Many Thanks

Four months into our great Ohio adventure and on Thanksgiving weekend, I figure there's not a more opportune time to get some of the things I'm thankful for out on e-paper. 

So, in no particular order, here's 15 things I'm thankful for...

1. I'm thankful that God has faithfully provided both jobs and great friendships during our first four months in a new city.

2. I'm thankful that, in the shuffle to find gainful employment and means to pay the bills, that we've needed minimal baby-sitting for Anabelle.

3. I'm thankful that, when we have needed baby-sitting, the body of Christ--particularly the Flower and Burns families--have gladly stepped in to fill the need.

4. I'm thankful for Skype, and for the connection Janelle and I are able to have with our families and friends back home.

5. I'm thankful for Rich Mullins, and for words that he wrote to the Lord, such as, "I'm home anywhere, if you are where I am."

6. I'm thankful that, as a great and desperate sinner who has been rescued by faith in the shed blood of Christ,  the accusation of "Hypocrite" can never stick to me.

7. I'm thankful that grace is a free gift resulting in glad obedience, and not a subsidy doled out to nearly deserving hard-workers.

8. I'm thankful for God's gift of mentors and models of His manifold grace.

9. I'm thankful for the quiet and tireless humility that I've watched in a man named Mo.

10. I'm thankful for the intentional, relentless pursuit of souls that I've watched in my friends, Ken and Miss Beverly.

11. I'm thankful for the frighteningly fearless joy I see in my Hawkeye State brothers.

12. I'm thankful that Pastor Bob went door-to-door, inviting the neighborhood kids to Vacation Bible School, and that God blessed his diligence by shedding the light of the Gospel in the hearts of my brothers, my parents and I.

13. I'm thankful that God did a similar work in Janelle's family just a few years later.

14. I'm thankful for my dad and Scott Burns for showing what the Gospel looks like in blue jeans.

15. I'm thankful that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Cowardice, Courage and Pure Religion

All the evidence that I needed to be convinced about man's depravity, my own depravity, was to listen to the news for five minutes this week.

In one week, there's been the Herman Cain allegations and press conferences while entire European economies falling apart. There was a local news report in the last 10 minutes about a dad who repeatedly beat his little girl on the head because she was having a hard time recognizing letters in the alphabet.

But, of course, the dominant story has been the Penn State child sex abuse cover-up scandal.

I honestly haven't been able to stop thinking about the implications that this story brings along to it. You know there's an overwhelming amount to think about when a grown man raping young boys is only the tip of the iceberg to a story.

The incredible, widespread cover-up and enablement afforded to a child rapist--ranging well beyond the university coaches and president, all the way into the local police department and public school district--is staggering, repulsive and literally sickening.

As far back as 1995, police knew that Jerry Sandusky showered with little boys and made physical contact with them, but when he apologized to one of the boy's parents during a police-organized sting operation, the case was closed.

"Sorry I raped and molested your son." Oh, okay, as long as you're sorry... If you weren't sorry, I was really going to be upset... Case closed.

And, when a 28-year-old man walked in on Sandusky raping another boy in 2002, he not only failed to immediately intervene and protect the child, his reaction was to call his dad and wait for the next morning to tell Coach Paterno about the scene.

Lest we give a hall-pass to Mike McQueary, may I remind you that Meriwether Lewis was 28 when he was commissioned to lead the journey to discover the Northwest Passage. Twenty-eight years ought to be enough time to figure out what you're going to do when you walk into that kind of situation.

When I was a kid, my dad told us about a startling, reoccurring dream that he had had. There was a home invasion, and there he was, a man defending his family. What would he do? His response in the dream was to vomit and--in a girly motion--to launch a coffee cup with his left hand toward his attacker.

Now that I have a little family, I understand that scary feeling of being put into my dad's situation and thinking through his scenario. How will I act? Will I wimp out and flail, unleashing the unbridled fury of my Care Bears coffee cup toward my assailant? I don't know.

For that matter, I honestly can't say what I would do if I were in McQuery's shoes. What I can say for certain, though, is that vomiting and throwing a coffee cup like a girl would've been an utterly courageous act in comparison with how he did handle the situation.

I'm being completely serious here. If he had thrown up and dropped whatever he was holding, then took the matter directly to the police, I guarantee this situation would've been over and done with back in 2002. That would've been an utterly courageous feat, and Mike McQueary would've been a hero.

Courage takes different forms in different situations. If all we can muster in the most surprising, terrifying moment of our lives is a pathetic, girly scream, then let's at least belt out the scream and fling our coffee.

