The way of Jesus lies in the shadow of the cross

Walking on Water (Matthew 14:22-23)

In the Gospel according to Matthew, after Jesus fed five-thousand men along with an unspecified number of women and children with a mere five loaves of bread and two small fish, we find the following recollection:

²²Immediately he [Jesus] made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. ²⁵And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. ²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. ²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
²⁸Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Matthew 14:22-33, NRSV

Let’s begin by reflecting on the image of Jesus walking on the sea. Two historical narratives are bound up with this picture. They are creation and Israel’s exodus from Egypt.

We notice first in verse 25 that the disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea. The word translated sea is the Greek word thalassa. That’s an unusual word to use for a body of water like Galilee. In the first century A.D. thalassa was more commonly used to describe larger, ocean-like bodies like the Mediterranean. The Gospel of Luke reflects the more common Greek term for smaller bodies of water like Galilee—limnē (lake). So, why do Matthew and Mark choose to call Galilee a thalassa (a sea)? Because of creation and the Exodus.

In the beginning, when God created, everything was covered by the waters. On the second day of creation, God separated the waters above from the waters below and created an expanse between them which He called the heavens. Then, on the third day, God gathered the waters below the heavens and separated them from the land. These gathered waters He called yamiym, in Hebrew—seas. When the Hebrew was translated into Greek, the translators used the word thalassas to translate yamiym.

So, calling gathered waters seas, irrespective of their size, is reflective of the terminology of creation. And this is why during the Exodus, the body of water that God parted before the Israelites was called a yam, a sea—more specifically, the yam-sūph, the Sea of Reeds or, in the Greek translation, the Red Sea.

When the psalmist, Asaph, recalled the crossing of the Israelites through the yam-sūph, he told the story this way:

¹⁶When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; the very deep trembled.
¹⁷The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered; your arrows flashed on every side.
¹⁸The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lit up the world; the earth trembled and shook.
¹⁹Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.
²⁰You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
Psalm 77:16-20, NRSV

Of course, the path the Israelites walked through the sea, led by God’s unseen feet, was on dry ground. Jesus did not part the waters of the sea in this instance in Matthew. He walked upon them. But, in the case that this might cause us to miss the Passover/Exodus significance of what Jesus was doing, the Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus intended to pass by them. Mark used the Greek verb par-erchomai to explain Jesus’ intent. Par-erchomai is the Greek verb used to translate the Hebrew pasach, to pass over.

When the disciples witness this event, they are terrified because they think they are seeing a phantasma, in Greek. The NRSV translates the word as ghost, and it can mean that. But, the translation ghost misses something. The word phantasma relates to an apparition or a supernatural appearance of something. The writer of Hebrews in chapter 12, verse 21 of his epistle used the verb form of the word to describe the appearance of God to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. He also described Moses as terrified in that moment. Matthew’s language is meant to indicate that Jesus was revealing Himself to the disciples in ways similar to those by which God revealed Himself to Israel in the events of the Exodus and at Sinai.

And these connotations are highlighted even further by Jesus’ response to the disciples’ fear. Jesus said, “Tharseite, egō eimi; mē phobeisthe.” Literally it translates, “Take courage, I am; do not be afraid.” The same command against fear is spoken by God when He appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15:1, to Hagar in Genesis 21:17, to Isaac in Genesis 26:24, and to Jacob at Bethel in Genesis 28:13. And in this instance Jesus designates Himself as egō eimi, I am. It could be translated as “It is I.” But, given the creation-Passover-Exodus context of this event, it more likely reflects the divine name of God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14:

¹⁴God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’ ”
Exodus 3:14, NRSV

And then Peter interrogates the moment.

“Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”

The Greek word for water is plural, reflecting again the Hebrew mayim, waters, of original creation. And Peter uses the Greek word Kyrios to address Jesus. This is not surprising. Kyrios simply means lord or master and means generally what Adonai means in Hebrew. However, Kyrios is also the word that the writers of the New Testament and the Greek translators of the First Testament used to translate the divine name, Yahweh. Was Peter saying, “If it is you, Jesus, command me to come to you on the water”? Or was Peter suggesting, “If you are the Lord, Jesus, command me to come to you on the water”? I suspect Peter was wrestling with a bit of both of these questions.

Perhaps surprisingly, Jesus invites Peter to step onto the waters with Him, and perhaps more surprisingly still, Peter gets out of the boat and actually takes a few steps upon the waters. But, then something happens…

³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Matthew says it was the wind that scared Peter at that moment—not the walking on water, not the realization that it was Jesus who had summoned him out of the boat and into this miracle. It was the mighty wind that took his attention off of Jesus, and for good reason, I’m sure. Peter was a fisherman on this very lake, and certainly he knew the difference between a survivable storm and a perilous one. Despite the miracle, despite the revelation of Jesus, despite even the presence of Jesus, Peter knew where he was, and he knew its peril. As the Egyptians before him, he began to sink into the waters.

