According to Understanding

Job 19:23-27b; Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Luke 20:27-38; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5,13-17

Central Baptist Church—Lowesville, VA

11 November 2007

We are all too accustomed to mixed messages. We decry the evil of abortion and promote war. We hear “care for the needy” and “look out for number one.” We distrust politicians and expect them to work for the common good. We expound the value of education and invest our resources on comfort and entertainment. We decry the fast food industry’s complicity on poor health and nutrition and support it with our dollars. We speak of Christ as Lord and ignore God’s will. Is it even possible to live according to our understanding of God’s presence in our lives? Can our lives speak a clear message of God’s love without the mix of competing drives?

The people of Haggai’s day cared for their own interests. They had descent homes. They had food, shelter, and clothing. They did not believe they had enough resources to do more than care for themselves. At the same time, they claimed faith in Yahweh. They claimed God’s provision, while the temple lay in ruins and they ignored responsibility for its rebuilding. They claimed faith, but did not live according to their claim. They spoke of Yahweh’s provision, but their actions did not expect provision to be sufficient for their own needs and to fulfill Yahweh’s will. Haggai decried a lack of faith. He decried an empty confidence in God’s providing for the needs of both people and temple. Do we live in the confidence of God’s presence and provision?

In psychology class, we called it cognitive dissonance. That is when we hold two conflicting ideas to be true, without recognize that one of them must be false. We claim Jesus as Lord. We claim to live according to the will of Christ Jesus. We claim Jesus’ words as the very words of God. We know of those who make these same claims with us, yet teach that God will bless the faithful believer with health, wealth, social status. We know that Jesus never made or lived such prosperity claims. If we critique others for such dissonant ideas, our ambitions aren’t so different from those who tout a prosperity gospel. How do our lives send mixed messages about faith in God?

Job’s words formed a stark contrast to the reality of his experience. Having lost children, wealth, and health, he claimed God’s faithfulness. He spoke with assurance that God would redeem his life. He knew God was on his side, despite circumstances and evidence to the contrary. Job’s “friends” did not agree. They were convinced that God had it out for Job, but Job’s faith was resolute. He lived in accord with the confidence he declared in God. He prayed for understanding. He bared his soul. He continued to profess confidence in God’s care. How do we respond to faith calling for trust beyond appearances?

We don’t really like to have others upset the apple cart of our lives. We are more comfortable with the security of who we are than with the challenge to be transformed into more than we are used to being. When someone attacks our beliefs, identity, or actions, our natural response is to raise barriers to protect ourselves from critique. On one level, this is what Job was doing as his friends critiqued him, judging that he must be guilty of sin for calamity to have fallen on him. Despite self-preservation instincts, Job truly was righteous before God. He stood in full confidence that he need not defend himself, but could trust God to handle it for him. He cast himself upon the care of his Creator. Do we live with this confidence or allow life’s uncertainties to overcome our comfort in Christ?

The Sadducees brought Jesus their best trick-question. They were sure there was no such thing as resurrection, after-life, spirit, or angels. They already knew what they believed, so now they came to pin Jesus in a corner. They knew that Levirate marriage provided for a woman’s care in this life. She needed a son or a husband to provide for her in a male-rights economy. Levirate marriage ensured her welfare. It obviously had no bearing on an eternity in which they did not believe.

Their understanding came from reading Scriptures sharing this view of life as limited to one’s experience of this world. They simply missed the same Scriptures hinting that there was more to life than earthly experience. They claimed God as God of the living, yet ignored God’s continued claim as the Patriarchs’ God. Their understanding of God was insufficient, but neither did they live according to the full truth they had accepted. They ignored some teachings to under gird their pattern of living. Claiming to follow Scripture did not mean they fulfilled their claim.

The Sadducees often claimed something akin to the prosperity theology we still hear today. They claimed God’s blessings upon themselves, for they held power and position. They claimed that those who were not living according to the blessings of this world were not living according to God’s will. They could not accept God’s presence and blessing on those whose lives were different than their own. Their stance fed their own sense of importance, but ignored God’s love, care, and provision for others for whom they should have accepted responsibility as agents of God’s care. Is it possible to live in full acceptance of God’s presence all around us?

If we claim God’s love, provision, and care while claiming to be God’s servants, our actions must speak in the same tones. If we believe in God’s grace, love, and acceptance, our lives must demonstrate the same qualities we claim as belonging to our Lord. Will our lives speak clearly of God’s character?

Paul wrote to remind Thessalonian believers of the faith they already claimed. He was not so much teaching the Thessalonians as reaffirming. They had trusted Jesus as Lord. They knew Jesus’ was yet to be revealed in coming glory. They understood persecution as part of the waiting experience of believers. All they were really lacking was the act of confidently living according to the understanding they claimed.

There were several Roman Emperors in the First Century who claimed the status of deity. In A.D. 70, Caesar’s image was erected in the Jerusalem Temple as a pig was sacrificed by the Romans. This was the capstone of Roman-Jewish hostilities paving the destruction of Jerusalem. As Paul writes, this is still a future event for which Jesus had prepared the disciples. Jesus had warned of approaching doom over Jerusalem and the Temple’s destruction. This period of tribulation was important enough for Jesus to warn the disciples to flee Judea when it came. It was no reason for losing faith, but a fact of history that was unfolding. This was not an event that would usher in a military campaign of Messiah.

Paul reminds the Thessalonians that Christ’s appearing in glory was not a question of a sudden reversal of fortunes in Jerusalem, but a question of their own living. In the gospel, they had already received the glory of Christ Jesus. This revealing of Christ Jesus in their lives was to work itself out in the manner of their living. They were to live according to the grace, love, and purpose of God. By so doing, they would reveal Christ to the world.

Paul called them to live according to what they already understood. They were to send the world a clear message of grace and love. Their actions would reveal the presence and identity of Christ. Do we trust Jesus to be as present today as in believers some 2000 years ago?

—©2007 Christopher B. Harbin