New Thoughts (6/2/04-6/7/04)
There is this said of John's coming ministry which I believe applies equally to each one who is called to serve Him. It is said that John would go before Messiah. From the English, this appears to say little more than that John will go first, and then Messiah will go, but that message is all contained in the Greek behind the word go. Behind that 'before' is a more important message. Yes, John would precede Messiah as His herald, but 'before' indicates the condition in which John would do this, and it is this condition which, as I say, applies to all who serve our God. We serve at His insistence. We serve in His power and upon His authority. All of this and more is wrapped up in the thought of 'before.'
Before we allow this to make us all giddy, as we consider our ability to play with Dad's things, we should recognize that our service is given in God's view, before His eyes, and while we serve with His approval, how we serve is subject to His judgment. There remains a judgment day even for the saved. The penalty, the ultimate penalty has most assuredly been paid by our Redeemer, but there remains a time when we will face the King of kings and answer for the quality of service we have rendered.
In truth, there is also the sense of preceding in this word, and in that sense, too, I think we can find ample application to ourselves in the message. We go before Him, we precede Him as we enter into service in His fields. The harvest, He told us, is great, and many workers are needed to prepare that harvest (Mt 9:37-38), but it remains to the Lord of the Harvest to do that final work of reaping the harvest we prepare. We are sent before Him, messengers of His grace, preparing hearts for His gift of faith. This we can only do because we indeed serve in His power and upon His authority. But there is this that we should always understand about our labors, we go before Him as John did, preparing the harvest as John did, but we remain in sight of Him as John did. This, too, is in the sense of 'before.' We go out ahead of our Lord, but only a short ways ahead, never beyond His sight, never beyond range of hearing Him should He have further instructions for us. This is the state of every servant who holds himself in the center of God's will.
When Israel camped around the pillar of God's presence, they did not set themselves smack in the spot where the pillar touched the earth. They arrayed themselves either around His presence, or if circumstance required it, to one side of His presence that He might be their shield. They went out a little ways before Him, in whatever direction, but in their wiser moments they never went beyond earshot. If the pillar remained, the camp remained. Only the foolish would contemplate pushing on through that desert land without Him to guide. This is the sense we must have of being centered in His will - moving as He directs, ranging out a bit as He commands, but making certain that we are in range of His voice, tuned to His voice, ready to react instantly to His voice should He have further orders concerning us.
You can see that same sense of things in the image of the Shepherd and the sheep. The sheep don't remain clustered tight around the feet of the shepherd. They range out and eat. They may wander quite a distance from their leader, but so long as they are within reach of his command, they are still safe. If danger comes, they that are still within hearing will be warned, they who can be reached by the shepherd's warning can also be protected by his defense. Now, there comes a time in the day when the shepherd insists that the sheep come into the fold, behind defending walls, and in those times the sheep do well to do as they are told. It is the ones who wander from the fold in those times who are lost. It is the ones who allow the freedom of the range to tempt them beyond the range of his call who are lost. So it is with us when we serve. If we remain in range of His voice, though we may push out a bit on our own course we continue to act as ones centered in His will. For us, that range is a matter of spiritual sensitivity. Are we hearing Him? Are we staying in communication with the One we love? And most importantly, when we hear Him, are we instant in our response? If all our answers are yes and amen, then we are still secure within His care and serving Him faithfully. If not, there is no time like the present to cry out for our faithful Shepherd, to recognize that we've wandered too far afield and got lost. Oh! The dangers that await a sheep that has gone beyond reach of the shepherd! Praise and glory to our God that we are never beyond His reach! Honor and glory to our God that He is faithful and true, that none who have been given into His hands has ever been lost for good, and none ever will! He will hear your cry, wherever you have wandered off to, and He will come to pull you out of the danger you have walked into.
Oh! Faithful friend! Mighty Savior! Great and Good Shepherd! When You are my strength and my shield, what cause have I to fear what this life might throw at me? When You are my strong tower, my strength when I am weak, my firm defense, and a great and unopposable weapon against the enemy of my soul, how can I fail to win through against these things that seek my ruin? God, in those places where I've grown dull of hearing, clear out my ears. Where I've been blinded to Your glory by the shiny trinkets of this world, open my eyes to truly see. If I have become dull of senses, deadened to Your guidance, bring new life! If I have insisted on wandering into dangerous places, come rescue me! Oh, foolish sheep that I am, come rescue me, great and wise Shepherd of my soul!
