Servant of the Word

Today I'm sick, but not so much that I can't read or write.  I spent part of this morning trying to prepare for a time of scripture study.  I read Sacred Reading by Michael Casey over the holiday.  He mentioned reverence as a precursor to scriptural meditation.  I thought I would find some ways to develop reverence for the Bible.

I began by looking for a Bible to read out of.  Many of my copies have writing in them, which I was worried might be distracting.  Also the study Bibles have notes and numbers and letters all over the place which can be distracting as well.  I was not able to find anything just right, but I found that removing the Bible from its protective cover with all the pockets and pens helped.  I could hold it more easily.

As I looked in our little storage room outside (brrrr), I discovered that many of the books I have collected over the years have been study helps and commentaries on the Bible.  Somehow when I saw them, they did not seem as inviting as I looked for help with reverence.  So many words.  And so many of them only partially read.  Somehow I felt they were not what I was looking for.

So I took my Bible out of its jacket and held it up and offered a prayer.

The law of the Lord is perfect

reviving the soul.

The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy

making wise the simple

The precepts of the Lord are right

giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant

giving light to the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is pure

enduring forever.

The ordinances of the Lord are sure

and altogether righteous.

They are more precious than gold,

sweeter than honey from the comb.

By them is your servant warned,

and in keeping them there is great reward.

(From Psalm 19)

A quiet rested on me.  I began to read slowly and reflectively from Colossians.  And so I found 1:23: "This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant."  I was moved by the text.  I saw something of the heart that Paul had as he served the church, even people he had never seen.  He was a servant of the word of truth, the gospel.

I saw now why so much of my learning seemed to miss the mark as I studied the Bible.  I came to master the Bible.  Reverence asked me to become a servant of the Bible.  I have so many things I want to tell people from the Bible, but how often have I really handled it well?  I wanted so much to speak as one who knows, one who has mastered the Bible.  I found that some people were impressed, but rarely changed.

I had wonder and awe, but they were quickly submerged in my desire to argue a point or address a problem.  I felt the dis junction, but I could never quite put my finger on how to deal with it.  Paul was joyful in these Colossians and how they received this gospel word he served for Jesus' sake.  Like a waiter serving a grand meal, he served the gospel to this church.  He removed whatever obstacles he could so they could really dine upon it.

I feel that this journey may free me to study, learn, and even teach in an entirely different way.  Reverence before the Bible is just another expression of submission to the Lord.

Lord, please make me like your servant, Paul, who served you, your gospel, your word, and your people.  Let reverence put reins on my pride and enable me to be a better student of your Word and of Jesus.  Save me from mock reverence and arrogance as I approach your Holy Scripture.  Amen.

The Word: Consumed and Not Burned Up

Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight – why the bush does not burn up.”  (Exodus 3:3)

“Do not come any closer, “God said.  “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5)

Moses’ experience of God tells me two things: how God’s word will affect me and how I should approach God in order to hear him.  The bush that does not burn up stands as a picture of what God intended for Moses and what he intends for me.  The voice of God with warning and instruction shows me how Moses could come to God and not be burned up.

One of the things that captured my imagination when I was growing up was a scene in the movie Krull.  The hero,  Colwyn,  has been fighting the monstrous villain with a special weapon called the Glaive.  The Glaive gets stuck in the enemy’s side during the battle and Colwyn is left defenseless.  However, he and the princess he came to rescue realize that their love gives them a greater weapon, a magic flame.  Colwyn then lights his hand in the fire and does not burn, but rather burns up “The Beast” he has been fighting.

Maybe, it’s not a great movie, but the impression of a fire that does not burn and is wielded as a weapon stuck with me.  Fire shows power.  Fire brings light.  Fire dances and swirls in the air.  I still have a fascination with fire.  I build one at our house most mornings in the winter.  I never tire of watching its light show as I enjoy its warmth.