But, then Peter remembered Jesus, and he called to Him for help, using the same address—Kyrios, Lord! And, as God had delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt by His outstretched arm, Jesus delivered Peter from the waters and into the boat. And then Jesus asked Peter the hardest of questions:

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

The word translated little faith is rare in Greek. It does not occur in the First Testament Greek translations, and it occurs only five times in the New Testament—four times in Matthew and once in Luke. And, in each case Jesus uttered it, He was reprimanding folks who were allowing earthly concerns to diminish their trust in God. In Matthew 6:30 Jesus called those who worry about clothing “you of little faith.” In Matthew 8:26, Jesus used the phrase of His disciples when they were afraid of another storm on the Sea of Galilee. In Matthew 16:8, Jesus again used the phrase to accuse His disciples when they were worried about not having enough to eat. And, here, in Matthew 14:31, Jesus uses it to describe Peter.

And Jesus proceeded to ask Peter, “Why did you doubt?” The Greek word here is distazō. It means to hesitate or to be uncertain. Jesus might as well have asked Peter, “Why were you uncertain which to trust—Me or the wind?” It’s a penetrating question. Which do we trust more? Food or Jesus? Clothing or Jesus? Housing or Jesus? Nature or Jesus?

Why do you suppose Peter was uncertain? Could it be because he knew from personal experience, as we do, that God does not always deliver us from earthly perils? Could it be that even with the miracle of walking on water and the presence of Jesus with him, Peter wasn’t sure that the wind could be safely ignored? That is familiar space for me—certain that God can deliver me, but not certain that God will deliver me. Why would Jesus reprimand such a dilemma? After all, Jesus Himself was soon to be crucified—the waters of death soon to rise above His head. And that, too, was God’s will. How can one trust such a God? Wasn’t Peter justified in being uncertain about the danger the wind posed to him?

But, of course, as the life and teachings of Jesus demonstrate abundantly, Jesus’ criticism was not meant to indicate that there are no dangers in the world when one walks with God. Jesus Himself would subject Himself to those dangers and perish in the flesh at their hands. So, the point of this reprimand from Jesus could not have been that those with sufficient faith will not fall prey to earthly perils. Peter himself would one day be executed for his faith in Christ. The wind was certainly dangerous to him.

So, what was Jesus looking for that day? I think Jesus was saying to Peter,

“Don’t let the wind distract you, not because it is not dangerous, nor because it cannot kill you. Don’t fear the wind, Peter, because God can order the chaos. God walks upon the waters. God created out of nothing and ordered what was lifeless. God can raise the dead. The threat of death is real, but the fear of death is slavery. Are you afraid to die, Peter? Are you afraid to suffer? Then the wind has you, and the world is your master. Keep your eyes fixed on me, and then, even if the winds kill you, I will deliver you from the waters.”

And still today, where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. So long as we fear sickness, so long as we fear suffering, so long as we fear loss, starvation, exposure, and death, the world will have us—we will remain slaves to sin and death and the world and the worldly will remain our masters. To follow Jesus out of the boat and into the chaos no matter the road no matter the cost, is life everlasting. This is what it means to become a Christian, and it is the road carved out by Jesus for all who would be His disciples.

“You of little faith, why do you doubt?”

Will you follow Him?

Signing Off (Saturday, August 14, 2021)

By way of explanation for the decision that I am making, I want to tell two stories. The first is of my calling. The second is of my discipleship. I will begin with my calling.

I was called to pastoral ministry when I was sixteen years old. That’s how I understood what happened. I was in a church service in Massachusetts; the pastor read from John 21; and I felt as though the words of Jesus were spoken directly to me:

“Do you love me? … Feed my sheep.”

I interpreted that experience as I had been conditioned to interpret it. I assumed God was speaking to me.

I did not have the awareness at the time to realize that many things intersected on that day, pushing me to interpret my experience in that way. From the time I was young my grandmother had told me I was to do something important for God and the church. That message was subconscious for me, but it was there. In my late teens I had begun to drift from faith in God, and I had a deep desire to repair that relationship. That was there, too. Also, I had been conditioned to read the Bible as a word written first to others, but also as one that spoke uniquely and personally to me. That was there. And, I had been enculturated in the church to expect that heightened emotions in the context of a worship service was God’s attempt to communicate. That was there. And finally, I wanted to do something important with my life, something significant, something that would help others and please God. That was there, too.

Together these pieces of me, and perhaps a host of others I could not and still cannot recognize, led me to a singular conclusion: God wanted me to be a pastor. God wanted me to lead a community of people in discipleship. That conclusion was predetermined. At the time, there was no other available interpretation. It was an imposition and an honor. I accepted. But, I’m not sure the offer was from God.

Growing up and finding one’s way in the world is a meandering and confusing journey. Certainty helps bring clarity, and this calling certainly provided that for me. It determined where I would go to college, what I would study, the kind of person I would look to marry, and the places I would apply for jobs upon graduation. Early on I had no reason to question whether I had heard from God. God was indistinguishable for me from my clarity and my ambition, and doors were opening for me to continue.

But, truth has a way of gnawing at us over time. The first indication that I may have misunderstood the road on which I had been walking came early in my ministry career. I had planned to take the teens with whom I was working on a mission trip, and we had begun to raise money for the endeavor. But, as the deadline for our deposits neared, I could not get enough teens and families to commit absolutely to the trip. So, I decided to change directions. Rather than going away, we would do mission work locally. And so, I began to plan for the week.

