CRN.Info and Analysis

Came across this tonight. Wondered what you all thought of this–especially since Pastor/Teacher/Prophet Silva doesn’t permit comments from his sycophants readers detractors congregants disciples anyone at his ‘blog’:

[concerning John 10: 1 — "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber."]

The sentence before us is a powerful and humbling one. That is [sic.] condemns the Jewish teachers of our Lord’s time all men can see. There was no “door” in their ministry. They taught nothing rightly about Messiah. They rejected Christ Himself when He appeared,—but all men do not see that the sentence condemns thousands of so-called Christian teachers, quite as much as the leaders and teachers of the Jews.

Thousands of ordained men in the present day know nothing whatever of Christ, except His name. They have not entered “the door” themselves, and they are unable to show it to others. Well would it be for Christendom if it were more widely known, and more seriously considered! Unconverted ministers are the dry-rot of the Church. “When the blind lead the blind” both must fall in the ditch.

If we know the value of a man’s ministry, we must never fail to ask, Where is the Lamb? Where is the door? Does he bring forth Christ, and give Him his rightful place? (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Vol. 3, 176)

J.C. Ryle

Thousands?

Could you please provide some statistical proof of such an assertion? I’m genuinely interested because the way I see it, it’s more like thousands of ordained men and women are actually leaving the ministry every year because people like you, who also inhabit, occupy, and wear-out the pew, have no concept of what it actually means to be and do the gospel.

So, in the interest of the Gospel, could you please provide some actual evidence to validate and support your assertion?

(PS–I think Ryle, for all his erudition, has quite missed the point of John 10:1 (2-6) and, consequently, Pastor Silva has erred too in his haste to make some larger point validating his own ‘ministry’ while running down and passing judgment upon the ministries of others. For all his talk about pointing to the Lamb, and the Door, and bringing forth Christ to his rightful place, he, Ryle, is doing exactly the opposite. The passage is, actually, demonstrating how Jesus is the expected one, Messiah; the Good Shepherd.

It is rather dangerous to extract verse 1 from its greater context of verses 1-6, indeed chapter 10 entirely. The focus of these verses is not the false teachers that are leading sheep blindly, even though they are clearly in the background (say, Ezekiel 34), but Jesus’ claim to be the True Shepherd whom the sheep recognize and follow. This passage is not pointing to ‘false teachers’ or ‘unconverted ministers’ of our day, or even in Jesus’ day, but to the True Shepherd of every day. Ryle has made a common hermeneutical mistake by attaching meaning to a verse that he has extracted from its context. Out of context, it can mean anything he wants it to mean. In it’s context it has but one meaning: The Sheep recognize the good shepherd and follow him; those same sheep reject all false shepherds, Messiahs. Turns out sheep aren’t so dumb after all. “Christ’s sheep inevitably follow him” (DA Carson, The Gospel of John, 383).

I have just a couple of points about Ryle’s application. First, Ryle says that “Thousands of ordained men in the present day know nothing whatever of Christ, except His name.” This may well be true, but that is not what Jesus says here, nor is it on his mind. Jesus says his sheep recognize him, his voice, follow him, and will not follow the voice of strangers at all. Ryle asserts a negative while Jesus is asserting a positive–and one quite opposite of Ryle’s point.

Jesus as ‘Good Shepherd’ here stands in contrast not with teachers or ministers–whether converted or un-converted, but with other shepherds, dangerous shepherds, who are rejected by those who are truly Jesus’ sheep. He, the Good Shepherd, is the one, he says, who ‘lays down his life for the sheep’; he is the Promised Davidic Shepherd: “The mingling of the foci–the promised shepherd is the Lord, or the promised shepherd is the Lord’s servant David–is peculiarly appropriate in a book where the Word is God, and the Word is God’s emissary, distinguishable from him” (DA Carson, The Gospel of John, 382). Thieves and robbers are not the Good Shepherd.

Second, Ryle writes, “They have not entered “the door” themselves, and they are unable to show it to others.” But that is not what Jesus is talking about, is it? The one who enters through the door in verse 2 is neither ‘converted ministers’ nor ‘unconverted ministers’ nor anyone else for that matter, but the Good Shepherd. Jesus said, “But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep…I am the Good Shepherd.” Jesus is talking about himself! The contrast is not between ‘converted’ and ‘un-converted’ ministers, but rather between the True Davidic Shepherd who was promised by God and those pretenders to the position, of whom there were, and are, many. Those who are in our day, and were in Ryle’s day, ministers, have nothing to do whatsoever with John 10:1-6. The passage is about Jesus–the True Shepherd who enters through the door and is recognized and followed by his sheep.

²³ I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. ²⁴ I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the LORD have spoken. (Ezekiel 34)

Now this is not to say there are not ‘un-converted’ preachers or bad shepherds of the sheep. It is to say that Ryle’s and Silva’s use of John 10:1 to demonstrate it is a decidedly wrong application of the Scripture. Paul warns of false teachers in the church, as does Jesus. But not in John 10. I hope that clears up Ryle’s muddled and confused and decidedly wrong exegesis of this passage of Scripture. And I hope it helps Pastor Silva too as both he and Ryle are dangerously wrong because neither one is pointing to Christ, the Lamb, or bringing forth Christ and giving him his rightful place in their blanket condemnation of ‘thousands’.)

Galatians 3:1 O foolish Galatians, who bewitched you not to obey the truth, to whom before your eyes Jesus Christ was written among you crucified?
:2 This only I would learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing of faith?
:3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, do you now perfect yourself in the flesh?
:4 Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it is even in vain?
:5 Then He supplying the Spirit to you and working powerful works in you, is it by works of the law, or by hearing of faith?
:6 Even as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
:7 Therefore know that those of faith, these are the sons of Abraham.

We have discussed the issue of salvation on this site many times and I can confidently say that we are in unity on this subject that salvation comes through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ alone and that we are reborn by the Spirit. The works of righteousness that follows rebirth are a result of that what the Spirit has already done inside.

