Drunken Mystic

There was this movie back when I was in high school called “Weekend at Bernie’s.”  I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but it is really a pretty stupid comedy.

As an example that God can really use anything to reveal Himself as He chooses, God’s been bringing that movie up in my mind over the last week or two.  I don’t think His intent is to get me to watch the movie again, necessarily, and even though I haven’t seen it in a while, I can’t say that I can recommend anyone watch it.  But it is what it is.

If you haven’t seen the movie, there are these two young executives, Larry and Richard, who get invited out to this beach house by their boss, Bernie.  Bernie is in with the mob and then gets taken out by the mafia by lethal injection right before Larry and Richard get there.  The two young men ultimately realize that Bernie is dead and for plot purposes decide they have to pretend he’s alive so they won’t be blamed for his death.  There’s a party that night and other shenanigans over the weekend, where the bulk of the comedy is how creative they get as they convince people Bernie is alive and a party animal.

God has been dealing with me about the heart of true Christianity.  If your expression of Christianity has to be maintained or sustained by you, then you are the basis of that religion.  In reality, Christ sustains and maintains you, and any expression where the opposite takes place or is given place is dangerous.

But there are many who work really hard at keeping up appearances as if dead religion actually works.  There is this great passage in the prophets where the prophet goes into how insane idolatry is.  You get a piece of wood.  You make a bowl out of it or a plate or something else.  Then you carve a god out of it and bow down to it, worship it, and ask it to help you.  It cannot help you.  You are the one who has power over it.  You have to prop it up and dress it up and keep it clean.  In fact, idolatry at its heart is worshipping the “work of your own hands.”  Doesn’t have to be even a physical item, just worshipping the things you can produce in your own strength.

The expressions of worship that bring life are from the Spirit and exalt fruit that only God can produce.  There are many buzzwords to describe such a life, but no matter how you label it, it is stripped down to an understanding that of yourself you can do nothing, but with God all things are possible, that you love God without compromise and others as He has loved you.  That is normal Christianity.  Unfortunately we’ve assigned normal Christianity to the work of others, people we call saints or mystics or ministers, so we can kinda just live our own lives and then feel pretty spiritual about it.

At some point when I discuss these things, I get the usual statement from some: “Well, everyone is different.  There’s no right way.”  That sounds all nice and inclusive, but it can only go so far.  I’ll give an example.

To be healthy you need to eat right, exercise, and sleep well.  Lack in these areas cause problems, even serious problems unto death.  There is plenty of freedom within these principles of health (what healthy foods you eat, when or how you exercise, etc).  But to use that freedom to then justify eating junk food, complete inactivity, and insomnia is dangerous.  There are some really creative arguments in the Church today as if living in an abusive way is healthy.  And they love the one example they can find of the lady who lived in complete gluttony and self abuse and grew to be a hundred and eighty.  Never mind the overwhelming majority of other people who have seen fruit from healthy living or died young from cancer or something from the lack of it.

The Bible says God has “ways.”  Christ named Himself “the Way”.  One of the names of the early believers had to do with their following the Way.  There are ways, right ways, to do things, that are of Christ and not of you.  And they produce fruit if you will follow those ways and try your best not to mix His ways with your own, or anyone else’s, really.

I have little to lose by calling dead things dead.  I have everything, eternally, however, to gain by calling that which is of life, Life.  Those that very creatively prop up Bernie can do what they do, but I’d rather tell the party-goers he’s dead and deal with whatever consequences occur.  Better in the long run.

Peace.

There is a popular song sung in many churches.  It is upbeat and catchy, and the refrain goes, “I am a friend of God; He calls me friend.”  You might even sing it at your church.

You probably shouldn’t.  The heart of the song isn’t necessarily evil or anything.  The writer, Israel Houghton, is someone I appreciate and have a great live CD of his that is cool.  But the heart of the song and the refrain don’t match.  I’ll explain.