One of the days I scheduled to be an ‘invite a non-Christian friend’ trip to an amusement park. When some of those who donated to the trip discovered that we were paying for some teens to ride roller coasters, they felt betrayed. I was accused of misappropriating funds, and I panicked. After a night of sleepless prayer, I determined to ask those who were involved in the planning to defend our decisions publicly. They did that. And those who had opposed me eventually left the church. I knew that this was not the way of Jesus. But, during that night of sleepless prayer, I had felt emboldened to do what I had done. I believed God was leading me. Who was I following?

The attention at that church quickly shifted from me as some controversies surrounding other leaders began to emerge, which led to a difficult season of transition. In the wake of those events, I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, underwent treatments, and experienced what I could only describe as a crisis of faith. I’ve chronicled much of that crisis in my book “When God Doesn’t Look Like God: A Search in the Dark for God.”

After completing my treatments, I left that ministry, but I continued to pursue the calling. In the sixteen years that followed, I earned a Masters degree in Divinity, taught Biblical Hebrew at the graduate level, planted a church, and became the lead pastor of two churches. When I resigned from pastoral ministry in January of 2021, I had reached the end of the call I received when I was sixteen. I had left the god who had called me. And, for the first time in my life, I had come to follow the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Who became flesh in the Person of Jesus. But, to explain how I have come to that conclusion, I must tell a second story—the story of my discipleship.

There is no doubt in me that, in my youthful mind, I was pursuing the God proclaimed in Christian Scripture. My confession that I had followed the call of false spirits and a false god is not a confession to have been doing such defiantly. And, what I have come to understand over time is that the One true God honors this pursuit by discipling those heading headlong into destruction long before they have an encounter with Him. He discipled me in my rebellion.

From the beginning I had a sense that I knew little to nothing about God, and I was one whose confidence came from study, preparation, and proficiency. So, I realized from the onset that in order to have the confidence to lead a church I would need to become an expert on the Christian Bible. Throughout the intervening years, therefore, I was reading, investigating, and studying the Scriptures. I’m still surprised how long it took for me to realize my deception, but the Scriptures were a place in which my blindness was challenged.

I realized very quickly that the Scriptural testimony about God and the kinds of impressions I associated with God were not always lining up. For instance, I had a deep desire to defend myself when questioned, and I quickly interpreted disagreement as distrust. These instincts looked more consistent with persons the like of King Saul than of the faithful followers of God in Scripture. I felt the disconnect, but this voice within me kept saying that I was fine, that I was called. I listened to that voice. But, the dissonant voice of God gnawed at me. I always found Scriptures to justify my feelings and decisions, but the One true God never let me find peace with those justifications.

The voice of God also spoke through my studies. While in graduate school, I was assigned the book Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, by Edwin Friedman. The following passage left an impression that I have not yet shaken:

The standard bearer usually is the oldest male, or the only one to carry on the family name, or anyone (male or female) who has replaced a significant progenitor two or even three generations back. Such individuals have great difficulty giving emotion or time to their marriage or their children. Success has the compelling drive of ghosts behind it. They have too much to do in the short span of a lifetime. In addition, failure is more significant because it is not only themselves or even their own generation that they will have failed. Individuals, for example, who commit suicide after business failures often occupy the standard bearer position. If it had been only their own failure, they might have been able to “live with themselves.” Such family members are caught in a multigenerational cul-de-sac in which history is their destiny. Something similar is frequently found in the family history of members of the clergy and will be illustrated further in Section IV. For the moment, that multigeneration identifying process can be put in the form of a question: Which of your ancestors really ordained you?
Friedman, Generation to Generation, 21-22.

Friedman’s theories aside, that last question penetrated. After reading this passage, I discussed it with my wife. I still clung to the belief that God had called me, that God had ordained me. But, deep within I suspected that my grandmother had ordained me. God was speaking; God was healing my blindness.

During this same time I was assigned the book Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At the time I read it, I had no ears to hear almost anything Bonhoeffer was commending. But, his words remained with me, and the Lord has used them to heal me. One passage that I think of often is from chapter five, “Confession and Communion”:

In confession a man breaks through to certainty. Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness? Self-forgiveness can never lead to a breach with sin; this can be accomplished only by the judging and pardoning Word of God itself.
Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 115-116.

Whether one agrees with Bonhoeffer’s understanding of James 5:16 (“Confess your faults to one another”) or not, the question that has remained with me these many years, is this: Have I been confessing my sins to myself and granting myself absolution? The Apostle John instructs us in 1 John 4:1:

“¹Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
1 John 4:1, NRSV.

I was realizing that my discernment should have always been suspect and scrutinized.

And then, some years later, an acquaintance with whom I attended seminary wrote a book entitled Shrink. His name is Tim Suttle. I read his book with my leadership team somewhere around 2016. The following passage encapsulates Tim’s governing thesis:

