New Thoughts (4/2/04-4/7/04)
What a wonderful passage this is! In it, I think God gives a glimpse of Elizabeth's background. Recall that she is a daughter of the priestly tribe, and here, I think, she displays some understanding of heavenly matters that the priests of her day may not have remembered. She is certainly more in tune with His work in her day than the majority of the religious leaders. Before considering Elizabeth more at length, though, I want to look at some of the words, some of the concepts, that come into her wonderful message.
To begin with, let it be noted that there are two different words here which are being translated as 'blessed.' Both of them have their own nuances in meaning, and both are worth some thinking upon. The first of these is a word related to the familiar idea of eulogy. Sadly, in our culture, the eulogy tends to wait for the one eulogized to depart this life. In a way, I suppose God does the same with us. His first blessing upon us is the beginning of our death, but it is a death that leads to life. This blessing, this well-speaking, encompasses in itself the favor of God being shown towards us. There is a comment in Zhodiate's text regarding this thought which I think is quite good: 'God blesses by interfering.'
This is the story of conversion, certainly the story of mine. God did some heavy interfering in what I thought my life was about in order to get my attention. I wasn't out searching for Him when He suddenly showed Himself. No, I wanted nothing to do with Him, but He showed Himself anyway. He interfered, and blessed me with an assurance such as none can disturb. He has also blessed me by interfering in my habits, such that I truly look forward to these morning study times. There are very few things that I will allow, now, to interrupt this time with my Father and my Teacher. This is important. I have always been an avid reader, but it was reading for pleasure, reading to sleep, reading for just about anything but content. He brought a change. He interfered, and reawakened a desire to understand, to know. These last several years have led to moments of internal crisis, on occasion, as supposition and impression gave way to understanding. Yet, everything I have seen of Him, everything I have learned of Him in this effort has confirmed the facts of experience. He keeps interfering with me to better establish faith, to fuse faith and reason together, building in me a foundation that will stand.
Truly, God blesses by interfering, and this should be for every one of us a cause for exuberant joy, the kind of joy John felt when he recognized the presence of God's greatest Interference. If God hadn't interfered, then we were all doomed from the outset, guilty against the Sovereign Lord of all Creation, and incapable of paying the fine for our crimes. Every one of us was under a life sentence. But, God interfered to bless His children. We were born into a life of death, orphaned at birth and sold into slavery to the cruelest of taskmasters. But God interfered to redeem us, and to serve adoption papers for us. He did not simply buy up the slaves, He gave us legal status as His own children! Oh! The blessing of His interference! Oh! The praises which are eternally due to such a wonderful King! Oh! The great and exuberant joy He brings to the lives of men! Oh! The dancing that shall fill the streets of His great city when all His children have come home! How can I but speak well of Him who has so interfered in my life? Where would I be if He had not!
God's interference is joy, for His interference is ever for my good. Truthfully, there are many times when it doesn't feel that way. There are many situations I go through that do not strike me as cause for jumping up and down, do not lead me to immediate shouts of 'thank You!' However, in the worst of situations, when things are difficult and I feel like I must break under the stress, there remains this fact, this firmly established, unalterable fact: All things work to the good of those who love God (Ro 8:28). This one thing, when it got into my understanding, gave me such power to withstand the trials. God understands that when His good must come to us in ways that seem bad to us, we are not going to be immediately appreciative. It is His own word that reminds us that discipline is never joyful in the moment, but we know from experience that discipline yields fruits in which we will find joy, fruits of righteousness (Heb 12:11). There are those that will insist that I should jump for joy in the midst of trial. I do not find that God is amongst those insisting that I do so.
