New Thoughts (5/23/05-5/27/05)
From darkness to light. This is imagery that sticks with us today, even amongst those who either have, or would like to have forgotten where it comes from. The most obvious meaning today is that sense of moving from ignorance into knowledge. This has been so since the so-called age of reason, when the power of the mind and the orderliness of science sought to be set apart from faith and religion.
Interesting to note at this point an article I saw yesterday, praising the dean of Yale for offering history as the new foundation for life. Religion bothered too many in this day and age to be taken as the basis for morality, and science has clearly failed in that inappropriate role, so now the historians offer their field as the answer for post-modernist ennui. To be sure, an historical perspective might give these lost souls some better guidance than mere opinion and observation of the present without point of reference. However, I see two major, glaring problems with this idea.
First, there is the fact that the post-modernist is as disinclined to believe the facts of history as he is to believe the facts of theology. He is unwilling to accept anything that will not fit into the neat framework of his scientific method, and from that perspective the lessons of history, even the accuracy of history, are as suspect in his opinions as the existence of some unseen God. He has the same problems to deal with. He cannot directly consult those of whom history is written, nor can he confirm the records of those who did the writing. Further, looking upon more contemporary, and therefore more accessible, practitioners of the historical trade, he finds conflicting views, disagreements over content, accuracy, and implication. Why, they are as divided in opinion as the Church, and surely no more trustworthy as guides for the soul! No, for the poor post-modernist, history is not a great deal different than religion. See, both require a faith in truth, and the sad post-modernist has only his facts. He can never get at the truth to which those facts point, for he doesn’t believe it exists.
The greater issue with this idea of history as moral guide is that the history one would be guided by is a history of men as fallible as those seeking the guidance. Now, it can certainly be argued that the Holy Scriptures are likewise the historical record of fallible men. Quite so! One will not find an idealized hero in its pages, but only men not at all unlike ourselves. After all, if these things were recorded for our guidance, it is only fitting that the things recorded should be the deeds of men we can relate to. Had the men of the Bible been unfailingly righteous, we should be at a loss to see ourselves in them. But, to a man, they made their mistakes, they showed themselves human, and in their humanity, they showed themselves fit guides for our own life.
Now, an interesting thought occurred to me as I wrote that last paragraph. History is actually a fit moral guide. The question is whose history? The Scriptures are a record of history, as much as our present day historians seek to ignore that simple fact. To be guided by faith and religion is to be guided by that history that matters, that history that is fit to explain what is right and proper because it is the history of men seeking to pursue the path God has laid out. It is, if you like, the history of the struggle for righteousness. It is a history as replete with setbacks and victories, moments of great despair and moments of boundless hope. It is a history precisely fit to be our moral compass, because its record was set down for exactly that purpose.
No other history can claim that. The history of the Roman empire may well have lessons for us, but it is not fundamentally a record laid out to teach us how to live righteously. It is not laid to expose the Truth to our eyes. It does not have the power to change us. Learning of the causes and effects of the two World Wars, or of those later conflicts that have engulfed our nation will surely give us useful information, but not a moral compass. At best, those earlier wars might remind us what it meant to have purpose in our lives, but then that perceived purpose may be nothing more than the illusion of not having been there. Those in the moment were doubtless devoid of any idealism as to what they were about.
History has much to teach us, but it must fail of being a moral foundation as surely as has science. For it has not the light. It can present facts. It can perhaps confirm those facts, and it will most assuredly seek to interpret those facts, but it will not serve as a foundation for it will not ever get below those facts. It will never look deeply enough to observe the Truth. The God of all history has already provided the account of such matters as illuminate the Truth of Him. If the historian would seek to lay a foundation, it is with God’s history that he must begin.
Light has come into the darkness. Knowledge has been given to a people ignorant of the Truth. The nations around Israel had spent long years in pursuit of God, but had been totally ignorant of where He might be found. We could lay the fault of that at Israel’s feet, I suppose, for the ignorance of God in the world was largely due to their insistence that God was their God only, and not to be sullied by the filth of the surrounding nations.
