Good

Luke 18:19 NIV

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good — except God alone.”

What Is Really Good?

Can I be blamed for thinking that California is one of the best places on Earth to live?  Of course there is much that is wrong with the state but nearly all of its problems can be pinned on the values and actions of those who live there.  There is something to be said though of a region that has both Yosemite and Muir Woods, the beaches of San Diego and the San Francisco Bay.  California certainly isn’t perfect but there are some aspects of it that approach perfection.  I was driving with a friend through Mississippi and he introduced me to the woods there, pointing out how lovely the forests were.  It was about like when I went with a classmate to visit his family living in Southwest Missouri and he commented on the beauty of the Ozark Mountains.  Now I am not one to denigrate another person’s “pride and joy”  but I had difficulty complimenting the skinny pine trees of Mississippi after hiking through redwood groves in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  And I must say that there are mountains and then there are MOUNTAINS.  Who am I to tell someone what to like and not like.  Perhaps New York pizza really is better than Chicago style and Japanese cars are better than Russian ones.  Yet am I correct in telling you that you would be happier living in the San Francisco Bay Area than you would be  staying in Amsterdam or Beijing, or Branson, Missouri?  We have a right to our opinions…and every one of us has them!

Goodness has the feeling of being just another aspect of opinion.  If you say you’re good, does that mean you are?  Serial killers and pedophiles and vandals who tag sidewalks may say they are good and really believe they are but is it true?  Probably even Stalin’s mom saw something good in him and Hitler was respected and honored by quite a few people.  It is funny though how easy it is for us to see the good in ourselves and not see it in others.  We use a sort of sliding scale when we evaluate people…whether it is ourselves or others.  Part of the reason we can see good in “bad” people is that there still is in each of us the hint of the good God put in us when he made us.  It may not be developed goodness or disciplined goodness we see, it might only be strand of what was left in us when the Lord put us together but it is there and we fool ourselves into thinking that is who we are rather than the hint of the good of God Himself. 

The account of James and John thinking they were good because they wanted fire to come down from heaven and burn up a poor Samaritan village because the people had the audacity to not want to pay to feed and house Jesus and His disciples is too true to human nature ever to have been fabricated.  As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.  And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"   But Jesus turned and rebuked them,  and they went to another village. (Luke 9:51-55 NIV)  I am sure, and probably you are too, that James and John thought they meant well, thought their hearts were in the right place but clearly Jesus saw things differently.  It was not good that fueled their anger at the Samaritans although if you had asked them before Jesus rebuked them, they probably would have seen themselves as good people.  You and I can’t judge them.  We might just as well have said exactly what James and John did if we were there.  This though is the problem with the strand of good we all have and make much of.  All too many of us think we are so good that we don’t need God…don’t need Him to significantly change us, don’t need Him to remake us.

I can’t imagine Jesus was very happy with one of the discussions the disciples had when He was gone.  If it were not for the fact that it was so very telling of the human condition, we might get a good laugh at it.  Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.  Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.  But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Luke 22:24-26 NIV)  Now if we just think a bit about this whole argument, there is a critical observation we must make.  At no point do the disciples consider what part God must play in their lives for them to be good!  It is all about them and their abilities, their morality, their skills, their religion.  God is not even needed.  Did they have to be saved?  Was there any hint in them that salvation was required?  It is fascinating, this strange reluctance to see ourselves, to really look at who we are without God.  We have that strand of good in us to keep us content but the truth of who we are eventually hits us.  We need a Savior.

Consider the sad case of Joseph and his brothers.  Joseph’s brothers were fed up with Joseph.  They had enough of Joseph being the favorite of their father, enough of his proud strutting about with his fancy coat and enough of the dreams he claimed to have had that according to Joseph foretold that they all, even their mothers and father would bow before Joseph one day as if he were some sort of king.  The boys decided to fix Joseph and with their dad not around, sold him into slavery.  So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe — the richly ornamented robe he was wearing — and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it.  As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.  Judah said to his brothers, "What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?  Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood." His brothers agreed.  So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:23-28 NIV)

Evil like that is tough to comprehend.  How could anyone do such a thing and yet it was done.  Each one of those brothers thought he was a better person than Joseph.  Each believed Joseph was arrogant, selfish and self-righteous.  You don’t sell your brother into slavery if you haven’t decided he is pretty bad.  Here is the irony of this.  Each brother felt like he was good, a decent soul because that strand of good was in him, and yet…At least two of them became murderers, one slept with his father’s common-law wife and one sought out prostitutes after his wife died.  We don’t know about the rest…they were at least bad enough to sell their own brother into slavery.  Here is what we see in all of us.  Each brother thought he was the good one…at least better than his brother was and each brother thought his brother was worse than he was, more evil and needing to be fixed.

