Category: redemption

God Doesn’t Leave Us Where We Are

God has plans for you.

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I wrote some time ago on the subject that God meets us where we are. That blog article has been among the most read articles on this site since I wrote it. It was heartfelt, part of my own journey of discovery, and I think it resonates with the longing and angst that seems always resident in the human heart. Certainly always in mine.

God stands at the door to our hearts knocking. He doesn’t break the door down, and He won’t continue to knock if we ignore Him. He doesn’t overpower us, and He doesn’t seek to compel us against our will.

Yet, He desires us so much that He left His glory behind to become one of us, to enter into our human, historical space, and to offer Himself up for us – to redeem us – and provide a way for us to connect with Him. He took on human form, and He offered Himself up in a human body to demonstrate His love for us. Amazing!

No one can say that God is not invested in our redemption and in our good. No one can show more love or commitment to another person than to lay down his own life for another, and God did that for us.

Yet, He is unwilling to violate our will to coerce us into relationship with Him or to require us to submit to Him – even if it is for our good. He desires a loving relationship with us. He loves us like a parent loves a child because He “gave birth” to us (knitting us together in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139)). His love is unwavering even if we ignore Him and go our own way.

Thus, God meets us where we are. We can go nowhere that God is not present and able to meet us – when we are ready to meet Him.

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

psalm 139:7-8

God meets us where we are when we are ready and willing to meet Him. He was always there, but we are not always ready or willing. When we get to that “place”, though, God is ever ready to meet us.

Know, however, that “meeting” the God who is always there is not an end; it is just a beginning. It is the beginning of a relationship with your creator. It is just the beginning of God’s good intentions for you.

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord….”

Jeremiah 29:11-14a

God’s intentions for you are good – to prosper you and not to arm you. We have trouble sometimes trusting God’s goodness, but this is the essence of faith: for “whoever comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.” (Hebrews 11:6) His promise for us is so good it is beyond our ability even to imagine! (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Yet, Jesus warns us to count the cost. (Luke 14:28) Why? What cost?

These are important questions that we should ask. There is a catch – a cost – that we need to be aware of: God may meet us where we are, but He doesn’t intend to leave us there.

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Ode to the Church and to God Who Watches Over the Foreigner

O Church, remember who you are,
Called to love, to heal, not to bar.

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Once, in Eden’s light, they walked,
In fear, mistrust, and pride they balked.
Their own way looked better than God’s,
So He cast them out to the odds.

Though God walled them out, yet He stayed near,
He watched them roam this earthly sphere.
He clothed their shame knowing His plan,
To redeem them from the dusty land.

When Abraham heard the voice divine:
“Go to a land that I’ll make thine.”
He wandered there, a stranger still,
Seeking the City of God’s will.

From Abraham’s loins a nation grew,
In Egypt enslaved, four centuries through.
Bound and broken, crushed and torn,
Yet God’s eye watched, where hope was worn.

And when they were freed by God’s hand,
The law that God, would make command:
“Be kind to the stranger, love them as you—
For once you were aliens too.”

The psalmist sang of a just cause
To guard the stranger one must because
God watches over the oppressed and poor,
His mercy flows to the foreigner.

The prophets warned with fire and might:
“Do not oppress, do not fight
The alien, the widow, the orphaned heart—
Deprive them not, lest from God you part.”

Then Jesus was born, in flesh, divine,
Refugee Son, in a troubled time.
To Egypt He fled, a stranger, a child,
God in the dust, both meek and mild.

He preached a kingdom for all men,
Every race and tongue and kin.
That he would save from cursed yeast,
According to how we treat the least.

And John envisioned a great throng,
From every tribe, with one great song.
Before the Lamb, all men unite,
Bathed in mercy, robed in white.

Yet now, the largest Church on earth,
Wielding wealth, claiming new birth,
Builds walls to keep strangers away,
Turning the poor from its doorway.

Refugees wander, oppressed and unseen,
Deprived of justice, crushed between
A gospel of love and hands that deny,
While heaven looks down, and angels cry.

O Church, remember who you are,
Called to love, to welcome, not bar.
For the walled-out Christ still calls to you,
“Whatever you’ve done, you’ve done to Me too.”

Come, O Church, to the narrow way,
Where love shines bright at break of day.
Lay down your walls, take up your cross,
And count the cost, not gain or loss.