How utterly at odds with the message of God this was! He had promised to bring light into the darkness, to bring knowledge to the ignorant, to expose the hidden sins that He might bring the people He created into the brilliant purity of His righteousness. Instead, His chosen ones had sought to keep Him to themselves. The great unwashed must not be allowed near the purity of God! This display of pride was at one and the same time a display of their lack of faith. Faith must know that God does not require our protection, we require His. Faith must know that the Omnipotent God of heaven can surely overwhelm the sins of any number of people. The Creator that could not deal with His own creations would hardly be worthy of praise. Quite the opposite, He would be an object of pity and scorn.
But, our God is not to be pitied. He has not once lost control of the world He created, though it may seem that way to our eyes. We must seek the Truth beneath the scenes of our day. We must come to Him for the foundational truths by which we can understand what He is doing. After all, if we don’t know what He is doing, how shall we ever join with Him to see it done? Israel lost sight of what He was doing, and therefore lost sight of her purpose. She no longer sought to make God known to the nations other than as Israel’s guarded treasure, not to be touched by them. Oh, they were allowed to come pay respects to Israel’s God, so long as they didn’t get too close. But, to truly enter in, to truly come before the King of kings; no, they would have none of that. The outer courts of the temple would have to suffice for such as they.
Before we get down on Israel’s record, though, we had best look to our own. The Church is ever in danger of following the same course, keeping the light to ourselves. Who have we looked at as beyond redemption? Who have we warned not to approach His throne? I rather doubt we put those things into thought, yet by our actions do we not accomplish the same end? In this, I will gladly be wrong, but I must recognize that inasmuch as we refuse to declare the good news of the Gospel we are most assuredly telling the unbelievers that they are not fit to know the salvation we have found. We can call it what we will – respect for conflicting beliefs, obedience to the rules of the workplace, whatever – but the truth behind the facts remains that we have told the unbeliever not to approach our holy God. We have called him unfit for the kingdom, and declared to him by our silence the utter impossibility of such as him ever being made fit.
Consider, then, what God said. I find the confluence of thought in the parallel verses to this passage compelling in this regard. God speaks of His Son, the import of His Son, both before and after the event of His dwelling amongst men. Consider first those things said before His birth. The announcement begins in those verses that Matthew has quoted, although there is more to that passage than he quotes:
“There will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish;” (Isa 9:1). Why, we might ask, was she in anguish, and who was she? The answer comes swiftly. She was Zebulun and Naphtali, and her anguish came because her God had treated her with contempt. It is interesting to read in Darby’s translation of this passage the thought that this anguish was because He had “at first lightly, and afterwards heavily, visited the land.” Yet, even in that visitation of punishment He held out the seeds of hope. In spite of their present, He would make them glorious in the future. Why, He would even cause His glory to shine in Galilee, that region known for the Gentiles who dwelt there. He would cause these darkened minds to see His own great light. Though they dwelt in a land of ignorance, a land in harsh bondage to sin, He would cause His own glorious light of life and wisdom to shine upon them. (Isa 9:2).
My, but that ought to excite every shred of spiritual understanding in us! Their ignorance, their slavish pursuit of utterly pagan ways, their outright opposition to the things of God, none of these was sufficient cause for Him to abandon them! Consider all the more carefully the two tribes addressed in this passage. These bore an even greater burden of guilt than those darkened peoples they suffered to dwell in their lands. For the sons of Israel knew God and knew His law, yet they had opted to pursue the course of the Gentiles. God, in His infinite mercy had visited them with the harshness of discipline that they might repent, and His favor be shown to them once more. And, not only to them, but He would even, in the glorious work of redemption He had prepared, cause His glory to shine on those spiritually ignorant Gentiles. Truly, Galilee would come to be a region known, as Darby translates it, “Galilee of the nations.” Galilee would be the seed ground on which the Gospel was planted, and from that ground it would spread like wildflowers to all the nations.
God, however, was not satisfied to suggest that the time would come eventually. He strengthened the message later in Isaiah’s ministry. “Your light has come!” He declares. “Arise! Shine! The glory of the LORD is upon you!” (Isa 60:1-3). Understanding must come with the light, so He explains. Darkness will seem to overwhelm the lands and the peoples in those lands. But, He promises, the LORD will be with you, and I like this: He will be apparent to you. You will know He is with you, and those darkened nations in whose midst you dwell will know, too. They will be drawn to His light in you, even as moths to the flame!