There is a passage in Isaiah that does not receive the attention it deserves.  It has a profound message describing what God is going to do with us.  He will save us, that is true…or we should say He does save us.  The prophecy was made eight hundred years before Jesus brought us our salvation though and it says something quite important about what that salvation will do for us.  A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.  And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.  For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 40:3-5 NIV)  You and I are that desert.  You are the one God will Himself make right so that you are a fit place for Him to live.  The good you think is good will be made perfect.  No strand of self-righteousness will be left to it for God Himself in Christ will make it truly good.  The evil in you will be leveled, and torn out and the glory of the LORD will be revealed in you.  Everyone will see it…that you are perfect, lovely in every way.  God will walk in you and make His home in you and nothing, not the worst of your sins, not the ugliest of evil that could ever be found in you will be there anymore.  There will be no corrupted goodness, no pretend morality or broken love or fractured peace.  Only goodness, real goodness that perfect God can make of you.  He has spoken.  And once again God will say of you.  “You are very good.”

Broken Bread

Luke 24:35 NIV

Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Does It Matter To You What Christ Wants?

The world is morphing at light speed.  Yet the most important parts of life have not changed a whit since Adam and Eve left the garden and pursued their dreams with Sin permeating their thinking.  We must contend with the same concerns David, the second King of Israel, did as well as those of the disciples who followed Jesus.  Last week I was asked by someone whose opinion matters to me, “Why do you stay with that same little church?  Why don’t you do something different?”  Someone else wanted to know what I planned on doing with the books I have written.  The implication was that my life might improve if I made certain changes.  Of course I was glad that people I love care about me and I knew they meant well but both times I found my heart pricked by a pang of disappointment that troubled me.  Why do I face so many difficulties?  What can I do to improve my life?  Do I need to make a change?  Should I be a bit more proactive in meeting my own needs?  Have I thrown away my life doing what I do?

You have important decisions to make about how you will use the time you have been given.  It is a bit daunting trying to have the best life possible because you only have one shot at it and then you are finished, at least with this temporal existence.  Without becoming overly melodramatic, there is a certain urgency to your decisions, as probably you want to make the most of what you do and squeeze out of your life the greatest amount of fulfillment you can.  There has been a philosophy which nearly all people around the world have adopted and it is illustrated by a request two of Jesus’ disciples had for Christ.  Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. "Teacher," they said, "we want you to do for us whatever we ask."   "What do you want me to do for you?" he asked. They replied, "Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory." (Mark 10:35-37 NIV)

Is it crazy to want something for yourself?  Don’t you have a right to try and make the most of your life, to achieve your goals and fulfill your dreams?  The Christian community generally believes James and John were philosophically in step with the great human push for fulfillment and personal achievement.  Much of the Church promotes this line of thinking and in fact usually celebrates it.  Jesus however seemed perturbed by the request and His response to the brothers reflected that.  Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. (Mark 10:42-45 NIV)

This of course was not what the disciples were expecting and if it were not for our familiarity with the text, it would not be for us either.  Consider carefully Jesus’ response when told by the twelve disciples that the huge crowd He had been teaching was famished.  "You give them something to eat." (Luke 9:13 NIV)  What were they supposed to do?  They didn’t have the money to pay for food for the crowd of thousands and although they were able to come up with two small fish and five loaves of bread between them, it seemed ludicrous to think they should provide food for all the people.  Keep in mind what Jesus demanded.  He did not expect them to be able to feed everyone.  He did tell the disciples to give the crowd the food they had after He blessed it.  There was no room here for the twelve to get a snack for themselves first before they started giving away the bread and fish.  They had to hand over all they had without any promise of getting any of it back.