Follow the One who bore your shame,
Who calls you now by His great name.
For hope is found in His pierced hands,
Where grace flows wide for all the lands.

The stranger waits, the orphan cries,
Will you reflect the Savior’s eyes?
Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God
Love deeply, with the gospel on your feet shod.

For Christ alone is our living hope,
A lifeline strong, a Savior’s rope.
Come back to Him, and walk His way,
Till all are gathered on that final day.

God’s Purpose from Babylon to the New Jerusalem

I am inspired today to try to attempt to trace the sweep and arc of God’s plan as revealed in the Bible.

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God had a purpose when he created the universe and put man in the center of it. This is what the Bible tells us. I believe God’s plan was not thwarted by Adam and Eve eating from the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God’s plan was not thwarted by Cain killing Abel, and God’s plan was not thwarted by the Babylonians constructing a tower to their own glory.

God is patient and long-suffering. He created His universe and called it good, but His plan is and always has been to perfect His creation.

God gave us the ability to go our own way, but God’s purposes will be accomplished despite the freedom God gave us.

God gave us the ability to create our own kingdoms, but God’s purposes are to invite all people to embrace His kingdom. He provides the way freely as a gift, but our kingdoms often look better to us, and our ways seem right in our own eyes.

This is a very simplistic view of the whole sweep of Scripture, from beginning to end, which I believe we need to see so we don’t miss the forest for the trees. Of course, only God has perspective to see and to make sense of all the trees in that Great Forest. But, He gave us His word so we can begin to catch a glimpse of God’s great plans.

I want to focus on the big picture today, to survey the sweep and arc of God’s plan as revealed in the Bible, but I am not going to start with the creation of the universe or in the garden. I am going to start in Babylon. After all, we all live in a spiritual Babylon today.

We read in Genesis 11 that the world had one language and common speech. The people moved eastward, found a plain, and they settled there.

Recall that God instructed Adam and Eve to fill the whole earth. Their descendants settled in Babylon, however, and they remained there contrary to that instruction. They didn’t want to follow God’s plan; they wanted to follow their own plans.

The people came together to build a city for themselves and “a tower that reaches to the heavens” to “make a name for themselves.” This is a description of human beings choosing to go their own way, rather than God’s way.

They were afraid of being scattered over the face of the whole earth because that is what God wanted: for them to fill the earth. Because they resisted they were afraid..

The people were unified in going their own way against God. Their unity in going their own way was an obstacle to God achieving His purposes. For this reason, God confused their language, and they scattered over the whole earth.

People do not do well with differences. We isolate. We become group-focused. We despise others who are not like us, and we have inordinate pride in ourselves and our own kind. THIS is the story of human history.

It is also the story of God working His purposes in the world He created to achieve his ends. We may have trouble following it, but I think it will come into better focus if we jump quickly to the end. Then we will fill in the middle. All of this is just a brief snapshot of what God has revealed.

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The Surprising Value of the Concept of Sin

The idea of sin makes people feel uncomfortable, and people blame sin for making them feel bad about themselves.

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Many people bristle at the Christian idea of sin, and many people fault Christianity for its emphasis on sin. Richard Dawkins criticized Christianity in his book, The God Delusion, that it’s all about sin, sin, sin. His sentiment seems to be a popular one.

As a long-time Christian, I have a “robust” view of sin not just because I have robust respect for the Bible. I see sin in myself, and I see it in mankind, generally. I see it as a fact, like gravity, that makes sense of the foibles, failures, and futility of people and human systems I see in the world.

Not that people are incapable of doing good. Even who do not believe in God can do good. Even in doing good, though, I believe most of us do it good “selfishly” – because it makes us feel good; because of peer pressure; because we want people to honor us; because we want other people to be nice to us; or simply because of the utilitarian ideal that it makes the world a better place for me and my tribe to live in.

Most people, I assume, would be uncomfortable with my assessment. Maybe what I see in myself shouldn’t be “projected” onto other people. Maybe I am right, though. I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t think it is a fair assessment.

I think one issue people have with the idea of sin is that they don’t know what to do with it. It doesn’t fit into an evolutionary paradigm that celebrates the progress of humanity from primordial ooze to ape to rational being.