The verse of the song says, “Who am I that you are mindful of me.  That you hear me, when I call.  Is it true that you are thinking of me.  How you love me, it’s amazing.”

I love it.  All good and true.  But this is not evidence that I am His frriend but that He is a friend to me.

God has done amazing things for those who would be His enemies.  He loves those who have rejected Him, even to the point of sending His only Son to bring grace and truth, to be the Way, the Truth, the Life.  All of that and more that I could spend days declaring.  But all of that does not make me His friend.  That makes him a friend to me.

Some of this comes from taking a verse out of context, which happens all the time.  Near the end of the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I no longer call you servants; I call you friends.”  Taken by itself, we can easily sing along with the catcy tune.  But maybe we should look at what it really means to be called a friend of God.

First of all, there is another verse in there that helps to quantify what it means.  “You are my friends if you do what I say.”  That sets up a fairly important condition to be called a friend of God.  Here we have that pesky standard of obedience again.  Jesus doesn’t say they would be His friends because He loves them or their doctinal stance or their solid theology or how they feel about Him … but based on what they actually do in response to what He says.

Let’s also look at who these people were.  In Luke, Jesus says to them, “You are those who have continued with Me through My trials.”  They answered the call to give up everything, possessions, family relationships, jobs, all to follow Him and be with Him.  When He was returning to Jerusalem, they said, “Let’s go die with Him.”  When many left Him after a hard teaching, Jesus turned and asked if they would leave Him, too.  They said, “Where else can we go?  You have the words of life.”

God takes my burden, sure.  That makes Him my friend.  But does He share His burden with me?  Have I endured with God to see the realization of His Kingdom, to have established what He wants to establish in the earth for eternity?  Am I about His business or my own?

These weren’t perfect men, as they were about to prove (especially Peter).  But they had endured with Jesus through what He called His trials.  Not theirs.  His.

Let’s look at Abraham, another man God calls His friend.  Abraham “obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would afterward receive as an inheritance.  And he went out, not knowing where he was going.  By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents … for he waited for the city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”

Abraham was also severely tested in attempting to sacrifice his only son, and at one point God allows Abraham to negotiate with Him over Sodom and Gomorrah.

I am also reminded of 1 John where he describes the fathers of faith who just “walk with Him who is from the beginning.”  They’ve passed the other necessary stages of maturity in Christ to attain a place where they just walk with Him.

Let me summarize what it means to be God’s friend.  You have answered an extreme call and completely separated yourself from the things of the world to seek the Kingdom of God without compromise.  You have no permanence in this world so you can seek a heavenly and spiritual city.  You are consumed with zeal for His house; you are about His business and not your own.  You have ceased from your own labors and co-labor with Him.  You understand what is important to God.  He shares the things that are on His heart with you.  You don’t waste time with God asking for things for yourself; you’d rather hear what He has to say.  You seek the Kingdom with a settled faith that realizes all other things will be taken care of by a good father.  You give your own life no thought.  You live a life of obedience and righteousness.  You walk by the Spirit.

Let me add another important principle.  No one in the scripture ever said it about themselves.  No one who is really God’s friend would have to claim it.  That is for God to say, not you.

Have you ever met someone who boasted about being someone elses’s best friend?  It feels prideful and immodest, at best immature, especially if you know the truth and reality of the relationship.  At best it is self-serving, attempting to advance oneself somehow at the expense of another.

Have you ever seen someone describe how great a friend someone has been to them?  It is one of the most moving things you’ll experience.

Remember the parable Jesus told about what to do at a great dinner?  Don’t sit up near the host, because invariably you will be told to move down for another.  You should sit at the lowest place, then the host will call you forward.

There are many things in the Kingdom that we are given by grace and ercy and love and we should claim them boldly and without shame, that God has been our friend.  But there are some things you just shouldn’t claim.  It’s like the guy who gives out a business card that says, “the Lord’s most humble servant.”  You can actually claim some things about yourself that prove the opposite.

