I am reading in Mathew right now in my year long reading plan, focusing this year on the New Testament. I have read the whole sweep of the Bible, from the Old Testament through the New Testament, each year for a number of years. I am not sure how many, because I have not kept track.
The words, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves”, came up in conversation with my son a few days ago, so these words caught my attention in my daily reading this morning. I had not paid much attention to the context in which Jesus spoke these words before:
“I am sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of people, because they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues.”
Matthew 10:16-17 NET
These are the instructions Jesus gave the disciples when he sent them to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. Jesus was very specific in his instructions, telling them what to do and what not to do, what to wear, how to conduct themselves, and Jesus pointedly included the following instructions:
“Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.”
Matthew 10:5-6
I realized this morning for the first time the significance of the warning that Jesus was giving to his disciples when he sent them “out like sheep surrounded by wolves”. (Matt. 10:16) That instruction takes on a different color for me, now, considering that the “wolves” surrounding the disciples would be the religious people in their world – their fellow Jews.
Jesus was not sending the disciples among the Romans, or the Greeks, or even the Samaritans. Jesus was sending his disciples to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Jesus told the disciples to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and Jesus warned them they would be surrounded by wolves. This means Jesus was sending the disciples to the sheep in the house of Israel, and the disciples would be surrounded by wolves in the house of Israel.
The conclusion seems clear that the sheep in the house of Israel to whom Jesus was sending his disciples were going to be among wolves, who were also in the house of Israel.
These words of Jesus provide us the time worn adages about wolves among the sheep and wolves in sheep’s clothing. Jesus repeats this theme of the lostness of religious people and the wolfishness of religious leaders over and over again throughout the Gospels. So much, that this theme has stuck out like a sore thumb to me in recent years. (I have written about it in articles like, Why Did Jesus Pick on the Pharisees so Much?)
I have been recently pondering about the many criticisms Jesus leveled against the religious leaders of his day. Do these criticisms have any warrant today? How should we view what Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day? Is the significance historical, only? Or does it have application today in our Christian world?
BRESCIA, ITALY – MAY 23, 2016: The painting Prophet Elijah Receiving Bread and Water from an Angel at Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista by Alessandro Bonvicino-Moretto
Do you identify with Elijah? Do you squirm thinking about his zeal? Do you feel guilty about not sharing the Gospel with your neighbor? Then, maybe a new look at Elijah may resonate with you.
We know Elijah for his zeal for Yahweh in a time when the culture and national leaders were rebelling against God. Sound familiar?
Elijah is famous for challenging the Israelite king, Ahab, and his rebellious wife, Jezebel, and all of the prophets of Baal and Asherah that were commissioned by that royal pair. He felt like he was the only one standing for God in a world that wanted him to shut up and go away.
Some of us may feel like Elijah, while many others of us may feel guilty that we are not like Elijah. He is a pillar of the faith, right?
Yes, of course, he is! As I read through these passages, though, I am seeing something I didn’t catch before. For one thing, I get the feeling that Elijah probably wasn’t a fun guy to be around.
He certainly didn’t go along with the crowd. He wasn’t known for his diplomatic tact. (To put it mildly) He said what was on his mind, and he didn’t pull any punches.
These characteristics of Elijah begin to give us an idea of what he is like. They also point toward a more human side of Elijah that I hadn’t noticed before, which is why I want to dive deeper into the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal.
Elijah is famous for challenging 450 prophets of Baal to an Ancient Near Eastern duel of the gods. It was Elijah against all the prophets of Baal; Yahweh against Baal in a cosmic duel with mortal consequences for the losers.
This is the way Elijah rolled. No holds barred!
Elijah challenged the prophets to sacrifice a bull on an altar without setting fire to it, letting Baal or Yahweh, as the case might be, consume the sacrifice directly. Which one would show up?! The stakes were high. If Yahweh didn’t show, Elijah was toast!!
Elijah offered to let the prophets of Baal go first. (A bit of showmanship?) They cut up the bull; they placed it on the altar; and they did their ritual thing to entice Baal to come out of whatever stone he might live under … but nothing happened.
Elijah taunted them. (He was not a master of subtlety!) He egged them on to shout louder and offered the following “helpful” comments (paraphrased by me):
Maybe your god is daydreaming”;
Maybe he fell asleep and you need to shout louder; and
Maybe he is relieving himself, and he will be back in a minute!
Elijah’s taunting wound those prophets up into a religious frenzy. They cut themselves with knives, and swords, and spears until they bled everywhere … but still nothing happened.