Absent a cosmic redeemer, people have no “solution” for sin. Reject the One, and the other makes no sense. Many people don’t want a cosmic redeemer interfering with their self-determination (even people, ironically, who believe we have no self-determination, because we merely dance to our DNA).

People don’t see any “value” in sin. The idea of sin makes people feel uncomfortable. They blame the concept of sin for making them feel bad about themselves. When people measure their goodness against others, they either feel shame or self-righteousness, because they see themselves as better or worse than others.

People blame judgmental attitudes, intolerance, lack of empathy for others, and a host of other evils on the Judeo-Christian concept of sin.

On the other hand, do people who have rejected the Christian concept of sin stop feeling bad about themselves or stop being self-righteous? In my experience, no, they don’t.

Abandoning the idea of sin doesn’t seem to help people not feel bad about themselves, and it doesn’t stop people from being self-righteous. People still compare themselves to others. People still struggle with self-image, and some people still seem to think themselves morally superior to others even after rejecting the concept of sin.

The Christian vocabulary that includes sin has no place in alternative cultural constructs, like cultural Marxism, and the host of critical theories that flow from it. Judgment of others, however, is baked into those constructs, and virtue is signaled for group approval in ways that seem, to me, just as inimical as any bad church environment.

People are shamed and labor under judgmental attitudes perfectly well without the help of Christianity. In fact, I believe the shame and self-righteousness is even worse because other cultural constructs lack the Christian concepts of redemption, grace, and forgiveness.

But, I believe in sin simply because it makes sense of all my experiences and everything that I see in people and the world that is run by people. I have never thought of sin as a value proposition, other than to think that sinfulness is generally bad. I have certainly never thought of the idea of sin as good!

Until now.

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The Curious Upside Down Kingdom of God Revealed in the First Prophetic Utterance in the Bible

The imagery in Genesis 3:15 is confusing in light of Isaiah 53, but that is a clue to our understanding

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In my last blog article, I focused on the way that Genesis 3:15 anticipates and foreshadows the coming of a Messiah, generally, and how it was specifically fulfilled in the virgin birth of Jesus. Not only that, but it introduces a thread in Scripture (the elevation of women) at the very beginning that runs through the entire Bible.

That the Bible uniquely elevates the stature of women despite the distinctly male dominated history of mankind should be noted. That this thread is embedded in the earliest biblical texts despite the ancient, backwards culture of the time speaks to a creator God who is able to influence the course of history even when people have a tendency to go their own ways.

I am constantly amazed how many hidden threads are woven into the great tapestry that is the Bible. I see new ones all the time, and I am going to highlight another thread in this article that I see in Genesis 3:15. In fact, I only noticed it as I was writing the last blog.

Genesis 3:15 reads as follows:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

In the last article I focused on the woman’s (Eve’s) offspring (seed) as a foreshadowing of the virgin birth. In this article, I will focus back on the second half of God’s statement to the serpent: “he [the woman’s offspring] will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

In my contemplation of the prophetic quality of this verse for the last article, I was drawn to Isaiah 53, which is (perhaps) the clearest prophetic passage anticipating and foreshadowing Jesus in all of the Old Testament:

  • 2 – “He grew up before him like a tender shoot”;
  • 3 – “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain…., and we held him in low esteem;
  • 4 – Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted”;
  • 5 – “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed”;
  • 6 – “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”
  • 7 – “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth”; and
  • 8 – “By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished”;
  • 9 – “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth”;
  • 10 – “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of he Lord will prosper in his hand”
  • 11 – “After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities”; and
  • 12 – “Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors”.

In reading through this passage again, I noticed multiple uses of the word “crush”. The Hebrew word, דָּכָא, (daka), found in Isaiah 53:5 and 53:10, is the same Hebrew word used in Genesis 3:15. It means, literally, “to crush” in English. It can also mean, figurately, to oppress (and it can mean contrite of heart for those who “are crushed”).

The appearance of the same word in both passages caught me eye. What are the odds of that? The imagery, however, is confusing.

Genesis 3 says that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent. Whereas, Isaiah 53 says that God will cause the crushing and “cause him [the suffering servant] to suffer” as an “offering for sin”.

On the one hand, God will crush the suffering servant as an offering for sin (Isaiah), and on the other hand the woman’s offspring will crush the head of the serpent. (Genesis) These verses seem to describe very different things, but the very particular use of the same word in both passages is cause for further consideration.

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