I believe that there are some in this life that are friends of God.  Most will live and go on to eternity unknown to this world, possibly by a few.  Eternity will celebrate these the most.  Many that are known are heard but rarely listened to.  But the true friends of God won’t say it about themselves.  They’re too busy actually dong what He says.

Peace.

“Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ be made of no effect.”

It is amazing to me that the most powerful event in history, the death and resurrection of the Son of God sent as the Word to Earth, can be made of no effect by those attempting to preach it.

The language here is interesting.  Notice Paul does not say “to a lesser or diminished effect” … but “no effect.”  None.  Zero.

And how can we do this?  Through preaching the gospel with “wisdom of words.”

Biblically speaking, there were three main ways that Christianity, the Gospel, was proven true.  In no particular order: the righteous behavior of those who followed Christ, the love between the brethren, and supernatural manifestations.

Unfortunately, it is rare to find believers or churches who believe all three are possible and valid for today.  But these are all evidence in the power of God through the cross.  Because without the power of God, these things couldn’t exist.

As for the first I listed, righteous behavior, by far the most modernly unpopular, Paul talked about “weapons of righteousness in the right and left hand”, the “breastplate of righteousness”.  Peter talked about living a righteous life so that when they bring you before judges and religious leaders to persecute you, they will have “nothing evil to say of you.”  The Church in Antioch had such a testimony that it was the non-believers of the city that called them “little Jesus”, Christian.

Paul was very concerned about his testimony as he preached the Gospel.  Often he pointed out not only his behavior but the behavior of all with him as people blameless and acting with all humility and grace.

The power of the cross not only forgives us of sin but breaks the power of sin over us.  Those aren’t two different works, but the same.  In fact, if forgiveness was all we needed, that was available through the Old Covenant and the Law and those religious sacrifices and duties.  The new work done on the cross was the complete victory over sin.

Read the Apostle John’s first letter without explaining parts of it away, and you’ll see what I mean.

For the second, the love of the brethren, we not only get Jesus’ inclusion to “love your neighbor as yourself” in the greatest commandment to love God, but we also get a brand new commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.”  The New Covenant standard is not to love “as you love yourself” only (that too), but to now “love as Christ has loved you.”

The verses with love in them are astounding: “love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the Law”, “love never fails”, “let all that you do be done with love”, “above all things put on love, which is the bond of perfection”, and many, many more.

For the third, supernatural manifestations, we see again and again that the Lord validated ministry and preaching by miraculous signs and wonders.  Through both the ministry of Jesus and Paul and Peter and the early Church, miracles were common enough and used for all sorts of purposes: to encourage, to convict, to break the power of evil spirits.

And we’re not talking about just healing or deliverance, either.  As Paul is encouraging the church at Corinth to seek the gift of prophecy over tongues, that they can each prophesy one by one and in order, he gives an example of a non-believer who comes into the meeting and hears all prophesy: “he is convinced by all, he is judged by all.  And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you.”

Notice the man did not hear a great sermon or teaching or argument, he witnessed a people doing something corporately supernatural, each speaking the “oracles of God” one by one and in order.

Peter tells us that when we speak, speak as the “oracles of God.”  This means speak by the Spirit as if God was speaking.  Revelation calls prophecy the “testimony of Jesus,” which causes me to question whether we can even preach the good news of Jesus Christ, the Gospel, without operating to some degree within the prophetic.

Allow me to transition here to exactly what Paul says he used to preach the Gospel: “And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring the testimony of God.  For I determined not to know anything among you except Christ and Him crucified.  I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.  And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.“

This is how we make the cross of no effect.  We place the power of salvation on human means of persuasion instead of the Spirit of God and the simple message of the cross.  The degree to which we use such human methods places faith not in God but in “the wisdom of men.”  And then we wonder why we don’t have the power or the faith to do what is right and love the Body and see God work in supernatural ways.

The power of the cross doesn’t need my philosophical defense, my historic proof, or my flashy display.  It simply stands alone as proof and only the Spirit can validate the message.  You do not discuss or debate the cross.  You declare it.