What a job John was given to do! What a message to deliver! Yet, more than delivering that message, his job was to transfer knowledge, to teach those to whom Messiah was coming. It was the knowledge which he taught that would prepare Messiah's way, would open up hearts to His ministering touch. That being the case, we do well to understand what John was to teach.
First, he is charged with giving God's people knowledge, but he is not told to do this by didactic means. It wasn't to be just John preaching to an idle audience. No, they were to brought into the knowledge that can only be gained from experience. What they were to experience was moral wisdom, and that experience could not help becoming evident in living right, living righteously. What was it about John's message of "repent!" that could give this experience to his hearers? Well, it was the message he bore! It wasn't just John giving folks a how-to, nor was it a Solomon-like listing of the wisdom he had garnered over the years. It was a specific matter, the knowledge of which was sufficient to bring change. That specific matter was salvation.
Not only was there a reminder in this knowledge that God had promised salvation, not only was there the news that the promised time was close indeed, there was also a fresh understanding to be had about this salvation. There was fresh understanding to be had of what salvation entailed, for those with ears to hear it. It wasn't about Israeli sovereignty. It wasn't about defeating the Roman Empire. It wasn't about temporal issues at all. It was a matter of spiritual deliverance, moral rescue. Salvation was a matter for eternity. Yes, there would be physical impact of this spiritual rescue, but the fundamental issue was not of this world, but of the eternal kingdom.
Also revolutionary, perhaps, in what John would teach, was the fact that salvation would be a matter of God's power to deliver. Somewhere along the way, that simple truth had gotten lost. Men were caught up in providing their own righteousness. People were going to great lengths to comply with what was perceived to be the Law. It would take Jesus' teaching, added to John's preparations to make it plain to the children of God once and for all that they could not attain to righteousness on their own power. The Law was far beyond the ability of flesh and blood to keep. Salvation, moral rescue, was necessary for this very reason! Every man stood in need of this rescue. Every man stood in desperate need of spiritual rescue, but it was not by their own power, nor was it by the power of friends, princes, priests, or teachers that their deliverance would come. It was by God's own power, and the experience of that power, was the experience from which knowledge would spring, from which moral wisdom would derive.
The word John was given to declare went further, though. Not only was it made clear what sort of salvation was ours and by what means that salvation would come, there was also news of what salvation would consist of: forgiveness of our sins. What a powerful thing, that! Salvation was made necessary by our inability to keep the Law. That inability had put us in debt to the Lawgiver. The debt which was required of us was life itself. In order to satisfy the demands of Justice, the penalty must be paid, and the penalty due was death.
This is the state of every man and woman alive today, and the state of all who ever did or ever will live upon this earth. We are, each and every one of us debtors to a holy God, and like the debtor of old, we are held in debtor's prison until our debt is paid. So long as life remains in us, we remain imprisoned. God had made provision for a deferment of the payment due Him. One could put off the final tally of accounts by offerings of lesser life, but this only paid down the interest, and the principle remained due.
How then could we be saved from this prison? Death would end imprisonment, but it could hardly be construed as having been saved from that imprisonment. No, God had something greater planned. He would put sin away from us. He would treat us as though that sin had never been committed! What? The entire debt, the debt of life itself, simply written off? Why, that was Good News indeed! It still is. But, if this was all there were to it, it would not be life to us, but death to God. What do I mean by that? If all that was involved in this salvation was that God would wink at our sins, tell us it was OK, just try not to do it again, then the Law would be pointless, as would the Lawgiver. Justice would be as empty a concept in heaven as it seems to become on earth. If our wrongs against Goodness and Truth don't matter, if the God of Justice does not uphold Justice, then He has ceased to be God. This is why Paul makes so much of that point that God had planned our salvation in a fashion that preserved His Justice while also manifesting His mercy and His love.
