Facing The Beast

Revelation 13: 11-18

What does Don McClean’s hit song, “American Pie,” have in common with the book of Revelation?

They are both aimed at very particular groups of people.  People who have been steeped in a culture common to them and them alone.  They both make many references to symbols that their intended audience would immediately understand but that would be completely opaque to someone outside of that culture.

In her most recent book, Facing The Beast, author Naomi Wolf does not cite directly to the book of Revelation or to the beasts that are described in that book but it is undeniable that the beast she describes there is the very same one that Saint John describes in the New Testament book of Revelation.  It is hard to imagine that she did not have that in mind as she came up with a title for her book.

What do we know about the beasts that Saint John describes in this least read and most widely misunderstood book of the Bible?  First, we know that they are evil.  They derive their power from the Dragon (chapter 12) who is expressly identified as Satan, that power who “makes war. . . against those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (12:17).  Thus, the beast was given “power to make war against the saints and to conquer them.”  (13: 7)

The second beast, the land beast, also deriving its power from Satan, “deceived the inhabitants of the earth,” and:

Revelation 13:16-17

New International Version

¹⁶ It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, ¹⁷ so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Thus, the two dynamics to which Saint John points in this image he gives us in chapter 13 are these: deception and coercion.  And, particularly, coercion by means of exclusion or ostracism, the idea of being left out.  In the picture John paints, the beast excludes those who refuse to bear his mark from all commerce.  If you cannot buy or sell, you are cut off from life, you cannot survive.

In Wolf’s book, she cites to the several instances in her life and in the lives of many around her where she or others were shut off from commerce or, more broadly, the flow of normal life, when they refused to be vaccinated.  In her own case, she was prohibited from eating in restaurants.  In other cases, unvaccinated students were prohibited from attending classes.  We know that NBA players and championship tennis players were not allowed onto the courts without proof of vaccination. (Kyrie Erving) (Novak Djokovic)

So much for exclusion or coercion.  Now to the other dynamic, that is, deception.  Naomi Wolf argues that a great deal more was known about the vaccines than was actually disclosed to the public at the time the vaccination push was underway.  She argues that:

• ·      the fact that the vaccines had not been tested in the way that other drugs had to have been before being placed on the market was either hidden or soft pedaled during the rollout campaign;
• ·      more was known about the widespread and often serious harms associated with the injections than was admitted (blood clots, heart problems, effects on women’s reproductive systems)
• ·      when it became more and more obvious that the vaccines did not prevent contraction of the disease, did not prevent transmission of the disease, and did not reduce the severity of the disease, or diminish the likelihood of hospitalization or death, efforts were made to keep these facts hidden; and
• ·      efforts were made and were effective to remove any dissent from the official narrative from all public discourse (Facebook, Twitter, etc) Those who were deplatformed included not only journalists like Wolf and Alex Berenson, but medical doctors who were at the top of their fields. (cites       )

In Revelation, we see two evil beasts, both with the goal of diminishing humanity, who work in concert with each other:

Revelation 13:11-15 New International Version

¹¹ Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. ¹² It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. ¹³ And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. ¹⁴ Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. ¹⁵ The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.

The beasts to which Naomi Wolf refers are the government, the drug companies and the media, all of which worked in concert to coerce and to “deceive the inhabitants of the earth.”

Some will say that this comparison I have made here goes too far.  It’s off base. Saint John is talking about spiritual evil and Naomi Wolf, at very best, is talking about secular politics.  These are not the same.  But Ms. Wolfe herself, once a strict secularist, would disagree:

What we lived through from 2020 to 2022 was so sophisticated, so massive, so evil, and executed in such inhumane unison, that it could not be accounted for without venturing into metaphysics.

I shared earlier that I started to believe in God in more literal terms that I had before, because this evil was so impressive; so it must be directed at something at least as powerful that was all good.

The Sunday School is not the place for partisan arguments.  So, rather than focusing here on what Naomi Wolf claims to be true in terms of current events, we must think about this book in terms of a personal conversion.  Not from strict unbelief to Christianity, but from a completely secular and materialist viewpoint (all that is real can be seen and measured) to one that recognizes the reality of the spiritual world and the idea – consistent with Biblical theology – that there are real, supernatural powers at work in the world that are bent on evil.  That is, their goal is to diminish and enslave humanity, to spread chaos.

The dynamic we see in the life of Ms Wolf is that same spiritual dynamic recognized and explained by David Walsh in his profound and hopeful and widely ignored book, After Ideology, first published in 1990.  In that book, Walsh argues that the hope for a restoration of order must rest at least in part in the discovery – through the living of life – that the road western society is on – the road of materialism and secularism – is a road that goes nowhere.  The idea that humanity can by itself establish order and morality is an idea that the horrors of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries has torn to shreds.

If we are to survive and thrive as human beings, if we are not to descend into chaos and slavery, we must recognize that morality – the idea of right and wrong – is not defined by the majority of the electorate or by the opinions of the educated elites.  Morality is defined by the character of God.

Moreover, our consideration of Naomi Wolf’s conversion story and her analysis of the state of the modern world in supernatural and spiritual terms can bring us right back into a very Sunday School kind of thing.  It can teach us something about how to read the Bible and more particularly, how to read the book of Revelation.

Although she does not directly say so herself, her book title hints at, and her analysis closely follows a time honored and classical interpretation of the book.

In his excellent commentary on the book of Revelation, The Returning King, Bible scholar Vern Poythress writes that there are generally four schools of interpretation of the book:

Four main approaches or schools of interpretation have developed over the centuries. Preterists think that fulfillment occurs in the fall of Jerusalem (if Revelation was written in 67-68 A.D.) and/or the fall of the Roman Empire. Futurists think that fulfillment occurs in a period of final crisis just before the Second Coming. Historicists think that 6:1-18:24 offers a basically chronological outline of the course of church history from the first century (6:1) until the Second Coming (19:11). Idealists think that the scenes of Revelation depict not specific events but principles of spiritual war. The principles are operative throughout the church age and may have repeated embodiments.

Thus, whether Naomi Wolf is explicit about it or not, her book, her interpretation of current events in terms of spiritual warfare, would put her clearly in the idealist school.  The Beast she faces is the same beast that the first century Christians to whom John originally wrote faced.  It is the embodiment of dark spiritual power that aims at the deception, enslavement of humanity, and the destruction of all that is good, all that is humane.  This beast has been organized and operative repeatedly throughout history.

That is, to say the least, interesting and of some value to us as Bible students.  But what is the real lesson here?  What does this work of Naomi Wolf, as seen alongside these passages of scripture have to tell us in practical terms?  How can it change the way we live our lives?  How can it improve our living?

For that, let us go back directly to our text.  Saint John tells us that the beast leaves a mark on everything he touches.  That mark is a number 666.  You could fill a library with the efforts of wild-eyed commentators who have undertaken to derive the meaning of that number, as if it is some sort of Davinci code that will reveal the real meaning of the passage.

But for our purposes this morning, let’s not speculate on numbers, let’s look at the general dynamics of the text and the plain and simple instructions that God’s spirit gives to the first century Christians and to you and me:

Revelation 13:18

New International Version

¹⁸ This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.^[a] That number is 666.

Here is Eugene Peterson in his book, Reversed Thunder:

Saint John expects the deceit of the land beast to be penetrated by the Christian mind: hard, critical thinking

How do we protect ourselves from organized deceit? Saint John is blunt; use your heads. Figure out what is going on.

…the land beast can be figured out. Thus, the larger than life political world is reduced to manageable terms.  The Christian, with Saint John’s help, is not overwhelmed by big government, by sensational religion, by gigantic threats, by colossal odds, by breathless claims.  The temptation to use the methods of satan to counter the force of satan is considerably weakened.  The lies of the enemy, clever as they are, are not so clever that they cannot be found out.

Use your head – all of your critical faculties.  Get the beast’s number!

A Longing Fulfilled. . .

Last week we began a study of this short proverb:

 “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Proverbs 13: 12

We began our study by looking at the exposition on this passage in the Interpreter’s Bible, written by Rolland Schloerb in the early part of the twentieth century. Mr. Schloerb notes that unanswered hope is not such a terrible thing. In fact, unfulfilled hopes, he says, “make life interesting.” He adds that hopes or desires fulfilled are often disappointments. We find that what we had hoped for really is not particularly great or we find ourselves satiated and with a diminished drive for living life.

So, to put the matter in the starkest terms, the Bible says that hope deferred makes the heart sick and hope fulfilled is a tree of life, while our fair interpreter says that hope deferred is a tree of life and hope fulfilled makes the heart sick.

