no trust in princes

Times are tense. North Korea doesn’t seem responsible enough to have nuclear weapons – I sure hope Secretary of State Tillerman can defuse that situation. It seems like ISIS and Al Quaida affiliates can attack us anywhere in the world – I sure hope Secretary of Defense Mattis is equal to that. Huge populations of people are moving across the globe – I sure hope the various governments, from Bangladesh and Myanmar to Europe and the Middle East and the US, can take care of them all.

Times are tense, but maybe more so because of where I’m putting my hope. Psalm 146 has a lot of good things to remind me this morning, starting with this central point in verses 3-5:

“Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.”

The Psalmist continues on with a list of reasons putting my hope in God makes a lot more sense. One, he made this place (“He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them . . . .”). Two, he will never turn his back on me or forget me (“. . . he remains faithful forever.”) On top of that, he’s compassionate to all those kinds of people who don’t get much attention because they have not power. That’s in verses 7-9:

“He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if God were running things instead of the politicians? Oh, wait . . . he is. Then why should I worry?

generational stories

Our church’s Faith Formation team is working on ways to promote inter-generational story-telling as a means of helping members discover faithful options at the crossroads of life. Sometimes it seems like a slow slog, but I was reinforced this morning while reading Psalm 145.

Look at verses 3-7: “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;

his greatness no one can fathom.
One generation commends your works to another;
they tell of your mighty acts.
They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—
and I will meditate on your wonderful works.
They tell of the power of your awesome works—
and I will proclaim your great deeds.
They celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.”

I love the sequencing – the previous generation tells its stories, and then the author meditates. The previous generation shares what they know about God, and then the author proclaims. The faithful praise and story-telling of the generation in the Psalm has a profound effect on the people.

That’s my hope for our Faith Formation initiative. There is so much power in the experience of ordinary people. There is so much power in tales of God’s power and faithfulness. If we can just find the right setting and tools, we can unleash a wave of goodness in our congregation.

I’m praying today that each generation will see the need younger people have for their stories, and will be moved to tell them.

no excuse

There really isn’t much excuse for my sin, except my own lack of self-discipline.

Here’s how Paul explains it, in 1 Corinthians 10:12-13: “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

Two things strike me in these verses. First, all my temptations are the same things other people are tempted by. All my temptations are “common to mankind.” That means that if others in my church manage to resist them, I can too. There’s nothing special about the things I’m up against, and if I make them out to be extra hard or tougher than normal, I do more than just make excuses. I belittle the spiritual strength of my brothers and sisters who have  been more faithful.

Second is that God makes sure that I’m stronger than my temptations. Paul notes that not only will God not let me be tempted beyond what I’m capable of handling, but also that whenever I am tempted, there will be a way out of temptation. When I claim I had no choice, I belittle the goodness of God himself, who promised that would never be true.

I guess in truth there isn’t any excuse. No excuse except my own choice to do a thing that disrupts my relationship with God, a preference for self-destructive self-indulgence over the only thing that can save me.

Those choices are just stupid. So maybe in the end stupidity would be a partial excuse.

puffed up

Whoever said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” had it right. Paul put it differently, in 1 Corinthians 8:1: “Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that ‘We all possess knowledge.’ But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.”

It’s easy to let our knowledge puff us up. We like to show off what we know, and we like to be right. Liking to be right, in fact, causes a lot of relationship-damaging behaviors, like arguing and insisting on our own way. We all know that person who drives us crazy because he or she is a know-it-all, but most of us act the same way as soon as the topic is one we know something about.

And sometimes people who know a lot about one thing think that makes them experts on everything. That’s probably why there are so many immigration experts and health care experts and tax experts and military experts vehemently defending their opinions all over social media.

None of that will make a person feel loved. In fact, none of that is prompted by love. Being impressed with myself and wanting others to be too has nothing to do with love, nor does wanting to be proven right. Both of those things diminish other people, even if we are, well, right.

Paul, using the topic of food sacrificed to idols, is about to point out a better tactic: do what builds other people up. That’s love, and, as Paul will say in another chapter, love is the most excellent way.

not my job

I wrote on Monday about how hard it is to confront sin when you can’t even agree on what words mean, with good reason: spiritual words are foolishness to people without the Spirit. As a minor point in that blog, I noted that I didn’t feel it was my place to hold those Spirit-less people accountable.

