Snakes in the bread

Oh the things that catch my eye. In Luke 11 Jesus tells a parable about going to a friend for a friend. In this parable what is needed is some bread for a friend who is hungry. So friend A goes to friend B to get bread for friend C. It is late and there is a lot of door knocking and friend B is irritated but eventully gives friend A the bread. And all this bread giving occurs not because friend B is in the mood to give bread but because friend A just won't stop knocking. And all this is a picture of our Lord who at times answers prayer because of persistence. But here is what I have been thinking about for a week. When Jesus wraps up this parable He says, "What father among you, if his son asks for a fish will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion? If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"

What to do with a God who does give snakes as a gift? While Jesus tells us that the Father will give us more of the Spirit (very nice) He does not tell us that God will not give us snakes when we ask for bread. The truth is that God does give snakes instead of bread. In Numbers 21 we find an amazing story where God sends a "gift" to the Israelites.  This "gift" from God is snakes that bite their heels. You see the Isralites were tired of walking around getting nowhere and they were bored of eating food from the sky everyday. And so they started to complain. They began to say things like "We loathe this worthless food." They actually were longing for the good old days in Egypt were the food was good and different. And so "The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died." There you go the Father sends snakes when the people were asking for different food. The story only gets crazier as Moses asks God to get rid of the snakes that bite and kill. God refuses to get rid of the snakes but He does have Moses make a bronze serpent and He has him put the bronze serpent on a pole so that whenever one of the people is biten by a snake they can go look at the pole and be healed. How completely weird is that?

So what is the point? Well there are many points here.  But the biggest point is that we must wrap our heads around this truth. Our God is good. And so when He sends snakes He is sending a good gift. His gift of snakes turned the people back to Him. So often we want to have a God who looks like us. We want a God who heals terminal diseases and sends us a new car. (And sometimes He does that) What we don't want is a God who sends snakes. And because of this we have stopped teaching this God. We pretend He doesn't exist. And so when He does send snakes we are left in utter shock. Beyond that unbelievers are even more shocked because nobody has mentioned this God. We are so busy telling them that God loves them that we have forgotten to tell them that He loves them so much that He has a snake for them. We are not sure of this God because we don't really believe in Him because we have created a God that behaves with our definition of Good. For us good always seems nice and polite. Our definition of good fails to take into account righteousness and eternity. Our good is woefully short of His.  We question God when He sends snakes. And yet the same God who sends snakes sent a snake pole. The snakes are going to keep coming until He returns. But He sent His Son and had Him put upon a pole. And when we have revelation of this act we realize the snakes are good. Because the snakes force us to the snake pole. And only through this process is there hope for eternal life, for redemption.

Salvation?

We throw the word around, unsure of what it fully means. You would think we would get it exact because what is at stake is eternal. When we land on an interpretation of this doctrine and preach it if we get it wrong or change it or make it simpler then there is the gravity of eternity in hell at stake. Our Father is unchanging. He will not make exceptions for our incorrect teachings.

In Matthew and Luke Jesus gives us a series of parables that essentially end with some who spend eternity with Him and some who are given to the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. A Closer look shows us that Jesus is not talking about unbelievers versus believers in a modern sense but rather these Parables talk about "believers" only. These are parables of those who knew the master, but tired of waiting for his return, acted unjustly when he wasn't looking, ran out of spirit, mismanaged his money or wore the wrong clothes. At the heart of each parable is the simplicity that these "believers" didn't know the master's heart or his ways. And because of this they were not followers. At the heart level they remained unchanged even after spending time with the master. They did not have a conversion.

These parables are very real warnings that there is more to our salvation than believing in Jesus. In our context belief means very little. I believe in the stars in the sky and I believe that the sun is out there and we rotate around it. It is time we moved away from selling belief in Him and it is time we started declaring His worthiness and holiness. It is time we started telling of His greatness. He is the mighty God who saves. He is Holy and He is worthy of all praise. He will destroy everything that does not declare this truth.

For many there is the great truth that in their "salvation" they have exchanged one idol for another. They have moved from believing that hard work and long hours will bring them worldly success to believing that Jesus will do this. They are no different than those who believed golden calves would bring good fortune. Those who worshiped golden calves didn't believe the golden calves were mighty or holy they just thought it would bring them more food or children or wealth. If our belief in Jesus is such that He becomes the thing that will get us to a better place we have just created a new idol, a new golden calf. Jesus did not die so we could avoid hell and have a better day. He died so that the Father would be glorified. It is time we understood that we are here to glorify the Father. Our salvation is so that He might be glorified through our transformation. It is for Him. It is His way. He will be glorified. This is the eternal truth of the Father. He will be glorified and there are many ways in which He will do this and until we understand this we are hopelessly lost. We need revelation on this truth. We live so that He will be glorified. Evidence of a life given to Him is in the way we live. And we are not talking about the things we do, or the way we conduct ourselves (these are important things). But the real truth of our conversion is that we die daily to our desires and live to His. We live to bring Him glory not ourselves. We must embrace His ways. And before we can embrace His ways we have to know Him for real.We need to get out of the business of selling fire insurance and we need to get into the business of glorifying the Father.