A man convinced by an argument will follow weakly until he hears a better argument.  Then he will follow the new argument weakly.  But a man convicted and changed by the Spirit of God Himself is overwhelmed to live in the extreme.  Paul knew this better than anyone.  He couldn’t win the argument with Stephen … and went right on persecuting Christians; it took a supernatural encounter with the Spirit of God to actually change him.

We make excuses as to why we can’t live “holy as I am holy”, barely see or know the Body of Christ enough to even call them friends, and come up with great theological arguments as to why we don’t see the miraculous much anymore.  But we replace it all with philosophical discussions and political causes and historical proofs and flashy entertainment.  And then we wonder how so many Christians can be so unsatisfied and why the world just doesn’t break down our doors to hear truth.

I’m telling you that if the world saw a people who lived righteous, lived life of sacrificial love with other believers as family and their primary relationships, performed miracles and spoke only with the power of the Spirit, they would either flock to Christ through us unashamed or try to kill us.  Those are both biblical reactions to truth.

There are some who live such a life, or at least make an all out attempt to do so.  But it is difficult.  That is why it is called the narrow way.  Not because it is difficult to understand but because it is difficult to follow.

Peace.

“those who went before and those who followed cried out, saying, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”

As I was reading through some scriptures on the week leading up to the crucifixion, this passage stuck in my brain and I’ve been meditating on it ever since.

In context, Jesus is coming into Jerusalem and being hailed as a king.  Did they really believe Messiah?  Hard to say, but it was the reception of a king, nonetheless.

The phrase I found interesting is “those who went before and those who followed.”  Some preceded Jesus into the city, while others followed.  But they all cried out the same thing.

Not mind boggling, necessarily, but important to realize that all men of God before and after the manifestation of the Son of Man were speaking of Christ.

Jesus deals with this in the Gospel of John when He says to the Jews of His day, “You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life.  These are the scriptures that testify of Me, but you are not willing to come to Me that you might have life.”  This helps us to understand the purpose for even the Old Testament, which was the scripture Jesus was speaking of here.  The Old Testament wasn’t an end of itself but a preparation for a greater revelation, Christ Himself.  To read the Old Testament apart from ultimately being fulfilled in Christ the Person will lead to bad teaching.

I’m also reminded of when three of the twelve were taken to a mountain and Jesus is revealed along with Moses and Elijah.  As the three disciples were about to make an altar to all three, they were blinded temporarily, and when they could see, only Jesus was left.  God says, “This is My Son. Listen to Him.”

The Bible says the Law came through Moses but grace and truth through Jesus.  Was there not grace and truth before?  Not apart from the person of Christ, no.  Jesus later explains that He sends His own Spirit to lead us into “all truth.”

I’m rambling here, but suffice it to say that there is no greater perspective to understand all truth than the perspective of Jesus through His Spirit.  In fact, you need nothing else apart from the Person Who declared Himself to be the Truth to receive it.  You cannot fully understand any of the scripture, the Old Testament included, unless you have a proper revelation of the Son of God by His Spirit.

Both the Greek and Jewish ways of thinking cannot perceive the truth of Christ, as Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians.  God is Spirit and can therefore only be fully and truly understood through the Spirit.  We should no longer even know Christ after the flesh, either, but only by the Spirit.  Christianity is so spiritual that all fleshly designations are put to death in Him (no Jew or Gentile, barbarian, slave or free), and we are not to even know one another after the flesh.

The men of God who came before spoke of Christ through a mystery.  They prepared the way for the Word being made flesh, even through veiled glimpses into the glory that was to later come.  But we who have followed after the Word was made flesh, we declare a present reality not a future mystery.  We deal in substance where they dealt in shadow.  The ones before said, in essence, “He is coming”, not really knowing what that meant.  We say, “He has come”, knowing the boundless treasure that truth entails.  For He not only came in the flesh two thousand years ago, but the Word is continually “made flesh” in and among His people.

Peace.