Happy (Belated) Yom Kippur

(This was obviously written a few days ago.  So apologies for posting it late here)

“29 “And this shall be a lasting statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth of the month, you must deny yourselves and you must not do any work, whether the native or the alien who is dwelling in your midst, 30 because on this day he shall make atonement for you to cleanse you; you must be clean from all your sins before Yahweh.” (Lev 16)

Yesterday I asked why pray?  Not a segue I would have chosen for Yom Kippur but I’m not in charge.  Today, is the Jewish Day of Atonement.  The one day of the year the High Priest was allowed, no, required to enter the Holy of Holies, the Sanctuary, the Holy Presence of the Only Real and Almighty Creator of the Universe, there in physical form in a cloud of glory and make atonement for the sins of the people.  If that isn’t the picture of prayer, I don’t know what is.  Face to face with God!  Sprinkling blood for his own sins.  Sprinkling blood for the people’s sins.  Bringing in coals from the eternal fire.  Burning incense, its recipe prescribed by God, the smoke the visible symbol of prayer going up before the Cloud of Glory upon the Mercy Seat.  All a picture of the throne room of God where we will someday come face to face with our Creator.  That’s Prayer!

Leviticus 16 goes through the rite.  This was no joke.  Aaron’s sons had been slain for doing it wrong (Lev 10).  God will not be mocked by those who should know better, particularly to His very face,“3 Therefore Moses said to Aaron, “This is what Yahweh spoke, saying, ‘Among those who are close to me I will show myself holy, and in the presence of all the people I will display my glory.’  Since the very first day we sinned, God’s been showing His amazing grace in even this most simplest of ways: by hiding His Holy Face from us, so we would not be consumed by His Holiness.  He has to hold back or we would be scorched right off the face of the earth!  Even Moses was only allowed to see His back.

So… Wow!  God of the Old Testament, eh?  Mr. Angry God.  Really scary dude.  Different God than we got now.  Right?  Jesus is the kindler, gentler God.  Guess God went soft in his old age or something, eh?

Wrong.  Same God.  Even Balaam knew it,

“19 God is not a man, that he should lie,


    nor a son of humankind,


that he should change his mind.


    Has he said, and will he not do it?


And has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num 23)

In our soft focus, baby kissing, blue eyed, feather haired Jesus era it’s easy for us to forget that Jesus is God.  The same God who struck down Nadab and Abihu.  The same God who opened the Earth and swallowed Korah.  The same God who ordered the complete destruction of every man, woman and child of Canaan.  The same God who drowned the Earth and all but eight of its inhabitants.  Some say it was Jesus himself who spoke with Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah.  Why am I pounding this point?  Am I just an angry guy?  Am I trying to diminish the soft focus view of Jesus?

Heavens forfend!  I am trying to make it all the more wonderful!  If God changed his mind, if God himself could change, then what glory is that?  A little, maybe.  But if God the Eternal, God the Immutable, God the Unchanging came to Earth to offer Himself for our sins??  If our sins are every bit as punishable as Nadab’s, Abihu’s, Korah’s, the Canaanites, the antediluvians, Sodom’s, Gomorrah’s, then how great is His love, how great His mercy, how great His grace that He made a way for us to be saved!? 

“16 For people swear by what is greater than themselves, and the oath for confirmation is the end of all dispute for them. 17 In the same way God, because he wanted to show even more to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of his resolve, guaranteed it with an oath, 18 in order that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge may have powerful encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us, 19 which we have like an anchor of the soul, both firm and steadfast, and entering into the inside of the curtain, 20 where Jesus, the forerunner for us, entered, because he became a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Heb 6)

Melchizadek.  You know what this mysterious priest-king of the Salem (Peace) brought out for Abraham?  Bread and wine. (Gen 14)  Jesus, God became our High Priest!  But more than that, He was our sacrifice!  A perfect, spotless lamb.  A truly pure human, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.  “14 “I am the good shepherd, and I know my own, and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep which are not from this fold. I must bring these also, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock—one shepherd. 17 Because of this the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take possession of it again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down voluntarily. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take possession of it again. This commandment I received from my Father.” (John 10)

Now go back to Leviticus 16 and read it as what it is, the promise of Jesus.  Washed; dressed in pure white; his blood making atonement; his body slaughtered and burned and taken outside the camp; our sins on him to wander the desolate wastes forever, far from us; entering the Holy of Holies to see God face to face!  Only now, he doesn’t do this for one day only.  He does not sin, so He has no need to leave the presence.  He is there eternally!  Eternally, every minute of every day, asking God for mercy for us!  His blood atoning for our sins, every minute of every day!  Now, now we have peace with God!  “27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you—not as the world gives, I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. 28 You have heard that I said to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am.” (John 14) 

And because His sacrifice is perfect and eternal, because we have this peace with God, we are now made right with Him, we are adopted Sons and Daughters.  The veil is torn asunder.  There is now no division between us and the Holy God!  We may enter the sanctuary where our sacrifice and our High Priest plead for us!  Every day is Yom Kippur!  Every day is Passover!  Every day is Communion.  We are in the Holy of Holies!  Why would we pray?