We'll be heroes if we do.

And what's more--much more--is that if we don't, we'll be judged, not only by our peers or 12 angry men. We'll be judged by he who keeps watch over our souls.

Proverbs 24:10-12 says all we need to know about this subject. It starts off by making a declaration that I think we can all assent to and identify with:

If you faint in the day of adversity,

your strength is small.

As someone who has a tenancy to literally faint from time-to-time, I can own this passage. It can be my life verse. It's not exactly the most flattering thing I have to say about myself, but, as brother Joel says, "This is my Bible, I am what it says I am."

The next couple of verses give us two commands, which are really one command, and two warnings, which are really one warning:

Rescue those who are being taken away to death;

hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

If you say, "Behold, we did not know this,"

does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,

and will he not repay man according to his work?

As people created in God's image, we bear the responsibility to protect others, who are also made in God's image. We don't get to make up excuses either, because God knows what is in our hearts, and He swears to avenge our unspeakable sin of nonchalance and apathy.

As a person redeemed by my Creator, restored to the Giver of Life through faith in Christ Jesus, I am doubly accountable to the Watcher of my soul. 

Lord, let me never, never excuse myself from obedience to your Word, which involves--at bare minimum--speaking out against evil and abuse around me. Lay my soul bare before the light of your Word, so that I may see where I am abusing your blood-bought grace and forsaking my Savior.

And give me courage to at least do something, anything, everything to protect the helpless around me.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:

to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,

and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Flesh and Blood Needs Flesh and Blood

The great American prophet Johnny Cash really hit this one on the head: Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood.

Obviously borrowing from Adam's pre-Eve bachelorhood, Cash's little ditty is about a guy looking all around him for a companion, but unable to find one until he lights upon his true love. The song culminates into a very cool, unique-to-Johnny line at the beginning of the main chorus:

Mother nature's quite a lady, 

but you're the one I need. 

Flesh and blood need flesh and blood, 

and you're the one I need.

Creation, as beautiful as it is is, can never satisfy like a friend, companion or lover can. And this points us to a deeper reality.

Over the past few days, we've gone over the story of a God who dwells with His people. So far, we've only gotten as far as wood and canvas, however, as we've focused primarily on God's instructions for Israel to build Him a Tabernacle in the Wilderness, "so that I may dwell with them."

As great as this immeasurable, certainly undeserved grace is--that God would in any sense dwell with His people--it would never be completely beautiful or satisfying, and it would never demonstrate both the justice and mercy of God, if it were confined only to acacia and canvas.

For God's love to truly be poured into our hearts--for God to truly dwell with man--His presence must become "realer" than wood and canvas. 

Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood.

One key piece of evidence to support this statement is to look at the entirety of Israel's history throughout the Old Testament. The rise and fall, obedience and--most often--disobedience of God's people point to their need for a deeper cleansing, a fuller revelation of God, a final and fuller dwelling of God with man.

And hope is scattered throughout the Old Testament, right alongside disappointment and disillusionment more times than not. But in very few places is hope expressed more clearly than in Isaiah 7, which we will soon hear throughout the Christmas season, as Advent grows closer and closer.

Amid severely hopeless prophecy about the up-coming demise and capture of Israel by invading armies, the Lord speaks to King Ahaz, who had recently taken the reigns from his father, King Uzziah. The Lord commands poor, terrified Ahaz to ask him for a sign from the Lord, "deep as Sheol or high as heaven."

When Ahaz declines, most likely from fear and even mistrust, the Lord gives him a sign anyways--the sign of Immanuel, "God with us."

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, 

and shall call his name Immanuel.

Speaking just a chapter later to Isaiah, the Lord further tells of this One who is to come, this "God with us" against whom the enemies of Israel and the Lord will not stand:

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace, 

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.

In this One, God will dwell among men in a way previously unimaginable. This "child", this "son" will also be called "Mighty God" and "Everlasting Father", along with other names that pertain only to the Lord.

Upon Him, this God-with-us, the Lord of Hosts will lay the government even of the great king, David. That is, the One to take up the everlasting throne of David as the right ruler of God's people is Himself God-with-us.

What an amazing thing must it have been for Mary--the virgin who conceived--to hear these words echoed and applied to her yet-to-be-born Son in Luke 1: "And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

And what an amazing thing it must have been for righteous Joseph to hear in a dream that--far from a failed engagement ending in a shameful annulment--his pregnant fiance would bear the one called Jesus, who would "save his people from their sins." 