What we find is that Mr. Schloerb has not really attempted to expose the meaning of the scripture at all. Rather, he has chosen to contradict it openly and admittedly in both its declarations. He dodges his one task.

While we may have some sympathy for Schloerb here and even believe that there is wisdom in all he says, we are still left with the undeniable contradiction between the passage he is supposed to be interpreting or exposing and his own conclusions. There are at least two questions that must raise themselves when we look at this paradox:

• Why did such a learned and well-meaning man write as he did; and
• Why did the editors allow this bit to withstand review and include it in this seminal publication?
• A third question might also be in order:  Why, when believers read this segment of Schloerb’s work, is there no immediate rejection of it or at least dissatisfaction?

In last week’s session, we found that many of us were quite willing to go along with Schloerb. We spoke of many good things that might result from our hope being deferred and we might have even mentioned some instances where a hope satisfied led to disappointment or other regrettable consequences.

In a recent interview the CEO of a major corporation said that he wished for suffering and disappointment for all those who wish to succeed.  That’s how you learn, that’s how character is formed.

There is a simple and obvious answer to all three of those questions, but if we are to really wrestle with the text, if we are to look at the scriptures as authoritative and a means for our own education and formation:

II Timothy 3: 16 English Standard Version

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

must not be content with the answer that immediately suggests itself and force ourselves to come to terms with the meaning of the text itself and think deeply about why we are so willing to avoid or dismiss that direct message.

The simple answer is this: We see, or at least remember more of unfulfilled hopes in these lives we lead than fulfillment.  The New Testament, not to mention all of history, is full of writing about the suffering of the Christian, indeed, the suffering of humanity.

We find substantial support for the ideas presented by Schloerb here in the New Testament:

The Message Romans 8: 24-27

These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Romans 5:3-5

English Standard Version

³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Hebrews 11

¹³ These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. ¹⁴ For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. ¹⁵ If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶ But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

And we must remember that Schloerb was a pastor.  How much more would he have been familiar with dashed and disappointed hopes and desires than fulfillment.  How much time would he have spent in hospitals and by deathbeds compared to weddings and graduations? How much more would he have appreciated that those who he shepherded needed solace in loss and disappointment rather than aid in celebrating desire fulfilled.

And yet…and yet.  We are still faced with this little verse that is unyielding and contrary and stubborn in its directness.  Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

Why are we so willing to hear the opposite case?

1. Have we ignored or thought too little of the fulfillments we have seen in our own lives?
2. Is our life so unfocused and undisciplined that we really have no hopes? Or cannot identify them?
3. Are we unwilling, for some reason or another, to admit to ourselves what our hopes are?
   1. Might this unwillingness stem from our reluctance to trust God?
   1. Might this be because we are aware of our own laziness and lack of discipline necessary to achieve fulfillment?
4. Have we given up on our lives?  Yes, we admit and cling to the ultimate hope we have in heaven, but have we, perhaps in the face of disappointment after disappointment, decided to give up on the here and now?  Have we decided that this abundant life that our Lord promised has little or nothing to do with daily life here on earth?  Here we are to be content with little, with taking a back seat, with being overlooked and overruled.  Have we forgotten how to dream?

A desire fulfilled is a tree of life.  “Tree of life” That is a metaphor bursting with meaning, exploding with suggestion and overtones.  What does it mean?  We discussed this to some extent last week.  We see the phrase written elsewhere in the Bible.  In Genesis, the tree of life is on the garden of Eden and after mankind has fallen, God banishes them from the garden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and living forever. (Gen 3: 22)

In the book of Revelation, we see the tree of life as a symbol of abundance, unending sustenance, provision, and healing.  (Rev. 22: 2)

Thus, the tree of life is a giver of something above and beyond the mortal.  It is a giver of that kind of life – zoe – of which our Lord spoke when he promised “abundant life.” (John 10: 10) The tree of life sustains life not only here and now, but for eternity.

Thus, according to the proverb, a desire fulfilled does not lead a person to satiety and disappointment.  It is, rather, a giver of new life, an inspiration. A desire fulfilled strengthens and sustains our faith, our hope, our willingness to engage ourselves in the battles before us.

To take in and understand the meaning of this proverb, let’s do a little thought experiment.  Let’s imagine the fulfillment of a great longing.  Let’s be concrete and specific in our imagining.  We won’t settle for some abstract notion of a longing fulfilled in theory.  We want to imagine the real fulfillment of a real longing. These things can be very personal, and we may want to keep them private, so we won’t demand that anyone share.

You and I believe that “every good and perfect gift cometh from above, it comes down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”  (James 1: 17) So, in our vocabulary, what we are talking about is a blessing.  There are different kinds. God may bless us in a way we have not anticipated or desired.  It may be a complete surprise.  God may bless us in a way that we do not immediately recognize as a blessing.  We see its value only in retrospect.  (Solzhenitsyn “Thank God for the Gulag.”)  A third kind of blessing is one that we have specifically anticipated.  Something that we have wanted to happen.  We may have been praying for it, long and hard.  And now it comes to us.  Here it is, that “longing fulfilled.”

How do we imagine that this will be a tree of life?

At last, and ultimately, our hope is in Christ. He is the desire of nations.

Christ The Apple Tree

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit, and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree

For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the apple tree

I’m weary with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest awhile:         Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree

Taking Stock

Psalm 90: 12

2 Peter 1:3-11

My grandfather was born in 1888 and grew up in rural southern West Virginia.  I spent a lot of time with him when I was very young.  I was pretty excited in those days with the prospect of having a farm.  Some of my friends’ families had country property and it seemed like heaven to me to have a place where you could go and hike around, maybe hunt and fish, and burn wood in a pot-bellied stove at night.  But when I would mention these places to Pawpaw, he would ask me whether those families had any stock.  And by that he did not mean shares in a publicly-traded corporation.  He meant livestock.

Taking stock of our own situation may mean different things at different times.  But one aspect of our ownings, no matter what generation we might be from, is time.  That is common to all of us.  We only have a limited amount of time, it is always passing away, and we do not know how much of it we have.

And yet, the psalmist writes this:

¹² So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

We don’t know how long our lives will last.  We may live for decades more or be gone in less than a month.  But the psalmist is encouraging us, or rather asking God to teach him, to number his days that he might apply his heart to wisdom. 

Q: What does “number our days” mean?

What can this mean other than a sober assessment of probability? 

That notion is supported by those well-known lines that come only two verses before:

¹⁰ The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

We don’t know precisely how much time we have left on this earth, but we are not without some clear guidelines, some ability to make sober estimates.  And this morning’s verse is a prayer to God to teach us to pay attention to this limitation and to plan and to value accordingly.

(In his book, The Matter With Things, the eminent scholar, Iain McGilchrist, tells us that paying attention to something changes the thing to which we are attending.)

Such an accounting does not come naturally to us, reluctant as we are to face our own mortality, but is should be of some moral worth in that it may lead us to value more dearly, more appropriately, the time we have left and to “apply ourselves to wisdom.”  That is, to use that time in the best ways.

But the phrase might be interpreted just a little differently.  It might be interpreted to mean not that we number our days in terms of coming to an estimate of what total may be left to us, but that we put a number on each day.  There is certainly less speculation involved in this formula.  Each day that we face we are to give a number and so we may think of what we will do or have done with that particular day, distinct as it is from every other.  Moreover, in consciously recognizing that number, we again gain some appreciation for the time allotted to us here under heaven.

When we think in this way, we come close to the idea of setting goals.  An idea that I didn’t think much of during my career.  At year end, management would have meetings and talk about goals.  Ho-hum.  Of course, we have goals.  To win the case.  What else do you need to waste time having meetings about?

Q: At this stage of our lives how much sense does it make to be setting goals?

Another objection is more easily articulated here.  How realistic is it for you and me – people of a certain age, people who have finished their careers and finished raising their children – people whose physical and mental powers are past their peaks – to be setting goals?  I mean, what is there realistically left for us to do, to achieve?  Shouldn’t our goal be nothing more than getting to the golf course early enough to beat the rush or pursuing some fancied “bucket list” of sights to see before we die.  Isn’t anything other than that a little presumptuous, a little arrogant?

But, the fact of the matter is, we do have goals.  Or, at least, a goal.  That is what we are – how we are made.  We are always longing and stretching for something.  And, though we often don’t recognize it, that something is God.  Here is David Bentley Hart:

Even the blessed soul’s union with God, Gregory (of Nyssa) insisted, must consist for the creature in an eternal epektasis, an endless intentional and dynamic stretching out into an ever-deeper participation in the divine nature.  For any finite thing possessed of a principle of life – psyche, soul – movement is life, stasis death.