This is the same promise, don’t you see! He has but made it more immediate, and therefore greater in our eyes. The time promised to those wayward northern tribes was now come. Righteousness would be reestablished even in their darkest hour. Whatever the world seemed to have become, however horrifically lost the people, there remained hope. Hope not only for God’s own children, but hope also for those very ones who seem so hopeless. Look around! Know that these things are written for your edification. We bewail the state of our nation, the moral decline, the promoting of sin as though it were righteousness. All is darkness about us, and that darkness threatens even our own children as the lies and temptations pour into our houses through every available means. Where is the voice of the righteous? All seems lost, the battle hopeless. But, God’s promise remains! He already told you this would come. Darkness covers the earth. Mankind drowns in his sins, submerged in the darkness of his spiritual ignorance.
Yet God’s glory will rise. It will rise, He has promised, upon you. This is a great promise, but at the same time an awesome responsibility. It is, if we care to hear it, a call to action. His glory, if it is to be made known to these poor, lost souls, will be made known in us. If His glory is to be seen in us, it must be as we are conformed to His image. If we are to be conformed to His image, it must mean that we think His thoughts, desire His desires, pursue His purpose of righteousness. It must mean that we stand out from the darkness, as a lamp will stand out in the gloom of the night. That’s the whole point of the image, after all! It is light that attracts, and as His church takes up its transformation, that renewing of the mind that is ours by the Spirit indwelling us, we will finally be that light. So long as we expend all our energy trying to look attractive to the world, we will succeed only in looking just as dark as they; the church in Goth attire. What power is there in that? But, the church shining, a brilliant, obvious purity on the blighted landscape, who will not run to it and be saved?
Then, because Isaiah still left the picture a little cloudy, God speaks a final prophecy of His Son. What was vague is now made plain. He is the light of revelation. He is that light which will draw the Gentiles to God. He is the glory of God’s people. He is the fulfillment of the promise we heard in Isaiah (Lk 2:32). Indeed, church, arise! Your light has long since come, but you have shuttered it away for fear of being misunderstood. Arise! Though He has treated you with contempt because you have treated Him with contempt, His redemption is still held out to you. His promise remains an end to your anguish if you will but repent of your wicked ways. If you will but cease from trying to look attractive, and take upon yourself the ultimate attraction of His glory, what is there that you shall not do in His name?
Now, having properly prepared, we can come to that message that the Son proclaimed, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Arise! For your Light is come! Can you hear the echo of that? Now, if it weren’t for Mark, I could consider these words as nothing more than the continuation of that prophecy. However, Mark records those most important introductory comments Jesus made to this message, “The time is fulfilled.” This gives us the immediacy of His message. He may as well have said the kingdom is here, but in the spirit of that time, His message would have been even more thoroughly misunderstood. He wasn’t there to overthrow governments, He was there to rescue souls held prisoner.
It is that introductory statement found in Mark’s account that leads me to the question of whether His kingdom has already come. If the time was fulfilled in that moment that Jesus began to preach, if the kingdom was hovering just off-stage, as it were, surely it was ushered in in those events that surrounded the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. On the cross, He would declare that all was finished (Jn 19:30). Every purpose for which He had come had been completed. The ultimate purpose, from our perspective, was that He had paid the price of our salvation, He had redeemed us from the death pits of sin. He had put to an end the wrath of God towards us. However, there was a purpose that I think was higher even than that in God’s plan, and that was the establishment of His kingdom. These two purposes were both being fulfilled in the Son of God. The redemption was complete in the moment that His grave was empty. The establishment, I believe, can be traced to that moment when the Holy Spirit rushed in upon the waiting disciples. Then and there, the fit government for the fullness of time was being established as eleven men took up the authority to serve in the Apostolic office to which God had appointed them.
Has the kingdom of heaven come, then? I believe it has in this sense. God established the order He desired. Now, the kingdom of heaven has come, but the kingdom of darkness has not yet withdrawn from the field. The battle continues, and the usurper would gladly preserve his place on the throne of that kingdom. He would cheerfully kill the King’s Son, even the King Himself, were he able. But, he is by no means able, so he focuses his efforts on the subjects of the kingdom. He endeavors to convince us that the kingdom is not here, that the time in which we live doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Oh! How much effort has gone into making humanity disinterested in its own times, in its own condition!