The Sermon on the Mount is often read but rarely taken seriously.  We solemnly proclaim it as “God’s word” but mostly ignore it.  Notice the theme woven throughout.  Here is just a quick overview of some of what is found in it.  Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.  If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.  Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:39-42 NIV)  And then He tells us what to do about our enemies.  But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...(Matthew 5:44 NIV)  Further, we are not even free to entertain ourselves however we want in the sanctity of our own mind.  I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  (Matthew 5:28-29 NIV)  Even if we are justified in our anger over how we are treated, we do not have the right to hold a grudge.  We are to forgive immediately any mistreatment we have received.  For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  (Matthew 6:14-15 NIV)  Perhaps most difficult of all, we are not free to criticize others.  "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” (Matthew 7:1 NIV)

If you put all of these admonitions of Christ together, you do not find a formula for success!  In fact, it does not even seem to matter to God how things go for you, whether you are liked or not, whether you have fun or don’t, whether you get what you have earned or you are cheated out of what you deserve.  You are here it seems, to make the lives of others better no matter how much it costs you.  That of course is not the Christianity we find promoted but it is what Christ has said Christianity is.  I recently heard of a pastor who discovered a couple of bags of trash dumped in the church dumpster by someone from the neighbor and not with the church.  He found somehow the address of who it was that left it there and brought all the trash back to the person’s house.  Is that what we find described in the Sermon on the Mount?

The Old Testament has a lovely picture of how Christianity is intended to look.  In the badly corrupted kingdom of Israel, a pagan king and queen ruled.  The person they put in charge of their palace was Obadiah, a man of faith who risked his life to save over a hundred prophets of God from being murdered by King Ahab’s soldiers.  The great prophet Elijah approached Obadiah while Obadiah was walking through the countryside.  Elijah wanted a meeting with King Ahab and asked Obadiah to arrange it due to his connection as palace administrator. 

As Obadiah was walking along, Elijah met him. Obadiah recognized him, bowed down to the ground, and said, "Is it really you, my lord Elijah?"   "Yes," he replied. "Go tell your master, 'Elijah is here.'"  "What have I done wrong," asked Obadiah, "that you are handing your servant over to Ahab to be put to death?  As surely as the Lord your God lives, there is not a nation or kingdom where my master has not sent someone to look for you. And whenever a nation or kingdom claimed you were not there, he made them swear they could not find you.  But now you tell me to go to my master and say, 'Elijah is here.'  I don't know where the Spirit of the Lord may carry you when I leave you. If I go and tell Ahab and he doesn't find you, he will kill me. Yet I your servant have worshiped the Lord since my youth.  Haven't you heard, my lord, what I did while Jezebel was killing the prophets of the Lord? I hid a hundred of the Lord's prophets in two caves, fifty in each, and supplied them with food and water…And now you tell me to go to my master and say, 'Elijah is here.' He will kill me!" (1 Kings 18:7-10, 14)

Obadiah faced a very real dilemma.  Would he risk his life to do what Elijah asked?  Without complaint he already had done more than enough to qualify as a good and godly man but now it felt like too much to ask of him.  Many will only go so far when it comes to practicing Christianity.  When it gets uncomfortable or inconvenient, how easy to just walk away from the tough demand of God!  Many Christian people are good at telling God, “No!”  Obadiah took the demand of Elijah as some sort of punishment. “What have I done wrong?”  He had not done anything wrong!  He was in fact gloriously right in his actions.  So why did God put him in such a dangerous spot?  God chose Obadiah to bless God’s people by giving up his right to manage his life as he saw fit.    How would he do it?  By opening the door for Elijah to speak with King Ahab!

We do not choose how God will use us to feed the world.  Like bread that is broken off and shared or juice that is poured into a cup and passed along, we are nourishment for a world hungry for God.  Your ignoring of an insult, generous gift, kind words, moral purity, love for people who should be despised is the bread God uses to feed starving people.   You may say that it does not matter if I hold back my criticism but you cannot know who will notice what you have done and be drawn to Christ by it.  When you are not aware of God using you, when you are simply doing the good thing our Lord has said to do, Christ will use that good thing to nourish someone, encourage someone, strengthen someone or heal a wound in someone.  You may not know in your lifetime what a great deed you did simply by forgiving someone or not paying attention to the mistake that person made but someday you will see how you were nourishing bread for a person starving for the generosity of God; thirsty for His mercy.