This pregnancy was not to lead to shame, but to the ushering in of Immanuel, "God with us."

Finally, what a shockingly clear statement John makes in his opening prologue, 1:14 in particular:

And the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt (literally: tabernacled) among us...

To quote a Christmas carol before it's proper to do so (it being early November and all), Do you See What I See? In Jesus, the God of the universe, the Lord of Hosts, whose loving presence and kindly kingship we have spurned, has finally and fully come to "dwell among men."

God spanned the distance that we proved unable to do at Babel. He didn't require for us to go up, He has come down. 

The Word taken on flesh means that God got his hands dirty. In Jesus, the Creator of all that is literally became what He had formed out of dirt. 

In the Wilderness Tabernacle, God came and met with man in a tent made of canvas, but in Jesus, the true and better Tabernacle, God came and met with man in man, as man.

That is good news indeed.

But the great news is, that taking on flesh and dwelling among us wasn't the furthest extent to which God has gone to again be with man. He went still further.

Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood. Not just to live for us, but to die for us.

A New Dawn of God's Dwelling

As we trace the theme of God dwelling with His people, a major set-back has occurred in Genesis 11. 

A daring and potentially self-satisfying attempt at repairing the major rift that first took place in the Garden failed miserably, as the builders of a great tower were suddenly confronted with their futility, as "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built."

We, the children of man, thought we were going up, congratulated ourselves on reaching the heavens--going up to God--when, like a dad sits down at his daughter's tea party, God came down to see their "progress."

The result is disaster, as our self-religion and autonomy are condemned and the people are scattered over the face of the earth.

There at Babel, man has plummeted to the bottom of our banishment, the depths of our nakedness--which, incidentally, we only noticed after we first sinned.

How will God dwell with man?

But, like the dawn of a new day after a dark, torrent night, hope rises in Genesis 12, when God initiates contact with a run-of-the-mill idolater named Abram.

In Abram, God re-initiates His process of dwelling with man. In Abram, God creates the nation of Israel, a people for His own possession who are eventually exiled to Egypt, then rescued and redeemed at the hand of Moses.

Fast-forward to Exodus 25-30, where Moses is given a detailed blueprint for a Tabernacle in the Wilderness. What a stark contrast these six, painfully detailed chapters give to the building project at Babel.

At Babel, the workers decided the plan, purpose and dimensions of their collective monument to human religion, but in the wilderness of Sinai, God's people were given exact, precise instructions.

Babel ended, predictably enough, in disaster and further banishment from God's presence, and by the time Moses comes down off the Mountain, having heard the clear instructions of the Lord, Israel nearly meets the same fate.

Because, while Moses is up the Mountain receiving the precise details of God’s meeting place with Israel, the people are down in the flat, casting their gold into a bonfire and smoothing out the edges to their golden calf.

Within a matter of hours, 3,000 men are killed by the priestly Levites and many more perish from a plague sent by the Lord, but the real disaster is still to come.

Moses goes up to meet again with the Lord and try to make atonement for the people, but he’s met with a “disastrous word” from the Lord:

“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

Though Israel is still to inherit the Promised Land, it will be without the presence of God, and the lack of God’s presence there doesn’t just put a damper on the party—it spells disaster.

But, as the story unfolds, Moses pleads to the Lord to come with the people—either that, or stay with them indefinitely in the desert. This beautiful conversation in Exodus 33, between Moses and the Lord, culminates in the Moses boldly asking that the Lord would show him His glory, and in the Lord allowing Moses a glimpse of His goodness while He declares His name.

The end result of this encounter is that God will indeed accompany His people into the Promised Land, and Moses is soon set to work at building the aforementioned Wilderness Tabernacle. Exodus closes with a dramatic scene, where God's glory fills the Tabernacle, so much so that Moses isn't even able to enter it.

The point is that God has taken up residence with His people in the Tabernacle, and that is great news, but it is also temporary, shadow-like news.

As Israel's history progresses, that tent is replaced by Solomon's temple, then by the rebuilt temple under Nehemiah, but still, the best is yet to come.

Great as they may be have been, the Wilderness Tabernacle and the Temple are meant serve as mere shadows--good, godly shadows, but still just shadows--of the real Tabernacle, the true and better Tabernacle, where God comes down to meet with man finally and decisively. 

God's full and final dwelling place with man won't be made of canvas, but of flesh and blood.

Beginnings of Banishment

God desires to dwell among men. That is good news worth dwelling on.