The bush that does not burn seems to me to be more than just a miracle to get Moses attention.  It is a picture of God’s purpose for him and for all people.  What is the Holy Spirit, but the true fire that consumes each person while not destroying them?  He is the baptism of fire spoken of by John the Baptist and Jesus.  He is the fire of Pentecost, settling on and in each believer.

The ignition for this fire is God’s word, his voice on the heart of each person.  God word is described as a fire (Jeremiah 23:29) as well as his very being (Hebrews 12:29).  When God’s word comes to me, I find I am like the disciples walking to Emmaus, who said after they recognized Jesus, "Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?"  (Luke 24:32)  The Lord speaks and within me, his Spirit burns.

Yet the fire of God can destroy those who do not approach him rightly.  When I enter the house of a family that asks me to remove my shoes before I enter, I feel some resistance.  I have a sense of vulnerability when I leave my shoes behind.  My ability to come and go as I please has been hampered.

Also, I have a sense of humiliation.  I have been judged to be a bringer of filth into this clean and pure place.  (I have only experienced this taking off of shoes for the sake of keeping a house clean of dirt.)  Again, there is resistance to being seen as dirty.  Isn’t it okay just to wipe my feet?

These two things accompany the worship system of that Moses received.  In order to approach God, each person had to deal with their “dirtiness” (uncleanliness) and shed what was common (everyday) for something special (holy).  The system was designed to bring about a heart that was clean, that is, contrite and humble, as well as a heart that was holy, that is, focused on what is eternal and spiritual as opposed to what is temporary and external.

For my own approach to God, I am to take off my old self and put on Christ.  Like Moses sandals, my old self is dirty with pride and lust.  Also like those sandals, my old self is preoccupied with self-life and self-love and cannot be vulnerable and receptive to God and his word and his Spirit.  Of course, I cannot, by my own determination take off that old self.  However, God will not remove those clothes  until I come and spread my arms in humility and let him unclothe me.  There is a nakedness, a vulnerability I must have to receive God’s fiery word and not be destroyed by it.

Lord, I light my soul with your word.  Let my heart burn with your Spirit.  Teach me how to approach your holy ground without pride, without lust, naked and vulnerable before you.  Let me be consumed but not burnt up.  Amen.

The warning “Do not come any closer” reminds me that approaching God is at his request and at his discretion.  I may long for his word, so that I can argue better or so I can experience the joy, peace, or power that accompanies such words.  I may long to come “Just As I Am,” not in humility, but with pride and a sense of entitlement.  Chris Web reminds me, “Here is the work of today – which is the work the whole life.  I’m called daily to open my heart afresh to the living Word of God. . . .  So it’s with caution that, in my prayers, I approach the reading of Scripture itself.”  (The Fire of the Word, p. 14)  Preparation ends up being the first and one of the most important parts of receiving God’s word.  I would like to practice such preparation better.

Coming to Know God

The trouble with knowing God comes from how I try to know him.  God is a person and so knowing him, at the very least, will come in the same way as knowing a person.  This is not to say that I cannot know anything about God without being personally acquainted with him, but it is to say that knowing about God is not the same as knowing God.

For example, I know a number of things about my wife, Dawn, but these things do not encompass the reality of knowing her as a person.  Knowing about Dawn is lesser form of knowledge of her.  Knowing about someone usually comes from hearing about them and seeing them doing things.  If I stop there with my knowledge of a person, then I might say I know about them or that I am acquainted with them, but I would not say I know them.

Knowing about God comes through hearing about him and seeing what he does and has done.  This comes through the creation as Paul asserts in Romans 1: "Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made."  This also comes through the church, the people who have known Jesus, who knows God.  Jesus prays especially or these in John 17: "I pray also for those who will believe in me through [the disciples'] message."  Also Peter writes Finally, God has arranged that a record be kept of what he has said and done among people.  Although, it was written be people, he oversaw its creation from beginning to end as 2 Peter says: "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."  What applies to these prophets applies to the Bible as a whole.

Obviously, there are many ways in which people first become acquainted with God.  What is special about these particular means is that they come from Jesus.  Other people have other ideas about how a person might start to know God, but these are the things that Jesus and his most intimate followers have developed in order to make God known in this life: the creation, the church, and the Bible.