Imagine the tiny desert lily, hidden away next to a rock but without warning a gentle breeze carries its fragrance off to an unsuspecting soul who at the moment it reaches her, gains courage to try to put her marriage back together, stop drinking or find enough hope to go to one more job interview.  In that instant, the forgotten lily becomes the hand of God when He seemed to be no longer there.  You are that lily and by just doing what God says to do, your fragrance brings hope once more to those who may have lost hope along the way.  Never underestimate the power of Christ to transform your simple actions of generosity, kindness and forgiveness into the power God uses to put together new lives through the Gospel of Christ.

Perception

Jeremiah 1:11 NIV

 The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?"

"I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied.

Are You Certain of What You See?

The very first time Mary Jo and I went out together, I borrowed a friend’s car and took her to the Robert E. Lee Theater.   This was a two story movie theater and it was the fanciest in New Orleans.  The movie we saw was quite memorable…it was the four hour “Reds”…and yes, it felt more like eight hours.  I more than made up for the terrible movie choice by getting Mary Jo nachos.  She had never before had nachos and so I felt like I had brought her to the Eiffel Tower or taken her on a camel ride through Morocco.  The nachos even had jalapeño slices on it.  Now for a year and a half we did these same sorts of things…I took her places, paid for the meal or the movie…just the two of us and we had fun together.  She didn’t go with any other guys to movies or restaurants or festivals during this time and I didn’t go with any other girls.  Imagine my surprise after a year and a half of this exclusive attention we gave to each other my discovery that Mary Jo did not think we were dating.  I kind of wondered what she thought we had been doing all this time…going on field trips…creating a review of restaurants…baby-sitting each other?  I thought, and call me “crazy”, that we had been dating the past year.  So here we were, two sane adults, experiencing the very same events and engaging in conversations together over a very long period of time, having completely different views of what we had been doing this whole time.

What is fascinating about perception is that it is a function of reality that is really real.  A wind really does blow a pine cone off a tree.  A bank really does charge you a fee for bouncing a check.  Your wife really does say, “I love you” and your boss really does warn you of potential lay-offs.  The car in front of you actually stopped and you did hit it and your mom told you that if you did not clean up your room, she would take your IPad away from you.  Really real things happen all around us but sometimes it is more important for us and for others our perception of those real things rather than the real things themselves.  One man commits suicide when his girlfriend breaks up with him but another man whose girlfriend breaks up with him finds someone else to date.  One child cries when a bully punches him but another child swings back and laughs about it afterward.  A mother frets anxiously about her son coming home late from a party; another falls asleep peacefully before he gets back.  Perception is not always reality but the two go hand in hand in determining the reality of many outcomes in life.

There is in the ancient writings of the prophet Habakkuk a case study on perception.  As the Babylonian armies began their approach toward Jerusalem it became clear to all Judea that the invasion could not be stopped.  Judah’s armies had no answer for the Babylonian juggernaut.  Destruction of Jerusalem seemed inevitable; slavery, rape and even death a real possibility for anyone still alive when the Babylonians finally overran the city.  Habakkuk faced the hard cold reality of invasion with not a hint of fluffy optimism.  His prayer to God was simple and direct.  Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet… (Habakkuk 3:17-18 NIV)  As Habakkuk writes, nothing is settled.  The invasion hasn’t begun.  The walls of Jerusalem are still intact.  The farms and ranches continue to provide food for everyone.  Yet…Habakkuk added in the space between what seemed to be coming and what was there before him.  This was where reality met perception for Habakkuk and we face it too.  How we respond to “yet” is critical to the reality that we have as it was for Habakkuk.  The “yet” for Habakkuk was, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:18 NIV)  This was the way Habakkuk saw things.  If everything falls apart and it goes from bad to worse, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.  Perception was unbending in the circumstance…crops failed or not, sheep in the pen or taken, grapes sweet and luscious or shriveled and hard, Habakkuk would see it all as “God is my Savior…I will love Him.”