There is far more to this matter of forgiveness through which salvation is made ours. Not only are we treated as though there had been no sin - the pardoning aspect, but we are also freed of the power of sin. We are released from our bondage to sin! That's the deliverance, the salvation that was promised. We are pulled forcefully free from the grip sin has upon us. Why is that necessary? Because sin is not just a weakness of the flesh. It's not a bad habit that we need to break. It's not a matter for retraining. Sin is a principality, a power holding dominion over us. It is a possessing spirit, a coercing force upon our lives. This is why deliverance is needed. This is why we need to be freed from sin's grip, because sin is a dominating spirit, a power and principality stronger than we are, and we have need of One who is stronger yet to break the grip of these powers upon us.
They have blinded us. They are the prison guards in this debtor's prison, and they take cruel pleasure in their jobs. They enjoy their work, and would not have their prisoners finding release. If the debt is paid, what work has the guard? If the prisoners have all gone free, what becomes of the prison? What power remains to those who ran that prison? Whom shall the torturers torture? No, it is in their interest to preserve the population, so they seek to misinform the debtors in their care. They labor to cause the debtors to forget where they are and why they are there. If they forget the debt, they will never repay it, and the task of the prison guards is certain to continue. Why, they can even convince their prisoners to increase the debt they owe rather than paying it off! Yes! If they've forgotten why they are imprisoned, they can easily be convinced to do the same and worse. Oh! The opportunities for a principality in this place are endless!
They hold dominion. In our much vaunted free will, we are utterly and hopelessly deluded. We crow about our accomplishments, brag about the decisions we make, but it's all nonsense. We are under dominion, and it never has been us who called the shots. About the only decision we ever made was to relinquish control to these stronger ones. But, God has had a plan all along. He has the ultimate weapon in forgiveness. In that one act of forgiveness, the power of the prison guard is broken. The debt has been marked paid-in-full, and the prisoner must be turned out from the prison. Blinders must be removed, the torment must cease, every act of the imprisonment must be reversed, and full restoration given to the one whom God forgives!
Why has God determined to do this? What reason does He have to set aside our sins? Certainly, there is nothing in who I was, who you were, who we are even now in which would recommend us to His attention for salvation. That forgiveness of sins through which we have been saved was not a matter of our having asked for it. We were quite at ease in our blindness. But, save us He did, and for one reason only: that His mercy might be made known. He saw our sins as we did not. He understood our condition as we did not, and the misery that befell us because of our poor choices moved Him to pity us. Fortunately for us, God's pity is more than just a sad thought in regards to us, and it leads to more than an expressions of commiseration for our sorry lot in Him. God's mercy is active compassion. He sees what we have brought upon ourselves, sees that we are powerless in ourselves to change, and so He brings change upon us. But, He is mindful of the shock our recovered senses will cause us. He is mindful of the residual damage which will remain to plague us even after we have, by His grace, changed our ways, and He provides for that which will help us recover from our shock, and which will help to heal the damage we have done ourselves in our blindness. It is, then, because God is a God of mercy, of active compassion, that He has determined to both forgive us our sins, and to do something about the misery our sins have caused. It is because of His active compassion that He has determined to save us.
It is said that His mercy both precedes and follows upon His grace, and there is truth in this. It is true because God's love, the perfect love of an eternal Father, has been present from the beginning, and will remain present to the end. Eternal God is love, and so His love is also eternal. That love which is His knows mercy, for mercy is a perfect part of His perfect love. It was His loving mercy that regarded what our rebellion had brought us, and determined to do something about it. So, His mercy was upon us before He saved us by His gracious gift of faith. That same love looked upon us in our reborn state and saw what anguish remained to us, the anguish of remorse over our wasted past, and the painful residual effects of our sinful ways. Know that He saw this from the beginning! He did not first think to save us, and then, seeing that the result wasn't as good as it could have been decide to also work on the aftermath of sin in us. It was all in the plan at the start, at the very start of creation, the Creator had put in place what would be needful. Every movement of heaven and earth, every tug upon the heartstrings of mankind that would prove necessary for our salvation and our regeneration was set in motion in those opening moments, carefully worked out by God's perfect wisdom and knowledge.
