Category: Diving Deep

Knowledge of the Holy

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While shopping for other books, I bought my second A.W. Tozer classic, The Knowledge of the Holy. This one was published in 1961, a couple of years before his death (and my birth). Tozer was concerned that the Church was losing its appreciation for the majesty of God and that Modern Christianity wasn’t producing the kind of Christian who could experience life in the spirit. He hoped that his short, simple book would help ordinary people like me have a better understanding of the majesty of God.

We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence.

A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

What comes to mind when you think about God?

According to Tozer, “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” God is “the mightiest thought the mind can entertain.” The way that we think about God predicts our spiritual future. The most significant message of the Church is its message about God.

When I think about God, I don’t have a visual image of Him in my head as I do when I think about anyone else. I don’t know what God looks like. No one does. God is like no one else. He is beyond my powers of imagining.

When I think about God, I think of Him as my loving Father. He is the Father who protects me,  the Father who disciplines me when I do wrong because He loves me, and the Father who shows me the right path in life. I think of God as the One who is always there for me, as the One who knows me inside and out and loves me anyway. He is the Creator of the universe and yet He knows my name!

When I think about God, I think of His attributes – omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, holiness. He is the source of all that is good. God is Spirit and from Him spring the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

When I think about God, I think about what He wants of me. He wants my obedience, my praise, my faithfulness, my humility. What does He ask of me? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.  

We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

A.W. Tozer

God is absolutely the mightiest, most magnificent thought the mind can consider. When you consider God’s majesty and glory, it’s incredible that so few people hunger and thirst for Him.

Decadent images of God

Tozer wrote that in the mid-twentieth century, the Christian conception of God was, in a word, decadent. In Tozer’s opinion, people did not rightly revere God and the lack of reverence kept people from humbling themselves before Him. The gospel is powerless unless it leads people to feel the weight of their sins and to see that they fall short of the glory of God. Until you see “a vision of God high and lifted up,” you will not feel the need to repent.

I can’t help but wonder what Tozer would think about the Christian conception of God today. I think he would be horrified. As I have written before, Christianity and evangelism have been corrupted by politics. Today, many people who self-identify as Christian worship a perverted image of God. Their god sits on a throne sharing his glory with the American flag. The one true God has been replaced with gods created by human hands – the gods of democracy, capitalism, nationalism, and guns. These false gods nullify the power of the gospel because those who might otherwise be receptive to the gospel are turned off by the hypocrisy of people who claim to be Christians.

Idolatry

Tozer wrote that idolatry springs from wrong ideas about God. People imagine things about God and act as if they are true. They create God in their own image instead of accepting Him as He is. Oh, how true this is today.

While in Athens (Acts 17:16-33), the Apostle Paul was upset to see that the city was full of idols. He stood up and spoke to the people.

“I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”

 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’’ 

Yesterday, a couple in front of me wore Trump masks to church – one that said Make American Great Again and the other with Trump’s current campaign slogan, Keep America Great. It’s very disturbing to me that Christians today have such a low concept of God that they think that God would support the lies and bigotry of the wicked. I can only pray that God will open their eyes to the truth of who He is.

As the deer pants for streams of water, my soul pants for you, my God. I call out to You in adoring silence. Show me Your glory.

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Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash

 

A kingdom of mercy

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I am convinced that the hope of the world is found in a kingdom that is not of this world – the kingdom of heaven. I’ve been studying the kingdom parables because I believe that God’s kingdom is the perfect antidote to the troubles that plague this world. Of all the kingdom parables, I think the easiest parable to understand is also the most difficult to put into practice.

Jesus told the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant after Peter asked him, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus replied, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Jesus then told a parable that compared sins to debts.

In the parable, a servant who was deeply in debt to the king begged the king for patience in settling his accounts. The king was more than patient; he took pity on the servant and canceled his debt in full. The servant then went out and demanded payment from a fellow servant who owed him far less than he owed the king. The servant’s debtor also begged for patience but the servant refused. Instead of being merciful, he had the man thrown into prison. When the king heard that his servant had not shown the same mercy that had been shown to him, he was angry and handed him over to the jailers.