So much for David Bentley Hart’s words about human nature.  But what does the Bible say?  What does the Bible tell us about human nature and is it consistent with Hart’s conclusions?

The first example of human restlessness might be the creation of Eve.  Man, the crown of God’s creation, surveys the entire world – all of creation – and ends up not with a feeling of satisfaction or fullness, but rather loneliness. All of creation, as it stood in that moment, could not satisfy the need in man. He stood over all creation and said “this is not enough. I need something more.”

If that is the first Biblical evidence of humanity’s dynamic nature, then the second must be that of Eve herself.  She is in the garden and in a state of grace.  All has been given to her and she and Adam live for now in an unfallen world.  But in the first conversation we see of Eve, we see her saying or at least implying that all of that is not enough. It is true that the offer came from the serpent, but if Eve had been content with what she had, she would not have been tempted by the offer.   She wants more.  She wants something else.

And look at the words of the psalmist:

Psalm 27:4

New King James Version

⁴ One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.

The psalmist, in contemplating heaven, does not stop with the idea of beholding.  That’s a part of it, to be sure, but the poet goes on to say that a part of life in the house of the Lord is his ability to inquire, to ask questions, to deepen understanding, to move, to grow.

“To inquire (baqar) in his temple” (palace) means to find out all that constant fellowship or unbroken intercourse with God can teach (Psalms 27:4).

And, of course, we have the testimony of Christ’s first disciples.  When the Lord asks them why they will not leave him, even in light of the hard teachings that have driven others away, their response, in the mouth of Peter, is telling of the best in our human nature.  “Where would we go?” Peter asks. “You have the word of eternal life.”

To say that is to admit, once again, that this world is not enough for us.  These fishermen, once content to tend their nets, have tasted something new.  They are no longer satisfied with mundane life; they must move on toward the goal. We want more.  And the more that we want, at least these disciples had figured out, is fellowship with God.

Do we see evidence in the scriptures that God expects human beings to be ever moving, ever evolving?

Here is the Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Corinth:

II Corinthians 4: ¹⁶ So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

This is unmistakably a reference to the decline of the body due to aging.  And it tells us that, even as our body inevitably deteriorates, our spirit – our dynamism, our aim toward a goal – is renewed, day by day.

There is a passage in I Peter that we’ve all heard repeated many times.  We have heard it, probably, as a list of virtues that the Christian is supposed to grow into – faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, love.  We may have heard preachers and teachers talk about each one of these virtues, laboring to distinguish one from another.  But this morning, let’s think less about the virtues listed there and how they might be defined and distinguished from each other and consider what this passage may have to say about the dynamism of the human character; about the idea expressed by Mr. Hart that human beings are not stationary or isolated creatures, but rather are constantly changing as they are affected by the world around them, by the relationships of which they are a part.

It would be hard to argue that this passage does not reflect an understanding of the dynamism of human life.  We see here the notion that the believer should evolve, moving in graduated steps from goodness to love.  We are going to be moving and changing, that’s just what we are.  This passage encourages us to be deliberate about it and to ensure that we are moving in the right direction, that is, to “participation in the divine nature so that we may escape the corruption in this world.”

(Note: the gospel is news of a means of escape from the fallen world. From our own fallen natures and from the fallen spiritual powers that reign in this world.  “In its dawn, the gospel was a proclamation principally of a divine victory that had been won over sin and death, and over the spiritual powers of rebellion against God that dwell on high and here below and under the earth.  It announced itself truly as the good tidings of a campaign of divine rescue on the part of a loving God…”  Hart, That All Shall Be Saved,  P. 205)

If one disciplines himself to aim at and achieve these virtues, what happens – they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive.

And we can move from the scriptures to experience.  We are surrounded by evidence of addiction.  Addiction not only to drugs, but to alcohol and food.  And what is addiction other than a perversion of the human dynamic for more.  The addict is not satisfied with mundane life and embarks on a mistaken path to assuage his emptiness,

All of this talk about goals and giving each day a number might seem a little too mechanistic.  Maybe too idealistic.  We are not so methodical and organized as all that.  To think that we can actually live that way might be a delusion.

But the real truth is that, no matter how conscious or unconscious of it we may be at the moment, we are in fact goal-oriented beings.  And our real goal, so Paschal, Augustine, and the scriptures tell us, is God.  We are all seeking, maybe we can admit that, but what we are really seeking, that is, that which will really satisfy and fulfill us is union with God.

So, to the extent that we convince ourselves that the prospect of growth and progress toward a goal is delusional for those of us of a certain age it is to that extent that we are deluded.  That kind of surrender does not lead to rest.  And it certainly does not lead to a deepening of life and love.  We are dynamic creatures.  Like it or not, admit it to ourselves or not, we are always desiring, always, wanting, always aiming.  That is what we are in essence, and it will not change.  To the extent we ignore this or try to suppress it, we are constricting our lives, we are cutting ourselves off from real fellowship, real communication, real joy, real life.

The wisdom of the faith – that we must apply our hearts to – is that we are in fact hungry and needy and that hunger and need, is at bottom for God, no matter how we may have confused it for something else.

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With The Gleaners

Ruth Ch 2

Matthew 23:12

¹² And whoever exalts himself will be ^[a]humbled, and he who humbles himself will be ^[b]exalted.

I Samuel 2: 8 (Hannah’s prayer of thanks for the gift of a son)

He raises the poor from the dust

and lifts the needy from the ash heap

He seats them with princes

And has them inherit a throne of honor

Last week we considered the motive behind Ruth’s decision to stay with Naomi. We said that the writer of this story is one who “shows, rather than telling,” and in this instance that writer does not directly tell us what is motivating Ruth, but he does show us, in the speech she makes to Naomi.  This pledge of allegiance is one of the most famous in the Old Testament.  It is moving; fraught with emotion.  It is often used in wedding ceremonies.  And that is just what the writer must have intended.

Rather than just telling us that Ruth opted to stay with Naomi, the writer gives us a relatively lengthy, expansive, and by any measure passionate speech. And as we read that speech, we may gain some insight into what motivated Ruth to make a choice that was seemingly – and according to Naomi and Orpah – against her own best interests.  That is, rather than remain in her own country, where she must have had some connections and prospects, to go into a land unknown to her, where she knew no one and would have been regarded as an outsider.

Q: What is the conventional theory regarding Ruth’s motive for remaining with Naomi?

We said last week that one conventional theory about Ruth’s motive here is that she acted selflessly, altruistically, out of compassion and pity for her aging mother-in-law.  If we think of it that way, we may see Ruth as a kind of suffering hero.  A good person.  A nice person.

Isn’t that special? (precious)

Q: Should our focus be on the stellar (self-sacrificing)  character of Ruth or on the vision of what she has seen in Naomi?

But what we proposed last week was that the thing that should be focused on and what the writer really intended that we see is not so much the stellar character of Ruth, but the quality of what she has seen.  That is more compatible with the message of the New Testament where we are not so much focused on the character of the people involved – all of them are flawed, and the scriptures often highlight those flaws – but on the amazing message.  The focus is not on the people carrying the message, but on the message itself.  Not on the preachers and teachers, but on the gospel.

We compared this interaction between Ruth and Naomi with several other passages in the Bible that have to do with partings proposed and then decided against.  We looked at the interplay between Elisha and Elijah as Elijah neared the end of his days on earth.  (II Kings 2: 2-9 “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit”  Elisha’s motive here is not self-sacrifice, but a longing to have what he has seen in Elijah) We saw the interplay between King David and Ittai in the midst of a desperate battle, (II Samuel 15: 21) and the passage where our Lord Jesus Christ asks his disciples whether they would not like to abandon ship before the storm starts to blow. (John 6: 68)

In each of these instances, the focus is not on the lovely character of those who choose to stay.  The point, and the motive in all those decisions is the weight and magnitude of what those people had seen. The disciples cannot leave the side of Jesus, not because we are pure and loyal soldiers (they weren’t) but because they had heard and seen in the person of Jesus that which outweighed every other consideration – even that of their own safety.

If we look at the story of Ruth in that way it becomes less a sentimental picture of loyalty and self-sacrifice – a panegyric (A panegyric is a formal public speech or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing.) to the character of Ruth – and more of an allegory of the gospel.