Why do you want to give your life to Christ? The answer is that He is God and He is holy and He is worthy of all our praise. When we sell the wrong Jesus we run the very real risk that those who have signed up will be turned away when Jesus says I never knew you. (Matt 7:23)

I deserve Hell

These Levites, they pop up everywhere. It may not be earth shattering to come to the conclusion that as far as the bible goes the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Levi really do play center stage. We would all do well to sit in the presence of the Father and just try to absorb what He wants us to take from the two tribes. But this really is not more of my insanity as i discover the Levites this is about Malachi, who of course is a Levite. Malachi ends the old testament with powerful words about John the Baptist, another Levite. He tells us that, "he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers." Powerful words that I have been pondering in context of a man crying out in the wilderness for a generation to get ready for the Lord's return. But right before that gem he talks about something that has been sitting with me for some time. Malachi 2:17 says, "You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, 'How have we wearied him?' 'By saying everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord and he delights in them.' Or by just asking, 'where is the God of justice?'" Why this sits with me should be clear to anyone who knows me.
For clarification: Those who are righteous are not those who are evil. Those who are righteous would be those who are walking with Christ keeping His commandments. (See John 14:15-17). By contrast those who are not in Christ are in darkness and therefore are by default evil. (See John 3:19-21)
So I'm struck. There is just such a clear line, such a real line in the eyes of the Lord and there seems to be so much confusion and delay. People are in fact walking in the dark. In truth way more are in dark than are in the light. Darkness does not comprehend the light. Oh sure it can mimic it, it can copy it, it can dress like it and do all sorts of cool things but at the end of the day darkness will still spend eternity in hell, no matter how many schools it built or people it fed. This is so critical in my mind. Where is God's justice? Oh I could smash windows with that. God's justice is clear. Those who walk in the light spend eternity with Him and those who walk in darkness spend eternity apart from Him. That is about as just as things can ever be. He is holy. He is mighty. He is worthy. He is completely other than. Oh how we want him to look like we look. Oh how i am glad he looks nothing like me. I will continue to throw myself at His feet. I will continue to cry Holy and Worthy. I will continue to remember that I deserve hell and He showed me mercy. This God, His ways are perfect and I will never be the same again.

The Levite

It should never amaze me that our God is a God of redemption. But still it does. Every time it does. Because who does things like that? Who really chooses the weak and makes them great? And yet His word is filled with these very stories. Ours is not a story of the great always being great and the weak always being weak. It is also not a story of perseverance and the exceptional spirit of success inherent in man. Ours is a story of weakness, of failure, inevitably over come by God through man. And this is what makes what we believe so amazing and so other than. Because we believe in a God who is so wholly other than that His ways make absolutely no sense and yet His way is always perfect. It is a story about Him and not about us. And that is what makes Him The God.
The redemption of the Levites is an amazing truth that clearly speaks to the perfection of our God. The tribe of Levi begins with a curse upon their head. Put in place by Jacob because of their wrath and uncontrollable anger we are told the Levites have such a passion but it inevitably results in death and destruction. And isn't it just like our God to claim them as His own. While God tells Moses that He is claiming the first born from all the other tribes He is claiming the entire tribe of the Levites as His own. And the Levites then are set apart to serve the Lord. Their job is to take care of the tabernacle. They manage the sacrifices and the security, They sit before the Lord and represent the people to Him. They are no longer their own but they become servants of the Lord.
And so it is no surprise when we meet John the Baptist and it turns out he is of the Levite tribe. How perfect it is that the one chosen to cry out that the Lord has come to earth is also one that God has chosen from the days of Moses. It should also come as no surprise that after Jesus has departed and the early church is formed and for the first time in history we have people who are called Christians we hear as Peter addresses them that they are "a royal priesthood." See it all seems so trivial when taken in separation. We have a bunch of Christians running around with a phrase that gets so abused that we are all part of the priesthood. We are all priests in the Kingdom therefore we don't need anything or anyone especially a church or a church body. But in the context of the truth of it all our perfect God chose the Levites and called them His, they became the servants of His church. And now He has called us out of darkness, not into a place of individual privilege but into a place of servant hood. A place of privilege too deep for words. We are His priests, we are His servants. He wants our everything and in return He is our everything. That is His plan, that is His way.