Now I have these questions for you:

• Can any works of righteousness make us more righteous?
• Or can any sin make us less righteous?

What do you say?

This guy seems to think he has the answer (does anybody else see the resemblance to Nooma here?):

Click To Play

I don’t very often post sermons here, simply because I really don’t listen to a lot of recorded sermons very often.  The other day, however, I came across s short sermon on Youtube by Greg Boyd entitled “The Pathology of the Religious”.  Boyd draws a lot from his book Repenting of Religion in this sermon (he also has a new book that touches on similar themes called The Myth of a Christian Religion), but the nice thing is that total sermon is less than 20 minutes long (I’m all for brevity when it comes to public speaking!).  I find Boyd’s comparison of a religious person to a clinically sociapathic person to be spot-on.  Please note that when Boyd uses the word “sociopath”, he is actually using it in the clinical sense and not as an ad hominem attack of any sort.  He is simply making the point that just as sociopathic people try to manipulate others by focusing solely on external behavior, a religious person attempts to in essence manipulate God.

I hope they are a blessing to you.

A couple of weeks ago, and old friend of mine introduced me to a YouTube fad of “literal videos”, which has given me a good number of laughs, whether it was looking back at the cheesiness of the 60’s

Or the 80’s

As I’ve thought about this on and off (honestly far more off than on) since then, I’ve thought of them as potentially a metaphor for how any approach to Scripture when over-applied - be it literalism, intellectualism, historicism, philosiphism, etc. - tends to sanitize it and take the impact of the story, itself, away.

I’ve been thinking about the parables since we started studying them here–well, that implies only; I’ve been thinking about them for a long time. To wit, I’m always on the lookout for some new bit of information that will help me get a better grasp on the content of Scripture. I came across this important bit of study from RC Sproul which, I believe, helps make, at least, part of the point I was making in my previous post in the De-Sanitizing the Parables series we are writing here at CRN.info.**

This is from Sproul’s book Knowing Scripture. It’s an older book, published in 1977, by IVP. I confess I haven’t read the entire book–I’m confessing since I have criticized those who make judgments about books without reading them entirely–but I don’t believe I am taking Dr Sproul out of context when I cite his work here. And these words are important because they echo what I said in my first post about that parables: We should approach them with caution.

In chapter 4, Sproul gives 10 practical rules for biblical interpretation. I am concerned here with number 9: Be Careful with the Parables. Thus,

Of all the various literary forms we find in Scripture, the parable is often considered the easiest to understand and interpret. People usually enjoy sermons that are based on parables. Since parables are concrete stories based on life situations, they seem easier to handle than abstract concepts. Yet, from the viewpoint of the New Testament scholar, the parables present unique difficulties in interpretation.

What is so hard about parables? Why can’t these pithy stories simply be presented and expounded? There are several answers to this question. First is the problem of the original intent of the parable. Jesus was obviously fond of using the parable as a teaching device. The puzzling question, however, is whether he used parables to elucidate his teaching or to obscure it. The debate focuses on Jesus’ cryptic words found in Mark 4:10-12:

¹⁰When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. ¹¹He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables ¹²so that,
” ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

Jesus continues by giving a detailed explanation of the Parable of the Sower to his disciples. What does he mean by saying that the parables are not to be perceived by those who have not been given the secret of the kingdom of God? Some translators are so offended by this saying that they have actually changed the wording of the text to avoid the problem. Such textual manipulation has no literary justification. Others see in these words an allusion to the judgment of God upon the hardened hearts of Israel and is an echo of God’s commission to the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah’s famous vision in the temple (Is. 6:8-13) God said to him, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah volunteered by saying, ‘Here am I. Send me!” God responded to Isaiah’s words by saying,

⁹ He said, “Go and tell this people:
” ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’

¹⁰ Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

Here God’s judgment involves giving the people ‘fat hearts’ as a judgment on their sin. It is punishment in kind. The people did not want to listen to God, so he took away their capacity to hear him. (94-95)

In fact, I shall argue in my next post (on the parable of the Sower/soils) that an understanding of what took place in Isaiah 6 is essential for understanding what Jesus said in Matthew 13–not just of the sower, but all of the parables.

Sproul makes two important points here. First, he notes that the parables are not as easy to understand as we are want to think they are. We must, as he will conclude, be cautious. Second, he argues for understanding them in context, especially with reference and deference to their Old Testament predecessors and backgrounds. I agree. Much (all?) of what is written in the New Testament is an unfolding or exposition of what is written in the Old Testament. You’ve now doubt heard the old saying, “The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed; the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed.”

I think this is a fine example where understanding the context, the culture, and the Scripture (OT) is essential to understanding the meaning of the parables Jesus spoke. Another example, building on Eugene’s post from the other day, confirms this idea of understanding the culture and context and Scripture. How would we listen to Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed differently if we had first listened to Ezekiel 31 where the tree in which all the birds make their home is Pharoah, king of Egypt?

¹ In the eleventh year, in the third month on the first day, the word of the LORD came to me: ² “Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his hordes:
” ‘Who can be compared with you in majesty?

³ Consider Assyria, once a cedar in Lebanon,
with beautiful branches overshadowing the forest;
it towered on high,
its top above the thick foliage.

⁴ The waters nourished it,
deep springs made it grow tall;
their streams flowed
all around its base
and sent their channels
to all the trees of the field.

⁵ So it towered higher
than all the trees of the field;
its boughs increased
and its branches grew long,
spreading because of abundant waters.

⁶ All the birds of the air
nested in its boughs,
all the beasts of the field
gave birth under its branches;
all the great nations
lived in its shade.