What is motivating Ruth is not so much pity for her mother-in-law as it is her longing for that world or quality or “transcendent horizon” that she has seen in Naomi.  She is willing to leave everything else behind.  Her country, her family, her religion.  In Naomi she has seen something that it better than all of that.  It is higher, it is transcendent.  Ruth is not deciding against self, she is not throwing her life away. Rather, she has decided to live it to the full.  In a way that would not be possible in the pagan country of Moab, where she would no longer have the example of Naomi. She has seen or found the great treasure, the pearl of great price.

Let’s imagine for a moment that we are Ruth’s parents.  We live quietly in Moab and have watched our daughter get married and suffer the loss of her husband.  She is childless, but still of child-bearing age, and now she comes to us to tell us that she is going to leave the country to accompany her mother-in-law to Judea. 

Q: How do we react to that?  What do we say to her?

Mom and Dad:

Honey, don’t give up on life.  Life is a gift.  Don’t squander what you have.  Naomi will be okay without you.  She says so herself.  Judea is her country, not yours. You’re still young.  You have your whole life ahead of you.  Things haven’t gone your way this time, but that doesn’t mean that they never will. 

Ruth:

I haven’t given up on life. This decision is not a compromise.  I’m not feeling sorry for myself, and I know that I don’t owe this to Naomi.  I know that she’d be fine without me.  But I cannot give up what I have seen in her.  I don’t see this as a sacrifice at all.  I am running into the greatest life I have ever seen.

And so, this morning, we move on to chapter 2.  This is a Jane Austen novel, but it only lasts for four pages, so things must move quickly, and here in chapter 2, the plot thickens.  After arriving in Judea, Ruth goes immediately to work.  What does the writer tell us about the work Ruth involves herself in?  And what does this tell us about the character of Ruth?

Q: What is gleaning?

Ruth decides to look for a field where she might join the gleaners.  In the Mosiac law, laid down at the time of the entry into the promised land, harvesters are commanded not to reap to the very edge of their fields and owners of vineyards are commanded not to go over the vineyards a second time or to pick up the fruit that has fallen to the ground. These fragments are to left for the poor and the alien.  But the Bible tells us that the leavings are meager:

Isaiah 17

₅ It will be as when reapers harvest the standing grain,
    gathering the grain in their arms—
as when someone gleans heads of grain
    in the Valley of Rephaim.
⁶ Yet some gleanings will remain,
    as when an olive tree is beaten,
leaving two or three olives on the topmost branches,
    four or five on the fruitful boughs,”
declares the Lord, the God of Israel.

The work that Ruth has volunteered for is work with meager reward.  The story also makes clear that it is hard work.  Long days bent over in the fields under the hot sun.  And for Ruth, we have not only the realities of meager reward and grinding labor, there is a real prospect of danger and physical harm.  When Boaz takes notice of Ruth, he warns her to stay in his field because he has “strictly forbidden the young men to molest you.” (2: 9) That evening, Naomi joins in Boaz’ warning: 2: 22 “you had better accompany his girls, so that the reapers may not attack you in some other field.”

What does this chapter – these details about the process of gleaning and the attendant dangers – have to teach us this morning?  What is the Spirit telling us in this chapter?

Last week we saw that Ruth ventured out in faith.  She was moved by what she had seen in her mother-in-law – moved enough to leave her own family, country and religion and travel into a land unknown to her.  And her first steps in this new journey of faith are anything but glorious.  She is reduced to difficult, dangerous, and dirty labor for meager rewards.  Yet we know the end of the story.  We know that in the end Ruth is blessed beyond her imaginings.  All that she longed for she receives. And the beginning of her salvation is there in that field.  Had she not undertaken this work, this story would never have been told.  And so, the point of it all may be that lesson that Parker Palmer learned and wrote of in his book, Let Your Life Speak:

Years ago, someone told me that humility is central to the spiritual life.  That made sense to me: I was proud to think of myself as humble!  But this person did not tell me that the path to humility, for some of us, at least, goes through humiliation, where we are brought low, rendered powerless, stripped of pretenses and defenses, and left feeling fraudulent, empty, and useless – a humiliation that allows us to regrow our lives from the ground up, from the humus of common ground.

We are all familiar with the story of Ruth.  And when we read of her troubles – the loss of her husband and father-in-law and brother-in-law and her being reduced to hard and dangerous work for meager rewards, we are quick to say, “Yep, that’s realistic. That’s just life.”  But the story has an ending.  Ruth is not left in some sparse field, digging for food.  Rather, she is taken up into a circle of love and abundance and security.  She becomes the great grandmother of King David and is included in the line of descent that produces our Lord Jesus Christ.

 If we are to accept and believe one part of the story, we must accept the other as well.

He raises the poor from the dust

and lifts the needy from the ash heap

He seats them with princes

And has them inherit a throne of honor

Ruth and Naomi

 Old Testament: Ruth Ch 1

New Testament:

Gospel:  Matthew 13:44

⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Epistle: Philippians 4:8

Meditate on These Things

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

The book of Ruth is right next to the book of Judges in our Bibles, but they are very different kinds of books.  The book of Judges looks at the nation of Israel as a whole.  It is a story of military campaigns and national leaders.   But the book of Ruth is a small story that focuses closely on a few individuals, none of whom hold high office or organize military campaigns. 

In 1814, Jane Austen’s niece – a girl named Anna – was attempting to write a novel.  She asked her brilliant aunt for some advice on how to proceed.  This is part of her answer:

You are now collecting your people (characters)delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,

The book of Ruth is a personal drama, a family story, a love story.  It is the Jane Austen novel of the Old Testament.

And here is the first irony: while the book of Judges concerns itself with great measures, it was our observation that in the end, after much sound and fury, nothing much changes.  Someone rises to leadership, has some success, peace comes for a time, maybe, then all reverts to chaos once more.  It is remarkable then, that this little story of Ruth, a poor widow, and her mother-in-law, actually does leave a lasting legacy. In fact, it is THE legacy, the greatest story ever told, the unending legacy.  This story has lasting effect.  It moves the needle.

For not with swords loud clashing, or roll of stirring drums

With deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes

“Lead On, O King Eternal”

The story begins in grief and tragedy.  Ruth is a young woman who loses her husband.  That is an awful fate in any day and age, but in Ruth’s day such a loss was even more profound, more devastating that it would be today.  In her day, women had fewer options than they do today.  No young widow could simply go back to college and end up as a partner in a law firm.  In her day a husband was the only honorable means of sustenance and security that was available.

To appreciate the story, to get from it all it has to give, we must try to understand who Ruth was and how she felt in her circumstances.  The story tells us a good deal about her character.

Here we might also note the difference in the narrative style or manner of this book compared to that of the book of Judges.  Judges is more explicitly religious. In that book we see angels coming to speak with Gideon and the Spirit of the Lord coming on Samson as he faces the Philistines.  The author of the book of Ruth does not write that way.  The style here is more like what we are familiar with, comfortable with.  Thus, in 2:3 we read of Ruth: “it was her fortune to come upon that part of the field that belonged to Boaz.” 

Moreover, the writer of Ruth seems to follow the advice given to modern writers, that is, “show, don’t tell.”  Instead of having the narrator tells us directly the characteristics of a person, that writer simply shows us how they act in various situations and we come to our own conclusions.  If the writer is skillful, the reader will come to the conclusions that the writer intended, but be all the more convinced and certain of them because he has come to those conclusions by himself.

Then, what does the story tell us about Ruth?

In the first place, we might think of Ruth as a girl who checked all the right boxes.  The story makes clear that Ruth was a dutiful girl. The story also makes it very clear that she was an attractive girl.  She was one of those girls who stand out in a crowd, who the rich man notices.  (2: 5)That would have been very much in her favor.   We have every reason to believe that her life until now had been rather uneventful. The normal options were open to her and she took advantage of them. She had done what girls in that day were supposed to do.  She had found a husband, married him, and had become a part of a family.  So far, so good.

But it all falls apart.  This isn’t what she wanted.  Not what she had hoped for.  Not what she had reasonable grounds to expect.  She had done what she was supposed to do.  She had taken appropriate advantage of those right opportunities that were before her and instead of being rewarded with a happy life, she is now at loose ends.  Everything has come apart.

Why is it important for us to grasp this?  Because we see the same thing in life.  All around us we see people who have done the right thing so far as they could see.  Who have acted responsibly and prudently, have taken the opportunities that were there for them and yet ended up in a place they never meant to go.  We may have been there ourselves.  We might be there even now.  Disappointed. At loose ends.  Bewildered.