I do not see any record that my Lord and Savior was jumping up and down shouting, 'Thank You, Father, may I have another,' as He underwent the humiliation and anguish of being beaten, whipped, physically destroyed by the authorities. I don't find Paul laughing at those who would beat him, urging them to greater efforts. No, but I find in both cases there is an assurance, an assurance that God remains in the situation, that He remains in control, and that whatever the present may seem, whatever the present may actually be, yet there is a goodness in what is happening that far outweighs these light and temporary afflictions. How can this be? How could they stand up to the violence done to their bodies? How could they stand for the violence done to their rights? Quite simply, it is as Paul said, "These momentary afflictions are as nothing compared to my just due, and they are generating a wealth of glory for me in heaven. What awaits me in that place is so far beyond the worth of what I'm suffering here that this suffering is as nothing! My eyes are not on the pain I see, but on the glory that is waiting just beyond the horizon. My concern is not with these things that are passing away even as they happen, but on the eternal things which are my destiny" (2Co 4:17-18).
Yet, they knew the joy of the LORD, they knew the joy of obedience, they knew that same exuberant joy that John was expressing in the presence of Messiah. They knew it for the same reason, as well - the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who brings joy to the blessed life. Recall that in studying the Holy Spirit, it was found that one of His roles in the Godhead was the anointing for service. It is interesting, with that in mind, to read in Thayer's Lexicon that joy is the result of anointing, but of a particular anointing. It was an anointing with the oil of gladness. Now, this makes sense, certainly. Joy and gladness go hand in hand, after all. But, Thayer continues from that point. That anointing is an emblem of divine power and majesty! The joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh 8:10). Precisely! The joy comes in being anointed in His power, to serve in His power, to the exaltation of His name. This is the power and majesty to which the Son has been exalted, the power and majesty of Messiah, seated at the right hand of the Father with the satisfaction of a mission accomplished. This is the power and majesty of the Shepherd who continues to oversee His flock in faithfulness.
Mention of His faithfulness makes it impossible that I should not make note of yesterday's events here. Yesterday, we went down to visit my father, who is getting on in years, and recently had to undergo some surgery on his eyes. It was our intent to bring him a bit of comfort and cheer, as we joined my parents for lunch. Well, we had made a timely start of it in the morning, so we were a bit ahead of schedule on the way down. For whatever reasons, I decided to detour onto a favorite old country road of my youth. This caused us to be approaching their house from a direction opposite our usual arrival there. Well, their house is to the side of a relatively busy highway, and as I was stopping take a left into their driveway, I happened to glance at the rearview mirror just in time to be too late. A car coming up behind us had lost its brakes and, with nowhere to go, we were left to fill up what was lacking. Listen! That car had to have been going a good 40 or more miles per hour, and I'd swear there had been some traffic coming the other way, although I can't honestly remember with certainty. What I do know is this: when they hit us, I already had my wheels turned. If there had been a car in that other lane, we would have wound up looking like an accordion. Instead, I was able to pull quickly and directly into the driveway, and out of harm's way.
Praise be to God, though! Every one of us had our seatbelts on and, though we did wind up taking a trip to the hospital to be looked at, no great harm was done to us, and the car was quite capable of taking us back home later - all lights working, all wheels straight. The folks in the other car escaped with minor bruises, except for one passenger with a broken ankle. Now - it would be tempting to ask why this should happen to us. We had prayed, even the night before, for protection over our travels. We had been praising the Lord on the way down. What was up with that? Was God asleep at the wheel or something? Absolutely not. My first answer to this would be that whatever traffic was coming up the hill at that moment was separated to let us through. Glory! My second answer would be that He prevented the folks behind us from trying to swerve around our side, which would have put them in a ditch, and potentially a rollover. Far greater hurt could have come from this! Still, that doesn't get at the root of why it happened in the first place.
Many would be tempted to simply write it off as the devil's work. The joy of this whole thing is that it wasn't. It was God's strange way of getting an intercessor into position. As my wife waited to be X-rayed up at the hospital, she was moved to sing. Well, she usually is, after all. But, the only songs coming out were 'Jesus Loves the Little Children,' and 'Peace is Flowing Like a River.' Well, anybody who knows her would expect the second song, but the first was a bit of a surprise. Come to find out that in the next bed was an infant who was dehydrated to the point that the hospital was having him picked up by a more advanced hospital up in Worcester. It was serious. We prayed. In truth, my darling intercessor wife prayed with far less ceasing than I. In time, one of the nurses came by to apologize for the delay in our being seen. But, the baby was in critical condition, he reported, hadn't even been crying like a baby in his state usually would. My wife explained that she had been praying for God's peace upon the child and his family, and that this silence was not to be a cause of concern to them, but was simply answered prayer.