See, if we become convinced that this present life is nothing, if our focus is so wholly on afterlife that we will not pursue the work of God’s kingdom now, then we become accomplices in extinguishing the light of the Gospel. The Good News of Christ Jesus is as much about the here and now as it is about the resurrected future. In that future, the opportunity to love your neighbor as yourself will be done with. In that future, the opportunity to be as the salt of the earth, as evident as a city on a hill will have passed from us. The opportunity to stand up and be counted for Christ is now. The opportunity to shine with the light of Life eternal is now. The opportunity is now because the kingdom of heaven we are called to represent is here, now, in our midst. It arrived with its King. When He arose into the heavens, He left us instructions to see to the spread of His kingdom. Go and make disciples. As well have said go and make citizens. It’s time we recall our purpose. It’s time we shine with the light of our Lord and Savior. It’s time we make evident the presence of the kingdom within and without us, that others may be rescued from the land of the shadow of death.
The prophets looked forward to the moment of His presence amongst His people, as we have seen. For the brief moment of three years, some amongst His people were blessed to see that to which the prophets looked, but the majority missed the fulfillment, though in destroying their King they were made part of that fulfillment. The pattern was set. Because the kingdom of heaven must stand opposed to the kingdom of darkness which had long been established in the earth, that bright kingdom must suffer violence. The citizens of that kingdom, until such time as He has wholly subdued His opponents, must suffer violence to the degree that they make evident their true allegiance. Even with our King seemingly dead and gone, they dare not cease their attacks, for they know – perhaps better than His subjects – that He has not been defeated in the least.
Paul was one who served to defend the status quo of his time against the meager forces of this new kingdom. Until he met the King. From that moment, he understood that the Scriptures he had studied so diligently truly had pointed to this One Son of God. His change was immediate and complete. As fearlessly as he had harassed and pursued the followers of the Way, just as fearlessly he now stood up and proclaimed the Messiah come and still quite alive in spite of having been crucified. Indeed, the words drawn from his letters speak of that brief ministry of the Christ every bit as powerfully as the prophets of old.
When the time had come, that perfect, precise moment of time, God sent His Son. He caused His Son to be born of a woman, subject to the Law, so that this Son might grow to be the head of a government fit for all time. This Son, this Christ, was God’s summation of all that had ever existed or occurred in heaven and on the earth, and this Son, this Christ, willingly gave Himself over to be the ransom for all His subjects. He stood up and testified to His Father’s goodness at that most proper time. Indeed, at that most proper time, He was manifested as the very living Word of God (even as He died), and the message He proclaimed in His life and in His death is the very message that was entrusted to Paul by His own command (Gal 4:4, Eph 1:10, 1Ti 2:6, Ti 1:3).
Indeed, it is the same message entrusted to you and I today. May we find it in our Christ to be as faithful to stand up and proclaim the witness of God as was Paul before us! If we believe God, if we believe the history He has revealed, then surely we must stand up and give witness to His goodness and mercy!
If we believe God, there is one other thing we can be certain of. We will have repented. Belief requires repentance. If we haven’t repented, we have heard, but without understanding or belief. We have listened, but with deaf ears. Repentance, after all, is a matter of course change. It is a turning from once course onto another. It is a ceasing from the pursuit of those things we once pursued, to pursue the One worth pursuing. If we have believed Him, we will surely pursue Him, and this we cannot do except we have laid aside all that once entangled us.
If we have said we believe in God, and yet we haven’t repented, then we have been lying to ourselves. This is not said to crush hope, but to encourage action. Belief in God requires it. Trust in God to bring it about. Look, I know as well as any that I am powerless in myself. I have the resistance of a rain drop. But, my God indwells me. He is, by His own word, my strength when I am weak. In His righteousness I can stand up to the temptations and reject them. But, I cannot do it without participating in that resistance. If I think I can just sit back and let God do the resisting for me, I have misunderstood His ways. Belief is active. Were it otherwise, Paul would have written, “sit and sit some more.” But, he didn’t. He wrote constantly in military terms, terms of active battle. Arm yourselves in the battle with sin! Wield your weapons with skill and vanquish the enemies of our Lord! Turn and defeat those things that enslaved you. Repent and believe, that you might know His forgiveness and mercy. Pursue that One who loves you, who created you, who calls you to come home and enter into His joy once more.
God has made a way. Go now, and follow Him in that way.