Jesus said, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

I say this parable is easy because the message is clear. We are all so deeply indebted to God that we could never repay him. And yet, because he is merciful, he cancels our debts in full. We are to forgive others just as our Father forgives us. We are to be merciful just as our Father is merciful.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Micah 6:8 (NIV)

I struggle sometimes to forgive others as I have been forgiven. The Lord’s prayer presupposes that we have forgiven our debtors. “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” How can we pray this prayer if we have not forgiven those who trespass against us?

This parable is hard because many of us do not forgive easily. We hold grudges. We keep score. We are so full of pride that we take the slightest offense as a personal affront. We don’t use the same standard when judging others as we do when judging ourselves. Instead of being honest about our own transgressions, we minimize them and make excuses.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Matthew 7:1-2

How easily we forget how much we have been forgiven! God sees us at our worst and he still loves us. He sees the darkness in our hearts and still forgives us.

As I was contemplating how difficult it can be to forgive, I read a few stories of forgiveness (and unforgiveness) in The Washington Post. As the author notes, sometimes we have to choose to forgive over and over again because the wounds are so deep. And some people cannot bring themselves to forgive at all.

Forgiveness may feel unfair. It may feel like you are letting someone get away without paying the right price. But unforgiveness is an awfully heavy burden to carry. As Joyce Meyer points out, unforgiveness is a poison that hurts the person who chooses not to forgive. Forgiveness frees the forgiver.

To all those who struggle to forgive deep hurts, I pray for healing. I pray for an obedient and humble heart. And I thank the Lord for his never ending mercy and forgiveness.

Joy in Heaven

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To turn my attention away from the messed up kingdoms of this world, I have been trying to focus on the glorious kingdom of God. The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast illustrate that the kingdom of God will grow exponentially from a very small beginning. The Parable of the Growing Seed shows that God is actively working behind the scenes to grow his kingdom. What is the message of the Parables of the Hidden Treasure and of the Pearl Merchant?

The pair of parables seem to share a similar theme: the kingdom of heaven is so valuable, the person who finds it will give up everything in this world to keep it. If you see yourself as the man finding a treasure in a field or as the merchant finding a precious pearl, this is a logical conclusion.

Parable of the Hidden Treasure. 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.

Parable of the Pearl Merchant. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

Matthew 13:44-45

When I searched for commentary on parables about the kingdom of God, I found a series of sermons on the Bible Tools website. Richard T. Ritenbaugh points out that when Jesus used the word “man” in a parable, the man was usually Jesus. In explaining his parables, Jesus said (Matthew 13:37-38), “The One who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world…”

Jesus, the Son of Man, found a treasure in the world and when he found it, he hid it again, then sold everything he had and bought it. In light of John 3:16, this interpretation makes much more sense to me. The truth is, even if I sold everything I have, I could never afford to purchase my salvation. It was Jesus who gave up everything he had to buy the treasure he found. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Who or what is the treasure? For the meaning of the word “treasure,” Ritenbaugh turned to the Old Testament. In Exodus 19:5, God said: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” Psalm 135:4 says, “For the Lord has chosen Jacob to be his own, Israel to be his treasured possession.” In the book of Malachi, God’s treasure was the faithful remnant who feared him and honored his name.

Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name. “On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him.

Malachi 3:16-17

In the New Testament, Peter referred to people who have been called into God’s wonderful light as God’s special possession. We have been adopted into his family. We are the treasure in the field, so precious that God sent his only Son to save us.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:9-10

The parable of the hidden treasure says that when the man found the hidden treasure, he hid it again. I never thought about what it means to be hidden in this context. Those chosen by God were hidden in the world. And when Jesus found them, he hid them again?

Ritenbaugh explains his theory about what it means to be hidden in the world. Those who are chosen by God were hidden in the world because before we believed, we were just like everyone else. We looked and acted just like everyone else. How did Jesus hide us once he made us his treasure? He sent us right back into the world. After we are redeemed, we are still hidden in the world, but in a different way.

