know my needs (Phil. 4:6)

3. I can put all my thoughts of Him and enjoy peace in my heart (Isaiah 26:3)

4. I can count on God’s provision (Phil. 4:19)

5. I can rely on God’s faithfulness and good intentions toward me (Matt. 6:33)

I might not see it now, but God’s handiwork is real even if my eyes aren’t able to receive the right wavelengths of spiritual light. That’s why He told me that He cares. I might be blind, but I am not deaf.

“but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our glory;” 1 Corinthians 2:4

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Meaningful Directions

Friday, February 06th, 2009 | Author:

Jesus walks along the rode with his disciples.  They come across a blind man.  There was no greater calamity in the ancient world than blindness.  In this case, the man was well known for the disciples recognize him as a man who was born blind.  This is especially cruel.  Only terrible evil could case such a hardship.  So the disciples ask the inevitable question:

“Master, who sinned so horribly that this man was born blind?  Was it he or was it his parents?”

Notice the implications in this question.  First, it’s hard to imagine that an unborn child could sin so terribly that the punishment would result in blindness at birth.  While the baby must be included as a possible candidate, it is much more probable that the parents are to blame.  That is the implication of the question.  Someone is to blame.  The disciples are being clever.  They include the unborn child but for all intents and purposes, they are asking Jesus to delineate the terrible sin committed by the parents resulting in this tragedy.

Now notice the direction of the disciples’ inquiry.  They look toward the past for the answer to the problem.  They are focusing on the cause of this effect.  Something or someone must be responsible, so Jesus, tell us what or who caused this to happen.  The disciples look back over the causal chain of events and suppose that they will find the answer to the meaning of the tragedy.  They are the scientists here, examining the evidence, looking for the past explanations.

But Jesus looks in an entirely different direction.  He pays absolutely no attention to finding the meaning of this event in the past.  His reply is “No one is to blame”.

What?  Does that mean that there wasn’t any cause for the blindness?  Of course not!  There was a cause, whether physical or spiritual.  But Jesus says that the explanation of this blindness is not to be found by looking for a cause.  It is to be found by looking for a purpose.  It is not what has happened that matters.  What matters is what is going to happen.  This man serves the purpose of revealing God’s glory.  How he because blind is irrelevant to the meaning of his blindness.   His blindness should not focus us on the past, but rather on the future.  Jesus demands that we view the meaning of the present from an eschatological perspective, not a causal perspective.

Dwell on this for a moment.  Most of our human experience is tied to the causal explanation of meaning.  We seek the past as the place to find an answer to the “Why” questions.  “Why did this happen to me?”  Start sorting through the evidence of the past to find the causal chains.  Why did I suffer financial collapse?  Well, it was because of this and this and this.  Why did my child die?  Well, this happened and then this happened and then this.  Why did my home burn?  Well, first this event occurred and then it triggered this event and then this.  You know the story all too well.  We constantly dissect the past causal chain in order to grasp the meaning of some present set of circumstances.

But Jesus calls a halt to the whole methodology.  Jesus reminds us that the meaning of present circumstances cannot be explained from an examination of the past causal chain.  The meaning must come from the future purpose.  My present circumstances cannot be understood according to the actions that brought them into being.  They can only be understood according to their ultimate fulfillment of God’s eternal purposes.  All meaning is eschatologically based.

Jesus lived his life in eschatological meaning.  The temptations in the wilderness have meaning only from the perspective of the overthrow of Satan at the end of the age.  The miracles have meaning only from the perspective of the victory of the Kingdom.  Death on the cross has meaning only from the perspective of the future resurrection.  While the disciples and the followers grieved, fled and despaired at the death of Jesus, he clearly said to them, “What is going to happen you will not understand, but be of good cheer, for the time will come when the meaning of it all will be revealed and you will turn for grief to rejoicing.”

So it is with each of us.  Your present circumstances require an eschatological explanation before you will understand the meaning.  That explanation is not yet available, but it will be.  The explanation is a function of telos, the end, the goal, the fully complete.  At that moment, we will no longer see through a dark glass.  The meaning will be revealed and we will say, “Oh, now I see what that was all about.  Oh, it’s so different than what I thought.”   The meaning of life is not found among the living.  I have to wait until I get to the other side of the horizon before God will say, “Now do you see why I worked it out this way?”