The means of our salvation was present in Him and with Him in that moment of creation, for Messiah, the Christ, was always with God and always was God - always is God. He was manifest for one brief period of human history, present among us in flesh like unto our own, but He has always been I AM. The plan and purpose which required His sacrifice at the hands of sinful men, on behalf of an ungrateful people was as much His own as the Father's. What unity is found in the Trinity! What mystery! Three, yet One. Ever-existent, always in fellowship, in eternal communion One with One! The Lord our God He is One indeed, but in His Perfect Oneness, He has His own fellowship. He has in Himself the ties of family. He did not become Father and Son to experience what we would experience. He created us as fathers and sons, that we could experience in our human degree what He has always experienced. God established our relationships that we might know in part what He knows in full, that we might understand better with the Trinity experiences eternally, what we will experience eternally in unity with Him.
The Son would come among mankind, wholly man, yet still wholly God, that His mercy might find expression towards us. Because His mercy is, He came. Because His mercy is, He undertook to show us what the perfection of mankind is. Because His mercy is, He suffered in Himself the requirements of His own plan and purpose on our behalf. Because His mercy is, He died. He died at the hands of sinful man, yet it was no man who took His life. He laid it down of His own accord because it was His purpose to do so. It was for this that He came, and though the pain of even the momentary experience of His own wrath upon Himself came near to being sorrow beyond bearing, He bore it for us!
God! This is simply incredible! No, not simply, but words escape me in considering the astronomic greatness of what You have done! Will I ever truly grasp the whole of this? I can speak of what is true about You. I can say with assurance that You are Three yet You are One, yet it remains a mystery how that can be. I can say with full knowledge that it is true that You were fully human yet fully God when You came among mankind, yet I cannot fathom how that can be so. I can declare with absolute certainty that You died of Your own accord and no other had a say in the matter, that in death You chose to experience Your own wrath. But, how this can be, my God, is beyond me to say. Indeed, Your ways are not my ways, Your thoughts are far and away above my own. Yet, Your thoughts have been upon me, Your ways determined to see that goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life, that I will dwell with You forever! How utterly worthy of all worship and praise You are! How singular is Your glory! What could compare?
All of this - the whole chain of events that Zacharias has laid out in plain sight for us - has been to one ultimate purpose: the we might know we have nothing to fear from this wonderful, incomprehensible God who died that we might live, and who lives that we might live fully. If we fear death, it is because we fear Him with Whom we shall have to do beyond that veil. Salvation has put an end to all cause of fear in that transition. There remains reverence. There remains awe. But all fear is gone because His wrath towards us has already found its expression. Our perfect High Priest has offered the perfect Sacrifice to close the accounts of perfect Justice in regard to all our sins. The court of heaven has been satisfied on our account, and we know that an eternity in that perfect kingdom, in the courts and the presence of the perfect King awaits us. Knowing what the end shall be, we can be content with whatever may come our way in this life. Whether in wealth or in want, whether in comfort or in trials, whether in dry times or high times, we wait upon the Lord, planted upon the foundation of His Word, and we will surely not be greatly moved! Nothing in this life can compare with what is our inheritance! Nothing in this life is worth disregarding what has been bequeathed to us by our Father in heaven! Oh! What peace is ours, knowing His love has conquered all, His righteousness has been made our cloak, and His house has been made with room enough for us.
He has prepared us a place because of His love for us, and His love will be evident in His preparations. What matters the grandest of houses on this earth when we have that awaiting us! A time awaits us in which there shall be no more sorrow, no more suffering of any sort, and that time, how is it measured? It is measured as eternity! Compare the grain of sand on the beach to the whole of the earth. So is the time of our trials and sorrows on this earth compared to the eternity of joyful fellowship, perfect fellowship with each other and with Him, that shall be ours! What can the trappings of this life possibly matter when we see that lying ahead!