Not only had she lost her husband, her father-in-law had also died and so had her brother-in-law.  One of the main characters in the story is Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law.  We will learn a good bit about her as the story unfolds, but the first thing we learn about her, here in the first chapter of the book, is that she is a pragmatic woman.

When her daughters-in-law tell her that they want to stay with her as she travels back to her home in Israel, Naomi shows us that she appreciates the emotion, the loyalty, and the proffered sacrifice of the two girls, but the advice she gives them is clear-eyed and practical. She tells them not to come with her, but to stay in Moab, their home country, where they have at least some connections, some establishment, and some real prospect of finding new husbands and starting over.

Finally, Orpah relents and follows her mother-in-law’s advice.  But Ruth is adamant.  She will not leave Naomi’s side and here we have one of the most famous and beloved passages in the Old Testament:

Ruth 1:16-18

New King James Version

¹⁶ But Ruth said:

“Entreat^[a] me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people,
And your God, my God.
¹⁷ Where you die, I will die,
And there will I be buried.
The Lord do so to me, and more also,
If anything but death parts you and me.”

This is passage is celebrated for its pretty sentiment, but if we are to understand the character of Ruth and what this story tells us, we must ask the question “why?”  Why was Ruth, contrary to her sister-in-law, so attached to Naomi?  What were Ruth’s motives in surrendering what even her mother-in-law told her were her best prospects?

Q: What motivated Ruth in deciding to stay at her mother-in-law’s side?

Some have seen Ruth’s pledge of allegiance here as motivated by altruism. That is, that Ruth was not looking out for herself at all, but was acting out of pity for her mother-in-law. 

But we might also think that in this moment, Ruth, after all around her has seemingly come to naught, is asking herself the tough questions of life: what is valuable? What is worthy of my life, my commitment, my effort?  What do I really love?

Q: What words might we use to describe the emotion and resolution in Ruth’s famous speech?

She does not give a short, “let’s just make the best of things,” or “let’s go on and see how things work out,” kind of answer.  She leaves herself no escape.

And this passage – the certainty and determination in her speech to Naomi  -makes it clear that Ruth does know what she loves.  She knows what she wants. And she knows that all of that is connected to Naomi.  Why?  Why is there this unusual connection between this young, attractive Moabite girl and her Hebrew mother-in-law?  It does not look normal.  In fact, we have a contrast in the story to show us what normal would look like.  Orpah seems to take the normal, predictable, rational path.  Why does Ruth act as she does?

            II.  Differences in Cultures

The Bible tells us that there were profound cultural differences among the tribes that inhabited what we now call the middle east in Old Testament times.  We remember Rebecca’s grief over Esau’s wives:

Genesis 27:46

New International Version

⁴⁶ Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.”

Rebecca therefore demands that Jacob be sent back to the homeland to find himself a wife in the culture that they knew. There is a difference in cultures.  Some are better than others.  Some are closer to the light than others.

Surely Ruth had seen that in Naomi.  In her, and in the little culture she had established within their extended family, Ruth saw something new, something better.  Something that was worth surrendering everything else for.  The Bible tells us about this dynamic:

Matthew 13:44

New International Version

⁴⁴ “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

And:

John 6:  ⁶⁶ After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. ⁶⁷ So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” ⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life

In Ruth’s memorable speech to Naomi, we may see the testimony not of one who merely has pity on another, but of one who has seen a great treasure and is willing to sacrifice everything else to claim it.  Thus, Ruth renounces her own country, her own family, her own destiny, and her own religion, everything she was invested in, everything in which she had a legitimate claim, to accompany Naomi into a strange land.

David Bentley Hart is one of the foremost theologians in the modern world.  He is Eastern Orthodox, but his books and other writings reach and have influenced the entire Christian world.  In one of his most recent books, dealing with a heavy subject that has been a controversy in the church for millennia, after having marshalled four detailed and scholarly arguments in support of his position, he ends his book with these three sentences:

Whether in the midst of our wisdom or of our folly, of truth or error, it is the transcendental horizon of all things that continually calls us to itself, and we must obey as best we can.  We may revere tradition or respect the sincerity of those who tell us all those venerable tales that we are asked to accept on faith.  But there is only one path to true freedom, and so to God.  In the end, we must love the good.

Hart, That All Shall Be Saved

We may shake our heads at this passage and say “fine sounding words, but what do they mean?”  But our lesson this morning tells us exactly what they mean.

Isn’t this dynamic what we see in Ruth?  Isn’t this the motivation behind her famous speech?  In Naomi – in the life that she led and in the culture she created in that family, so distinct from the pagan, Moabite, culture that Ruth had known, has Ruth seen and heard that call of the transcendental horizon?   Again, fancy words, but what is meant is that something that we know is above – higher and better – and that is visible, but out of reach and beyond our comprehension. Just as the disciples had seen and heard it in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.   In refusing to leave the side of Naomi is Ruth showing and acting on her love for the good?

Might we also imagine that Ruth had seen in her mother-in-law something that she had seen nowhere else in her experience and that she did not regard her decision to stay with Naomi as a sacrifice at all, but rather the means to stay near – to stay in touch with – that good that she had experienced in Naomi’s company.  To Ruth, in the moment, Naomi was the pearl of great price and worth the sacrifice of all else.

O, to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be

Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee

“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”

Such an interpretation is surely consistent with or borne out by the rest of the story.  For Ruth, acting as she does on faith, putting all she knows and has behind and heeding the call to the “transcendental horizon,” that is, that good that she has glimpsed in Naomi, results in great gain, gain that is pressed down and overflowing.  Ruth and Naomi come to rest in abundance, in security, in complete fulfillment, and in a place in God’s plan of salvation for the world.

◄ Malachi 3:10 ►

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

A Fish Story

Jonah 1: 7

I Corinthians 15: 54

“Let us cast lots to find out who has brought this trouble upon us.”

This expression by the crewmembers on Jonah’s boat reveals ideas and motives that are at once strange and familiar to us.  Let’s get the strange one out of the way first.  We moderns don’t put much stock in the casting of lots.  That idea, although we see it more than once in the Bible, and sometimes even among the faithful, has had its day.

The more challenging and fundamental question is this:  what assumptions underlie the crewmembers’ notion that there was some cause for their pressing trouble other than just a physical one – a “powerful low-pressure system,” for example.

Beneath it all, there is something of the concept of karma.  That is, that people reap what they have sown; that transgression of the moral order will bring retribution.   That concept is not strange to us. We believe it.  We say things like “the wheels of justice may grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly sure.”

So, the concept of karma, of the belief that one reaps what one has sown, is right there in this book.  The crewmembers believe in it instinctively, and their instincts are confirmed.  Through a process we would call occult, they find the perpetrator, the one who has stepped outside the moral order, and when they cast him from the boat their trouble abates.  The sea is calmed.   Just as Jonah said:  (1: 12) Just what we expected. Karma.

So far, we have an interesting action story and one that conforms to our expectations.  Jonah, who has rebelled against the moral order – the command of God – has gotten his just deserts.  This does not upset our view of reality.  That’s the way things go. The way they should go.  It’s like physics – every action has an opposite, but equal, reaction.

But of course, the story does not end there.  In fact, it has just started. In the next phase, the story leaves all conventional story lines, all normal ideas about reaping and sowing, and takes a turn into the fantastic.  It is like we have jumped from a scene in The Waltons to something in Jurassic Park.  All notions of normality are thrown away and something happens that is both physically unimaginable and morally strange.  Jonah, who by every measure of justice had it coming, does not die.  Every right-thinking person reading the story for the first time would expect that he did die.  (The crew members thought that they were killing him by throwing him overboard: 1: 14) The physical causes are there and seem insurmountable: He is cast into the middle of a raging storm in the middle of the sea. The moral cause is there.  He is in rebellion against God, against the moral order of the universe.  The physical and the moral seem to converge.  He will die.  He will get what he deserves.  That’s what the crewmembers have assumed, and that is what we would assume, if we were reading the story for the first time.

So, what good is this story for you and me?  This wild, old tale about God breaking all the rules and saving someone who looked to be doomed, who should have been doomed?  Does this have any moral relevance to you and me, or is it just a novelty; something God did once but doesn’t do anymore?

Of course, we are traditionally told that this story is of great moral significance. 

Commentators tell is that what we have in the story of Jonah is a story of grace.  The more common interpretation is that the story stands for grace as it is extended to Nineveh, a city outside of Israel; a city outside the special covenant with God; a city caught in the throes of paganism and moral decay.  Grace is extended to this corrupt city.  A city that deserved condemnation.