I submit to you that perhaps the parable makes better sense, or at least a different sense, when we consider this passage of Scripture. Those who heard Jesus’ parable that day about the mustard seed would surely have known about Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning Pharoah. See then how Jesus transformed a parable in the Prophets from one of judgment to one of blessing; destruction of Pharaoh, construction in Jesus. It’s really a beautiful thing. This is but one example though, and is by no means conclusive or exhaustive. (Nor, for that matter, is it meant to upend Eugene’s fine exposition of the parable. It is simply to demonstrate that Jesus was not entirely thinking outside of what he knew when he did speak the parables. It is to show that perhaps the answers are ‘there’ and that we need to know where to look.)

Sproul goes on:

If Jesus is to be taken seriously about the use of parables, we must acknowledge an element of concealment in them. But that is not to say that the only purpose of a parable is to obscure or conceal the mystery of the kingdom to the impenitent. A parable is not a riddle. It was meant to be understood, at least by those who were open to it. There is also the consideration that Jesus’ enemies did have some understanding of the parables. At least enough to be infuriated by them. (96)

Yes. Consider this:

He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. ¹⁰At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. ¹²He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.

¹³“Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’

¹⁴“But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ¹⁵So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

“What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? ¹⁶He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When the people heard this, they said, “May this never be!”

¹⁷Jesus looked directly at them and asked, “Then what is the meaning of that which is written:
” ‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone^‘ Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”

¹⁹The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.

Well, if it is true that Jesus spoke this parable ‘against them’, then how are we to understand it? To whom does it apply in our culture? Are there ‘them’ in our culture? Who would ‘them’ be? These are important questions to ask before we go off half-cocked and slap any old meaning on the parable we wish. It may not be as cut and dry as we think. We may need to be extra cautious: they knew the meaning, that doesn’t guarantee that we do. And how did they get this one right and so many others wrong?

Sproul concludes:

In dealing with the ‘concealment’ aspect of the parables there is one very important factor to keep in mind. The parables were originally given to an audience that lived before the cross and the resurrection. At that point in time people did not have the benefit of the entire New Testament as a background to aid them in interpreting the parables. Much of the parabolic material concerns the kingdom of God. At the time the parables were given there was much popular misconception of the meaning of the kingdom in the minds of Jesus’ hearers. Thus, the parables were not always easy to understand. Even the disciples had to ask Jesus for a more detailed interpretation of them. (96)

[...]

Again, the basic rule is one of care in dealing with them. (97)

Well, I think Sproul is correct. And if the people who lived in that culture, and understood that culture, misunderstood the parables Jesus spoke, how much more are we who do not live in that culture, and know little about that culture, susceptible to misunderstanding the parables Jesus spoke? I submit that we are even more susceptible precisely because we don’t want to take the time to know the context in which the parables were spoken.

I’ll note two resources that I have found particularly helpful. The first is a DVD series of lessons published by Zondervan: The Parables of Jesus, general editor, Matt Williams. From amazon.com customer review:

The Teachers featured on the series are : Dr. Gary Burge, Wheaton College; Dr. David Garland, Truett Theological Seminary; Dr. Mark Strauss, Bethel Seminary; Dr. Michael Wilkins, Talbot School of Theology; Dr. Matt Williams, Biola University; Dr. Ben Witherington III, Asbury Theological Seminary.

Hosted by Jarrett Stevens and filmed in locations as diverse as Gloucester harbor, the Holy Land, Boston’s Old North Church, and Chicago’s lakefront, each volume consists of six fascinating sessions. Each session is taught by a different instructor and consists of three components:

1. Historical and cultural background
2. An engaging, close look at the biblical text and its meaning
3. Accurate, encouraging, and challenging applications of the Bible’s message to life today

This is a most helpful set of six lessons that can be used in Bible School, small groups, or other venues.

Another resource that is most helpful for understanding the geographical, political, social, economic, scriptural, and cultural background to many of the pericopes in Scripture is the work of Ray Vander Laan. His work is exceptional–especially his ‘That the World May Know’ series of lessons. You will find Vander Laan’s work most insightful in your efforts to understand the Scripture. From the ‘Our Philosophy’ page at his website:

God’s people settled in the land and developed customs and tradition and culture. And so when God’s Word became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus lived like a Jew, talked like a Jew, and worshipped like a Jew. Jesus was a Jew. Thus, Jesus’ words, actions and teaching methods, for example, were in keeping with the customs, traditions and religions of the Semitic culture into which he was born.

One way for us to know Jesus—and thus God the Father and the Holy Spirit—more intimately, is to carefully assess our 21st-century culture and Western attitudes in relation to and in light of the 1st-century world of Jesus. Immersing ourselves in the culture of Scripture and Jesus of Nazareth often brings additional insights to our understanding of the text. It is helpful to learn to “think Hebrew”? in the way that the original writers of the Text thought.

There are surely more resources available for study, but these are two that I have personally used in my own ministry work. As always, my goal here is to help you better understand the Scripture by whetting your appetite…creating a hunger for Christ, a hunger that can only be satisfied by Christ.

May you be blessed in your efforts and satisfied by His.

**Some of this post is question asking. Please be careful to note where I am asking questions as opposed to making definitive statements. I am interracting here with Dr Sproul’s work which I found to be particularly helpful.

“No-one can live on the spiritual capital of his ancestors. As R.B.Y. Scott puts it, ‘The religious group which only carries on the momentum in belief and practice of an age which has passed away, and has not made its own the covenant of the fathers, will find that the covenant is no longer valid, and the living God has passed on to seek a new people for Himself.”

–Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 74

I agree.

Since we decided to do a series De-Sanitizing the Parables of Jesus we had Chris L’s de-sanitizing the parable of the Good Samaritan answering the question: “Who is my neighbor?” and Jerry’s introduction to parables in the Hebrew context. I decided to look at the parable of the mustard seed because… well it is short

Jesus and His Stories

In Matthew 13 Jesus tells a series of parables and after the first one his disciples interrupts Him asking why he tells these stories. Jesus’ answer gives us a view into his audience minds and expectations.

From verse 11 we read

He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12 For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 13 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:
‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.’