As I write about these things, I am filled with gratitude for how carefully God has laid out the table of friendship between himself and each person.  A person who is willing to come and eat of these things will find that he cannot not only know about God, but actually come to know God personally.  In order to sit at the table of friendship with God, I see that I have some baggage to lay aside.

Why?  Why must I change myself in order to start knowing God?  One reason comes back to the way I come to know God.  I come to know him as a person, not merely a subject.  With this understanding, I realize that I cannot come to know any person merely as a subject.  Cutting up and dissecting a person (whether figuratively or in fact) will not bring me to know them because knowing them takes a personal investment.  Without any investment, personally knowing them is impossible.  The investment is trust at some level.

So with Dawn, although observing her and hearing about her may reveal many things about her, I will not know her without investing myself in being with her and listening to her.  Amazing things happen to my perceptions about Dawn, even after 19 years of marriage, when I spend time listening to her and just being around her.  The things I observe and hear about her take on new meaning in light of the deeper knowledge of intimacy.  The things I know about Dawn are conditioned by how much I know her.  Without trust at some level, Dawn will not allow me to know her and I will remain on the outside of her life looking in.  Without trust, I am a mere observer or maybe an acquaintance of Dawn.  So it is with God.

This is what Jesus meant as he started his earthly ministry to bring the Father to humanity and humanity to the Father.  He said, "Repent!"  Repenting is not so much about being sorry as it is about changing one's mind.  It is a decision to invest and trust instead of ignore and mistrust.  For those willing to investigate and lay aside distrust of God and his purposes, Jesus says, "the kingdom of heaven is available."  Knowing God and his purposes is accessible, but as with any knowledge, it has conditions.  The condition for most knowledge is "repentance," that is, turning aside the idea that whatever is there is unknowable and investigating the matter firsthand.

Now Jesus gave me the means of knowing him, but he does not demand that I use the means.  This is what makes him trustworthy as a teacher and a friend.  He is willing to let me go and look for other ways to know God.  He would be the first to encourage any ideas that were better than his own.  Jesus knows that in order to obtain knowledge a person must seek it.  Knowledge of God or anything else does not just happen or enter me passively like osmosis.  To know something, I must seek it.  To know a person I must seek them and ask them.  So Jesus does not, really cannot, make us know God, because of the nature of knowledge, even on a personal level.

It doesn't take much experience with other people to realize that a person must be sought to be known.  I cannot know Dawn unless I want to know Dawn.  She can talk and strive to be with me all she wants to.  If I don't seek her, she will remain unknown (and possibly be annoying) if she tries to make me know her.  Jesus lays the table for knowing God, but cannot make me eat.

I run into three barriers when I try to explain knowing God, even in myself: "Do I want to know God?", "Can I know God?", and "Does God want to know me?"  The first is the desire to know God.  Do I want a loving God to be personally involved with me on a daily basis?  Do I really want to know God?  Obviously, if I don't desire to know him, I won't really know him.  I will probably make up a lot of things about him from what I hear and see, but it will all be guesswork, just as it would be for any other person I don't care to know.  Usually the real barrier here is that I want to do what I want to do without any interference, especially from God.

"Can I know God?"  Another barrier is the doubt that I really can know God at all.  Can I know someone that I cannot see or hear directly with my senses?  This doubt presses on me not so much because I cannot conceive of knowing a purely spiritual being, but because how I have been brought up to think that only the things I can see, hear, and measure are worth paying attention to.  Reality is what is seen and senses, not what is unseen or outside the senses, according to the general wisdom.  As I move forward though, I realize that this doubt comes from social pressure, not from any reason or well-thought-out idea.