That peace, that peace of knowing God as our loving Husband rather than our wrathful Judge, comes because His mercy has brought about our deliverance from sin, and not only deliverance, but recovery from the results of sin. Therein lies our salvation. This is the news that John was born to shout. This is the message of the herald, for this is the lifework of the One whom he was sent to proclaim. What joy to the world that the Forerunner was sent to declare - nay, to teach, to disciple! Knowledge of the salvation which is ours through that forgiveness of sin which is the expression of God's mercy, and which brings our hearts to a place of peace unending. What joy to the world that John's message was not vain imaginings of an overheated imagination, but true word of the True Word! Salvation was come among mankind, that very Redeemer that Job knew was alive, was here on earth, in the flesh, to offer that flesh up as the atoning sacrifice that alone could accomplish our redemption.
Rejoice, my soul! Your Redeemer has come. He has redeemed you from the pit by the sacrifice of His own perfect life! Still, I know my Redeemer lives! He lives forever in the courts of heaven, pleading my cause, and assuring my place! Thank You, Holy Father, that You planned in perfection for my need! Thank You for even caring to bother with such as I! Who can doubt Your love! Who can look upon himself with honest eyes and not sense the overwhelming wonder of even being allowed to live for the briefest spell? How can one draw breath and not know thankfulness to You in whom we live and have breath? Glory! Glory to Your name, Jesus! Glory to You, my God and King! Oh! That these small labors of mine might redound to Your glory in some way! That will be enough for me and more than enough. I await the day, my Father, my Brother, my Husband, my Love! Even so…
Now comes this amazing picture of Messiah's coming, and of the reason for His coming. The light will shine, the light being this Sunrise from on high, the bright Morning Star. One had tried to usurp His position in heaven, and that one had been thrust out of the courts of God (Isa 14:12). He who weakened the nations had thought to make a throne for himself in heaven, sought to make himself as God. He failed. He sought to spread his diseased thought to God's creation by corrupting the man made in God's image. He succeeded in this, but it was a fleeting success in the grand sweep of eternity. As we shall see in the unfolding of Jesus' life, this same enemy tried repeatedly to spread his corruption even to the very One whose place he had sought to usurp. So deluded, he, that he worked overtime to ensure that the Son of the King would be put to death. Oh! How sure he was that this would once for all put him in the position he so coveted, but this last little victory of his was no victory at all. The One he thought he had put to death would not stay dead! He would take up the life He had purposefully relinquished, and He would never again set it down.
The True Morning Star was come! That was the great shout of this prophecy. He would appear openly before the people of Israel, but even with all the announcements that heralded His arrival, it would be an unexpected appearance. Epiphany! What a perfect choice of a word to describe His coming! He would appear, but the appearance would be so unexpected that many seeing Him would not even suspect His true identity. Those seeking the conquering King who would once for all establish Israel as the dominant nation were ill prepared for the King who came in Servant's clothes. Yet many would come to clearly know this King, this Redeemer.
Now, a light shining under the full glare of the noonday sun is not even going to attract attention. But this Light, we are told repeatedly, was set to shine in the darkness. What would not even be noticed at noon will be so noticeable that it hurts the eyes when seen at darkest midnight. It's unexpected, but it is most certainly made visible and known! So it is in the physical realm, but here we deal with the spiritual. The same truth remains applicable there.
The world at large was and is in spiritual darkness. It is a darkness of thinking. Men have become the more ignorant for being so impressed with their own understanding. Thinking ourselves wise, we have been shown repeatedly to be the most utter fools. We live in a time when the wise think it foolish to think there is a God. More fools they. We live in an age that thinks it wise to punish certain crimes more severely because they are 'hate crimes,' yet cannot grasp the simple truth that all crimes are acts of hatred. This same crown will do everything in their power to legislate safety and preservation for any animal on the earth, will insist that the most vile criminals - even by its own distorted standards - be allowed to live and even return to freedom. It would, after all, be a hate crime in itself to so confine another human being just because he broke the laws of man!
We live in a world that thinks it wise to promote a social agenda that promotes creation of 'families' that cannot possibly procreate. We have even turned to justifying it by animal behaviors! As if the behavior of some aberrant jackal is the proper choice of role model for humanity!