Paul reinforced that for me this morning, in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked person from among you.’”

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Yet that’s where most of my judgment goes. It’s hard to confront sin inside the church, because I like those people. It ends up being kind of hypocritical.

A recent study made a telling point – I can’t find it back so I won’t attempt to cite numbers. But it showed that statistically there’s no longer any difference in divorce rates between churched and unchurched Americans. The same is true for adultery and infidelity. Domestic violence is actually higher among church members. And cohabitation is increasingly seen as a reasonable alternative to marriage even among Christian young people.

Here’s the point: how can we decry gay unions as an attack on marriage when we church-going Christians have done so much damage to it ourselves? Why are we so quick to judge outside the church and so slow within it?

The same is true for almost any category of sin you can name. There’s plenty for us to work on at home, where Paul says our attention should be focused. Following the same principle a step farther, I should then be quicker to call myself to account than my fellow believers. 

foundations

I ‘m thinking today about a word of caution from Paul, as written to the baby church in Corinth. Here it is, in 1 Corinthians 3:10-11:

“By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

The context was this: the Corinthian churches were arguing about which preacher to follow, Paul or Apollos. Paul is telling them it doesn’t matter; he was there initially doing the spade work and Apollos came later on, and as long as both preach Christ crucified, it’s the same effort.

The warning struck me, though: Build with care, because if you try to set any foundation except Jesus, your work will fail. Worse, you’ll be guilty of heresy or apostasy.

It makes me want to examine the foundations I’m building on. It would be easy, as some have done, to see Jesus as a way to make connections that are good for business, or to win followers on social media. If that’s what I’m doing – always a legitimate question for, say, a blogger – then I’m not building with care.

Or it would be easy to use Jesus as a club to chastise people I don’t like. I can call any viewpoint not my own “political correctness” or “identity politics” or “reverse discrimination” and mercilessly beat anyone who voices them from my morally-superior position as a Christian. But that’s a different foundation than Jesus.

It seems to me that if I have any agenda other than spreading the good news, winning souls, and encouraging believers, I’m probably building on a bad foundation.

fools

I often don’t know what to say to people, especially when I see them sinning. I don’t want to confront, but more than that, I’m not equipped to counter their arguments. It’s not that I don’t have counterpoints, but we can’t agree on enough that my counterpoint even makes sense. When they have different definitions for marriage and sin and family and appropriate sex, we don’t even have enough common understanding to talk about things.

I’ve often been frustrated by that, but it’s explained pretty well in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians. A good example is verses 12-16 of 1 Corinthians 2:

“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

‘Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?’
But we have the mind of Christ.”

That supports my long-time view that as a Christian I shouldn’t even think about judgment and accountability for sin except with fellow believers. Among non-believers I’ve always tried to focus on love and grace; those conversations about lifestyle choices can come after they acknowledge Jesus as Lord. That doesn’t mean giving evil a pass – I think every Christ-follower should fight any encroachment of Satan wherever we see it. But individual sinners I try to treat with love.

Until they have the Spirit, they can’t even start to make sense of all the reasons they should change. Change not because I don’t like something, or it would make me happy, but change because their souls are in danger. But before they have the Spirit, we’re just going to argue and disagree and grow farther and farther apart. If I can somehow build a relationship that turns into true questioning on their part, there’s hope.

I can’t ever forget, though, that in those places where I don’t have the mind of Christ, I’ll be just as confused and unable to understand as they are. In those cases, God’s truth will look like foolishness to me. So that’s always my first place to start, by asking, “Which of us is really the fool?”

his love

There’s a theme all through Psalm 136. In fact, the words are repeated 26 times, ending each verse: “His love endures forever.” It’s easy to imagine it sung as a sort of descant, or antiphonally as a response to the start of the verse.

The Psalm reflects on three major ways that God shows his love. He does so in the creation he has made. He does so by punishing our enemies. And he does so by blessing us. All those same kinds of love – his creative goodness, his unfailing justice and his bountiful blessing – are present in my life too.