To explain the concept of being in the world but set apart, Ritenbaugh pointed to the prayer of Jesus in John 17. Jesus said that his disciples are in this world but they are not of us world, just as he is not of this world.

Our Lord and Savior, finding the treasure of His elect in the world, conceals and protects them against all the depredations of the enemy. Remember, we’re hidden. That’s the protection part. And with His own life’s blood, He redeemed us with joy. That’s the lesson of this parable.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh

The pair of parables remind me of the Story of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11-31). When the younger son ran off and squandered everything on wild living, he came back to his father to humbly ask for forgiveness. Instead of being angry and treating him as he deserved, the father treated him like a treasured possession. He celebrated. He was joyful!

Each of the parables about the kingdom of God conveys a powerful message and each message generates an emotional response in me. Hope. Faith. Joy. The parable of the hidden treasure brings me joy because it shows how precious we are to God. There is joy in heaven when those who were lost are found. Jesus is overjoyed whenever he finds a treasured person in this broken, messed up world. We are valuable to him, like precious pearls.

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Return of the Prodigal Son, by Rembrandt. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22353933

The Mystery of the Growing Seed

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Jesus said, “the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” He also said, “the kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation.” You can’t point to it and say, “here it is” or “there it is.” In the gospel of Mark, Jesus explained what the kingdom of God is like by comparing it to a growing seed.

The Parable of the Growing Seed.

This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.

Mark 4:26-29

The parable of the growing seed is found only in the gospel of Mark. It follows the parable of the soils, the one in which a farmer sows seed by scattering it on the ground. As in the parable of the soils, the seed represents the word of God.

Who sows the seed? Those who teach, preach, and otherwise share the word of God with others. The apostle Paul said that those who believe are assigned a task by God. Some plant the seed, some water it. Neither the one who sows the seed nor the one who waters it has a role in making the seed grow. The one who sows does not even know whether the seed will take root.

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

1 Corinthians 3:5-7

The parable of the sower hints at the mysterious ways God works in the hearts of those who hear his word. The sower does not cause the seed to grow. The one who waters does not make the seed grow. Only God can make the seed grow. Only God can change hearts.

The word of God contains everything a person needs for eternal life. But sometimes the word falls on deaf ears. Oftentimes the distractions and temptations of the world keep the seed from taking root. As a sower of the seed, I don’t know what words will get through to a person who has hardened his or her heart to God. Fortunately, God does.

God does not waste his words. His word will not return to Him empty. His word will achieve the purpose for which he sent it.

As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11

This parable gives me hope for unsaved loved ones. It gives me hope for a world that is hungry for the Good News. The kingdom of God is near. God is actively working to build his kingdom. No matter what we do, the seed sprouts and grows. We can trust that God will accomplish what he desires at the right time.

In the parable, I see myself as a sower of the seed, trusting that God will make his word grow. But I also see myself in the parable as one who heard the word and believed. Like a sunflower that turns its face towards the sun, I am drawn to God, the giver of life. The kingdom of God is within me.

You, God, are my God,
    earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
    my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
    where there is no water.

Psalm 63:1

Praise the Lord, O my soul, all my inmost being praise his holy name!

Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Luke 17:20-21

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The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed

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Since reading a book that contrasted the kingdoms of the world with the kingdom of God, I have been reflecting on what Jesus said about God’s kingdom. What is the kingdom of God? I believe that it is a real kingdom that will be established when Jesus returns and that those of us who follow him are to prepare for it now by following his example. What is the kingdom like? Jesus used parables to answer this question, including the Parable of the Mustard Seed. I heard this parable when I was child and I remember being shown how tiny a mustard seed is. The message seemed very simple – great things start out very small. But is that all Jesus was saying?

The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables.

Mark 4:11

Jesus told seven parables about the kingdom of God. A parable is a story or statement that conveys a message indirectly by comparing something to something else. Jesus used parables because he knew that many people were too hardhearted to understand his message. The parable comparing the kingdom of God to the mustard seed is found in Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 13. Below is the NIV version from Luke.