But look for a moment at the story of Jonah himself.  Is this not a perfect picture of salvation by grace?   How is that so?

In the first place we see the Jonah himself had nothing to do with his own salvation.  Jonah did not hire the fish.  He did not find the fish.  The fish, under God’s command, found Jonah.  His salvation – his coming from certain death to new life – is the work of God alone.  As the reformers would have put it, it is “sola gratia,” all of grace.  He is saved by God, even though his deepest intent at that moment was to get away from God.  It is hard to ignore the parallels to the story of the conversion of Paul.  Both he and Jonah were acting against God, running from God, and both were brought to salvation through God’s action alone.

Another thing this story might be trying to show us is the strangeness of grace.  It runs counter to karma; to what we might expect. Getting swallowed up by a fish and there being protected for three days and being vomited up on a convenient beach somewhere is what we would call unusual.  Weird, even.  But so is grace.  Always.  Always grace is given where it should not be expected and often through means that were unforeseeable.  It has been the testimony of millions that they were protected from the consequences of their rebellion through means that they could never have concocted themselves and that they may have even been unaware of at the time.

And so, this little story, so old, so odd, and so improbable, becomes supremely relevant to you and me when we realize, as the Bible tells us, that we, and indeed all of creation, are in the same boat – or rather out of the same boat – as Jonah.  That is to say that we – and all of creation – are fallen.   We were all in rebellion, all running from God, all under the power and sway of sin:

Romans 3:9-20

English Standard Version

No One Is Righteous

⁹ What then? Are we Jews^[a] any better off?^[b] No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, ¹⁰ as it is written:

“None is righteous, no, not one;
¹¹     no one understands;
    no one seeks for God.
¹² All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
    no one does good,
    not even one.”

On our own we are outside of the moral order of the universe and headed for condemnation.  We cannot save ourselves.

But the good news – the gospel – is this: God breaks the chain of karma, a chain that you and I are powerless to break.  That is the story of Jonah and that is the story of the Bible, as it is shown most pointedly and most universally in Christ.  There, the means and the magnitude of the miracle make the great fish of Jonah look mundane.  The great fish swallowed Jonah, saving him from death.  Christ swallows death itself and saves the world:

ESV

I Corinthians 15: 54

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Isaiah 25:8-9

English Standard Version

⁸     He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
    and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
    for the Lord has spoken.

Colossians 3:3-5

English Standard Version

³ For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ who is your^[a] life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

What God did here – however strange the physical circumstances were – is what He always does.  What He does throughout the Bible, what He did in Christ and what he does in our own lives. 

So, what are we to do with this lesson?  With this idea that salvation is all of God?  With the notion that if karma would be allowed to run its course all of us would be doomed to meaninglessness and defeat? 

Look at what Jonah himself concluded while in the belly of the fish:

     Those who heed vain idols leave their real refuge. (2:8)

For Jonah, and for you and me, the message is only this:  place your focus on God and live in faith.  Trust in Him.  Rest in Him.

“The Gate of the Year” a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”  And he replied:  “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

Fire From Heaven?

I Kings 18: 19-40

Matthew 26:53

Ephesians 6: 12

In one of his Prairie Home Companion monologues, Garrison Keilor told a story about a pastor in Lake Wobegon who made it a habit to visit one of his aging parishioners immediately after Sunday Services.  This lady, who had been faithful in attending church while she was able, was now homebound and very hard of hearing.  So, the pastor came to her house to bring the message to her.  But her way of hearing the message was a bit of a challenge to the pastor.  “Don’t preach me the sermon,” She would tell him, “Just whisper in my good ear what the point of it was.”

And so, the pastor had to get right down to brass tacks.  No humor, no rhetorical flourishes, no embellishments.  Just tell me the point.  Maybe not all that easy to do, and maybe forcing the pastor to reconsider what it was he had actually said in his twenty minutes before the congregation.

Last week after Sunday School I had the pleasure of sitting down with Luke to talk over the week’s events with him.  Tell me about your Sunday School lesson, he said.

And so, I started on about Elijah the great prophet running for his life from Jezebel and Ahab.  About how Elijah showed all the signs of depression – signs that we moderns are familiar with – and how the Lord met Elijah’s needs in a very mundane way.  Rest, food, and water.  And all of this coming on the heels of Elijah’s great triumph over the prophets of Baal.

“Well, what about that story?”  Luke asked. “The one with fire coming down from heaven and all that.  What are we to make of that one.  Here is Elijah doing trash talk.  What are we to learn from that scene?”

And so, like the Lake Wobegon preacher, I was taken aback and I started tap dancing.  “I didn’t really prepare that lesson,” I said.  I was focused on what came after.  “But what about that other scene.”  Well, I said, I don’t know what we can make of that.

And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that what I had assumed was the point of that story may not have been the point at all.  I had heard, or maybe just assumed, that the point was obvious.  It was about the great and awesome power of God.  And it was about the impotence of those that those crazy prophets called gods.  Plain enough.  Why then ask any questions?

But if you look at the story in its entirety – if you ignore the chapter delineation, which was added more than a thousand years after the story was recorded, then maybe the point of the story is something other than what I had always blithely assumed.

For when you look at the chapters together and see them as one story, Elijah’s triumph is not so glorious.  It is dramatic and dynamic and complete in the moment.  It had to have been gratifying to him then and there.  It is a real Hollywood action movie scene. Lots of blood and gore.  Fire from heaven. 

But when we look at the story as a whole, what is there for us to whisper in the old lady’s ear?  What is the point?  Just tell me the point.

Maybe we can start our analysis by looking at the opinion of one who was there.  Who actually saw what went on. That person, of course, is Elijah himself.  What did he have to say about the overall or net effect of this great wonder that he had called down from heaven?

And his take on the matter may be inferred from his prayer as he stands before the Lord on Mount Hebron after fleeing from Jezebel.  Here it is:

¹⁰ He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”

In other words, the net effect of Elijah’s great triumph, as he here admits, was zero.  In his prayer, Elijah lays it on the line.  Nothing has changed.  He may have won the battle, but, so far as he could see, the war is lost. Fire from heaven nothwithstanding, he is no better off, and the nation is no better off, than the day before.  Jezebel is unaffected.  She still holds power, and he fears her now more than ever.  The great drama of yesterday was all for naught.

What is the point of the story then?  Why did this event occur and why has this account of it been preserved these three thousand years and why has the church included in in the canon of scripture and why is it set before you and me here this bright Sunday morning in this spring of 2023?

This morning I want to offer you an alternative, maybe contrarian, opinion about that.  I want to say that the point of the story is not so much to illustrate the great power of Almighty God and the impotence of those spirits that the crazy prophets of that day called gods.  Although the story does both of those things, that cannot be the main or final point.  The main or final point – made so vividly to Elijah in that day and to you and me as we read the chapters as one story – is this:  we battle not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities.  That is to say that the battle against evil cannot be won using physical tactics.  Elijah may slay 450 bad guys with the sword, but the cause of evil is unaffected.  Baal reigns on.  Jezebel is still on the throne.

Before we dismiss this idea as anathema, let us see how consistent it may be with the life and teaching of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

When the Roman officers came to arrest Jesus, Peter attempted to defend the hour with physical strategy.  He pulled his sword.  He cut of the ear of one of the officers.  But our Lord stopped him:

Matthew 26:53

English Standard Version

⁵³ Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?

This is not patience, it is wisdom.  It is not mercy, it is strategy. It is not because He wants to be kind to evil, it is because He knows what works and what doesn’t work.

The entirety of Jesus ministry is shot through with the message that the kingdom of God – that is, righteousness, justice, mercy, and peace – will not be ushered in through military or coercive means.  It will not come or be fostered by force. In the final analysis, evil will not be defeated by the sword or by tanks or nuclear bombs.  The foe is not physical, it is spiritual, and its defeat must be accomplished through spiritual means.

Here is the Apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesians:

Ephesians 6:12

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

The term “principalities” has different meanings depending on the context it is used in. It can refer to a state, office, or authority of a prince1. In Christianity, principalities and powers are levels of demons or the presence of demonic activity2. They are real beings whose primary goal is to harm humans2. In the Bible, principalities and powers can mean demonic forces themselves or false prophets and teachers empowered by demonic forces to come against the truth and deceive us3.

The faces of evil: war, famine, and disease

Then look again at our ancient story.  Taking the two chapters, 18 and 19 together. What is the end note?  It is a still, small voice.  It is a whisper.  As if to emphasize to Elijah that the battle is not to be won in fire and explosions, God arranges wind and fire and even an earthquake, and He is not in them.  That’s not His strategy.  That is not how His kingdom comes.  His voice is a whisper.

