John 21:21 NIV
When Peter saw him,
he asked, "Lord, what about him?"
Are You Surprised By How Things Have Gone?
I like a story with
surprising twists and turns. Whether it
is a book or a movie, I want it to have some unpredictability to it. I have
recently been reading To Kill A Mockingbird. It has been fifty years since I read it the
first time and I had forgotten enough of the storyline to be caught off guard
by parts of the book. Yet based on
popularity alone, it seems that most Americans want their stories to go as
predicted. The cute couple eventually
gets together, the villain is caught, the aliens are destroyed, the good guys
survive and win in the end. Every once
in a while a La La Land comes along that catches me by surprise but generally like
most, I want stories to end the way I expect them to end. There is comfort in predictability. I get Campbell’s Tomato Soup because I know
how it will taste and it is good enough for me.
That is why I choose Gala apples and vanilla ice cream. I know what I will find when I bite into it.
When I was young and
studying chemistry I was surprised to discover that electrons did not revolve
around the nucleus in simple and predictable orbitals. New information threw the old pictures of
atomic structures out of whack. It
turned out that electrons move about chaotically. One can never predict where a given electron
will be. It might be within a certain
area but its action is irrational and chaotic and you cannot even know where it
is when you try to find it. Many
philosophers describe the universe in a similar way. There is chaos and unpredictability to
it. “The universe is irrational without
any intelligence behind it”, they contend.
Some people are comfortable with that notion. They like the idea that nothing is certain or
trustworthy.
When it comes to
Christianity, the majority of church people believe there is one place of certainty
and predictability. It is God. They speak of Him in ways that a
mathematician speaks of her field. We
want our God to be predictable, mathematically determinable. If we do this, God does that. When this happens, it is because God has this
in mind. God is stable. He goes this way or that but always in a
logical and understandable process. We
want God to be reasonable and sensible to us.
There must be formulas that he follows, certain equations that determine
His actions. No one would design a god
who can’t be counted on to run smoothly, to make His payments and provide His
dividends. The world has its eye on a
mathematical God. Do you?
Job and his friends were
certain that God was bound up in rules and obligations…that there were formulas
they could use to predict his actions.
What makes the book of Job so disorienting is that all the main
characters discovered the Lord was not programmable. He did not give Job an easy life because Job
was honest, moral and generous. Job’s
friends knew God had to behave in certain ways and when He didn’t, they decided
something must have been wrong with Job.
Like the jurists in To Kill A Mockingbird who could not
recalibrate when the evidence went against their determinations, Job’s friends
could not comprehend that God would put Job through so much pain and suffering
it Job was not a bad man. They thought
God was mathematical when He isn’t.
Jonah had the same
problem. He had in mind a mathematical
God when he heard God tell him to go to Nineveh and preach judgment to the
people there. Jonah did not expect that
kind of job. The Lord was predictable to
him. A terrible and cruel people like
the Assyrians would be burnt to a crisp by God.
They didn’t need any warnings…just fire from heaven. Yet that was not what happened. God gave the Ninevites a chance to repent,
they took it and God mercifully gave the Assyrians the opportunity to try
again. That did not fit Jonah’s God
formula and he fell into a deep depression over his miscalculations.
Consider the strange case
of Josiah, one of the last kings of Judah.
He was young when he became king, just eight years old. His grandfather was perhaps the cruelest and
most ungodly king Judah ever had. Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood
that he filled Jerusalem from end to end — besides the sin that he had caused
Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord. As for the other events of Manasseh's reign,
and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the
book of the annals of the kings of Judah?
(2 Kings 21:16-18 NIV) His father was no better a king and after two
years of reigning, the people were so fed up with him that he was
assassinated. That left Josiah as next
in line. After eighteen years being
king, Josiah ordered that the Temple of God be cleaned and restored. For nearly sixty years it had been a center
of pagan worship and it fell into ruin.