Most of the church leadership conversation today has its footing squarely in the cultural narrative, not the Christian narrative. Leadership today is about getting things done and growing a ministry we can be proud of. As a result, Christian leadership has come to focus solely on best practices. Leaders want to know what we can do to produce the kind of results we desire. We want effectiveness. We crave practical advice that will help us to be bigger, better, and so on.
I have come to believe that this entire line of thinking has little to do with the gospel, even less with the life of Jesus Christ, whom we have been called to imitate.
Here’s the heart of my ethos and the foundation of everything I will say in this book: there’s leadership, and then there’s Christian leadership. Christian leadership is categorically different from any other mode of leadership.
If you have been involved in any kind of leadership conversation recently, you could probably teach a seminar on what the word leadership means. We all know the bullet points: define the mission, assemble a team, cast the vision, set goals, inspire everyone to work together, achieve the goals, celebrate success, adapt to changes, and grow the enterprise. Under this set of assumptions, the way to judge the effectiveness of the leader is by viewing the results. Success is about effectiveness.
Christian leadership operates with a completely different basic assumption. Our most basic conviction is that the kingdom of God has come and is coming in and through Jesus Christ. We cannot accomplish the kingdom of God; it is the work of God. Our job is to be faithful to the ways of Jesus, not the ways of our culture. The Christian leader does not pursue success or results the way the CEO of a Fortune 500 company does. The Christian leader pursues faithfulness. Results, success, and effectiveness are nice when they happen, but they are not the primary pursuit.
Christian leaders are meant to model their lives and leadership practices on the life of Jesus. This means that we can never have the assurance of predictable results. We lead in the way of Christ and leave the results up to God. Faithfulness, not success, is our goal. The goal of Christian leadership is always and only ever faithfulness in the way of Jesus.
Suttle, Shrink, 24-25.

What Tim wrote resonated not with my calling or with my ministerial approach, but with what I saw the Scriptures to teach. The dissonance was becoming deafening to me, and I began in 2016 the slow journey out of the calling to pastor and into the calling to be a disciple of Jesus. Both churches I pastored in the wake of this began to experience this change in me, and it was destabilizing in many ways to both communities—the second more so than the first. When I resigned from ministry in January of 2021, I realized that my resignation was the only way I could continue to follow Jesus in discipleship. I have come to understand that my calling, which I had believed had been from God, was an idol that had governed my life. And, more perplexing still, the Church had become its prophet.

Even with this awareness, I continued to preach and teach through social media after I left, holding out the hope that the calling could still be embodied in a different venue. If the church had been overtaken by culture, perhaps a pure, virtual teaching ministry focused only on Scripture and the Word of God might be the means by which I feed God’s sheep.

However, at the beginning of this month my brother-in-law (who is also a pastor) suggested I listen to the Christianity Today podcast, “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.” To date seven episodes have been released, and I listened to them all in a single day. And in the story of Mars Hill and its founding pastor, I heard the voice of the god who called me to ministry, to significance, to become a world-changer. It wasn’t until I listened to that story that it all came into focus for me. I was called by the gods of this age. I had been driven by the spirits of this age. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, the God I had longed to serve—the One true God of all creation—had not been the God I had followed.

In the days that followed, the lessons of my past and the whispers of God throughout have become clearer. And I returned to Bonhoeffer’s Life Together to read the following words again with a heart softened by discipleship to Jesus:

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that was given it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be every so honest and earnest and sacrificial.
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to others in the circles of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of the brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 27-28.

I have held on to my calling too long, along with its siren’s call of significance, influence, and legacy. I am ready now to follow Jesus. However life progresses from here, my repentance—my turning—requires my service to Christ to be humble, local, and done in secret. What is currently online will remain, and I will continue to write and blog on occasion. If the Lord gives me a word to speak, I will speak it in whatever venue He requires. But apart from such exceptional circumstances, I am signing off. May Jesus Christ alone be magnified. And may the Lord Himself guide your steps.

A Word for the Nations (August 13, 2021)

The ancient nation of Babylon was a shadow, and Israel’s exile in her was a shadow, as well. This is not to say that these events did not occur. Quite to the contrary. These were historical realities. But they were shadows, types.

History is cyclical; it repeats itself over and over again. God reveals this pattern to us in the Christian Bible. These cycles are not accidental or incidental. History is cyclical by the will of God.

In six days God created life on earth along with its requisite cycles and seasons. And then, on the seventh day, God rested. Perhaps one of the more surprising discoveries of the book of Genesis is that creation has not yet joined God on day seven. Creation is imprisoned on day six. As the writer of Hebrews has taught the Church:

¹Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should seem to have failed to reach it. ²For indeed the good news came to us just as to them; but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. ³For we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “As in my anger I swore, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’ ” though his works were finished at the foundation of the world.
⁴For in one place it speaks about the seventh day as follows, “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” ⁵And again in this place it says, “They shall not enter my rest.” ⁶Since therefore it remains open for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, ⁷again he sets a certain day—“today”—saying through David much later, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
⁸For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day. ⁹So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; ¹⁰for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. ¹¹Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs.
Hebrews 4:1-11, NRSV

It was sin that led God to cage us here. When God first created humanity, He instructed us with these words:

¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Genesis 2:16-17, NRSV

The first woman ate of the tree, and then the man. The penalty, the consequence, the promise of God was death. But God sought to be merciful; God sought humanity’s reclamation. And so, God imprisoned humanity on day six. Sleep is a shadow–a type of death–as awakening is a shadow–a type of birth and creation. We still live on the day humanity fell, trapped in a repeating cycle of death and birth. We are barred from entering God’s rest.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes has observed:

⁹What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9, NRSV

We are imprisoned by our rebellions—the first rebellion and all that have followed thereafter. What has been is what will be. This is the shadow and the reality—the past which is simultaneously the future. There is nothing new under the sun.