16 But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; 17 for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

Somehow the majority of Jesus’ audience spiritual eyes where blinded, even the righteous ones. When Jesus spoke plain words they did not understand the plain meaning of it. Why this spiritual blindness? I think if we investigate who these people were and what their expectations of the Kingdom of God were we might get an idea why they heard but did not understand.

These people were Jews and the Jews expected the Kingdom of God to come by certain means and liberate them, the Jews, from the yoke of the Roman empire. Some of them expected the Kingdom to come by force (the Zealots), others expected it would come by political means (the Sadducees) and then there were those who expected God would liberate them if they got their act together and acted according to the Mosaic law (the Pharisees).

Besides all of their different views all of them expected the Messiah to come with much fanfare and kingly splendor. So for them to hear that the Messiah came from a lowly town, born out of wedlock and He then speaking of walking the extra mile, turning the other cheek, paying taxes to the Romans, mixing with the low life of the time… Jesus and the Kingdom he spoke of was not what they expected.

I’m convinced that these expectations they had clouded their understanding so that they could not comprehend what Jesus spoke of. Consequently Jesus told stories that brought them images of what the Kingdom of God is really like. Images have a powerful way of circumventing our expectations and opening the mind to other possibilities.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

In Matthew 13 Jesus tells a series of parables that He begins with “the kingdom of heaven is like…”. So the focus of these parables is to explain the nature of the kingdom of heaven or as noted in other passages the kingdom of God. The parable of the mustard seed is recorded in three gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke and in all three it is covered by only one sentence. It seems that in the Gospels Jesus had this ability to communicate something profound in very few words and this parable is one such example.

Matthew 13:31
31 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, 32 which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”

Mark 4:30-32
30 Then He said, “To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? 31 It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; 32 but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade.”

Luke 13:18-19
18 Then He said, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden; and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.”

A Few Things About Mustard and Birds

The Mustard seed, like the parable says, is a relatively small seed. The mustard plant is a shrub that grows easily and spreads fast and it can take over a garden in a short period of time just like weeds. In Jewish culture a well kept garden was desirable and allowing mustard to grow in your garden was prohibited by Jewish law in fact it was considered a weed. The mustard shrub could grow to the size of a small tree but is bushy and not what we would call aesthetically nice to look at.

Just a few verses before Jesus was talking about birds of the air and using that image to describe unwanted influences. Birds of the air would most likely have been viewed as a nuisance by an agricultural society like the Jews of the time. Birds would be something you would want to keep away from your fields and gardens. The use of straw men keeping the unwanted away comes to mind.

Why Mustard and Birds?

Jesus was provocative in using these images to describe the nature of the Kingdom. He could have used the image of a lofty cedar tree (which also has a small seed) and of eagles that nest there. Why did Jesus use the images of a weed and birds that made nuisances of themselves to describe the Kingdom of God?

My dad loved his Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Bible and I thought it a good idea to see what Mr. Henry thought of the parable as told in Luke 13:

Here is, I. The gospel’s progress foretold in two parables, which we had before, Mt. 13:31-33. The kingdom of the Messiah is the kingdom of God, for it advances his glory; this kingdom was yet a mystery, and people were generally in the dark, and under mistakes, about it. Now, when we would describe a thing to those that are strangers to it, we choose to do it by similitudes. “Such a person you know not, but I will tell you whom he is like;” so Christ undertakes here to show what the kingdom of God is like (v. 18): “Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? v. 20. It will be quite another thing from what you expect, and will operate, and gain its point, in quite another manner.” 1. “You expect it will appear great, and will arrive at its perfection all of a sudden; but you are mistaken, it is like a grain of mustard-seed, a little thing, takes up but little room, makes but a little figure, and promises but little; yet, when sown in soil proper to receive it, it waxes a great tree.”

Jesus was clearly demonstrating to his audience that the Kingdom of God was very unlike to what they thought it would be. The beginning of it small, like the seed of the mustard plant. No victory brought about by sword and violence, no glorious entrance of a political hero and no heralding of a moral prophet and judge to bring a nation back to obeying ancient laws but a small almost unnoticeable event - the death of a man hung between two criminals and a rumour that he didn’t stay dead*.

As for the expansion of this Kingdom - no disciplined military maneuvers, no political alliances and no getting on God’s good side by being the obeying older brother but unpredictable (John 3:5), sometimes in places where it is not wanted and the people involved in it not the beautiful and famous. The word subversive comes to mind to describe this Kingdom.

Then there are those despicable birds that take refuge in this mustard bush. Could it be that the ones that find this Kingdom attractive are those that the Jews looked down upon? The Samaritans, prostitutes, tax collectors and gentiles?

Our Expectation of the Kingdom of God and His Christ

I think that this parable must cause us to ask some serious questions to ourselves. It is always so easy to see how other people have the wrong idea about the Kingdom but what about us?
Will we be able to get beyond our expectations of what the Kingdom of God should be and who Christ should be to be acceptable to us?
Or will we stay stuck in our clouded mindsets where the Kingdom should come in a neat way and liberate us from our oppressors with the force of a super power’s army?
Should those who find shelter in this Kingdom be the acceptable ones or come already repentant?

May God’s Word become alive to us, transforming our lives to reflect His gory.

* Just to make it clear - I absolutely believe that Christ Jesus rose from the dead. I’m stating here what might have been the perception of the first people who heard the news.

This is always a favorite game of mine: My dad is better than your dad. Sometimes boys play this when they are young. I heard a joke about it once. It had three boys arguing about whose dad was the richest or something like that. The doctor’s son. The Lawyer’s son. And the preacher’s son. It ends with the preacher’s son saying something like, “Well, my dad talks for 30 minutes per week and it takes seven people to carry out his haul.” That’s kind of what I thought about as I read this gem from Sam Guzman: Driscoll’s Jesus.

After informing us of his anger with Driscoll, Samuel writes this:

After opening to a random page and starting to read, I quickly gave up all notions of learning something of value.