So every time I think it’s a beautiful day, or that I’m grateful for the rain, or I wonder what big planet is that’s so bright in the night sky, I should think, “His love endures forever.” And each instance where a bad person is stopped or evil is thwarted and justice is done, I should give thanks that “His love endures forever.” And whenever my life overflows with goodness, in my relationships and my physical needs and the joy I find in life, I should praise, “His love endures forever.”

It’s a core truth, a source of hope, one of my greatest blessings. I wonder why I don’t say it more.

magnificence

My church is discussing an addition. We’re kind of tapped on space for a lot of things, and we’re evaluating the right thing to do. Other churches in town have built wonderful facilities, beautiful buildings with lovely fellowship and worship spaces. It’s hard sometimes not to be envious.

Something I read this morning seems pertinent to that conversation. Here’s what it says in Mark 13:1-2: “As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!’

“‘Do you see all these great buildings?’ replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’"

In the context of thinking about budgets and buildings and how they can best translate into ministry, this seemed to me a reminder not to focus so much on architectural magnificence. The wonderful temple of Jesus’ day is a ruin now, but the church of Jesus is still vibrant and growing. All of the action of Acts launched the spread of the Gospel around the world, so that today there is a church in Orange City that nurtures me.

People now meet in thatch-roofed pole structures, in concrete-floored tin-roofed spaces, in house churches, in store fronts. God’s name is glorified and the good news goes forward in Communist China and Taliban-held Afghanistan and post-Christian Europe. The most beautiful churches in the world are often primarily tourist attractions, while the Spirit does mighty work in some of the shabbiest neighborhoods.

There’s nothing wrong with honoring God with our best, and that includes the building we worship in. And it’s always good to make our spaces as conducive to praise and worship as we can. So I’m still hopeful for some beauty and congeniality in our new church addition.

But it’s also good to remind myself of all the wonderful worship I had sitting on my helmet under a tree with a handful of God-fearing fellow soldiers. It’s good to remember the Azerbaijani Christians I prayed with in a small lunchroom in Baku. God’s kingdom marches on with only the slightest regard to conventional wisdom about what appropriate construction code and décor would be.

It might be good to put a little less passion into my opinions on the church building and a little more into the ministries I’m part of. Anything God does is going to be wonderful no matter where we happen to be. But unless the Lord builds, the builders labor in vain.

beating Jesus

I wonder if I’ve ever done spiritual violence to Jesus. Oh, I know, we all have a share in his torturous death on the cross, but this morning, I’m thinking of something more immediate.

I was reading through Mark 12 and I got to the parable of the tenants in the vineyard. When the owner sends messengers, the tenants beat them. When he sends his son, they kill him. It’s a power grab. It’s trying to retain control.

And then, this, in verse 12: “Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.”

Think of that. Jesus knew the religious leaders wanted to kill him, and now they knew he knew. Yet this pointed parable didn’t change their mind.

Even when Jesus pointed out, in this tale, that he was sent by the master of the church. Even when his story clearly stated the criminality of killing the son. Even then, they went ahead, because they wouldn’t give up control of the church.

I’ve been in leadership positions in my church off and on for decades. Have I ever, in that time, brushed off or even belittled someone whose proposed change may have been Jesus moving them? Worse, have I ever undermined people behind their backs to prevent change I don’t like? In those ways, may I have done the same thing that the tenants of the vineyard, and the religious leaders of Jesus day? Have I refused to hear God’s messengers? Have I turned them away? Have I ever turned Jesus away because he didn’t look in that moment like I expected him to look – like me?

I don’t know. I can’t think of a specific time, but it sounds like something I could have done. Or could do, still. It bears watching.

believing unbelief

This morning, a very well-known story and well-known moral show that even the familiar can have a lot of power.Here’s the story, from Mark 9:20-23:

“When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the boy’s father, ‘How long has he been like this?’

“‘From childhood,’ he answered. ‘It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.’

“‘“If you can’?”’ said Jesus. ‘Everything is possible for one who believes.”’
“Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’”

Who can’t relate to that? I do believe. I believe fervently that only Jesus can save. I believe fervently that I have no hope except in him. I know with all my heart that a life of service and obedience to him will bring me more joy than any other thing I can do.