This is the sum of worldly wisdom, though. It is darkness. It is thinking shot through with all manner of ignorance and error, promoted by an educational system that for the most part does not teach its students to think, only to behave as society now considers normal This darkness is more than human stupidity, though. We were created in better fashion than all that. We were given minds with which to think, but we have taken to training them not to do so. Thinking can be troublesome, we are taught. Best leave that to the experts. Where has this nonsense come from? It has come from the infernal spirits who serve that fallen usurper. Having been cast out of the light, he has come to hate everything that has to do with the Light. Like a jilted lover, he is determined that if he cannot have his desire, neither shall the rightful owner have it. He darkens understanding, does everything in his power to keep men from knowing their true nature, their true situation, and their true hope. He casts darkness over whomever he can, that they might not see light and be drawn to it. Indeed, he spreads his darkness by intercepting the light - darkens the understanding until the light of truth can no longer be seen.
But here is great good news! The Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness could not overwhelm it (Jn 1:5)! All Satan's efforts come to naught! As hard as he has worked to blind an entire world, the Light has shone out through the ages, and there has ever been a remnant who know that Light. The King remains upon the throne, and watches with, perhaps, a bit of amusement and a bit of irritation as this defeated foe continues to play at winning. He cannot. He is already defeated, and in all truth, he knows it. He's not stupid. He's just been so long in spreading darkness to this mind and that that it has spread to his own. He has labored so hard to intercept the Light that he can no longer see it himself.
In spite of his worst efforts, Light is shining in the darkness. There is an epiphany for the living dead! They who dwell in the darkness of wrong thinking, who even in this life are wrapped in the mists of Hades have suddenly seen the unexpected Truth! This is how it really is. This is the reality of our own condition before He chose to shine His light upon us - living dead, walking about as though alive, but dead in every way. That is the testimony of God on the matter: every one of us a sinner, every one of us owing the penalty due for breaking divine Law, every one of us already sentenced and condemned to a death sentence. We were all no more than criminals on the lamb, hoping to run from the arm of Justice, but there is no darkness deep enough to hide us from Him. The Light shines, and darkness cannot overwhelm it.
Repeatedly Scripture talks of us in these terms. "There were those who lived in darkness, dwelt in the shadow of death. They were prisoners in misery because they rebelled against God" (Ps 107:10-11). But, this righteous assessment came with a promise even then. "I will increase their burden until they cry out to Me." And they did. And the God of all Mercy responded. He took them out of that darkness, lifted them out of the shadows of deadness, destroyed the bonds of their imprisonment, and set them on paths of life (Ps 107:12-14). Those who live in a dark land, walking in darkness will see a great light, Isaiah foretold (Isa 9:2). See in this the twofold problem of man. We live in a dark land, a land whose morals, such as they are, are determined in ignorance of true righteousness. We live in a land where ethics are foundationless, having no further basis than 'learned opinion' and no more stable than the current trend. It is a societal, communal darkness, a culture of ignorance. And they speak of Christians as possessed of blind faith! Yet, we dare not be too harsh, for we once existed even as they do.
There was a communal darkness in which the whole community participated. There was also a personal darkness, a willful ignorance, a choosing to be deceived in our own thinking. If we heard the challenge of Moses and of Joshua, as they called out "choose you this day" we chose death. We cast our lot firmly with death, and then began calling that life, in our pursuit of self-delusion. Before too long, we had convinced ourselves that death was life, and were quite content to remain amidst its mists. We even offered our wrists and ankles most cheerfully to receive the chains of our bondage in that dark place. Look, we thought, we are made acceptable to society! We have become like those around us, and they now appreciate our true worth. Finally, we are receiving the respect that is our due! So do we fool ourselves by feeding our stupid pride. Indeed, we speak truth to ourselves in this, but we don't hear what we are truly saying. Oh, we have made ourselves socially acceptable, but it is a society of darkness that accepts us as its own. They appreciate our true worth, certainly, but we have so overestimated it that we think this a compliment! Our true worth is less than that of the dung heap! Our compatriots in darkness value us almost as much and, truth be told, that's about what they are worth in our estimation. We are indeed receiving exactly the respect that is due us, which is to say none.
So far gone! So far gone that we did not even recognize that we were under judgment already. How well Paul sums it up for us. We did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, had no place for Him in our thoughts. So, He gave us over to our own thoughts, abandoned us to our own much vaunted intellect. In doing so, He gave us over to depraved minds - our own, which could only guide us into doing what was not proper (Ro 1:28). In so doing, God did no more than to inflict us with the due penalty of our error (Ro 1:27). Justice was served.