Then he writes:

What’s my problem with Driscoll? He has a low and vulgar view of my friend, Jesus. To Driscoll, Jesus is not a conquering King, before whom millions of angels fall on their face day and night; He is not the glorious Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, before whom every knee shall bow; He would never be sitting on a throne high and lifted up; He could never knock you unconscious with a glance. In short, He is not worthy of respect because he’s just an average Joe. Joe the plumber Jesus. I wonder if Mark Driscoll realizes the Jesus of Revelation is Jesus in his humanity. The Jesus with flaming eyes is Jesus the man.

Sam, my friend, no one said you had to read the book. No one said you had to like Mark Driscoll. No one said you had to open to a ‘random page’ and start reading. But how can you, after ‘opening to a random page’ of one book begin to completely understand what a person believes about Jesus? Sam, you are fighting the wrong battle here. Driscoll, for all his weirdness, is on our side; he is preaching the Jesus of Scripture. There is no such thing as ‘Driscoll’s Jesus’ any more than there is ‘Sam’s Jesus’ or ‘Jerry’s Jesus.’

As the second member of the Trinity, Jesus Christ ruled from eternity past as God exalted in glory. He then humbly entered into history as a man to identify with us. The common jargon for the second member of the Trinity entering into history as a human being is incarnation (from the Latin meaning ‘becoming flesh’); it is a biblical concept.

On the earth, Jesus grew from infancy to adulthood, had a family, worked a job, ate meals, increased his knowledge through learning, told jokes, attended funerals, had male and female friends, celebrated holidays, went to parties, loved his parents, felt the pain of betrayal and lies told about him, and experienced the full range of human emotions from stress to astonishment, joy, compassion, and sorrow. Furthermore, Jesus experienced the same sorts of trials and temptations that we do, with the exception that he never sinned. Subsequently, Jesus lived the sinless life that we are supposed to live but have not; he was both our substitute and our example.

Significantly, Jesus lived his sinless life on the earth in large part by the power of the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that Jesus in any way ceased to be fully God while on the earth, but rather as Philippians 2:5-11 shows, he humbly chose not always to avail himself of his divine attributes. Thus, he often lived as we must live: by the enabling power of God the Holy Spirit. I want to be clear: Jesus remained fully God during his incarnation while also fully man on the earth; he maintained all of his divine attributes and availed himself of them upon occasion, such as to forgive human sin, which God alone can do. Nonetheless, Jesus’ life was lived as fully human in that he lived by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Mark Driscoll, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, pp 128-129, ed by John Piper and Justin Taylor.)

I’m not sure how this Jesus differs from the Biblical Jesus. I’m not sure what you are contending for if this Jesus written of by Driscoll differs from your Jesus whom you claim Driscoll is opposed to. What? I know. I’m confused too.

Driscoll then goes on to defend truth: “Since nothing short of God’s glory and human eternal destiny are at stake when it comes to matters of the truth, we must contend for it like Jude 3 commands.” (134) He then lists what he believes are ten theological issues we must contend for. Among them are 1) Scripture as inerrant, timeless truth. 2) The sovereignty and foreknowledge of God. 3) The virgin birth of Jesus [I would call this the virginal conception]. 4) Our sin nature and total depravity [we don't agree here]. 5) Jesus’ death as our penal substitution [and more!] 6) Jesus’ exclusivity as the only possible means of salvation. And 4 others.

So, Sam, out of curiosity, how is ‘Driscoll’s Jesus’ different from ‘your Jesus’? Contrary to your statement that this is ‘not about theology’, it is about theology. You write:

Your conception of God will transform everything about you, your worship, and your service. In his practice, in his speech, in his writing, in his whole demeanor towards holy things, Mark Driscoll reveals what he really believes God to be like. And it is not high and lifted up.

And you know this to be true because…You are either saying that Driscoll is a liar or that he is, well, a liar. No one, the Scripture says, can say that “Jesus is Lord, apart from the Spirit.”

Sam once again you are fighting the wrong enemy.

Stunned - That might approach my initial response to what I read today at Slice of Laodicea. The post, Rob Bell Wades Into Nuclear Disarmament, contains such sophomoric rants as this:

I think Rob Bell may have gotten into some wheat grass juice that fermented into something else altogether. USA Today is reporting that he is now on the anti-nuke bandwagon.

and this gem:

Maybe Bell could try his line out on North Korea’s Kim Jong iL. “Hi Kim, uh, your honor, I’m an American emergent guru and life is beautiful and nuclear weapons are ugly. Would you mind dismantling your nuclear weapons for me?”

which is surely outdone by this:

Nuclear weapons are certainly ugly, but so is communism and totalitarianism. Soviet communism fell because we in America had a powerful deterrent in our own arsenal. In short, we were stronger than the thugs. And that is something only a fool would attempt to change.

______________________

A few of us here at CRN.info have some thoughts on this post by the author of Slice and her criticism of Bell’s words. So in the spirit of our Christmas and Easter posts, we share with you: On Wolves, Lambs, Plowshares and Rob Bell.

*************************************************************************************

Contributed by Neil:

As we have often pointed out, one of the tragedies of Christendom was the mixing of faith and nationalism. Whether it is thinking all Serbs must be Orthodox, or Socialism is somehow unchristian – no good comes from such blurred lines. And for one who seems to like lines, Ingrid misses this point regularly.

I will admit that calling for multilateral nuclear disarmament sounds like the proverbial pipe-dream. But hey, there is nothing wrong with dreaming as long as the dreams are not careless. And this is what distinguishes Bell’s (et. al.) call from the No-Nuke Movement of the ‘80’s. In that decade the call was for America to unilaterally lay down its nukes – an idea no thinking person could accept. This call is different. A nuance that is lost on Ingrid – ironically, the discerner is unable to discern.

It is worth noting that Ingrid only calls out Bell. If you read the USA Today article, he is but one person listed. Yet Ingrid ignores the rest and mocks just Bell. Of course, this is no surprise given her propensity to twist his words to fit her own agenda.