"Does God want to know me?"  A third barrier is the suspicion that God may not really care to know me.  Can someone all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good be interested in me?  Can intimacy exist between myself and such a being?  Not surprisingly, this suspicion comes most of all when I don't really want to be known.  What I mean is that it is hard to be known, really known.  It's scary.  I look at myself from past to present and really doubt at times that I am worth knowing.  The proof of this is in how many things I hide about myself and how I present something that is not really who I am to other people, God included.  This bias is fed by enemies who tell me that I am not worth knowing and that God has abandoned me, if he was ever really there at all.  However, I think it is because of my own fear of being known that I suspect that God can't or won't have a personal relationship with me.  If God is so great, he certainly can come to know me intimately and personally.  To say he is too "great" to know me is to misunderstand greatness.

Jesus has shown a God who wants to be known and a humanity that wants to hide from him.  Jesus has explained how to come to know God through changing and seeking him.  He has provided the way through three basic means: the creation, the church, and the Bible.  These means are regularly disregarded and degraded because of a lack of desire to know God who might interfere with personal desires, a general social bias to regard the physical realm as all of reality, and the suspicion that God doesn't really want to know people and has abandoned this existence.  Jesus teaches and shows all people that those who want to know God will find him, that he is knowable, and that he wants to know each person.

These three means for knowing God are not final, but are the beginning of knowing about him.  Ultimately, they all become the means by which I pray and converse with God, thereby knowing him directly.  In the light of prayer, the means of knowledge that Jesus gave become more brilliant and understandable, just as in my relationship with Dawn.  My personal, conversational relationship with her brings to light the reasons and meanings for the things she says and does.  I will not ever be in a place where I could always predict her, but I can say what her tendencies are and come to understand her reasons through our relationship.  So it is with God.

Lord, you have provided the table of friendship so I can know you in this life.  I need not be content with guesses, rumors, and suspicions.  I can know you and come to understand you and your ways.  Save me from my own desires that take me away from you, the world that presses me to see you as unreal, and my enemies that say you don't care.  You are my Shepherd and I'll not be in want.  Amen.


As a last word, I love this statement from the first followers of Jesus about knowing God in 2 Peter:

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.  And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.† 

Jesus Fills the Scriptures

public-domain-image

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. (Matthew 5:17)

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:2)

I looked up the Greek word for "fulfill" and found play-rah'-oh, which means in this case to meets the demands and fulfill the promises of the Law and the Prophets. The real question comes when I ask, "How?"

The thought that God brought to me before I looked up this information is that Jesus fills up the Scriptures with his very being and life. That is why he could tell the Pharisees that even though they study the Scriptures because they think they will find life in them, what they really need is to find Jesus and have life through him. This implies that Jesus himself is the life of the Scriptures. So I think of him filling them with life, animating them.

This fits well with the idea in Matthew 5:17 of Jesus fulfilling the demands and the promises of the Law and the Prophets. Instead of Jesus fulfilling them merely through an exchange of his life for mine, he also fulfills them by infusing his life into mine in such a way that the Scriptures become something I can truly live and not merely read. His salvation then becomes not merely and exchange or a bargain, but a way of living.

But even more helpful for me was the comfort of the Bible being full of Jesus. The truth of the matter is that I can enjoy him and his presence through the words of the Bible. Although I may be tempted to neglect the Scriptures for a variety of reasons, all I do is find myself distanced from Jesus and knowing him less. For this journey, my days of weariness and sadness are days that I need more of him, not less.

Drinking deeply of his presence through the written Word comes most through short phrases and single ideas. I am comforted by the idea that Jesus did not come to destroy the written word or devalue it, but rather to make it a grand path to his life, his heart, and his mind. Certainly it is not enough in itself, as the Pharisees found out, but it is sufficient to be used mightily by Jesus in my life. I love the Bible, but not merely for itself, but where it comes from and where it leads me to.

Lord, even if no one else wants to drink from the cup of Scriptures, which are full of you, let me not grow weary or discouraged. A while ago I gave in and said I would be a "fanatic" for you and your written word if you wanted. I have seen you use it to reform my mind and change my heart by teaching me to delight in hearing you through the Bible more than delighting in being right through it. Keep my heart pure. Amen.