Well, he was back in a little while, explaining that they were having great difficulty putting in the needed IV for this young child. My prayer warrior went back on the attack, and before too long, he was back once more to let us know she could stop praying, because the IV had gone in, and the situation was improving! Not long after that, she was given a clean bill of health, handed a prescription for some pain killers that I doubt she'll ever fill, and we were on our belated way to lunch with my folks. Turned out to be supper by the time we got there, but the food was just as good as if we had been on time. Nothing burned, nothing dried out and tasteless, and what great abundance on that table!
You ask why God allowed this to happen? There's your answer. Jesus loves the little children. He is a faithful shepherd, and He knew what that child needed, and He knew where His servants were. He knew, also, that there was not much chance of our getting to position any other way. What an incredible blessing to be allowed this part in His labors! What small and temporary pains in comparison with being part of His team! Listen, the car looks a bit messy right now. The front seats no longer come up quite as straight as they used to, but it drives like it always did. We all have a few aches and pains we could complain about, but I'm able to sit here this morning in the presence of my God as I always do. I'm able to stand in the midst of His congregation and rejoice in His goodness in a way that may actually be new, a bit more real.
Father, I only pray that You would help my own child to understand the goodness of this. Turn her eyes from the shock of the event, to the glory of Your hand in it. Cast all fear out of her by Your perfect love, and let her rejoice to see the land of the living with new eyes. And, Holy One, let not the prayers of yesterday be in vain. You didn't go to all that effort to have this young baby suffer and die in spite of it all. Your word does not go forth void. I pray, then, that not only would that child live, but that he would live as only You can give life, that he would live knowing You, loving You, and serving You with all that You have given him.
Here is a thought I have just had this morning: should it not be found the case that when faith encounters blessing it brings joy? This ought to be the case even when the blessing is upon another. That's a part of John's reaction, I think. It's certainly part of Elizabeth's. Their joy is most fundamentally founded on the presence of Messiah. However, their joy is also in part at encountering the blessing which is upon Mary. It brings joy to find another being blessed by God, to find God interfering in their lives for good. Why? For the very simple reason that it strengthens faith. Faith is believing what God has said. This is exactly what Elizabeth says of Mary. She believed what had been spoken to her by the Lord. That is the definition of faith, and to see that faith rewarded with fulfillment in another is assurance to us that our own faith is equally sound.
Consider the definition of believing, in this most important sense. To believe is to have joyful trust in Jesus as Messiah, and to have that trust joined with obedience to Him. This was Mary's position. She believed, and she obeyed. She obeyed even to the point that unmistakable command was no longer required for her. She was told of Elizabeth's condition, and needed no further instruction. Gabriel did not have to relay the instruction that she go and see for herself. She understood it in what was said. She believed. She heard the word that was given to bolster her faith. She heard the unspoken promise in that word, that this was indeed a means to strengthen her faith, and she immediately availed herself of what God was providing for her.
This brings me back to the thoughts I had in considering the moral application of this. However, before I take that step, there's a thought I've wanted to pursue, and the questions this passage brings up provide me with the proper place to pursue it. Three words. Three words that tend to become confused and muddied together in our thinking: doctrine, ethic, and moral. At best, we tend to draw pretty fuzzy lines around these concepts, and they kind of merge together. In practice, perhaps this is right and proper, but in thinking, I suggest that they must maintain their distinctions.