Ingrid summarizes her post by saying “In short, we were stronger than the thugs. And that is something only a fool would attempt to change.” I agree, except this is not what anyone is calling for - as before she has twisted someone else’s words creating a caricature she can easily attack… Unfortunately, what she has created does not correspond with the reality of what Bell said.

______________________

Contributed by Chris L:

Every once in awhile, I wonder to myself - have significant pockets of modern Christianity simply become intellectually bankrupt? Is reading comprehension something not taught in the schools (or home schools) that have produced the current batch of “Discernmentalists” inflicted upon the blogosphere? Or have basic honesty and Christian charity been completely jettisoned by those who claim the loudest to possess these treasures?

After reading Ingrid’s spewings in the article on Nuclear weapons and Rob Bell’s (and other evangelicals’) opposition to them, such wonderings only become more troublesome in the answers they seem to provide.

So - let’s examine what he said: 1) Nuclear weapons are an affront to God’s dream of shalom (that’s peace for the completely Hebrew illiterate folks out there); 2) We believe things can change for the better.

Now, let’s examine how Ingrid has interpreted this:

Picture [Iranian President Ahmadinejad] coming in, fresh from his latest holocaust denying speech where he called for the utter destruction of Israel.

“Hi, I’m Rob Bell, and I’m an American emergent guru and I’m here to say that life is beautiful and nuclear weapons are ugly. Would you mind dismantling your nuclear weapons for me?”

Bell is the hidden ace up Obama’s sleeve to change the world. You read it here first.

Followed up with:

Soviet communism fell because we in America had a powerful deterrent in our own arsenal. In short, we were stronger than the thugs. And that is something only a fool would attempt to change.

Now - I think a few points bear additional exploration:

1) Multilateral Disarmament: - If you can read and comprehend the USA Today article, the group to which Bell belongs supports “multilateral disarmament”. Applying just a slight bit of intelligence and reading comprehension, a non-partisan reader could easily break this down into - a) “multilateral” - i.e. all parties involved; b) “disarmament” - to give up arms. Or, to put it all together - “multilateral disarmament = all parties involved get rid of nuclear arms”. Now, just to make sure that the reader understands this point, the article even ends with this statement:

The group is not calling for unilateral disarmament but a “multilateral process where the United States takes leadership,” Wigg-Stevenson said.

In other words - the words of my favorite president - multilateral disarmament can also be called “trust but verify”…

2) Failure to recognize that the ideal state is not to be “stronger than the thugs” - those are the values of the world - kosmos - speaking, not the values of the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, peacemakers will be called the sons of God. In the kingdom of God, we will rely on God to save, not the threat of man-made obliteration. Would it not be nice to spend more of the GDP of this country to aid the poor, the widow and the stranger instead of having to spend it for our own defense? The only way that will happen is if America takes a leading role in pushing for multilateral change.

3) Putting our faith in politics. The Slice article does little more than wring its hands, crying about fears and worries of this world and harping at Christians who think that perhaps the actions of our country should mirror the orthopraxy that springs from our faith, rather than just wielding its name as a source of moral superiority.

It is articles like this one from Slice that demonstrate that many Christians have no faith in God or the Holy Spirit. Such voices ignore the Psalms -

I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.

The Proverbs:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

the Apostles:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

And Jesus, himself:

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Am I (or Bell) advocating unilateral disarmament and leaving the people of our country unprotected? No. What many Christians, including Bell, are calling for is to look for ways that nations might work together to lessen the instances of and the destruction from war.

To close, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) may have been an adequate (or even successful) deterrent between nation-states during the Cold War, in actual effect preventing the use of nuclear weapons. However, in the modern reality of asymmetrical warfare and islamofacism, MAD is far less of a deterrent. In fact, MAD increases the likelihood of the use of nukes, because it makes it more likely that terrorists and dictators who are unafraid of assured destruction will have these weapons at their disposal.

It should be our desire that all war would cease, and that any weapons - especially the most destructive of weapons - never need to see use. Expressing this Christian desire should not be seen as a partisan issue (who cares if Obama agrees/disagrees w/ Bell? Even a stopped watch is correct twice a day), but as an issue of being the peacemakers - the sons of God - we were called to be.

______________________

Contributed by Jerry:

“Followers of Christ missing the central message of the Bible? It happened the, and it happens now. And sometimes the reason is, of course, empire.” (Rob Bell & Don Golden, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, 131)

I suspect that, when the new heavens and new earth finally dawn upon us, there will be no nuclear weapons in existence. Dare we dream? Dare we perpetuate God’s ideas for what is peace on this planet? Dare we think along the same lines as God who has made it abundantly clear in Scripture that man’s way of doing things will, at last and finally, someday, be done away with?  Isaiah saw it:

How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!”

Yes. Yes. Let’s be fair. Isaiah probably wasn’t talking about someone going around and calling for multi-lateral disarmament. And he probably wasn’t thinking of nuclear weapons. And he wasn’t thinking of Rob Bell. But he was thinking of Someone who would make such an announcement. Jesus is one person who made such an announcement. Paul the apostle also seems to think that christians ought to make such announcements too. (See Romans 10.) So I guess we could say that worst Mr Bell is guilty of going around and imitating the words of a prophet. Isn’t that what preachers, christians, are supposed to do? Or maybe we should expect Mr Bell to go around saying things like (hyperbole alert), “God has a dream that all of us will one day destroy ourselves with our weapons. Therefore, I call on the US and Russia to start giving nuclear weapons to anyone who asks for them.”

I suppose it is better to live in fear and with eyes. We have weapons not because we need them, but because we can. We create fear in order to maintain control. We wield power in order to subjugate the weak. This world would be no worse than it is now if all such nuclear weapons were dismantled and the secrets forever burned. With all due respect, I don’t care why or how the SU was dismantled. I don’t know that ‘we’ ‘won’ anything; a lot of Russians have suffered much since as did before. My point is that I am not living in the United States, as an American, with my fingers crossed that our government will be quicker to the button than will the Chinese.