When their time was up, all eyes turned to Elijah.
I imagine the anticipation in the crowd rivaled a Las Vegas audience watching Siegfried and Roy walk a full grown tiger onto the stage. Elijah let the expectation mount as he built his own altar. The atmosphere was electric. The crowd was undoubtedly hoping for more action than the prophets of Baal gave them.
I can imagine the smug look on Elijah’s face and the brash confidence in his demeaner as he instructed volunteers from the crowd to pour water on the offering. Elijah was nothing if not dramatic!
Lest we forget, they were in the middle of a long draught. Elijah didn’t just have them sprinkle water. Three times Elijah instructed his helpers to fill up the jars, and pour them out on the bull, the wood, and the altar until it was soaked and water pooled in the trench around it.
Anticipation hung like a funnel cloud overhead as darkness loomed over the mountaintop stage. The expectant crowd, the exhausted prophets recovering from their failed ordeal, and Ahab sat poised on the edge of their proverbial seats.
In the flash of a moment, fire came down from heaven. Like a galactic flamethrower, the fire was so fierce it completely consumed the bull, the wood, and the altar itself!
Nothing remained but hot, smoldering ash.
Yahweh showed up as Elijah said he would! Elijah was vindicated!
But that wasn’t enough for him. With freshened zeal fueled by the powerful demonstration of God’s power, Elijah provoked the excited crowd to grab the cowering prophets of Baal and march them down the mountain where they were slaughtered in the valley below.
Elijah was at the height of his prophetic career. Elijah may have thought, “Not even Moses presided over such a powerful demonstration of God’s awesome power!” Elijah was on top of the world!
It’s hard to imagine greater faith and boldness or a more decisive display of God’s power. Perhaps, the only thing more amazing than all of that was Jezebel’s response:
She was not… impressed… at all.
When Ahab raced to deliver the news to Jezebel, his haughty audacious wife didn’t even hesitate. She ordered death to Elijah with ice in her veins.
Elijah must have been thinking, “What’s a man of God got to do?!” (Never mind that the crowd seemed properly convinced.) If his greatest act of faith couldn’t turn the hardened hearts of Ahab and Jezebel, nothing would! He had done his absolute best, and it wasn’t enough.
Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt like nothing you do, or can do, makes any difference? Have you ever come to the place that you have done your best, and your best wasn’t good enough? Have you ever felt like you are the only one who stands for God?
Have you ever gotten mad at God for not defending you for standing up for Him? Then, read on.
In my last blog post, I wrote about the crippled woman Jesus healed in the synagogue, to the synagogue leader’s chagrin (The Danger of Being Too Set in Our Interpretation of What God Requires and What He Is Doing). The synagogue leader thought Jesus shouldn’t be working/healing on the Sabbath, so he instructed the crowd that they could come any other day of the week to be healed, but not on the Sabbath. (Luke 13:10-17)
It seems ridiculous to us, but who knows what doctrines, dogmas, understandings, and ways of thinking we have that get in our way of recognizing God and what He is doing in our present time. If we shrug our shoulders at the seeming insignificance of the Sabbath concern, we will miss the weight of this encounter.
The keeping of the Sabbath was a sacred tradition that goes all the way back to Genesis, when God rested after the six (6) days of creation. (Gen. 2:2-3) Moses passed on the commandment directly from God when the Hebrews were delivered out of Egypt: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work….” (Ex. 20:9-10)
The Sabbath was reinforced by Moses as part of the covenant relationship established by God with the Israelites. Many centuries before Jesus, God told Moses:
“Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy. Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.” (Ex. 31:13-14)
Can you see why the first century Hebrews held so tightly to their Sabbath doctrine? It was a commandment; it was sacred; it was an intimate sign of their covenant with God going back many centuries; and the penalty of violating the Sabbath in the Mosaic law was death (or being cut off from the people).
For that reason, the Jewish leaders added strict protocols to the observance of the Sabbath to be sure that no one violated it, even inadvertently. Thus, when Jesus did something highly irregular, like calling a crippled woman forward in the synagogue in the first place, and then healing her, the synagogue leader was legitimately concerned, in his mind, about a violation of that sacred commandment.
Yet, in his concern for not offending God and for observing law, he failed to recognize God in the flesh standing right before him! Ironically, the Law that was intended to point the Hebrews to God got in the way of the him recognizing God.
God commanded them to keep the Sabbath at the risk of death and exile! Thus, they believed they couldn’t be too careful! What are we to make of this?