But, thanks be to God in heaven, though Justice was served, Mercy was not satisfied! Epiphany to the living dead! In the most unexpected place, amidst the most unholy of people, Light shined! It wasn't in the Temple precincts. It wasn't amongst the holy asceticism of the Essenes. It wasn't amidst the holy ardor of the Zealots. It wasn't to be found illumining the scrupulous practices of the Pharisees. No! The Light was shone upon publicans, prostitutes, tax-gatherers, dumb fishermen! The very dregs of society were chosen for this privilege. The living dead - rejected even by the society of the dead because they would not even pretend to life - there the Light dawned, there the blinders were first removed, and the incredible Truth revealed.
The Essenes, the Zealots, the Pharisees, they were all too caught up in their own delusions to accept what the Light revealed. They were all too convinced of the wisdom of their own ways to hear the correcting voice of the One they claimed to be seeking. His was an unexpected appearance. It did not fit their preconceptions. He was not the ascetics' ascetic. He was not the rebel leader who would bring about brutal change. He was not the meticulous holy man who would prove the worth of the Pharisaic code. He came as the God-man, the Servant of all, with no home to call His own, yet as much at home with the elite as with the off-scourings of society, for He had come to save the prisoners, to set them at liberty.
The accumulation of references that Zacharias has poured out by God's prompting make it thoroughly impossible that those who heard did not understand that it was Messiah being announced. The pointers are unmistakable. The Prophet like Moses, the King to occupy the throne of David, the High Priest to fulfill the faith of Abraham, the Deliverer, the Redeemer, the Savior - He who had been promised through the voice of God in every generation. The Light was come, but the darkness could not comprehend it! Darkness could not stop it from penetrating to those upon whom the Light chose to shine. Neither could the darkness understand what the Light was.
None misunderstood Who was announced, but sadly, many would fail to recognize Him in spite of the announcement. Are we, then, to be praised for having recognized Him? No! He is to be praised for revealing Himself to us. He is to be given an eternity of thanks for having chosen to shine upon our darkened understanding. There are those who live in that place still, from which we were forcefully dragged away. There are those all around us who live in a state of spiritual death. Woe to us if we forget in our precious liberty that we were once in that same place and in that same condition!
The Light came to shine on those whose present reality was sitting in darkness, blind to all that pertained to life. Because He shone on this man, even as he sat in that blind state, I am now alive indeed, in pursuit of my Savior, my Husband. The same Light continues to shine on darkened men today. Oh, the days are dark, indeed! The foolishness of man's wisdom seeks daily to outdo itself! All thought has been given over in favor of peer approval, and the world races along on its downward spiral. But, the Light continues to shine. Mercy still seeks out those whose sight can be restored. Grace still leads a man to reject his wicked ways, to turn to the Son of Life, and be received back into the favor of his Creator.
We are they. We are they who were in darkness, and woe be to us if we forget that simple fact. In forgetting from whence we were pulled, we fail of God's own compassion upon those we left behind. If we do not care that they are still blind and lost, dying in ignorance, then can we truly claim to be alive? If we don't care that so many are perishing, that so many will spend an eternity perishing, never even to know the poor satisfaction of oblivion, how then are we to take the name of sons of God? The sons are made known in that they do as they see their father do. I have seen the Father bring life into the very camps of death! I have seen my Father reach out to the most unlovely of men and transform them into jewels to adorn His own courts! I have seen my Father's great labors on my behalf, polishing, cleaning, chiseling away great flakes of ugly stone, carefully etching lines to define the shape of His workmanship, patiently working away on this raw material to bring forth the masterpiece He has in mind. I have seen all this, known all this simply because He has chosen to make Himself known to me. He has been found by one who wasn't seeking, and even this is but the fulfilling of His own word, His own revealed purpose. Knowing as I do somewhat of what my Father is about, I have not choice but to pursue His ways, I have no desire for such a choice, I must do the things I see Him doing, because He has won my love, my admiration, my devotion.