How could we NOT?

Can't buy me love

“17 And as he was setting out on his way, one individual ran up and knelt down before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10)

Why did God accept Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s?  It’s always bothered me.  Oh, I’ve heard explanations but none of them sufficed.  None of them truly explained it in my mind.  Both are worshiping God yet God looks with favor on Abel and Cain gets the hand.  Whassup witdat?  Can we worship God wrong?  How will I know if I’m doing it?  Seems like a pretty important question, doesn’t it?

It almost sounds like the essence of the rich young ruler’s question in the above passage from Mark.  I’m doing this, this and this, what more do I lack?  Maybe he asks because he’s read Genesis four and he wants to make sure he’s doing it right.  Maybe he has done these things and he still feels that nagging loss.  The incompleteness that creeps in at the end of a day of business in the form of a question, “I worked so hard today but what did I accomplish?  I was so good, but was I good enough?”  Maybe, what he really longed to hear was Jesus say, “Dude!  You’re golden!  God told me to tell you, good on ya, keep on keepin’ on!”

Jesus doesn’t say, “Good on ya,” partly, I’m sure, because Jesus is not Australian.  But also partly because it was not good on him and it was not good for him. 

I write a lot about what we are to do, what we Christians, we followers of Christ, we the Bride of Christ are to do.  Lately, where it concerns evangelism: who gets into the Kingdom, who inherits eternal life and who does not.  Why should we tell folk?  How should we tell folk?  If no one can come unless they are called and God gives a measure of proof to all and faith is a gift, why should we talk about Jesus at all?  And here’s the crux of what I have to say…

If you’re asking the question, “Why should we talk about Jesus?” you shouldn’t.  In fact, please don’t.  Because you don’t know him.

Why didn’t God accept Cain’s offering?  I don’t think it was because it was grain and produce.  God told the Israelites to make all kinds of grain and produce offerings.  Why did Jesus tell the rich, young ruler to give all he owned to the poor?  He didn’t tell Nicodemus or Zaccheus to impoverish themselves.  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, David, Solomon, were all actually blessed with riches.  God’s not anti-wealth.  So what’s the deal?  Why did Jesus in Luke nine tell the guys, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” “Foxes have dens and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and “He who puts his hands to the plow and looks back is not worthy of me.”?  Why is it whenever people seem most enthusiastic about Jesus and his new movement, he says something calculated to skeeve them out and make them angry, upset or confused?  Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden?  Why did God not tell Job what it was all about?  Why do we suffer and God seems strangely silent?  Why am I asking so many questions and not giving any answers?  Why am I not going to stop?

Why wouldn’t you pay for a husband?  Why do we not knock women on the head and drag them to our caves to be our wives?  Why is it we could not be satisfied with a Stepford Wife?  Why isn’t wine better than a man?  Many jokes come to mind but the answer is only one question away…

Why isn’t God pleased with religion?

Love.

Love is a relationship.  Love is total submission to the other for the good of the other!  The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father.  God loves you and what’s best for you is to be drawn into the relationship He has within Himself!  It’s what He made you for!  It’s what you’re searching for when you acquire things, when you long for love, when you work, when you seek health!  Nothing else will satisfy.  Not even religion.  Why?  Because religion is love of the self.   Cain’s sacrifice wasn’t for God.  It wasn’t from love.  It was to get something from God.  The rich young ruler wasn’t keeping the commandments because he loved others; it was because he loved himself.  He wanted righteousness, rightness for himself.  To put God in his debt.

“Good Teacher,” he says, you who have achieved enlightenment.  Show me how to get where you are.  To make myself like the Most High!  “I am good,” is only one letter away from, “I am god!”  Spiritually, it’s the same thing. “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”   And there is only one God in heaven and earth. Why did God not accept Cain’s offering?  Why did the rich man go away sad?  Why do self-righteous people go to hell? 