But . . . . Why then do I still worry? Why do I plan so carefully for my retirement? Why do I think the things I do make me more spiritual than other people? Why do I still look for my happiness in the same places everyone else does?

Lord, I do believe. Help me in my unbelief.

commandments and traditions

I remember a congregational meeting at a church I attended as a young husband. The only woman in the building that night was the one setting the coffee and cutting the bars, and she left as soon as lunch as prepared. The business, and all discussion of the business, was done by the men. No votes for females in that church.

I remember a time on church council when we argued points of procedure all the time. The ones who understood Robert’s Rules of Order had a distinct advantage over those who didn’t; the ability to manipulate parliamentary procedure equated to power on that council. Now Dawn is facing the same thing on a non-profit board she chairs.

Sometimes churches do things that don’t seem to have much to do with the love of God.

That’s why Jesus’ response to some Pharisees in Mark 7: 6-8 struck me this morning. They challenged him because his disciples ate without going through a ceremonial cleansing ritual first.

“He replied, ‘Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
‘“These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.”
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.’”

Restricting votes in congregations, or elevating the rulebook to almost the same level as scripture, are human traditions that were never commanded by God. I wonder how many other things we do fall into the same category? I wonder how many things that I judge others for are my own traditions?

It’s a reminder that love is hard. We prefer orderliness and calm and conformance to the messy, noisy chaos of humans rubbing up against humans. Relationships can’t be managed like meetings.

But God loves me in all my moods and attitudes and inconsistencies, and I can love others the same way. In fact, that kind of love is a commandment from God, and has little to do with human tradition.

unity

I was in a contentious church council meeting one time when an elder said, “I’m sure there are a few things more important to God than unity in his church, but there probably aren’t very many. And I’m not even sure what they would be.”

I thought of that this morning when I read Psalm 133:

“How good and pleasant it is

when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.”

God loves it when his people get along. He loves it as much as that aromatic, reverent act of anointing a high priest. Such unity brings abundant life, just like the dew that brings moisture to high mountain plants. And, the Psalmist says, God responds the same way, by giving us eternal life.

I think maybe we don’t give God enough to be happy about. Maybe if we prioritized unity as highly as we do getting our way, or not just being right but forcing everyone else to acknowledge we’re right, then we could do better. Sometimes it seems like Americans, and American Christians, are not only ready to fight at the drop of the hat, but they carry hats with them to drop.

I’m going to try it. For the next while, I’m going focus on peace-bringing and avoiding dissension. I’m going to try forget about how things turn out, and just think about how what we’re doing is affecting our relationships. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I’m interested to see.

no faith

Scripture really is timeless. No matter how well I think I know a passage, it still has the power to hit me between the eyes. I think that’s because these are living words that interact with my actual life.

What prompted this train of thought this morning? The familiar story of Jesus quieting the storm in Mark 4:35-41:

“That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’

“He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
“He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’
“They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!’”

It was Jesus’ response to his disciples that got me this morning. “Do you still have no faith?” Suddenly, I could think of half a dozen times this year that I didn’t have much faith. Times I worried instead of trusted. Times I tried to solve things myself. Times I acted as though my future depended on me. Times I judged instead of loved.

Why do I do that? Is it because, as with the disciples, I’m afraid? Do I really think God won’t take care of it? There are only a few reasons he wouldn’t. If he didn’t care, or didn’t know, or just plain couldn’t, then he wouldn’t. But that’s ridiculous; of course he can, of course he cares, and of course he knows. So what do I fear?

I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense, but then a lot of emotions don’t.

So this is my reminder to live in faith. I don’t need to see the future, or understand it. I don’t need to be in control. It isn’t all up to me.

God has already won my victory. All I have to do is live that way.

dark night

One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 130. Here are the first six verses: 

“Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;

Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

One of the reasons I like it so much is that my name, Gregory, can mean either watchful, or the one who watches. Or, if you like, watchman. So this passage seems personal to me; I wait for the Lord more than I watch for morning.

There’s deeper meaning and connection, though, from my days in uniform. I took my turns on night watch. I remember trying to walk my post when it was raining; I recall stumbling along on patrol when it was too dark to see the man in front of me. Many nights I was staff duty officer or had the graveyard shift in the Tactical Operations Center. I know what it’s like to wait for morning, to long for sunrise.