My hope does not rest in the United States possessing nuclear weapons. Destroy them all.

In what sense is war ever a good thing? In what sense can we say that the proliferation of weapons that can destroy humanity is ever a good idea? I guaran-damn-tee you it won’t be the rich and powerful in Washington, DC who suffer from such wars! Just because the Bible says ‘there is a time for war’ doesn’t necessarily mean that war is ever a good or necessary thing. Just because Paul wrote that governments are the swords of God’s justice (and reward!) doesn’t mean we have to be so quick to wield it.  I’ve come a long way on this precisely because, when all is said and done, we as a people are not protected because we have the biggest guns or the biggest bombs. I might also go so far as to say that God doesn’t need another nation, bigger or smaller than ours, to wipe us out if he, in his Sovereignty, decides to wipe us out.

Try not to be too offended at the notion that God is sovereign enough to make such decisions. Try not to be more offended that I happen to believe getting rid of nuclear weapons is a good idea even if it opens us up to severe consequences from rogues and rebels. Christians do not exist to perpetuate the American Dream nor is the American Dream biblical Christianity. But let me go out on a far left limb here, perhaps one that might make other writers here a bit uncomfortable. Let me say, imitating another prophet, that we are not citizens of this world. We are strangers, sojourners; pilgrims all. “We” should be opposed to the machinations of those in power–those rulers and authorities and principalities who in no way imaginable have the best interests of the kingdom of God in mind. Christians are not allies of the world in their power plays.

Consider:

They [principalities and powers] select as their primary target those whom God elects and sets apart (saints), those to whom God reveals his love in Jesus Christ (Christians), and the fellowship of such people (the church). The efforts of evil powers (I call them such for convenience, although I repeat that they are not powers in themselves nor evil as the antithesis of the good God) focus on the place where God’s grace and love are best expressed. They deploy their full strength on Jesus Christ. They concentrate all the forces of evil on Christians. […] [The Devil] brings all his efforts to bear against those who carry grace and love in the world. For his problem is not to bring people to eternal loss or to carry them off to hell, but to prevent God’s love from being present in the world. (Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, 176ff)

I might go so far as to say that a superpower nation is not required to destroy life as we know it.

The prophet Isaiah had more to say. Listen:

^48:22 “There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”

The wicked do not know how to find peace or what it looks like. Nor, for that matter, do they have the foggiest idea how to perpetuate it. What better person (people) than one who knows the Prince of Peace, to make the announcement, the proclamation, that God actually has a dream for Shalom? Or are we just terrified because someone used the words ‘God’ and ‘Dream’ in the same sentence?

Only a person who has the uncomfortable position of not being heard can sit back, behind a computer screen, and write with a straight face the following words:

Picture [Iranian President Ahmadinejad] coming in, fresh from his latest holocaust denying speech where he called for the utter destruction of Israel.

“Hi, I’m Rob Bell, and I’m an American emergent guru and I’m here to say that life is beautiful and nuclear weapons are ugly. Would you mind dismantling your nuclear weapons for me?”

Bell is the hidden ace up Obama’s sleeve to change the world. You read it here first.

Soviet communism fell because we in America had a powerful deterrent in our own arsenal. In short, we were stronger than the thugs. And that is something only a fool would attempt to change.

It takes no amount of courage in this world, rife with war, anxiety, poverty, and latent fears to sit back and boast about strength. This is pure, unadulterated arrogance. It is contrary to the ways of God who prides himself on weakness and the cross. (Let no one boast, he said, save for the cross.) It takes no little courage to walk into the face of ‘enemies’ and suggest that perhaps there is a better way of doing things–a way that is motivated and amplified by the presence and Spirit of Almighty God. “He prepares and table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

I don’t believe Bell is the hidden ace of President Obama’s sleeve to change the world. I don’t believe for a minute that Rob Bell is one who would concede that Christians are those who should be manipulated and cooperative with the very powers that mean to destroy Christ on this earth. Rather, I do believe that Rob Bell, since he is a Christian, and all Christians who are empowered by the Holy Spirit, are the aces up God’s proverbial sleeve and that it is we, us, whom God is using to change this world.

¹⁰For,
“Whoever would love life
and see good days
must keep his tongue from evil
and his lips from deceitful speech.
¹¹He must turn from evil and do good;
he must seek peace and pursue it.
¹²For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

–Peter

The God of Our Expectations

1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 But the LORD replied, “Have you any right to be angry?”

5 Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

But God said to Jonah, “Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?” “I do,” he said. “I am angry enough to die.” 10 But the LORD said, “You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?”

There is something wrong with this story and it’s not what you think. Well, maybe it is; I don’t know what you are thinking. From where I sit the problem appears to be Jonah, though, again, perhaps not how we think. In an ironic twist, the only person in the story of Jonah to remain unconverted was Jonah. I believe that this story is told from a point of view that means for us to see that Jonah was the real target of God’s advances. Everywhere Jonah goes in the story, someone gets religion. It doesn’t matter if it is men on a ship headed for Tarshish or the 100,000 people living in Ninevah or the animals: God does weird, wild, amazing things in spite of Jonah. Yet Jonah, for all his theological profundity, remains steadfast in his anger.

But there’s a problem with the story. The problem should be obvious, but in case it is not, let me point it out to you. It’s in verse 2 and I think it is worth repeating: “He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”

The problem is not this verse per se, but Jonah’s application of it. I think what it demonstrates is that Jonah had a profoundly orthodox view of God. He had dotted all the theological ‘i’s’ and crossed all the theological ‘t’s’. He had it all together and to prove it he quoted from the Torah. Jonah knew his Bible; Jonah knew his God. Look what Jonah says, “I knew this is what you would do…” and it was precisely because Jonah knew that he fled and ran and ran and fled. That is, Jonah’s theological orthodoxy is the very problem of this story. It got in the way of Jonah’s discipleship and it got in the way of Jonah’s vocation. It was precisely because Jonah knew something about God that Jonah refused to be obedient to God or care about the people God cared about.