I have heard it taught, for instance, that doctrine is what you do, not what you say. Well, I'm sorry, but that's incorrect. Doctrine is a set of principles that define what Christians believe. Doctrine is a statement of fundamental government policy, according to Webster's dictionary. In this case, the government whose policy is being stated is God's government. It is, then, the definition of what we know of Truth, as it declares what we understand about the God of Truth. It is likewise a policy statement regarding how one is to live, how one is to regulate his life, in the kingdom of Truth. With that in mind, it should be pretty clear that doctrine, at least sound doctrine, has nothing at all to do with what I say or what I do. It's not about me, and it's not set by me. When I allow it to be my definitions, it will quickly cease being God's definitions, and it will just as quickly cease being sound. Doctrine is, at heart, a statement of Truth, and Truth is not subject to belief. We can refuse to believe it, and it will remain truth just the same.
Ethics, on the other hand, define what we understand of truth. It defines how we think we should behave. Ethics declares our understanding of how we should regulate our lives given what we have learned from sound doctrine. Seeing the Truth, dwelling in the presence of the God of Truth, how should we then live? This is the question ethics answers. It defines the way we know we should think and do in daily life.
Morals, then, are the measure of how well our action matches our understanding. Morals are what we do. Inasmuch as our morals diverge from our ethics, we know ourselves to be lawbreakers and rebels. However, if our ethics are not founded on sound doctrine, then compliance to our ethics is useless. We are true to ourselves, but we are liars at the outset, so we simply obey a lie. To correct that declaration I began with, we might say, "Ethics is what you say, morals are what you do." Doctrine does not enter into the equation directly. It merely determines the value of aligning action to word. If ethics are founded on sound doctrine, and morals comply with ethics, then we are maturing in God's sight.
This is why, when considering the doctrinal relevance of a passage in Scripture, it is imperative that great care be taken. This is not the place for off the cuff thoughts, and it is not the place for personal applications that allow the verse to mean one thing to me and another to you. Doctrine defines Truth. Modern thought has tried to tell us that truth can be one thing for me and another for you, but it cannot be so. Truth is Truth. It cannot be false at the same time. If I say the sky is blue, and you say it is green, one of us must be wrong. The truth will not change to fit our differing perceptions. Doctrine must be either right or wrong. Where doctrines disagree, where our understanding of truth differs, at least one of us must be wrong. This deserves great attention, it deserves our best effort to seek God with an open mind to discern which answer is God's answer, and to set aside every doctrinal opinion that does not reflect His answer, however dearly we might hold to it.
Only with this foundation can we move to the ethics and morals. Only with the careful establishment of Truth can we then move on to the moral relevance of a passage. It needs this first consideration before we can say, 'how does this apply to me?' In this moral application, there is room for the rhema word, for the personal application. Here, things may differ from person to person, and from moment to moment. What needs addressing by the Truth in my life today will [hopefully] be different from what needs addressing next week or next month. If it isn't, then I'm not growing.
So, it comes to this: If we truly believe God is God, then we must accept that God defines our ethics, and if we love this God we believe, then surely our morals must accord with our ethics, with His ethics. It becomes a multi-part question. First and perhaps foremost, have I shaped my ethics in accord with God's word, or in accord with the society in which I live? It's incredibly easy to slip into the latter without noticing. Entire denominations have allowed the world to define their ethics, even when those ethics must stand absolutely opposed to God's revealed Truth. This is part of what makes study of His word so critical! Many teachers today have been shifted from their foundation without even realizing it. They teach on the authority of Scripture, but their words deny that authority, and declare instead the authority of pop psychology. On the other side of things, it is entirely possible to become so focused on explaining one facet of Truth that one falls into twisting other portions of the Truth until they become a lie. The point being made remains valid, but in making the point, who knows what evil misunderstandings get planted along the way? I may well suffer from this very thing. I know there have been times when I've pursued what appeared to be a Scriptural position only to find myself completely off track at the end, needing to rescind what I started out thinking.
There are further layers to this question, though. The next would be, assuming I have discerned sound doctrine, have I allowed it to inform my ethics? Has it been more than a scholarly exercise? Truth be told, there are times when I really wonder about that. There are times when those who know me probably wonder about that. On the other hand, there are times when I am suddenly allowed to see just how much He has effected change in my ways. To have gone through the accident last weekend without uttering words that ought not have been said, this is a huge thing for me! This tongue has been a long time coming under a semblance of control outside the walls of the church! Thank You, Father, that You have been patiently working! The urge to smoke right after that event was strong, but not so strong as to be succumbed to. It may not be final victory, but it's progress, and again, I can only say, Thank You, Father, for Your patient labor!