If we take this lesson to mean that the battle we face as Christians is a spiritual battle and not to be fought or won through physical or political means, then what does the fight look like?  How do we fight against the forces of evil, the powers and principalities in high places that hold sway in the world and delight in limiting human potential, human life?

We are told to endure and to withstand.  Faith is necessary here.  We cannot hold on against an onslaught unless we believe that the end is a good one.  If we know the ending, we may endure.  I’ve learned a new exercise lately.  It’s called a “dead hang.”  You grab the pull up bar and just hand there for as long as you can.  It’s supposed to do all kinds of good things for you, but the idea is to hold on as long as you can.  One of the benchmarks for people of a certain age, like me, is 90 seconds.  If you can hold on for 90 seconds, you’re considered to be in good shape.  When you’ve hung there a while, things start to hurt, but it’s easier to hold on when you can see the clock, when you know that you’re almost there, you know that a good end is possible, is in sight.

What’s So Great About the Resurrection?

I Corinthians 15: 19-22

Today marks the high point on the Christian calendar, for today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.  We may not think much about why we celebrate such an event.  Of course, we would.  After all, it is, to say the least, unusual.  What our entire experience and all of history, except for the gospel, teaches us is that life is temporary.  We all die.  Here is the wisdom of King Solomon:

Ecclesiastes 9:2-6

English Standard Version

² It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil,^[a] to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. ³ This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

So, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is to be celebrated because of its uniqueness.  Here is something that has never happened before or since.  But, despite our own experience of the universality and finality of death, the Bible mentions many resurrections from the dead:

•  Resurrection of the widow’s son in Zarephath (1 Kgs 17:17–22)
• Resurrection of the Shunammite’s son (2 Kgs 4:18–37)
• Resurrection of the man thrown into Elisha’s grave (2 Kgs 13:20)
• Resurrection of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:41)
• Resurrection of the young man at Nain (Luke 7:14)
• Resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:38–44)
• Resurrection of unknown saints during the crucifixion (Matt 27:52–53)
• Resurrection of Christ (Matt 28:1-6)
• Resurrection of Tabitha/Dorcas (Acts 9:36–42)
• Resurrection of Eutychus (Acts 20:7–12)

Not one of these resurrections is celebrated like Easter.  Then when we ask what is so great about the resurrection, we must change the question to ask: “What is so great about the resurrection of Jesus Christ?  Why is His resurrection different from the others in the Bible.”

What Paul tells us on that point is this:  The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not merely the resurrection of a single individual to life here on earth (as was the resurrection of Lazarus or Jairus’ daughter).  Rather, the resurrection of Christ is an act of cosmic or universal consequence.  It marks the decisive battle against all things evil, including, and especially, death itself. 

The resurrection of Christ is first of all, a fact of history.  A real flesh-and-blood man, Jesus of Nazareth, was crucified, died and rose again and walked the shores of Galilee and appeared to 500 and sat on the beach and ate grilled fish with his friends.  But the resurrection of Christ is different from all the others in that it marks a new cosmic beginning.  The old order of death has been defeated.  Things have changed.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pivotal event in all of history and in all of creation.  It is of ultimate importance to you and me because we need a place to go and we need a way to get there.

To say that we need a place to go is to say that our souls hunger for eternity.  Although the evidence for universal death is all around us – we are reminded of it every day – we are never comfortable with that.  We do not resign ourselves easily to the idea that when the lights go out at the end of our earthly days there is no more beyond. Human beings are built with a longing for eternity.  How do we experience that longing?

We may taste the longing for eternity in the experience of separation from loved ones.  When someone we have long loved passes, we come to realize that what we had with them, however good it was, was incomplete, that there was more to it – more promised – than we were able to complete in what Alfred Lord Tennyson called “this bourne of time and space.”  There was more to be had.  More to be said and done and felt. More to be expressed and explained.

And we feel this incompleteness not only in the passing or remembrance of loved ones.  We may feel it in any aspect of life.  In any experience, no matter how good, how perfect, it may have been, we may sense some incompleteness.  One poet has written that we cannot expect a friendship to flower fully “in such a nook as this”  In his famous song, “American Pie,” Don McClean  hints at the sense of incompleteness of life as it passes here:

We all got up to dance

But we never got the chance

We all know that there are roads we never traveled and never will this side of Jordan, that may have held more treasure for us.  We may see that, however successful we may have been in our work, it was at best an unfinished symphony. We know that we are not what we should be.  That our lives are not what they should be.  Our souls keep telling us: This world is not enough.  We hunger for eternity.

Lewis:

the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given – nay, cannot even be imagined as given – in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal existence

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is of ultimate importance for you and me because we need a place to go.  We die here, and yet we hunger for more, we hunger for eternity.

We need a place to go.  We hunger for eternity.  And yet we have no way of getting there.

Romans 5: 12

New International Version

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

Romans 7:24

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

 We have no more power over any rebirth than we did over our first birth.  The Bible teaches that we are separated from God – from the eternal – by sin – by a power that is working in the world and in our very lives.  And this is confirmed by our experience of life.  Standing alone, we are a prisoner to this power, we cannot escape on our own.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is of ultimate importance because it is through him that we may escape the fate of sin and death and enter into eternal life.  Christ’s death and resurrection have universal consequences.  Our Lord speaks of it Himself:

John 12:31-33

English Standard Version

³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. ³² And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³ He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

Christ will draw all men to Himself.  He will draw all men to eternity.

And here is the Apostle Paul:

1 Corinthians 15:19-22

English Standard Version

¹⁹ If in Christ we have hope^[a] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰ But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. ²¹ For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. ²² For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important event in all of creation.   It is the insurmountable evidence that all that Jesus said and all that He claimed to be is true. It is of ultimate importance to you and me because we need a place to go and we need a way to get there.  Heaven is that place, and Jesus Christ is the way.

What About Heaven?

Last week we studied the first eleven verses in the book of Ephesians.  We asked ourselves: “What promises are contained in this passage?”  We found that the verses contain several promises.  Among them are:

• That God has an overarching plan for history and human life,
• That the believer is included in that plan, has a role to play in it,
• That the believer will be given guidance and resources sufficient to allow him or her to fulfill that role,
• That the story has a happy ending. One of complete fulfillment.

Last week we looked at these promises in several ways.  We asked:

• How essential or important are these promises?
• What would life look like without them?
• How can we believe them as we are faced with the realities of life?  With the relentless news of war, famine and sickness all over the world, a breakdown of order in the streets of our cities, a continuing dissolution of the moral fabric of society all around us, and the frustrations and disappointments and grief in every life?

This morning we want to think about these promises from another angle.  Let’s say that you are in the market for a book.  Something to read while you are at the beach.  Someone hands you a volume and tells you that the story in it has no real plot, that is, it isn’t really a story at all.  Every character in the book is overwhelmed by circumstances.  They have their hopes and desires; their dreams, but no one is able to make a stand, hold to a decision, or succeed in any way.  And, finally, the end of the book is not a happy one.  No one gets what he or she wants.  Everyone is left hanging in a moral limbo.  There are no rewards and no satisfaction.

Would you buy the book?

And this comparison is enough to show us that the promises in this passage, as fantastic as they are, are not some distant dream approached only by a select few moral stormtroopers.  No, these promises are not champagne and caviar, they are meat and potatoes.  They are essential to every human life.

For without these promises, without the assurance that there is an overarching plan of God in life and that the lives we have been given and the grace we have in Christ involves us in this great redemptive plan; without the assurance that all will end well, life is at best a grey tedium and at worst a nightmare.  The promises here in these verses are essential to the coherence of the individual personality and to the maintenance of any society.

Moreover, let’s spend a few minutes thinking about this happy ending that is promised.  What is that like?  What do we really have to look forward to?

And for that, let’s turn back to our book analogy.  Suppose that the book you are being offered is different from what we first posited.  Suppose that we are told that there is in fact a plot or overarching plan in the story.  Suppose we are told that the characters do have roles to play in the unfolding of that overarching plan.  They do have resources and guidance for the struggles along the way and are thus able to endure and achieve.

And there is a happy ending.  But here is the strange thing.  The destiny of our beloved characters, though good, has nothing at all to do with the lives we have seen them live.  Their end and reward is something grand and glorious, but unimaginable and bearing no relation to what our characters loved and desired in the lives we have seen them live.