In the book of Daniel is a second case study of perception.  A few years later, after Babylon had conquered Jerusalem and brought a number of the Jews back to Babylon with them, some of the captives because of their special abilities were given significant government jobs.  Three of them, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego faced a terrible dilemma just as they really got started in their careers.  The king enacted a law that whenever a traveling band came to your town and began to play, if anyone refused to worship the ninety foot gold portable idol they brought with them, those people would be thrown into a blazing furnace.  The reality was that this idol was before the three Jewish young men, the music was playing and the furnace was stoked and available for anyone refusing to worship the golden idol.  Perception of the reality was voiced by the three men who faced squarely their fate even as they refused to bow in worship to the idol. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.  But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:16-18 NIV)  The adjustment in thinking the three men made to the reality of the furnace and the king’s fury and the idol was simple.  Our hope is in God regardless of how things turn and we will not worship idols.  That was the perception they all had of the situation they faced.  This was how they looked at the idol and the furnace and the angry king.

The third case study we shall examine took place in a secret place where Jesus was with his disciples.  He told them exactly what to expect soon.  And he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." (Luke 9: 22 NIV)  Now we must take these two parts of the reality separately.  The first is that Jesus was telling the disciples that the religious leaders were going to reject him outright and because of this, He would have to be killed.  This had to be terribly disconcerting to them, perhaps even depressing.  And of course that is what happened.  Jesus was crucified and the disciples had to face it.  Reality was the end of dreams, broken plans and the loss of a beloved friend.  All of this Jesus told them to expect and they had it.  The death of Jesus came and it was real dying.  So what were they to do?  What perception of this were they to form of Jesus being dead?  How were they to view Christ crucified; which was very different than Christ healing and Christ teaching and Christ eating with them and potentially taking over the nation of Israel as her king?

Jesus told the Disciples two things.  He would die and He would be raised from the dead.  Those two were interconnected at every point.  The Disciples would have taken these two parts as completely different matters, at least during the three days when Jesus was dead but not raised from the dead.  Since then though, the two are never separated from one another.  The crucified Christ is reality and the raised Christ is reality and both determine perception in every single circumstance.  When the Disciples saw a bright future filled with success and happiness, Jesus saw Himself crucified.  When the Disciples saw all hope dashed and their lives crushed, Jesus saw Himself raised from the dead.  We can either perceive things as the Disciples did or see all we face as Jesus saw things.  What do I mean by that?

When Christ died, He took the Sin of mankind into His body and it was crucified with Him when He died.  The Apostle Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV)  In Hebrews we find a similar statement.  But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26 NIV)  The death of Christ did away with Sin because Sin died with Him when He died.  When this happened we became free to see things from God’s point of view.  Before, Sin corrupted our thinking and made us Satan’s fool, but, after the Cross when we are made right with God through the cross of Christ Sin is worked out of us and we can think with God’s mind and understand things.  Sin does not direct our thinking!  The Cross meant victory!  The Disciples thought it was defeat.  We with Sin see trials and troubles and hardship and unfair circumstances.  With Christ and our Sin taken from us, we see God working everything out for our good, we see our lives being put together in a perfect way.  We see strength of character building and holiness developing and love growing pure and true.  With Sin out of the way, we can reinterpret everything so we see things as they are and not as they seem.

With the Cross came resurrection.  Peter says this of the resurrection’s effect on us.  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1 Peter 1:3-4 NIV)  The Resurrection is the most astounding event in the history of mankind because it was the power of God revealed in Jesus Christ.  If there is one enemy of us all, if there is any unifying force that we cannot break, it is death and with the Resurrection, death is broken and the operating system of every one of us is hope.  Hope rises above every problem we face.  If death is a shattered enemy, then what is unemployment in God’s hands…what is disease…what is divorce…what is infertility…what is injury or insult or persecution…what is failure…what is disappointment…what is rejection when it is in God’s hands?  Resurrection is the creator of hope at every point in life…hope is the bright dawn and it casts no shadows because it is built by the Resurrection of Christ and that is reality.  When Jesus Christ rose from the dead and He really did rise…over five hundred different people in many different places saw Him alive…He made hope the reality for every single situation we face.  Hope is not in resurrection, it rises from the Resurrection and we can hope and have real hope because hope is not a dream of something that could happen.  It really is what is happening because the resurrection of Christ really occurred in history and the resurrection is working through every circumstance we encounter wherever we go and whatever we face.