To live life eschatologically is to live life as trust.  We do not require the meaning because it is simply not available – yet.  We have to wait until the end.  In the meanwhile, life is the exercise of dependence on the faithfulness of God, the God who will reveal the meaning to us on the day of completion, the God whose purposes weave all events into a tapestry of meaning.

Why was the man born blind?  For this purpose – that the glory of God might be revealed in him.  The answer looks forward.  The answer anticipates the connection to God’s great tapestry.  Eschatological meaning is ultimately not about me at all.

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FINDERS KEEPERS

Friday, February 06th, 2009 | Author:

You know how it goes:

“Finders keepers, losers weepers”

I heard it often enough as a child to know just how painful that little rhyme can be.  I think the event that anchored those words forever in my mind was about marbles.  My favorite cat’s eye was forgotten after recess.  When I remembered, it was too late.  Rushing back to the chalk circle on the pavement, I saw another boy using my cat’s eye as a shooter.  “It’s mine.  I forgot it”, I pleaded.  Then I heard those awful words.

You might not realize just how Biblical this childhood excuse for robbery is.  Jesus had a lot to say about marbles – and everything else that we count as precious in life.  He said,

“For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25).

Jesus also said something about the second half of this rhyme except in Jesus’ words the losers do a bit more than weep.  They also gnash their teeth.

“in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”  (Matthew 8:12)

But this is not a picture of rage or torment.  It is an image of wailing loss and remorse that involves the entire body in a paroxysm of despair.  These losers have lost quite a bit more than the cat’s eye.  They have lost permanent fellowship with God in heaven.

Notice the exact wording in the statement in Matthew.  It’s a little different than the parallel in Mark and Luke.  In the other accounts the opposing ideas are the same pair reversed:  save – lose, lose – save.  But not in Matthew.   In Matthew’s gospel Jesus draws our thoughts to two sets of opposites:  save – lose, lose – find.  While I am not inclined to argue technical issues on this difference, I do find it interesting that Matthew uses a different Greek word in the second pair.  Apparently Matthew thought there was enough of a difference in Jesus’ Aramaic words to warrant this change.  If we ask why we may discover something worth thinking about.

What is the difference between “save” and “find”?  Well, something that you save indicates that it was in jeopardy of being lost but was rescued.  If we save a life, it usually means that the life could have been lost but was pulled back from death in the nick of time.  This implication applies even to those cases where the person dies but is somehow brought back to life.  The intention is that the life is rescued from a permanent state of loss.

Isn’t this the implication behind the first group of terms (save-lose)?  Jesus says, “Those who put all their effort into trying to save their own lives will actually end up losing the very lives they try to save.”   Jesus clearly means that a life like this will be permanently lost.  It won’t be rescued.  It is gone for good.

Then Jesus says, “But if you are willing to lose your life for my sake, you will find it.”  Now that doesn’t mean quite the same thing as “you will save it”.  I would not say to a man who had drowned but was brought back to life that he was “found”, although obviously I would say that he was “saved”.  The first pair makes it clear that we are talking about permanent loss.  What is permanently lost is bought back to life.  It is saved.

So why would Matthew depart from the term used by Mark and Luke?  Why would he say, “find”.  Finding implies that you never had it before or that you lost it completely and discovered it again.  When we speak about possessions, we do use the term “find” for something that was once ours but was lost.  But when we speak about living, we don’t say “find” when we mean “rescued from loss”.  Life is not something that you misplace.  You either have it or you don’t have it.  If I “find” life, the implication is that I never had it before.  It is this implication that becomes clear in Matthew’s account.