Such a story, although immeasurably better than the first one, is still not as good as it could be.  We want to see fulfillment.  We know through experience that life here and now makes many promises that are only partially fulfilled and that we sense and know pointed to depths that we were not able to reach here and now.  Human life, in these few years that we have on earth, is an unfinished symphony:

There are depths of love that I cannot know
Till I cross the narrow sea;
There are heights of joy that I may not reach
Till I rest in peace with thee.

The ending that is promised in scripture, although greater than we can imagine, ask or think, is not less that we hope for or desire, it is only more.  That is to say, heaven is not strange.  It is greater and more glorious than we can imagine, but it is every bit as good as what we do imagine.

Psalm 37

Trust in the Lord, and do good;
    dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.^[b]
4 Delight yourself in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

⁵ Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him, and he will act.
⁶ He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
    and your justice as the noonday.

Paul Who?

Exodus 1:8

King James Version

⁸ Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

II Corinthians 11: 1-6

Q: Free association.  When I mention the Apostle Paul, what word comes to mind?

When I think of the Apostle Paul, I think of authority.  Spiritual authority.  God-given authority.  His spiritual origins – the sources of his authority – are not obscure or ambiguous.  He met Christ, face to face, on the road to Damascus and was specifically commissioned by the Spirit to take the gospel to the Gentile world.  Moreover, the scriptures are chock full of passages documenting the demonstration of Paul’s authority right in the light of day. He drove out demons, healed the sick, and raised the dead. 

We look at the church today – at its many divisions, at the moral confusion and compromise, at the fraud and hypocrisy and even debauchery that plague it at the highest and lowest levels, might think that if we had such a spiritual giant among us today we might have more unity, more clarity, more cohesion, more power, less confusion, fraud and corruption.

When we think of the writings of Paul, we also think of authority.  Every piece of his writing that has survived antiquity, every bit that can be confirmed as his own, has been canonized.  His words are familiar and even dear to millions even today, some 2000 years after they were written.  We think of his passage on the resurrection (I Cor 15) and the middle chapters in Romans and the love passage in I Corinthians 13, we can imagine little that exceeds their influence and, indeed, their authority, throughout the history of the western world.

Compacted into this very small collection of Paul’s letters is everything that explains the modern world.  Everything we take for granted.  The idea of human rights, the idea of international law – these do not go back to Greek philosophy or Roman law.  They are founded in the letters of Paul.

Tom Holland, historian

“His writings, along with the four Gospels, are the most revolutionary, the most influential writings to come out of antiquity.  His writings were like depth charges which set up recurrent ripples of revolution.  By the time of the 11^th century, everything had changed.  The world of classical antiquity, an economy based almost entirely on slave labor, a sexual ethic that permitted male Roman citizens to have sex with anyone they wanted and in any way that they wanted, a government that reveled in cruelty, had been overturned.”

Tom Holland

Western culture is fundamentally different from that of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and much of that difference is due to Christianity. For instance, our societies are much fairer and less cruel. The possibility of an afterlife and a reckoning leads to more restrained and less selfish behavior in the here and now. The notion that we are all, kings and peons alike, equal in the eyes of an almighty creator is socially liberating and protects the lower orders from depredations. Jesus was a political revolutionary (among other things).

Justin Brierly on the writings of Paul:  St Paul’s ‘depth charge’: Why historian Tom Holland changed his mind about Christianity. By Justin Brierly.

If only we had such a man in our midst today.  How much brighter would our horizon be, how much better ordered our lives, how much more certain our hope.

Q: What sort of opposition did Paul face in his day?

And yet, when we read his letters – perhaps the parts of them that are not so familiar, those parts of our Bibles that are not heavy with highlighting and underscoring – we find that Paul’s influence, even in his own day, among those to whom he had preached and brought to Christ, was vulnerable and fragile.  Subject to usurpation.  We are not talking now about the opposition Paul faced from “the world.”  That is, from established religious interests, both Jewish and pagan, outside of the church, and from governmental officeholders who were jealous of their own authority and were suspicious of anything – God or not – who might undermine their own power.  All of that is well-documented and easily remembered.  Sunday School 101.  This kind of opposition was a matter of honor to Paul.  Of course the world would resist him. That old, oppressive order was what he was fighting against; what the gospel he preached intended to supplant. 

But what I want to consider this morning is another kind of opposition or undermining that Paul experienced.  And that is opposition within the church itself.  Opposition from those who called themselves apostles and who wormed their way inside the churches Paul had founded or influenced with the purpose of taking control, usurping his authority.  Opposition from those leaders and also from those within the congregations who followed them.

When we read the book of II Corinthians we find it inescapable that Paul, who founded the church there, was, after a very little time, having to pull out all of the stops to re-establish his authority and to call into question the bona-fides of those who had moved in.  Paul’s recounting of the situation is all we have to go on.  We have nothing from his “opponents” and nothing from the congregation itself that has survived. 

Q: What were the false apostles actually preaching and teaching?

And Paul’s own account of the matter is somewhat oblique.  Although he is given to his rather characteristic heated rants – taking whole paragraphs to cast aspersions on those he opposes and tout his own virtues – he never actually names his opponents and his descriptions of what they were actually preaching and teaching are, again, rather oblique.  It is certainly a sore spot with Paul that the interlopers at Corinth have criticized him:

The Paul who is ‘humble enough to your face when he is with you, but outspoken enough when he is away from you…’ (10:1)

…my mind is made up to tackle certain people who have made up their minds that I move on the low level of the flesh (10:2)

My opponent says ‘Paul’s letters are weighty and telling, but his personality is weak and his delivery is beneath contempt (10:10)

But what they were actually teaching is anything but clear.  Rather than give detail about the doctrine they proposed, Paul simply refers to them, again and again, as preaching something other than what he preached (11: 4) He does give us reason to think that the interloper(s) were using their pretended authority to enrich themselves materially:

English Standard Version

²⁰ For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face…

II Corinthians 11:20

As frustrating as this omission may seem to the reader, it may be a good thing.  It may be the way it is because in the providence of God what is important is not so much the details of the teachings of those particular false apostles in Corinth, but the fact that false teachers and teachings do arise.  That the occurrences in Corinth and Galatia (Gal. 1: 6-7) are the first examples of a dynamic that has continued through the centuries.  What is important, therefore, is not so much the content of the false teachings in Corinth but identifying the dynamic in our day and time.  What are the marks of false teachers, generally speaking?  How can we identify them today?  And for this, Paul’s general descriptions serve quite well.

In the first place, we should be wary of any teacher or preacher who seeks to aggrandize himself.  Anyone who looks at the pulpit as a means of fame or riches or personal advancement is not fit for it.  Anyone who glories in exercising power over others is unfit for the pulpit

Thoughts

1. It didn’t take long for the churches Paul founded to veer off course.  Corinth, (6: 12 “you are withholding your affection from us.”  “Make room for us in your hearts.” 7: 2) Galatia.  (Gal. 1: 6)
   1. What might have been the false gospel that the pseudo- apostles preached to the Corinthians?
      1. A gospel of salvation by works.  A means of enslaving rather than liberating people?
   1. What are the false gospels that attract and hinder men and women of the church today?
      1. Materialism – that life consists in material gainNihilism – nothingness.  Nothing, in the end, really mattersHedonism – life is to be lived in the pursuit of physical pleasures.  “Faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, more money.”
      1. Humanism – mankind can find his own salvation through reason and invention and without the power of God or reference to His character.
2. It didn’t take long for people to figure out that there was a quick buck to be made in dabbling in religion.  (5: 12) Example: The Assemblies of God church in Matewan.
3. The truth is always under assault.  It must be ably stated and defended in every generation.  It takes constant effort and vigilance to stay the course, to recognize and stay clear of false teachers.  Of those who are seeking money, influence and self-aggrandizement.
4. Not every change is progress.  There must be consistency in the faith.  What is preached today must not be inconsistent with what was preached at first.  Continuity.
5. Look for accountability and transparency in leaders and administrators. “For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord, but also in the eyes of men.” 8: 21 If what he was doing was right in the eyes of God, why would he worry about whether it was right in the eyes of men” In other words, we are transparent and accountable.  We are not running a “me and God” kind of ministry.  That is tyrannical.  God has said this to me, you don’t know about it, you aren’t in on the revelation, so just shut up and fall into line and send me your money.  Paul: “We want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift.”
6. 10: 2 “some people” – a reference to interlopers, Paul’s opponents?
7. 10: 7 “You are looking only on the surface of things.”  This must be a response to something Paul has heard about the church at Corinth.  Something that they have been conned into believing.  10: 12 “some who commend themselves”