As each evening we sleep and each morning we awaken, to be free from this cycle one must die and rise. As Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus:

³. . . . “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
John 3:3b, NRSV

But the worldly mind cannot comprehend its reality. And so, Nicodemus, like so many of us, responded with the wisdom of ignorance:

⁴. . . . “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”
John 3:4b, NRSV

Only by faith, by trusting Jesus and walking in the way He carved before us can the gate between day six and God’s rest be passed through. Jesus is both the gate and the gatekeeper from day six to day seven, from death to life, from toil to rest.

History is typology—shadows and realities caught in an endless dance under the sun. Babylon was a type, a shadow, a permutation to be repeated through time. Babel, Sumeria, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, all these were both shadows and realities trapped in a timeless cycle. But the circle is not closed. The course of history is both cyclical and linear, repeating and yet moving toward a final cycle, a final reality, a final dusk followed by an eschatological dawn. History has both a beginning and an end, an alpha and an omega, an aleph and a tav. As John testifies in the book of Revelation:

⁵And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ⁶Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
Revelation 21:5-6a, NRSV

The Lord instructed the prophet Jeremiah to speak the following words with respect to ancient Babylon:

³⁴“King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon has devoured me, he has crushed me; he has made me an empty vessel, he has swallowed me like a monster; he has filled his belly with my delicacies, he has spewed me out. ³⁵May my torn flesh be avenged on Babylon,” the inhabitants of Zion shall say. “May my blood be avenged on the inhabitants of Chaldea,” Jerusalem shall say.
³⁶Therefore thus says the Lord: I am going to defend your cause and take vengeance for you. I will dry up her sea and make her fountain dry; ³⁷and Babylon shall become a heap of ruins, a den of jackals, an object of horror and of hissing, without inhabitant.
³⁸Like lions they shall roar together; they shall growl like lions’ whelps. ³⁹When they are inflamed, I will set out their drink and make them drunk, until they become merry and then sleep a perpetual sleep and never wake, says the Lord. ⁴⁰I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams and goats.
⁴¹How Sheshach is taken, the pride of the whole earth seized! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations! ⁴²The sea has risen over Babylon; she has been covered by its tumultuous waves. ⁴³Her cities have become an object of horror, a land of drought and a desert, a land in which no one lives, and through which no mortal passes. ⁴⁴I will punish Bel in Babylon, and make him disgorge what he has swallowed. The nations shall no longer stream to him; the wall of Babylon has fallen.
⁴⁵Come out of her, my people! Save your lives, each of you, from the fierce anger of the Lord! ⁴⁶Do not be fainthearted or fearful at the rumors heard in the land—one year one rumor comes, the next year another, rumors of violence in the land and of ruler against ruler.
⁴⁷Assuredly, the days are coming when I will punish the images of Babylon; her whole land shall be put to shame, and all her slain shall fall in her midst. ⁴⁸Then the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them, shall shout for joy over Babylon; for the destroyers shall come against them out of the north, says the Lord. ⁴⁹Babylon must fall for the slain of Israel, as the slain of all the earth have fallen because of Babylon.
⁵⁰You survivors of the sword, go, do not linger! Remember the Lord in a distant land, and let Jerusalem come into your mind: ⁵¹We are put to shame, for we have heard insults; dishonor has covered our face, for aliens have come into the holy places of the Lord’s house.
⁵²Therefore the time is surely coming, says the Lord, when I will punish her idols, and through all her land the wounded shall groan. ⁵³Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify her strong height, from me destroyers would come upon her, says the Lord.
⁵⁴Listen!—a cry from Babylon! A great crashing from the land of the Chaldeans! ⁵⁵For the Lord is laying Babylon waste, and stilling her loud clamor. Their waves roar like mighty waters, the sound of their clamor resounds; ⁵⁶for a destroyer has come against her, against Babylon; her warriors are taken, their bows are broken; for the Lord is a God of recompense, he will repay in full.
⁵⁷I will make her officials and her sages drunk, also her governors, her deputies, and her warriors; they shall sleep a perpetual sleep and never wake, says the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts.
⁵⁸Thus says the Lord of hosts: The broad wall of Babylon shall be leveled to the ground, and her high gates shall be burned with fire. The peoples exhaust themselves for nothing, and the nations weary themselves only for fire.
Jeremiah 51:34-58, NRSV

Over and over Babylon has risen, and over and over these words have been declared from on high, and over and over these prophecies have been fulfilled. Such is the fate of all who blaspheme the Lord, the God of heaven and earth. Such is the fate of all who seek to build a city and a nation by their own wisdom, their own strength, and under the leadership of their own kings.

These shadows are with us still. Babylon has arisen again. The cycle has repeated. And John heard Jeremiah’s words spoken anew with reference to the final permutation of Babylon in Revelation 18:

¹After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor. ²He called out with a mighty voice,
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast. ³For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury.”
⁴Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues; ⁵for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. ⁶Render to her as she herself has rendered, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed. ⁷As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, so give her a like measure of torment and grief. Since in her heart she says, ‘I rule as a queen; I am no widow, and I will never see grief,’ ⁸therefore her plagues will come in a single day— pestilence and mourning and famine— and she will be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”
⁹And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; ¹⁰they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
“Alas, alas, the great city, Babylon, the mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come.” ¹¹And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, ¹²cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, ¹³cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves—and human lives. ¹⁴“The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your dainties and your splendor are lost to you, never to be found again!”
¹⁵The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,
¹⁶“Alas, alas, the great city, clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls! ¹⁷For in one hour all this wealth has been laid waste!”
And all shipmasters and seafarers, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off ¹⁸and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, “What city was like the great city?” ¹⁹And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out, “Alas, alas, the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in one hour she has been laid waste.
²⁰Rejoice over her, O heaven, you saints and apostles and prophets! For God has given judgment for you against her.”
²¹Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying,
“With such violence Babylon the great city will be thrown down, and will be found no more; ²²and the sound of harpists and minstrels and of flutists and trumpeters will be heard in you no more; and an artisan of any trade will be found in you no more; and the sound of the millstone will be heard in you no more; ²³and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more; and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more; for your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery. ²⁴And in you was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slaughtered on earth.”
Revelation 18:1-24, NRSV