Because they take the Bread of Life and the Wine of the Covenant that the Father offers them, the marriage proposal he gives to the World, the offer of eternal love, life and joy in Him, they slap them from Jesus’ outstretched, nail scarred hands and say through clenched teeth, “I don’t want pity from you!  I want to BE YOU!”  And God sadly, lets them go their way, to a place where they are god alone.  You think the world is bad now, imagine a place without any mitigating limits on people’s selfishness, without any blessings from God at all.  Total separation from everything good.  Imagine what they’ll be like when they realize how much of what they loved was a blessing from God they didn’t deserve.  Rage.  Furious, impotent, all consuming rage and despair.  Fire unquenched and worms which never die.  That’s hell.

Now imagine being drawn into the most loving relationship there ever was, ever is and ever will be.  True love.  Not transactional, not based on the worth of the loved but on the worth of the lover!  “6 For in this way God loved the world, so that he gave his one and only Son, in order that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.” (John 3)  Why won’t you perish?  Because you have Jesus!  Jesus IS LIFE!  He is bread!  He is water!  He is Love!  You can’t come to the Father except through him because he is the Way to the Father!  He’s not being exclusive!  He’s being honest!  The Father loves Jesus, Jesus is the only one who can stand in God’s presence because Jesus. Is. God!  Even the angels hide their faces from God!  But He loved us so much he came to us and died for us!  And when he took our sin, our unworthiness, our unrighteousness on himself, he gave us HIS WORTH, HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, his status as the SON OF GOD!  The best pagan is worshiping what they do not know!  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a man to enter the kingdom of God.  But Jesus!  Nothing is impossible with God.  They are trying to get to God and we know God Immanuel, God has come and is trying to get to us! 

Why would you tell someone about Jesus?  Why wouldn’t you???

Johnny Thunder

“12 There is a way that seems right to a man,


    but its end is the way to death.” (Prov 14)

John boy.  I am told John bar-Zebedee is possibly the youngest of the disciples.  He is nearly always referred to in a relationship:  “Sons of Zebedee,” “the brother of James,” as a child would.  He’s not old enough to have a reputation of his own yet.  But he’s eager to make one.  Is this initially what draws him to the excitement of following fringe rabbis?  It’s possible he first followed John the Baptist with Andy.  Then when John directs them to the Lamb of God, he upgrades.  Is it this desire for reputation, desire for greatness that leads this small town fisherman’s kid to Jesus?  Teenagers don’t walk through life, if they move at all, they run.  Odd isn’t it, they with the most time before them move like they have none?  Lace up your running shoes.  Let’s follow Johnny through Luke 9. 

Jesus sends him out with the twelve.

He helps Jesus feeds the five thousand.

He hears Pete confess Jesus is the Christ.

He hears Jesus foretell his death.

He is one of three chosen to see the Transfiguration.

He sees Jesus heal the epileptic.

He and the disciples have their Muhammed Ali moment.

He tells Jesus about them trying to stop a successful, non-disciple demon punter.

Jimbo and he ask Jesus if they can call down fire on a Samaritan village.

Along the way, he sees and hears Jesus give interviews to other disciple applicants.

This possibly sixteen years old young man, I cannot call him a boy for his own people would not unless they were trying to insult him, is one of Jesus’ “inner circle.”  He’s the elite of the elite twelve.  Only Simon, James and John are singled out for many of Jesus’ miracles and praying moments.  Quite the honor considering his age and the stature of the men around him.  Did it go to his head?  Jesus refers to the sons of Zebedee as Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder, Bene reghesh, sons of rage, sons of tumult.  Cool nickname.  If Jesus were a biker, he’d have something like seventy-two bikes in trail, a bevy of biker babes, his twelve immortals and his captains, Rock and the Sons of Thunder.  Let’s ride! 

But Jesus wasn’t a biker.  He wasn’t a son of anarchy.  He was the Son of Man, the Son of God, a shepherd, gently leading this teenager to true greatness.  A teacher who sometimes cried out, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?”

So what was Johnny like?  This inner circle disciple captain.  This one of three men who Jesus allowed closer than any.  Brash?  Brazen?  He and his brother ask to sit on Jesus’ right and left when he comes into his kingdom.  Take that Rock!  Vengeful, power mad?  Calling down fire on a village that denies hospitality to them?  Yeah, I’d say so.  Jealous?  Denominational?  Trying to constantly one up Pete and the others.  Trying to stop a man with a successful ministry in Jesus’ name just “because he does not follow with us.”  Safe bet.  Deaf?  Obstinate?  Jesus tells him over and over what it takes to be greatest in the kingdom.  What kind of kingdom he’s setting up.  What it costs to follow him.  What “drinking his cup and being baptized with his baptism” will mean and he still doesn’t get it.  This is not some outsider atheist.  This is Jesus’ friend!  The “disciple whom Jesus loved”!  But for all his boldness, all his big talk, there’s a timidity, a shyness that might betray his tender age.  He does not try and walk on the water.  He falls uncharacteristically silent when Jesus is angry.  He is the first to the tomb but the second to enter.  He is the first to recognize Jesus from the boat after the resurrection but Pete jumps into the water alone.  Hypocritical, hyper-critical, power-hungry John. 