Well, then, though the work is far from complete, I think I can say that yes, I am allowing sound doctrine to inform my ethics. What remains is to consider whether I am true to my ethics. This, in reality, is by far and away the hardest part. It's amazingly easy to know exactly what one ought to do, and then to do exactly what one knows one ought not. Somehow, in spite of the fact that we do it ourselves so often, it continues to shock us in our children! We look at them in amazement. "You know better! How could you? What were you thinking?" Yet, we will turn a bland eye to ourselves as we do exactly the same in our own decisions. Meanwhile, our Father on high is shaking His head in sorrow, looking upon us, and saying, "You know better! What are you thinking? How can you choose death again when you know the way to life?" Yet, there is forgiveness. God in His mercy has learned the weakness of the flesh. God sees our own thoughts, knows that we are hearing His voice in our thoughts, are echoing the same questions to ourselves.
I hate to think how many times I have done one thing or another and almost immediately asked myself those very questions. How could I? I know better than that, yet I seem to do it over and over again. Oh, how I hate those checks! But at the same time, how thankful I am for the testimony of my conscience: not that I am innocent, but that my conscience is not so seared as to think I am! It is a testimony to me that the Holy Spirit is still at home in this sorry temple, is still at work renewing the mind. It is an assurance that I have truly been renewed by the washing of the Word, and all that is needful is to cleanse my feet. One cannot walk upon the road without picking up some dust. It is the nature of being in the world. Safety lies in recognizing that while in the world, we are not so much a part of the world that we relish the dust that clings to us in our travels. The dust may be inevitable, but the pursuit of dust is perverse.
As we allow God to inform our doctrine, and thereby to define our ethics, as we allow His inward working to align our morals with the ethics He has written upon our hearts, then we will recognize dust for what it is. "All is vanity," declared the Preacher (Ecc 1:2). All the things that worldly man seeks after - fame, fortune, a posterity - all these things are but dust. They pass like a breath, and are shown utterly worthless. The profit ethic, the philanthropic ethic, the best ethics that man can devise on his own are all empty and worthless in the end, for they deny the Truth of God, in which only can solid ethics be rooted. They will attain to nothing in the end, because they are founded on nothing. Being no more than opinions, they are whipped about by the winds of social change, they allow a society in descent to define the high ground, and will find in the end that the high ground is but a sinking swamp. There is but one Rock upon which to found our understanding, upon which to set our feet in a stand for what is Right and Good, and that Rock is my Salvation, my Redeemer, my Lord and Christ! In Him alone shall I trust! Upon Him alone shall I feed my conscience, that I may mature into His image the more with each passing day.
Mother and child, both are declared blessed, joyfully experiencing the interference of God, joyful participants in that interference. Elizabeth continues, however, by declaring Mary blessed once more. This would seem repetitious, but in reality, Elizabeth has changed terms here. She is no longer speaking of the experience of God that Mary is having, she is now turning to Mary's condition. She is indwelt by God, she is fully satisfied in and by His presence, for her heart is wholly upon His kingdom. In Mary's case, we have a most literal example of being indwelt by God. In the baby she bore, God was being made flesh. Yet, the reality of this indwelt state is no less literal for us today. We are the Christians, the indwelt. We are the temple of the living God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We live out the truth of Jesus' own declaration that if we abide in Him, He will abide in us. We live out the promise of the Holy Spirit, whose temple we are. We live out the reality of the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, one as God is one, Christ in us, and the Father in Christ, perfected in unity (Jn 17:22-23).