Church of Jesus Christ around the world, those who have been faithful to the testimony of the prophets and apostles with Jesus as the chief cornerstone, who have not soiled their garments by adding or taking away from what has been written, who have never adulterated themselves with loyalty to the nations of the earth, God is now assaulting Babylon. The prophecies of Scripture are again being spoken and finding their fulfillment. Take heed and hear the call of the Spirit to the churches:

“Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues; ⁵for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.”

Come out by repentance; come out by the confession in word and in deed that Jesus is Lord; come out by forgiveness, by generosity, by hospitality, by patience, by kindness, by self-control, by the denial of self, and by faith in Jesus.

Thus says the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One True God of the heavens and the earth and the Lord Jesus Christ:

The current tribulations of the earth have been asked for, even demanded by the wise and the learned of your nations. You have wished for a universe without me, and you have prayed for my death. If I answered your prayers, the waters would overwhelm you like a flood, and life would be extinguished. But, in the days of Noah I promised never again to allow the waters to overwhelm the earth and extinguish all life. I am a God of hesed, and I will not change my mind.
And yet, I am giving you a taste of your desire. I keep the chaos at bay. I set the boundaries and preserve life in my creation. By my Word the universe is maintained, and by my Spirit you live and breathe and have your being. The atheists and agnostics have described a world to you without me, and, as Goliath in ages past, they have blasphemed my Name. I am allowing you to sample the world for which they have wished, and the world in which they have longed to live. They are the gods you have chosen. Let them deliver you from your tribulations.
I am making war against the false gods of the heavens and the earth. Come out, come out, My people. Trust in them no longer. I am the God who became flesh in the Person of Jesus. I am the God Who lays down my life only to take it up again. I am the God who, while you were in your rebellion, stayed my hand and made a way from life to death for those who believe in Me and in My way. Put no faith in principalities and powers. I am the Lord who delivers you. Come, enter my rest, by trusting the way and Word of my Son with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your life.
But, to Babylon and her children, the way is made for you into the waters. Logic and reason are taken; wisdom is darkened; and order is turned back. Light is darkness and darkness is light. Heaven and earth are turned against you, and no rescue will come for your transgressions. When hope is within reach, it will depart from you; when peace is at hand, strife will erupt; when respite arrives, despair will dispel it. So shall it be until you repent of your rebellions and ask my faithful ones to intercede on your behalf.
Am I a human that I desire the death of the wicked? Am I not the crucified Lord who desires that the lost be found and the rebel be reconciled? Come to me in repentance, and I will hear. Turn from your selfishness and lustful desires, and I will make you whole again. Can life persist without my Spirit? Can orderliness be maintained without my faithfulness? Can a covenant be upheld without my hesed? This is the way of things, people of the earth, and they can be no other? Do not persist in your rebellions. The Day of the Lord is at hand.

The Narrow Way (Matthew 7:13-14)

Near the conclusion of His Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus exhorted His disciples with the following words:

¹³“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. ¹⁴For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Mt 7:13–14.

It is not surprising that Jesus encouraged His disciples in this way in this context. Matthew chapters 5-7 include some of the most challenging teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. The way of discipleship for Jesus certainly is narrow, but what precisely did Jesus mean to convey with this language?

Does Jesus mean to say that folks can only pass through this gate single file? Must one wait in line? Is Jesus saying something akin to Yoda when Luke asked him if the dark side of the force was stronger? “No! No…quicker, easier, more seductive.” Was George Lucas borrowing from Jesus? Possibly…but not quite.

The New Testament word translated narrow is the Greek word stenós. Stenós is an adjective in Greek, and narrow is a pretty good translation. However, in my view it would be a mistake to assume Jesus’ intention begins and ends with the Greek language. The Gospels have translated Jesus’ teachings into Greek, but beneath that translation lie the Semitic languages of Aramaic and Hebrew. When the word stenós is used to translate the Hebrew of the First Testament, the Hebrew word it translates is tsar. Tsar is usually used in the First Testament to indicate distress—e.g., 2 Samuel 24:14:

¹⁴Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into human hands.”
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 2 Sa 24:14.

The way of discipleship, according to Jesus, is narrow in the sense that it is pressing or squeezing. In other words, Jesus is not describing a one-lane highway, or a footpath in a field, or even a neglected road in a forest. He is describing a tight squeeze that is challenging to pass through. And this is more evident still by Jesus’ further description of the road that leads to life as hard. Hard is the Greek word thlibō. Thlibō means pressed, squeezed, or pinched, and it can be used metaphorically to refer to oppression, affliction, or distress.