All those experiences give me a sharp, almost painful simile for my sin – living in sin is like that agony of being so tired that everything hurts; it’s like being cold and hungry and wet and exhausted all at the same time in my soul. No rest, no joy, not the slightest bit of comfort. My whole miserable being, as the Psalmist says, waits for the Lord. “In his word I put my hope.”

That’s what I think of when I read, “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;” it’s that miserable dark night of my sick sinning that feels spiritually so much like those miserable nights on watch. That’s why I join with the Psalmist in rejoicing in my forgiveness.

And in his response: to serve God with reverence. How can I not?

frolic like calves

Malachi 4:1-2: “‘Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.’”

What a day that will be! What do you suppose the sun of righteousness will look like? Or better yet, feel like? Those rays will heal anything that ails any Christ-follower. We’ll be all done with arthritis and paralysis and chronic back pain or headaches. No more depression or anxiety. Just glorious, blessed sunshine.

And we’ll go out and frolic like calves in a sunny meadow. Imagine, all of us dour Dutch Calvinists, jumping and kicking up our heels, and rolling the grass. We’ll be so happy, we can’t contain it. We’ll feel so healthy, we can’t help but run.

What a day! What an eternity, lived with God! What a promise!

wearying words

As I read in Malachi this morning, I wonder if God is going to run out of patience with America.

I’m thinking of the place in Malachi 2:17 where it says, “You have wearied the Lord with your words.

‘How have we wearied him?’ you ask.
By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?’”

There’s a lot of that going on these days. Neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville were “a lot of very good people.” “We can’t help who we love,” say people who want to excuse affairs or any kind of marriage, or no marriage at all. “You can choose your own gender,” claim the ones who want to deny God’s sovereignty over our lives. And in my denomination and my town there are more and more neighbors and friends, many of them Christians, who want us to be tolerant and inclusive of people whose lives repudiate scripture. Universalism, this idea that everyone will go to heaven, is proclaimed by evangelical leaders and embraced by hundreds of thousands.

And whenever another hurricane comes ashore or evil strikes at the hands of demented men and women, we hear again a growing denial of God. How could a God of love allow this? If he exists, people say, then I want no part of him. A famous actor, an atheist, when asked what he would say if God turned out to be real, answered, “I’d look him in the eye and say, ‘Childhood cancer? Really? What kind of God are you?’”

Those words that wearied God in Malachi’s day, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord,” and “Where is the God of Justice?” are heard a lot these days. How long will God be patient?

The good news is that his response to the Jews of Malachi’s time was love and forgiveness, and a call to revival. May revival come to America, and come soon.

remember

Nehemiah did a lot for God’s people, things that cost him money and took up his time. He lived in Spartan circumstances away from his home. And every time, he had the same prayer. Here’s an example, from Nehemiah 13:22b:

“Remember me for this also, my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.”

I find a couple of things interesting about this prayer. One is that Nehemiah believes that doing these good things will do him some good. He wants God to remember them. This goes beyond the initial glory given to God, and the strengthening of the relationship; Nehemiah wants God not to forget the things he’s done.

Yet Nehemiah still puts his hope on God, not himself. Remember, he says, and show mercy. Mercy not according to Nehemiah’s deeds, but according to God’s great love. This seems to me to be a good balance of works and grace. 

nobles

Nehemiah 7:4-5: “Now the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it, and the houses had not yet been rebuilt. So my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials and the common people for registration by families.”

When the Israelites finally entered the Promised Land, each tribe and family got an allotment of property defined by God himself. God told Joshua where the boundaries should be. At that time there was no king. Joshua led the people with the aid of the judges, the ones selected to help the people upon the advice of Jethro. There was the Levitical priesthood. Other than that, the family and clan structure was the government.

How far things had drifted by Nehemiah’s day! The word that caught me in the above passage, part of the ongoing narrative of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, was “noble.” When did the Jews get nobles? Isn’t the very idea of a privileged elite class at odds with God’s vision for his people?

I suppose it may have gotten started when Israel demanded a king. A king will have relatives who will seem more blue-blooded because of that relationship. And a king will want to bestow favors on those who support him, and titles and lands are the most common of those favors.