One clue is in the details of the response by Jesus. He called the religious leaders hypocrites because they untied their livestock and took them out to get water on the Sabbath. (Luke 13:13) If they believed that caring for their animals on the Sabbath was ok on the Sabbath, they should have recognized that healing a person was ok also.
“Yes, but God commanded!”, the synagogue leader might have said. I suppose Jesus might have asked in return, “Commanded what?” The synagogue leader might have protested further, “But we cannot be too careful! These things are not to be taken lightly. We need to err on the side of caution, lest we step over the line!”
These things should not be taken lightly, no doubt, but the synagogue leader obviously missed something of essential importance. What he missed, I think is better understood in the context of some global criticisms Jesus expressed toward the religious leaders of his day (which likely are as applicable today as they were then):
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matt. 23:23-24)
The Law and all of its rules were not meant to be the end all be all. Paul says the law was a guardian or tutor to lead us to Christ. (Gal. 2:24) Perhaps partially, to help us recognize our need for Christ in our inability to keep the Law. Perhaps, partially, to provide rituals by and through which a relationship could be established with God. Perhaps, in other ways as well.
The point is that the Law was never meant to define the totality of God’s relationship with people. What God wanted, which is what the Law was intended to teach, was for the Hebrews to love Him and for them to love each other.
Jesus said as much when he said the Law can be summed up succinctly in two phrases: Love God, and love your neighbor.
This was not a new concept when Jesus spoke those words, though. Jesus was once asked, “What is greatest commandment?”, by a teacher of the Law. When Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor, the teacher commended Jesus for the answer, demonstrating that the teacher of the Law knew the answer, himself. (Mark 12:28-34)
When the teacher of the law commended Jesus for the answer, Jesus told the teacher that he answered “wisely” and, therefore, is “not far from the kingdom of God.” (Mk. 12:34) In other words, the key to unlocking the “mystery” of the Law is to understand that it is meant to teach us to love God and love our neighbors. If we fail to see that, we are missing the boat
When we hold too tightly to our doctrinal constructs to the point that we miss the ultimate point, like the synagogue leader did, we fail to understand God; we fail to recognize God when He is acting in our midst; and we risk being on the “outside” with God, though we may be good, religious people in every other way.
Jesus said,
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Matthew 6:22-23
How do we apply this? How do we make sense of the things God has commanded us without missing the forest for the trees? How do we take a lesson from the synagogue ruler? I am no theologian, but I have some thoughts.
Over the couple weeks that I was paying attention to what happened at Asbury University in Wilmore, KY (and other places now too), and considering the people criticizing it or cautioning us about it, I have prayerfully considered the matter. I have written about the “Asbury revival” a handful of times, so I am not going to rehash what I have written.
I continue to mull over the seeming positive development of 20-somthings worshiping, publicly confessing sins, praying for each other, and exalting the name of Jesus while people have been critical of what was happening and questioning God’s involvement in it. At the same, I have been drawn in my daily Bible reading to the concern Paul expressed in most of his letters for unity in the body of Christ.
This focus that has been impressed on me as I read the Bible and meditate on it predates the Asbury thing by many months, but it is directly relevant to it. The lack of unity in the American Church stands in sharp contrast to Paul’s emphasis on unity in the body of Christ. Our lack of unity has been publicly demonstrated in the vitriolic responses to the “He gets us” commercials aired during the Super Bowl and now to the Asbury “revival”.
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is all about unity and order in the local body of believers in Corinth. At the same time, the Corinthian Christians seemed to lack no shortage of what we might call the “outpouring” or “movement” of the Holy Spirit. None of Paul’s letters deals more with “the spiritual gifts” than this one.
I need to comment that the free exercise of the spiritual gifts, and God moving in peoples’ hearts and minds do not necessarily go hand in hand, as we will see, Paul also did not discourage the Corinthians from using the spiritual gifts.
This is the problem, though: while the spiritual gifts were demonstrably evidenced in the Corinthian church, they Corinthians were not producing an abundance of the fruits of the Spirit among. This lack of the fruit of the Holy Spirit was the problem in Corinth.
As a key indicator of that lack of fruit, Paul focused on their quarrelsome cliques: one group followed Paul, another group followed Apollos, and other groups of people claimed to follow Cephas, or simply Christ. That local body was being torn apart by arguments over who they should follow and other aspects of the Christian life, like whether they should be eating food sacrificed to idols. Meanwhile, they were ignoring other problems in their midst like sexual sin, relational issues, and other things.
