"To Him be glory forever": desire

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Desire

If. A little word that often carries a big meaning. We use it to say how something might happen, but only when certain conditions are met first. You can go to the carnival if you'll clean up your room. We'll pay for four years of college if you'll serve four years in the military first. I'm sure there examples in your own life, maybe even today, where that small word, if, has played a large role.

There is an interesting use of the word "if" in the Bible. In chapter 27 of his gospel Matthew describes the trial, crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus. As Jesus hangs on the cross Matthew notes the words of the leaders of the Jews, (the chief priests, elders and scribes) who observe what is happening and say:

“He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”

It would seem that as Jesus' life is reaching its end, and that in a most humiliating fashion, that the Jewish leaders reach a very obvious conclusion. The things that are happening to Jesus are clear proof that God has no desire for Jesus, even if the claim of Jesus to be the Son of God were to be true. Their law teaches that to die hanging on a tree is to die under God's curse, so the end result, that God has no desire for Jesus, should be obvious to everyone. Duh!

But what is going on here at the cross is more than meets the eye. That is clear to those of us who live with faith in Jesus, 2,000 years after the event and having read the fuller story. Hopefully it became clear to at least of few of the leaders before their own lives came to an end.

First of all, the desire the Father has for the Son has not wavered in the slightest throughout all eternity. The essence of the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit has never changed. There are many things about the Trinity that are: 1) Hard to understand, and/or 2) Hard to clearly articulate, but one of the easier things to grasp about the Trinity is that there has never been a time when such human emotions as anger, disappointment or estrangement has existed between any of three Persons. Never.

Second, the humiliation and death of the Son is essential to the greater purposes of God. I've made some pastoral visits recently where I've had to talk about the fact that we just can't always see or know God's purposes for things that happen in our lives. This is especially true when they are things that we don’t like. No non-believer could look at Jesus hanging on the cross and believe that God would have a greater purpose in that apparent tragedy. Not even these Jewish leaders are capable of seeing the Father demonstrating things like his holiness, his righteousness, his justice, or even his mercy, as the Son hangs on the cross.

Yes, his mercy. The third thing going on as the Son breathes his last is this. The Father desires for all those humans who would have faith in his Son to be with the Triune God forever. And that requires the death of the Son to remove the sin those women and men have committed against God during their lives. This is mercy, that God spares those who love the Son from the consequences that their sin deserves.

The Father could have easily brought the entire crucifixion to an end as the events were unfolding. He could have said, "That's enough. We don’t need for this to go any farther." Perhaps that would have shown the Jewish leaders the desire of the Father for the Son. But that would have prevented the greater purpose, the greater desire, of God, which is that by faith in Jesus that people like you and I could one day be in God's very presence.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Having it all

Last Sunday in church our pastor was planning to talk about Solomon, the last of the three kings of the united Hebrew kingdom. So earlier in the week we read some of the parts of the Bible written about him. We also read to our daughter the story of Solomon in one of her Bibles, The Story for Children.

Her Bible contains just one of the stories of Solomon, but it is one that shows him at the virtual height of his power. He is ruler of the Hebrew kingdom, has built the temple in Jerusalem, and is pretty much considered to be the wealthiest and wisest person on earth. He receives a visitor, the Queen of Sheba, who marvels at Solomon’s riches and intellect. As I read this story Solomon appears to “have it all.” If he was alive today we might say that he was living the American Dream.

I thought that it was a little ironic that we were reading of Solomon at the same time that Facebook was going public, catapulting Mark Zuckerburg overnight to a level of wealth that, for all practical purposes, is unimaginable. Zuckerburg may, or may not, have Solomon’s wisdom, but he sure seems to have as much money. And a day or two later he married his girlfriend. I don’t really know a lot about Zuckerburg but I do know that he has money, family and youth. To me it seems that he “has it all” as much as Solomon did.

We have no idea how Zuckerburg’s story will play out over time. Nor, for that matter, the story of anyone else. Zuckerburg, like Solomon, just lives more publicly than most of us because of his wealth. What we do know of the latter parts of Solomon’s story wasn’t pretty.

In 1 Kings 2:2-4 Solomon was given some instructions from his father, David, whom he succeeded as king, instructions to prepare him to lead the Hebrew people. They included,

“I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses,…”

Solomon had received wisdom as a gift from God but wound up living in ways in which evidence of his wisdom was absent. He blatantly neglected, at best, and rejected, at worst, the foundational teaching of Moses that his father told him to follow, the first of the Ten Commandments, which was, and still is,

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

I think it is very easy, and somewhat natural given that we live in a fallen world, to envy the things that others have. We can see what Solomon had and desire it. Or what Zuckerburg has. Or what our next-door neighbor or our sibling has. Solomon, despite all his riches, remained unsatisfied and he pursued the acquisition of other things in a manner that took him away from God. Rather than worship God alone, other things became his gods.

In his second letter to the church at Corinth Paul gives testimony to the situation that he and those with him lived in as they shared God’s Good News of Jesus. In chapter 6:3-10 he lists a number of contrasts in their circumstances. He details the repeated ways in which they have suffered, followed by a list of the virtues they have continued to practice. He then has a number of pairs, with the first being the way something appears to be and the second being the way it really is. He concludes in writing this:

“as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”

Paul knows, and reminds the church at Corinth and those who follow Christ today, that “having it all” isn’t about money, or fame, or power, or family, or health, or any other thing we could possibly desire.

Having it all is only about having Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior, something that we begin to understand as we live in faith today, and something that he promises will be more glorious than anything we can possibly imagine. In Christ we can truly "have it all," now and forever.