To use the Hebrew word, the gate and the road that lead to life are tsar—roads of distress, of pressure. It’s no wonder that few find such a way. Who’s looking for a tight squeeze? Is anybody really searching for a pressure-filled road? Of course not. That’s why Jesus indicates that few find it. It’s not that it’s hidden or that it requires a special map to find. The way of life is plain enough in the teachings of Scripture. But, it hides in plain sight from those who wish to find a way that is free of suffering and distress.

Jesus describes the road to destruction, on the other hand, as quite easy on the suspension. The word translated wide (platús) indicates broadness or flatness, and the word translated easy (eurú-chōros) also means roomy or wide. In other words, the road to destruction presents itself as an easier, more relaxed way, and Jesus insists that many choose to enter it.

The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7 delineates what the twentieth-century theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, described as the cost of discipleship. Even a cursory read of Jesus’ description of the way to the Kingdom of Heaven can leave a leisurely traveler full of despair. On another occasion described for us in Matthew 19:16-30, Jesus instructed a wealthy man to sell all his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and only afterwards to follow Him. After the man walked away sad, Jesus said that it was near impossible for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, to which His disciples exclaimed:

“Then who can be saved?”
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Matt. 19:25.

Jesus’ only encouragement to them was that with God all things are possible.

This exchange dovetails well with Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount because, to extend the metaphor, the narrow way may require the shedding of gear to pass through. If we truly wish to follow Jesus, we will need to pass through some squeezes so tight that we will have to shed weight and provisions in order to continue the journey.

Of course, Jesus’ encouragement is that His disciples do not make this journey on their own. Jesus is with them, and God will make the journey possible. But still, it will be no relaxed trip. The way of life presses on those who take it, squeezes those who wish to pass through it. It is a way of pressure and distress. Judged by mere appearances, only a fool would take it. But, we who claim faith in Jesus follow Him, and Jesus denied Himself, took up His cross, and squeezed through the narrow gate.

The history of Christianity is filled with people, both clergy and laity alike, who have sought to widen the passes of the narrow way so that it might appear more appealing to a greater variety of people. Others have sought to place greater emphasis on the destination and leave the road itself undescribed as a way of enticing folks to begin the journey without full awareness of their commitment. And, then, of course, there are plenty who have switched the signs, identifying the wide road as leading to life and the narrow road as leading to destruction.

Do not be deceived by these tactics. The road to life is a pressing road, and those who find it are seeking the way of Jesus, however difficult a squeeze it may be.

If we are to seek the pressing, squeezing road and follow Jesus, we must divest ourselves of the desire for safety, security, ease, and pleasure. These experiences are to be received with thanksgiving when they are given by God in proper season, but they cannot be sought. If we are to find the pressing, squeezing road that Jesus trailblazed before us, we must be looking for precisely that. Jesus goes on in the next verses in Matthew 7 to warn His disciples not to fall prey to false teachers and false prophets. That is a fitting warning because such folks always diminish the pressing, squeezing, distressing facets of the road of discipleship.

False prophets and false teachers offer shorter ways, short cuts, easy principles, and can’t-miss formulas. Jesus never pretended that the road to life was anything but impossible by human effort alone. The way of life is traversable only by those who have gone all-in with Jesus and who are enabled by God Himself. For those looking for a road possible to traverse without God, you will find only the road to destruction. The pressing, squeezing, distressed way that leads to life cannot be traversed without God, and this is precisely why so few find it.

Seek the narrow way. If it is described in the teachings of Scripture and looks to be impossible, you’ve found the gate. You will only enter by placing faith in Jesus to make the impossible possible. This is the road to life. Embrace the call to find it.

~ J. Thomas ~

Return (Isaiah 1:1-20)

²Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. ³The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.
⁴Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord, who have despised the Holy One of Israel, who are utterly estranged! ⁵Why do you seek further beatings? Why do you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. ⁶From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds; they have not been drained, or bound up, or softened with oil.
⁷Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners. ⁸And daughter Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a shelter in a cucumber field, like a besieged city. ⁹If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.
¹⁰Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! ¹¹What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. ¹²When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; ¹³bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
¹⁴Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. ¹⁵When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. ¹⁶Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, ¹⁷learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
¹⁸Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. ¹⁹If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; ²⁰but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Is 1:2–20.

It is difficult to read words like this, especially when they are presented as proceeding from the mouth of God. Some Christians find it hard to believe God would ever speak in such a way. The caricature of Jesus that is drawn in many modern descriptions of Jesus is so tender and gentle that a few contemporary theologians seem to suggest that Israel only imagined these words into the mouth of God in hindsight after the devastation the Babylonians brought to Israel in the 500s B.C.

And yet, these words should not be surprising to us. The covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai promised such curses if Israel broke the covenant, which the people did, over and over again. God sent prophet after prophet, curse after curse, judgment after judgment for over 800 years before these words of Isaiah were finally fulfilled. And yet, God’s children did not return to the covenant God had made with them. They continued to follow their own hearts and to go their own way.

Though, the question still remains: Do such words still apply in the New Covenant of Jesus? After all, those of us who have been reconciled to God by faith in the faithfulness and trustworthiness of Jesus did not enter into a written covenant with God. We simply let our yes be yes and our no be no. We agreed to be the people of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Who became flesh in the Person of Jesus by following Jesus and honoring Him as Lord. There was no written Law. We are being saved by faith. So, without Law, there can be no just consequence, can there? Perhaps this covenant, this agreement, allows for no tangible correction.