In yesterday’s post, I pointed out the tension that comes along with God’s desire and plan to dwell among men.

If it’s to happen at all, it will all happen on God’s terms.

Like most good stories, the story of the God who dwells with His people starts at the start.

When Adam was first formed out of the dirt, God placed him in a garden, gave him a job, a blessing, a command and a wife. But we’re also told that God himself was with them, walking among them in the garden "in the cool of the day."

That nearness to God was soon broken, however, when Adam spurned the kind and loving authority of his Maker and disobeyed the only command he was given. In addition to curses falling upon the serpent, the earth and all of mankind as a result of Adam's willful disobedience, something even more dreadful and painful overtook us as a result:

God banished us from his presence.

From that moment on, the tension and plot-line of God's story revolves around one question: How will God and Man dwell together as at the beginning?

Also, from that moment on, the world is seriously out of whack. Brother turns on brother and murders over jealousy. Problems escalate from Cain's shameful murder of his brother to Lamech's shameless boasting of murder to his two--count 'em, two--wives, and finally to God reducing the world's population to right around eight.

The best solution man can come up with to remedy the core issue of banishment from God's presence comes in Genesis 11, where the world's first and finest self-help religion arises at a place that came to be known as Babel.

As the workmen stand back and marvel at their enormous tower, bottle of suds in hand, they pat each other on the back and raise a toast. "We did it! We've worked hard, and finally reached heaven! Soak it up, boys, this is a day they'll remember!"

Just then, "the Lord came down..." That's a painful phrase to would-be God-reachers. No matter how great you are, successful we are or hard-working we are, we can’t ever hope to reconcile ourselves to God. We must give up all hope of reaching Him ourselves.

In other words, if you are to meet with God, He must come down to you. Not the other way around.

And yet, even amid constant failure on a personal level and scandal in the public sphere, the world around us—including myself—instinctively strives to reach back up to God, to restore Eden and even to assert ourselves as good, worthy and right.

If we are to be re-united with God as we were in the beginning, it will have to be His doing, on His terms. The Babel experiment failed, and with it, so do our repeated efforts at self-justification.

God must take action to bring us back to Himself, to again dwell with man. And that's where Abram comes in.

The God Who Dwells with Us

I'll be honest, if it were up to me to pick which text I was to teach on in Sunday School last weekend, it probably would not have been Exodus 25-30.

Maybe it's owing to my church's paltry flannelgraph supply or my woefully inadequate knowledge of the cubits-to-feet conversion table--or maybe it's a combination of the two--but, somehow, teaching a handful of 3-to-11 year-olds about the wonders and glories (and precise dimensions) of the wilderness tabernacle isn't quite at the top of my must-preach list.

I mean, think about how many flans would have to be butchered to come up with enough flannel to depict six chapters of the sometimes-excruciating detail that Moses is given in order to construct Israel's mobile worship center.

That's a lot of flans, and certainly a good measure of droopy eye-lids to go along with 'em.

So imagine my relief and blossoming excitement when I ran across only the fourth sentence of chapter 25, a sentence that serves as a heading and purpose statement for everything that follows: "And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst."

This may not be new news to you, but it's the best news you and I could ever hear. God desires to dwell with His people. 

That's the plot line of the entirety of the Bible, starting with our great grandpappy Adam and running all the way through the end of Revelation, where the joyful conclusion of history is pronounced: "Behold, the dwelling place (literally "Tabernacle) of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God."

And the plot line runs right through Exodus 25-30, where God is telling Moses and Israel--in no uncertain terms--how He will go about dwelling with them in the desert.

As the details flow throughout these six chapters, prescribing everything from yarn colors to priestly boxer-briefs, it becomes inescapably clear that God is very particular about the way He desires to be met and worshiped.

In fact, the follow-up to God's stated purpose (...that I may dwell with them) is, "Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it."

And that's the rub. God desires to again dwell with His people. Fantastic, wouldn't we all like to dwell with our Maker? But, God will only dwell with His people if He gets to call the shots--in other words, He'll only be our God if He is God, King, Authority, Boss.

Maybe you chafe against this concept, of God calling all the shots even as He reconciles us to Himself and accomplishes His grand purpose of redemption. Maybe you feel like God is playing the much-maligned "One Percent," throwing His weight around while we hapless "Ninety-Nine Percent" are left to only cower in His shadow.

If that's where you're at, lend me your ear over the next few days and let's talk about the God who dwells with His people.

And I promise to keep the flannelgraph use at a minimum.