It probably didn’t help when the conquering Assyrians and Babylonians came in. Their governments likely were full of nobles, and their method of governing conquered territories probably included setting up a local nobility that owed their prominence to the new king.

However it happened, by the time of Nehemiah there were at least three classes in Jewish society: the nobility, the government officials, and the common folk. The fact that Nehemiah had to register them all by families suggests that national identity by tribe and family had degraded over time.

It doesn’t seem like this class society was helping the Jews. In fact, earlier in the book of Nehemiah he addresses the social injustices of the nobles and officials taking advantage of the commoners.

I don’t like the word “common” to describe people, and I think God might not either. How can anyone made in his image be considered common? It’s a word we use to say there’s nothing important or special about someone, but aren’t we to consider everyone as important to God and special in his eyes?

I’m going to pay attention to those times when I want to think someone else is inferior to me. The ones we call rednecks and Walmart people and trailer trash – they aren’t common either, but I tend to look down my nose at them. That’s thinking like a noble, and God’s Plan A didn’t include nobles. 

not in vain

Sometimes I’m tempted by the race up the career ladder. I think the first-class travel, limousine rides, nice suits and deferential aides would look good on me. All the years plugging away in Sioux County, raising a family and investing in a small community, can seem like they haven’t gotten me very far.

But then I’m reminded of the truth so succinctly stated by the Psalmist in Psalm 127:1-2:

“Unless the Lord builds the house,

the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the guards stand watch in vain.
In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.”

Whatever gifts I have weren’t given to me so I could be an important somebody. They’re for the good of God’s people. If I try to use them to construct a self-centered career, I’m on my own. God is trying to build something different than that, and wants me to be too.

Probably that’s why I’ve been as blessed as I have. In my efforts to honor my wife and children and mom and dad, and to do ministry in my local church, I’ve for the most part made unselfish choices. And I’ve often marveled at what opportunity has come my way in this place that can look so much like a backwater. Like flyover country.

The biggest possible success and the more sure thing are the same thing: to join God in building his house, and in watching over his people.

and

Sometimes there is a lot of wisdom packed into a few words. That’s what Nehemiah 4:9 looks like to me. That verse relates the response of Nehemiah and all the Jews rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, when they heard that Sanballat was going to attack them to stop there work. This is what it says:

“But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.”

The first thing I noticed was the “and.” In addition to praying, they did what they could. Or, depending on how you tend to handle things, you might say in addition to doing what they could, they prayed. I think this is a good model of how discipleship works. I’ve heard it said this way: Pray like it’s all up to God, but work like it’s all up to you.

It’s easy, I think, to do one or the other. Most typically, we probably try to handle things ourselves and then pray when that doesn’t seem to be working.

Which brings us to the second thing I see in this verse. Nehemiah prayed first. To him it was the best answer, Plan A, the thing most likely to work. Then, trusting that God would handle it, he posted guards in case God chose to handle it that way.

Pray first, but act also – that seems to be the lesson of this verse. Actually, I think James and John Calvin would say pray first, then act but pray while you act, and then pray afterward in thanksgiving. But I think as we progress through Nehemiah we’ll find that he did exactly that.

no share

Sometimes I have to choose between pleasing God and pleasing people. Much more rarely, we might have to choose between pleasing God and pleasing our president, or boss. For all those times, Nehemiah gives a good answer.

This is what happened, in Nehemiah 2:19-20: “But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. ‘What is this you are doing?’ they asked. ‘Are you rebelling against the king?’

“I answered them by saying, ‘The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it.’”

That’s what I have to remember. There are a lot of voices in this world that will try to stop me from doing God’s will. They might mock and ridicule, like Sanballat and Tobiah. They might try to coerce, maybe by hinting they might tell “the king,” whoever it is we might fear. They might even threaten. It doesn’t matter.

If I’m doing God’s will, it’s going to work, and it’s all going to work out. And all the naysayers are simply talking themselves out of any share in God’s good work. Keep it up long enough and they’ll forfeit their share in heaven. I guess that’s the choice: try to take my shares on earth, or work toward heavenly shares.

Instead of being intimidated or coerced by all those negative voices, I just need to keep my eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith, and trust that he won’t lead me wrong.