And yet, the same God who authored the covenant of Sinai, is the God Who became flesh in the Person of Jesus. What does it mean to have faith in Him? What would be the consequence of faithlessness? Perhaps part of our response must begin with a different question. Were the curses of the covenant of Sinai more like punishments or more like consequences? This could be a distinction without a difference, but I do not believe such to be the case.

My sense of the curses of the Covenant of Sinai is that they were specified consequences of God’s turning away from Israel. In the beginning, when God created, the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the deep, while the Spirit of God was brooding over the waters. This primal chaos was created by God in the beginning, but God did not leave the chaos as it was. He proceeded to shape the chaos through separation and organization. He separated light from darkness and then water from water and then land from sea. And then, He organized the light and darkness with the creation of sun, moon, and stars, the waters and sky with sea creatures and birds, and the land with land creatures.

God created space for life by separating the chaotic waters. Life depends on God. But, what was happening in Israel in the days of Isaiah was akin to what happened with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The people wished for autonomy—they wished to chart their own course. When we rebel against God, seeking autonomy and self-direction, we ask God to depart; we fail to appreciate our and creation’s utter dependence on God for its existence. The covenant of Sinai anticipated this eventuality, and prepared the people for it by describing a world without God. In the curses of Sinai, God identified specific aspects of the waters—the chaos—that He would allow to flow into Israel if they were intent on making their way without Him. These were punishments, certainly, but they were punishments precisely because they were inevitable consequences.

Essentially, these curses were meant to convey a truth to Israel: If you get what you want, and God vacates creation, chaos and lifelessness will ensue. There is no world in which creatures exist without their Creator. There is no life without God and His creativity. And the guidelines God gives are essential to the maintaining of the world He has created. Without God’s Laws, there is no life, no universe. Nothing created is simply free to do as it sees fit. Creation depends fundamentally on the architecture of God.

Understood in this way, the Covenant of Sinai is as much a caution as it is an agreement. Part of what this implies for me is that even in the New Covenant of Jesus, the rules of creation have not changed. The consequence for endeavoring to build a world without need of God is always the same—chaos and lifelessness. And over and over through history, God has endeavored to demonstrate the truthfulness of this testimony. Of course, we are still here, but Scripture teaches that such is the case because God made a promise to Noah that remains in effect and is signified by the rainbow. God has promised to keep creation from total devastation until the coming of the end.

So, Isaiah still speaks to the church, even if it speaks to us out of a different context. These warnings to Israel were rooted in covenant. These warnings to the Church are rooted in creation. The world has been asking God to depart for a very long time, whether consciously or unconsciously. The Lord has been insisting to me in my spirit that the upheaval of our day—personally, societally, and environmentally—are consequences, God’s preview of what it would look like to live in this world as the atheists and agnostics imagine it.

These events are muted, of course. If God truly withdrew, nothing would survive. He promised that He would not do that again until the end. But, over and over, God continues to call to His children, asking them to depart from their pursuit of independence and return to Him. So, perhaps we should read Isaiah’s prophecy again as not only covenantal, but also as cosmic.

The sins from which God warned Israel to turn still persist in the nations of the world. And it is not surprising that the pursuit of secular humanism has resulted in chaos, war, tyranny, and ever increasing moral depravity. The road of independence from God always results in these things. They are inevitable. Without God, there is no life. Chaos is the natural state of things. The more freedom from God we possess, the further from life we progress.

In these days, the Lord is once again turning His face from the nations of the earth; once again He is providing us a foretaste of the world without Him. But, God is doing this to warn us. For it is not only unbelievers who pursue independence and freedom. Those who call themselves Christians value these things, too. The body has lost connection with the Head. The church, in many places, has become indistinguishable from the world. We have allowed the Gospel of Jesus to become a license to live free of God and the boundaries He has set.

The world can hear the warnings and experience the foretaste, but the worldly mind cannot comprehend the meaning of these things. They see only godless nature and natural consequence. They cannot hear the voice of God calling to the people of the earth to forsake the path of independence and return to Him that they might live. But, the children of God must see and hear differently. We must recognize the warning God is giving us, and the opportunity.

All that we’ve experienced so far is consequence…a small foretaste of what the withdrawal of God means for life on earth. If we are to heed these warnings, we must return to the teachings of God, as they have been preserved by His prophets and apostles in the Christian Scriptures. We must place faith again in Jesus by living as God has taught us to live, within the bounds of His creativity.

However, so that God’s children might hear His voice, what comes next has been declared in advance. What comes next is not random consequence. God has chosen it. These are His locusts. What is coming on the east coast of the United States is for our reclamation.

Repent, children of God. Depart from your rebellion. Relinquish your buildings and your institutions. Release your desire for significance and influence. Follow God again into the wilderness. Pursue godliness. Depart from greatness. Call God’s people to repentance. Worship God not in song or celebration. The pagans pursue these things, and God is not hungry for them. Worship God in holiness of heart and life, by denying yourself daily, by embracing the cost of discipleship, and by walking in the way of Jesus.

The world and its ways are passing away. Do not tether yourself to the nations of the earth. What follows is for our reclamation. Repent, for the kingdom of God draws ever nearer.

~ J. Thomas ~