Josiah though loved the Lord and when a book of the Law was found in the
wreckage, Josiah turned his life over to God and dedicated himself to following
Him wholeheartedly. Then the king
called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the Lord with the
men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets — all the
people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words
of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the
Lord. The king stood by the pillar and
renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep
his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus
confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people
pledged themselves to the covenant.
(2 Kings 23:1-3 NIV)
How would God treat such
a man as this, let alone a king like him?
It would seem that God would do with him as he did with Josiah’s
great-grandfather who also was faithful to the Lord. When faced with a great international threat
and insurmountable odds, the Lord intervened on Hezekiah’s behalf and wrecked
the army that came against him and the people.
That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred
and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the
next morning — there were all the dead bodies! (2 Kings 19:35 NIV) Plug in the variables, use your God formula
and you have your answer for how things will go. When the Egyptians formed a great army and
posed a threat to Josiah’s kingdom, Josiah pulled together all his fighting
forces and went up against the Egyptians in battle. Everything would turn out fine he probably
told his wife and kids as he left to go battle the Egyptians. His generals he reassured that if they fought
hard, the Lord would bring them victory.
Everything fit the God formula.
Good king. Growing faith among
the people! What could go wrong?
While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt
went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched
out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo. (2 Kings 23:29 NIV) So what do you
make of that? What should any good
Christian brother or sister just trying to follow Jesus faithfully make of
it? How does that fit into the
mathematics of God? Even the Apostle
Peter wanted to know what algebraic equation to use when trying to calculate the
Lord’s plans for him. As he and the
other apostles were meeting with Jesus on the shore of Galilee after Christ
rose from the dead following His crucifixion, the Lord revealed to Peter what
would come of him. “I tell you the
truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted;
but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will
dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." (John 21:18 NIV)
This was in fact Jesus’ way of telling Peter how
Peter would die. That certainly didn’t
fit into the equation Peter had of how God would deal with him and it must have
thrown him. It would have thrown you. He then asked the Lord about the Apostle
John, "Lord, what about him?"
(John 21:21 NIV) He wanted to
recalculate God with a better equation. He
thought He knew and understood God but now He realized he didn’t. Christ’s reply took it all out of the realm
of mathematics. Jesus answered,
"If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You
must follow me."(John 21:22 NIV)
In other words, “Don’t try to predict what I will do.” “Don’t think I can be understood with a
calculator.” The Lord is not bound by
the rules of physics or logic. His
actions are not determined by what you think is best. He does as He pleases whenever He wants. He is absolutely free.
There is only one way to
think along God’s lines. There is only
this law through which He operates. It
is the Law of Love. Not your love. Not my love.
Pure, undefiled love is how you see into God. John the Apostle, who knew Jesus as well as
anyone has made this clear when He stated, Dear friends, let us love one another, for
love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God,
because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8 NIV) The only way to get into God’s mind is to
love His people. You are as confused
about Him as a rock in a creek bed if you do not love. Love is the map to His personality, it is the
glasses through which we understand His actions. The lowest of minds can think along the lines
of Jesus if love is at play but the great intellects of the world are at a
complete loss to comprehend even the smallest thing of God without love. How can you understand God and know what He
is doing with you? Stare with fixed
attention upon Jesus crucified, His hands riveted to the horizontal beam with
rough iron nails, His feet fixed to the vertical wooden beam with another nail
and the blood drops oozing down from his head.
That is how you understand what He is doing with you. Watch Him as He dies to take from you your
sin. Gaze upon Him as He dies to give
you a new and perfect life. That is how
you figure Him out. It is love through
and through that decides for Christ what He will do at any moment. It is love that determines His actions. Take heed to this. The only ones who get a grasp on God and
understand His ways are those who love and invest with love in the lives of
others. Let this be the way you think
about all you see of God and hear about Him.
Let it be your rule of thumb whenever you look for what the Lord may be
doing with you. And so we know and rely
on the love God has for us. (1 John 4:16 NIV) It may be a surprise ending when it comes to
what happens next for you but you can be certain of this. It will be because God loves you and died to
save you from your sin.