Mary's blessed state is evident to Elizabeth in that she believed. She believed that God's word would be fulfilled, would be completed to perfection, leaving nothing out, lacking nothing. What a difference between the power of God's word, and the vanity of man's! Where is our trust? Mary trusted in the word of the Lord, knowing that what He had declared He would certainly do, and would do in full. That this was an article of faith for her can not be doubted. She had only limited reason to trust that Gabriel had truly spoken for God, but had required even less reason of him before accepting his words. Elizabeth, the proof given of his credentials, was offered as proof after Mary had accepted the message as legitimate. Faith had already laid hold of her. This was but a means to strengthen what was already established.
Then, there is Elizabeth. A jumping baby might elicit comment in any woman, but the comment would doubtless be focused on either the thrill of feeling the baby, or the annoyance of the pain or nausea which that jumping was causing. Who among us, though, would have immediately sensed the import of that particular jump? Who among us today can so fully accept God's Sovereign Providence, that even such a confluence of events as a relative's 'hello' and a baby's jump are seen to be far more than coincidence? We know this as an article of doctrine, that there really is no such thing as coincidence. Yet, we are (at least, I know I am) quick to strip the mundane events of the day of any spiritual significance. We are quick to join the crowd saying, "that's just a coincidence." It has no meaning. Elizabeth, though, knew her God, knew His sovereignty, and clearly understood just how thoroughly He can and does interfere in the lives of men.
More importantly, she shows herself to be fully in tune to what He is doing around her. Yes, she was filled with the Holy Spirit, yet we can make that same claim today. Can we claim to be so fully attuned to His doings, though? It is one thing to be filled, it is another to be full! Looking at the Holy Spirit, I noticed that even Peter, who had experienced that infilling fire at Pentecost, during a later event, needed to be filled once more. The apostles, for that matter, had received the Holy Spirit before Jesus ascended, but they still needed that filling. It's not a one time thing. It's a state. It's a process. It's a desire and hunger within the soul of the righteous. Like any of these things, it may fluctuate in this body of flesh. The Holy Spirit hasn't gone anywhere when those sensations ebb, our attention span has just been shown to be short. Our spirituality is not unlike a cell-phone, and it's somewhat embarrassing to think how often we leave God asking, 'can you hear Me now?'
Elizabeth heard. Mary heard. Because they were listening, they both knew things about each other that were simply unknowable. Mary had no way of knowing about Elizabeth's pregnancy, yet she did. Elizabeth had even less opportunity to know of Mary's pregnancy. The girl was all of maybe a week into it, unmarried, a mere child. Yet, know of it Elizabeth did! Why? Because she was tuned in to what God was up to.
What about me? Am I listening? I know there have been times when I have heard so clearly. I can recall the warning thought as I drove to work one day that a car was coming over the rise, and I'd best pull further to the right. Immediate reaction to that Voice prevented an accident. I know Somebody prompted me to look in the rearview last Saturday. That quick glance, if memory is anything like accurate, moved my foot from brake to gas pedal. How much of a difference did that make in the moment of collision? I don't know. I can never know. I do know that we were clear of the road, that the car which hit us continued well past our position before it finally stopped. Had I been standing on the brakes, how much more of that energy would we have had to absorb? Being in tune with the Creator is a life saver!
More than that, though, it requires us to be in tune with Him, if we are to be useful for His purposes. It requires being in tune with Him to understand what He is doing when things are hard. It requires us being in tune with Him to reject our urge to take offense when things are said. It requires us being in tune with Him to spread the Gospel, because only as we are in tune with Him will we see the opportunities He keeps planting in our path. Only as we are in tune with Him will we have the boldness to step into those opportunities and be His mouthpiece. Only as we are in tune with Him will we know the peace that is in Christ, such that we can approach the unapproachable, touch the untouchable, and express the inexpressible glory which is God. Mary's trust was not in Joseph. His reaction to what was happening in her, his attention to the spiritual, was as unpredictable as yours and mine. What was steadfast and trustworthy was the simple fact that Jehovah is Faithful and True. Had Mary been slipping in and out of tune with God, she would have been consumed by fear, fear of being labeled an adulteress, fear of being stoned, fear of being an outcast. But, her trust was in Jehovah, and He would be true. He still is, and He is worthy of our trust today.