Jesus’ imagery is a bit stronger than the idea of rescuing a life that I was losing by changing my focus from self-serving to serving Him.  This imagery in Matthew could imply that those who thought they were saving their own lives never really had life in the first place.  They lost what they did not have, not because they were going about it the wrong way but because true life does not belong to anyone who seeks it in a self-serving manner.  Jesus could be saying that you “find” life when you give up what you think is living for his sake.  When you make the decision to stop self-striving and turn over to him what you think is life, you discover that you really never had life at all.  Then you find life.  And this is the great mystery of “finders-keepers”.  You can only keep what you never had.

If we apply this thought to the introduction to John’s gospel, we see that true life exists only because of and in the Son.  Those who are presently animated without a personal self-sacrifice to the Son are alive because of His gracious long-suffering, but they do not have life anymore than any believer has life.  Life is not something that I own.  It is a borrowed relation entirely dependent on God’s graciousness.  Only those who give up the illusion of ownership realize that life was never theirs.  They make the happy discovery that they now participate in real life because they have life in Him.

Losers really are weepers.  They discover too late that what they thought they possessed turns out to be pseudo-zoe (false life).  It looked like the real thing.  It tasted like the real thing.  It behaved like the real thing.  But under the skin it was all imitation, fake, synthetic.  When the real test came, it was shown to be nothing more than illusion.  They never had life in the first place.  Their eventual discovery of loss is simply the result of pulling back the veil of true existence.  Without participation in His life, there is nothing to be saved.

(See Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24 and the parallel in John 12:25)

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And, In The End

Friday, February 06th, 2009 | Author:

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.  Philippians 1:6

And, In The End

Will Perfect It – God does not operate by the “what have you done for Me lately?” method.  Aren’t you glad? Who among us could ever meet the standard that He would set.  Holiness is just beyond our grasp, no matter how high up we are able to reach.  If you ever felt that there was just no way that you would ever get there, if you ever felt that your catalog of failures even after your conversion were just too many, then this verse is for you.  That means, by the way, that is applies to all of us.

Paul tells us the wonderful news that God is not done with us yet.  God never quits on us.  He guarantees the end result, not you or me.  What God starts, He finishes.

Previously, we looked at God as the end-in-view Father.  In other words, when it comes to righteous standing before Him, God treats you as if you are already complete.  He doesn’t see you as a want-to-be like His Son.  He sees you with the same status as Yeshua, righteous.  That is half of our true reality.  Finished in Christ! Done!  Nothing more to add!

But there’s another half.  It is not the half about righteousness.  It is that half about character conformance and usefulness.  This half is a work in progress.  However (and it’s a big however), it still isn’t all up to you.  God has started something in your life and He will finish it.  He will ensure that what needs to be changed in order to get the maximum character conformity and usefulness out of you is accomplished.  He will engineer your life in such a way that you will be confronted with those things that He wants you to complete.  Most of the time, these are not tasks.  God doesn’t need you to be a good little worker.  He wants you to become a devoted child.  Christ-likeness is the goal.  Everything that He does in your life is aimed at that objective.  What you happen to accomplish along the way is nice, but it is the by-product of the real target.

Remember what the Hebrew image of sin is?  It’s not hitting the dead center of the target.  God’s engineering is designed to move you to the dead center of the bull’s eye in order that all the blessings and benefits that He aims in your direction will land right on you.  He moves you into the line of fire.  That’s the purpose.

The Greek verb here is epiteleo.  The root is teleo – to finish, to complete, to perfect.  Paul adds the intensifier epi.  This is the grand finale.  It is completion with an exclamation point!  God will do it!!!

You know, today I needed to read what I write for myself.  I need to know that God is working to complete me, because on days like today, I just don’t see how I can do it.  That, of course, is the point.  I can’t!  But He can.  Thanks be to the Lord for He is God.

Topical Index:  epiteleos, complete, finish, perfect

My dear community of followers:  Here’s what we can do together.  I just finished a phone call with Loy Burgess in Waco, TX.  She wanted to contribute and loves Today’s Word.  But she takes care of her 103 year-old mother.  Now, that is something special!  So, I told her to tear up that check and go buy something that her mother would enjoy.  She told me that she no longer can go to worship because her mother is too frail, and she has felt isolated for several years.  I told her, “No more.  There are now 349 people who are connected to you.”  This is community!  God is on the move.

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