The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Yeast

Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to?  It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”

Again he asked, “What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

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When I read the parable of the mustard seed today, especially considering the parable of the yeast that follows it, Jesus seems to be saying that God’s rule in human hearts will start very small and grow or expand exponentially. This seems like a very positive message.

When I searched for commentary on the parable, I found a couple of people who see a deeper meaning and a hidden warning. In explaining what he calls the parable of the growth of the mustard seed, David Legge made a few points about the parable that I had not noticed. One, he said it is important to consider the context of the parable, the timing of Christ’s message. At that time, the teachers of the law were indignant because Jesus healed on the Sabbath; they accused him of being possessed. The Pharisees were plotting with the Herodians on how they might kill Jesus. Even his own family thought Jesus was out of his mind.

In an environment that was hostile to his message, Jesus told the parable of the sower (Mark 4). As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.

The theme of the parable of the soils is that God’s word will be ignored and rejected. And just as birds came and ate seeds from the path, Satan will come and take away the word from many who hear it. Very few people will hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop.

Keeping this context in mind, Legge made a second point. Mustard seeds grow into bushes not into a tree as in the parable. Some mustard plants could grow into a 12 to 15 foot tree but that would be unnatural, abnormal, unhealthy growth.

Legge then made a third point about something in the parable that never seemed significant to me. He said we have to account for the birds in the branches. In an earlier sermon on parables, Legge said that a parable is not an allegory and that every symbol does not necessarily have to stand for something. But in the parable of the mustard seed, he sees the birds as symbolic because birds were also mentioned in the parable of the sower. Legge suggests that the mustard tree represents “an imitation of a great world power. It aspires to greatness beyond its means, it’s reaching to heaven but it is firmly rooted in the earth, and it is harbouring these birds which already in the context refer to demonic forces.”

I looked at the birds in the parable as God’s creatures who find shelter in a great tree. But Legge points out that birds are natural enemies of the sower. In the context of the parables of the sower and the mustard seed, birds could represent false teachers who keep the message of the kingdom of God from taking root. Legge concludes that from small beginnings, the kingdom of God would succeed, in worldly terms, by growing unhealthily and abnormally “to an empire in which its enemies could even shelter and nest.”

This interpretation of the parable of the mustard seed is certainly intriguing. Richard T. Ritenbaugh makes a similar argument in his sermon on the parables of Matthew 13. He notes that a seed is the means by which a plant grows and that “it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say that the Kingdom of God grows by means of the Kingdom of God.” In other words, the mustard seed represents an agent of the kingdom of God and not the kingdom itself. The mustard seed represents the church, the few people who are chosen to spread the Good News.

Ritenbaugh continues by repeating Legge’s point about the unnatural growth of the mustard seed in the parable. Something happens to make the mustard plant grow beyond its natural limit. Then the birds of the air, which symbolize demons, find a home in the tree. Ritenbaugh suggests reading Daniel 4:19-27. It tells the story of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about an enormous tree. Wild animals found shelter under it and birds lived in it branches. He also saw a messenger from heaven who said, “Cut down the tree and trim off its branches…” Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that he was that tree. God humbled Nebuchadnezzar to force him to acknowledge God’s sovereignty.

This not only shows the rise of the great false church, but it shows the tendency of the church, at all times, to become large, great, and worldly.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh

I am on the fence about whether to believe these interpretations of the parable of the mustard seed. I still see the parable as an encouraging word from Jesus. First and foremost, the purpose of the parable was to explain what the kingdom of God is like, not the church. The parable of the yeast that immediately follows in both Matthew and Luke has no hidden meaning. The kingdom of God will grow exponentially from small beginnings. Finally, I think that Jesus was quite explicit when he warned people about false prophets. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.  See, I have told you ahead of time.

Regardless of whether Legge and Ritenbaugh are correct about the meaning of the parable of the mustard seed, I give them credit for making an important point about the unhealthy growth of the church. When churches promote false teachings like the prosperity gospel, when they are more concerned about entertaining people and making money than about souls, when they become too worldly, Satan has made a home in the branches.

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