You see, Jonah did not want God to be gracious, and compassionate, and slow to anger, and abounding in love, and relenting from calamity towards the Ninevites. Jonah wanted God to act in a way contrary to God’s revealed character, the character Jonah knew and believed. He wanted God to, well, not be God or do God things. That is, Jonah wanted God, I think this is clearly the implication, to wipe out the Ninevites because of their wickedness. Clearly, if any one deserved the wrath of God, it was the Ninevites. But Jonah knew what kind of a God he served and prophesied for and so Jonah did what any self-respecting, theologically orthodox Christian would do: He ran and refused to offer that God to the Ninevites. He would rather have been dead than to offer the God of grace to the people of Ninevah (that is why he asked to be thrown overboard; he hoped to die.)

Jonah must have figured if he ran and ran and ran then perhaps the Ninevites would get what was coming to them.

I might go so far as to make this claim: Jonah had reduced God to an idol. That’s right: An idol. You know why? Because Jonah knew God, he knew God’s character, he knew how God would act and he, Jonah, challenged God on this point. Jonah wanted God to act like Jonah wanted God to act which is contrary to what Jonah knew about God. Jonah had no desire for God to demonstrate grace to Ninevah. Ninevah deserved wrath and judgment. When we reduce God to our expectations and demand that he act in accordance with our expectations we have made him an idol. God did not act in accordance with Jonah’s wishes but in accordance with his own character: “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” And that is how God acted: Perfectly orthodox.

What I’m suggesting is that God is not bound to our conceptions of theological orthodoxy even if he is bound to his own revealed character. Here, in Jonah’s short book, I think that is abundantly on display. And I suppose when God does do things that run contrary to our conceptions of theological orthodoxy or our expectations of God,  we act just like…Jonah. Theological orthodoxy, while not wrong, can be among the most dangerous weapons wielded by the church because it breeds the sort of pride and privilege we see in Jonah the man. The worst thing we christians can do is try to hold wind in a bottle, but the wind blows where the wind blows and who among us can stop the wind? And if we cannot stop the wind, what makes us think we can stop the Spirit of God?

Let’s see if this economy of grace plays itself out in the New Testament too. We already know that Jesus preferred hanging around with the sinners of the world, but he also taught about these things. Consider this parable of the workers in the field (which is a sad misnomer) in Matthew 20:

1″For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

3″About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5So they went. “He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7″ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8″When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

9″The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. 10So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12′These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ 13″But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16″So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Here we see a profound example of God acting contra the expectations of people and doing something no one could explain, even though it is perfectly in keeping with his revealed character: Paying everyone equally for unequal work. Thus this isn’t a parable about workers in a field or about eleventh hour salvations as much as it is a parable about the crazy economy of God’s grace. Someone wisely pointed out to me this morning that those who expected to get more because they ‘bore the labor in the heat of the day’ are, actually, those who are bound up in a system of works righteousness. They believe they deserve more because they worked longer and harder and at the most inconvenient times of the day. They did not recognize that they were being paid according to the owner’s gracious will. At the end of the day, all the workers go away baffled at God’s grace. Grace makes no sense. Grace is the great equalizer. (It is likely, though, that those at the end of the day went away far more thankful than did those who began working at the beginning of the day and this for reasons that should be fairly obvious. The whole ‘those who have been forgiven much…’.)

This parable should turn our conceptions of God upside down because in it we see a great, profound reversal of all our expectations about God: He is not fair. Grace is not fair. We need to get used to it. This is what Jonah could not get in his head, and since the story of Jonah is left open-ended, we have no idea how he answered God. (Just like we have no idea if the older brother went in and joined the party in Luke 15.) Grace makes no sense because it is so wasteful. Grace makes no sense because…well, because it is grace. Who can understand it?

The great thing about Jonah and this parable in Matthew 20 is that they both end with questions the readers are supposed answer. In Jonah, God asks whether or not he has a right, as God, to be concerned about those whom he has created and to demonstrate grace to them as he wills. In the parable, God asks the people if they are envious because he is generous and spreads around his grace freely to all equally. (Another parable that fits well here, and also ends with a question, is Luke 15’s parable of the two lost sons.) All of these stories are pointing in one direction with these questions: Have we so bound God to a theological system that we actually prevent God from being God? Or, negatively, we cannot bind God to, or in, a theological system. Hear it well: We cannot control, bind, predict or anticipate this God and his grace.

Just about the minute we do, he tells us this parable (or the story of Jonah or the story of the two lost sons.)

Have we so demanded God act according to our expectations that we have actually reduced him to a mere idol?

Do we have a right to be angry with God when he acts outside our expectations, outside our theological constructs (no matter how orthodox), and against our will? (And doesn’t it infuriate some of us when he does?)

Are we so bound to a theological orthodoxy about God that we actually hope God sends calamity, that we get angry when he doesn’t, against those whom we deem to be the worst of the worst? What if…what if…those that we think are the worst, the ones most deserving of God’s wrath and judgment in our expectation…what if God actually does care about them more than we do and is in the process of saving them quite apart from our efforts, pride, and prejudice?

What if…what if…at the renewal of all things….what if God raised everyone up and in his grace had mercy on…everyone…without exception paid everyone the same price? I don’t know if he will; I don’t know if he won’t. I do know that if he does, which he could since he is a God who delights to act outside and contrary to our expectations, it will be christians who will complain the loudest and the longest and who will, most likely, bear a grudge against God, sit outside the party, pouting and refusing to join in an celebrate that the lost have been found, the blind have received sight, the lame dance, and the sinners forgiven, or will grumble because others have unfairly received the same as we have. Do you think we will rejoice that the lost have been found?

The God of our expectations is not necessarily the God of the Scripture or the God who saves. The God of our theological orthodoxy, is not necessarily the God who saves and reveals and redeems. The God of grace is.