They exhibited the spiritual gifts abundantly. Those exhibitions of spiritual gifting might be called today a “movement” or “outpouring” of the Holy Spirit, but the fruit of the Holy Spirit was lacking. Whether the Spirit was “moving” or people were simply exercising gifts given by the spirit are two different things.
I have experienced that incongruity myself. A lack of harmony between a hyper focus on the spiritual gifts and a lack of unity, faithfulness, maturity, and holiness in the local body of Christ has caused many to pull back from Charismatic and Pentecostal forms of Christian expression. Me included.
If those two things went hand in hand, Paul would have had no issues with the Corinthian church, because the Corinthians experienced a liberal “outpouring of the Spirit” characterized by prophecy, speaking in tongues, miracles, etc. Though the Corinthian church was demonstrably Charismatic (or Pentecostal), it was woefully lacking in unity and personal holiness.
Having acknowledged that, we need to notice that Paul’s issue with the Corinthians wasn’t (primarily) their misuse (or ineffective use) of the spiritual gifts. The more serious concern was their prideful, boastful, quarrelsome lack of unity and toleration of sin in their midst.
Something else occurs to me that I hadn’t noticed before, and this is the focus of my writing today. The Corinthians were Greek, of course. Paul famously says to the Corinthians that Greeks demand wisdom, while Jews (his people) demand signs.
Both of these things are forms of error, but the Corinthians, being Greek, were particularly prone to err along the lines of their particular, cultural bias. They valued discourse, argument and persuasive oratory. Thus, Paul said,
“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.”
1 Corinthians 2:1-5 CSB
Paul says he did not come with brilliance of speech or with persuasive words. He came with “a demonstration of the Spirit’s power”. As I will show below, Paul’s focus is on the Greek tendency to err in demanding “wisdom”, not the Jewish tendency to demand “signs” (though the Corinthians experienced no shortage of “signs”). This is interesting to me in the light of the Asbury University phenomenon.
The themes of law and grace are central to Christianity. Sorting them out gets to the very heart of the gospel message. Yet, many people inside and outside of the Christian community are unclear on what laws Christians must follow, what laws are no longer applicable, and why.
Someone recently posted the following question to a group to which I belong on social media:
I get the message of we are not under the law but under grace. But if we live through Christ we will follow the law. How do we know what law to follow? Does this go as far back as to not mix fabrics?
Obviously everyone says we’re no longer under the law, but ”faith without works is dead” so I am confused.
How do we know which laws to follow?
Human tendency is to want a list of rules to follow so we can check them off. The rich young ruler demonstrates that human tendency when he came to Jesus one day and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” (Matt. 19:16)
We also have a tendency to want to quantify rules, and to simplify them to make them easier to follow. Perhaps, that is what motivated someone to ask Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matt. 22:36)
Or we go the other direction: we add rules on top of rules on top of rules to make sure that we don’t miss anything. The Pharisees demonstrated this approach in how they handled the commandment to observe the Sabbath. The created a list of “work” that was forbidden including, among other things: sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, selecting, grinding, sifting, kneading, and baking bread; twelve similar activities related to the preparation of clothing, from shearing sheep to sewing; and seven activities related to preparing the carcass of a deer for food or leather. (See What are some Sabbath Observance rules that the Pharisees made?)
Moses started with ten commandments. By the time the books of Moses were completed, there were 613 commandments! (Though not everyone agrees on exactly what they are.)
The Torah (the Five Books of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy) focused on laws. That focus carries through the entire Old Testament. Though the laws are often more prominent in the breach, than in the observance thereof!
The same focus continued into the New Testament. We see it in the question asked by the rich young ruler and the Pharisees’ questions to Jesus. We see it in the tension that threatened to divide the early church between Paul and Peter over whether believing Jews must follow the Law and what laws believing Gentiles must follow.
This is the tension between the Law and the Gospel. If we understand only one thing about the Gospel message, the relationship of the Law to the Gospel might be the most important thing! I have written about it often, including How the Moorings of the Gospel Were Secured.
For the sake of brevity, I won’t to summarize everything here. You can click in the links in the last two paragraphs to get an overview from the articles linked there. Understanding what Jesus meant when he said he didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, is key.
If you are not a Christian, or you are a Christian, but you are not sure you understand these things, please do not just gloss over them. The tension between the Law and the Gospel and how they relate to each other is the key to Christianity.
It was the focus of almost all of Paul’s writings. It is the major theme in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Hebrews and other epistles besides. Take some time now to wrestle with it. Don’t stop until it makes sense to you!
Hopefully, the rest of my thoughts in this piece will help.
Navigating by Faith 