But Jesus…  “43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God.  But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, 44 “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” 45 But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it.” (Luke 9)  Then Jesus dies, just as he said he would.  John is possibly the only disciple to see it.  To stand at the foot of the cross.  To see his own dreams shattered, beaten, bloody and nailed, to watch them die, horribly, painfully, oozing out one drop at a time.  There would be no kingdom.  There would be no places of honor.  He wasn’t a captain leading a revolution now.  He was a fugitive in the mop up of an insurgency.  Days later, hiding behind locked doors, a wanted man.  No longer proud.  No longer boastful.  The thunder had faded, the tumult had passed and a new day had dawned. 

But Jesus… rose.  “25 “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14)  I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, people don’t get better, they get worse…. But Jesus!  Without grace our whims become desires and our desires, lusts.  Without grace there is no check on our selfishness.  Without grace there is no force in the universe countering entropy.  Grace is the seed.  Grace is the rain.  Grace is the sunlight.  Grace is the plow, sower, the reaper.  Without grace, dust you are and to dust you return.  But Jesus! 

Johnny does die at the cross!  John the Revelator is born!  Three gospels strive to tell us what happened in Jesus’ life.  John’s agonizes over Why!  Three gospels talk of the kingdom.  John’s hunger for the kingdom died at the cross, now he speaks of Life!  Light!  Love!  Three gospels speak of a man who was the Son of God.  John speaks of God who became a man!  The disciple who wanted a place on Jesus’ throne never again refers to himself at all.  Johnny who personified “live fast, die young,” outlives all the apostles and sees heaven personally before it’s over.  John who spoke like thunder and tumult, “47 But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side 48 and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.” (Luke 9) turns into John who says, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”  Amen Johnny, amen.

How Do We Do?

“17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.  18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1Cor 1)

I fell asleep on my face in my prayers this morning.  It’s not the weird patterns of the carpet left on my forehead or the thought of someone finding me in this undignified state which bothers me.  It’s this: if this is how my day starts, how can I hope to accomplish the works of God?  Where does the believer, the saved, the saint get the energy to live a life set apart?  A holy life?  A life lived for God?

I make lots words.  I draw funny pictures.  They have a point and I spend a lot of time and effort on them and I want to see their impact.  I believe they are at least in part, my calling.  When I don’t see direct ripples from the pebbles I’m tossing I get discouraged.  When I’m reminded I’m not doing enough to pay the bills, I doubt my calling.  To make matters worse, the sinful side of me wants to be glorified for them.  Where does the power come from to keep going?  To trust?  To overcome myself?

I was deeply effected in church on Sunday.  The hymns, the music, the words, the power of fellowship with so many others… it was worship!  Moments like those, where God feels so close and life makes so much more sense, are precious and few.  Like time alone in nature.  Like time spent holding a sleeping baby.  Life has such a clear purpose and meaning then.  How does one keep going when so much of the rest of life is Scottish?  Cold, wet, gray and ruled by someone else.  Paul, who knew something of hardship and suffering, tells us…

The Cross. 

For all its doctrines, for all its teachings, for all the volumes of words in the myriads of books printed about it, ours is a simple faith:  “8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5)  Get knocked on the noggin and forget everything else but keep this deeply tucked away and engraved in the center of your life and you will be just fine.

Pray it in the morning.  Repeat it at night.  Say it over every meal.  Whisper it before every fight.  Write it on every check, dollar and bill.  Cry it in the valley, sing it on the hill.  I love the way a cross marks a spot.  It draws the eye.  It centers.  It focuses.  It says, “Here!  Look here!”  The Cross sits in the center of History.  Hardly noticed by the residents of a single city at the time, it is now and forever the single most important event ever.  We must not grow weary of it.  We must not take it for granted.  We must remember!  It is the source of our strength, the source of our joy, the source of our faith!  It is by what we judge and why we don’t.  It’s how we forgive and why we’re forgiven.  Even the strength we use to remember it comes from it.  Wheels within wheels.  The Spirit testifies continually about the blood of Jesus, the grace of Jesus.  The Spirit is in us!  “7 for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2Tim 1)

So do whatever you must to keep this center!  “18 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19 You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.” (Deut 11)

 “3 Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;


    bind them around your neck;

write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Prov 3)

“14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Heb 5)

Amen.