Tag: Holy

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No longer a walk in the garden.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

“When the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of the ram’s horn, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear. And they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!” “Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered them, “for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning!” As the people stood in the distance, Moses approached the dark cloud where God was.” ‭‭Exodus‬ ‭20‬:‭18‬-‭21‬ ‭NLT‬‬

God once walked with humans, casually, perfectly, lovingly in the garden. In the cool of the day, God would take a walk, “When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden.” Now, years after Eden, years after many, many people, well past Noah and the total destruction of almost all living things, well past the rise and fall of Babel and Egypt, we now come to Moses and the Law.

God had just given Moses the laws, rules for His people to live and love differently from all other peoples, cultures and countries. These laws would keep Israel alive and allow them to interact with a holy, perfect God. God was always holy, always perfect. God is the same today and will never change.

Exodus captures a honest moment expressed by God’s beloved Israel… “we’re afraid of Him!” They said. God showed up like a tornado and the people didn’t feel all snuggly safe. Moses told the people, “God comes like a storm to test you. Your fear of him will keep you from sinning.” It did keep them from sin…for the moment, but it didn’t last. God told the people through Moses, “Remember, you must not make any idols of silver or gold to rival me.” ‭‭Exodus‬ ‭20‬:‭23‬ ‭NLT‬‬.

Just twelve chapters later…“When the people saw how long it was taking Moses to come back down the mountain, they gathered around Aaron. “Come on,” they said, “make us some gods who can lead us. We don’t know what happened to this fellow Moses, who brought us here from the land of Egypt.”” ‭‭Exodus‬ ‭32‬:‭1‬ ‭NLT‬‬ – really? That was fast.

Fear works while it is directly applied, but fades as we forget the storm, the threat of death. But fear is never enough to sustain a authentic relationship over the long haul. Who wants to take walks in a garden with someone they fear and sense that perfection is held over them at every moment.

Exodus, the Law and the entire Old Testament is very real and very much a part of our story of who we are and who God is. As I wrote, God is and always will be holy, perfect and completely incompatible with sin. The fear of God is still a reality today and will always be a part of our relationship to Him.

Fast forward to the paradox of New Covenant in tension to the Old Covenant. The God who showed up in the deadly storm is the same God who touched the dead body of a little girl and said, “talitha koum” (little maiden), arise. Or the same God who wept and embrimaomai (moved with anger) called out his friend, Lazarus, from death’s pit. We see God the Father, as holy, perfect and feared in the Exodus, but He is the same as the person of Christ, God the Son. Yet, this holy perfection, under the new covenant is love so pure, so piercing, it penetrates beyond fear. A fear that CAN make us want to hide as Adam and Even had done or stand at a distance as the Israelites. OR, this love/fear is to be experienced as an imperfect human completely and totally seen and known for who and what we really are. Yet, we have FAITH that the sacrifice of Christ doesn’t repel us from God’s holiness but contrarily – it supernaturally pulls us, draws us into God’s presence to be embraced by Him.

When shown our sin, we no longer need to run, hide nor flaunt or make excuses. We can now move towards God’s perfect grace not fearing the final judgement of separation. Believers will even be judged in perfect love and not fear (Bema – Judgement Seat of Christ (Romans 14:10, 2 Corinthians 5:10)).

Where is the “fear of God” in this season of grace? Well, it is still here. The fear of God should never be skirted, challenged or arrogantly thrown in the face of God, exclaiming, “His grace is sufficient.” Saying, “I can sin. I can disobey. I can do whatever I want because of Christ’s covering.” How arrogant, how immature! God can certainly strike you dead where you stand regardless of your status of being saved! God can end your life here and sort out the details later? Or, sin’s own consequences can bury you, destroying everything you’ve built and leave you destitute. Don’t tempt God’s grace!

Prayer

Dad,
I know of your love and it’s perfect. I also believe I have a healthy fear of your perfection, your righteousness, your repulsion of sin. I am completely and totally confident in your grace and painfully aware of the consequences of my sin, my choices that are neither hidden from you nor acceptable to you. I am willing to live in this tension. I am willing to run towards you even in my sin, with my failures and work hard to NEVER run from or uselessly try to hide or dodge my poor decisions. I am without excuse, but I am forever grateful for your mercy. Amen.

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The whore and the holy

Reading Time: 5 minutes

​Oh boy! I just love these real life examples of Jesus’ interactions with both the highest and lowest people on the social ladder at that time. I have so many questions as I read this story.

“One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.” Luke‬ ‭7:36-38‬ ‭NLT‬‬

At first, there are no names mentioned, “one” of the Pharisees and a “certain” immoral woman from the city. Where exactly do Pharisee’s live? Since they are relatively separatists, my guess is that they lived uptown somewhere, away from the chaos of the town. And, I imagine that this Pharisee was surrounded by fellow religious leaders that made up his neighborhood. A place where privilege provided privacy. Where it was safe, egos were fed and status was earned by seemingly clean, holy living. There were no sinners there, only saints.

Where did the city-girl live? With her kind, her people. She lived and worked where the greatest concentration of traffic and opportunity would be. Where she could eek out a living, be herself, not be judged and have a certain kind of freedom of invisibility. Her neighborhood may have carried a label like Red-district, Bourbon Street or Crack Alley. Her neighborhood was where people go to purposely get lost, or lose themselves in addictions and pleasures. A place where people were quite comfortable making transactions for a moment of position, pleasure, or pain – searching, aching for peace and anything to escape their mundane lives. I doubt neither the religious leader nor the immoral woman spent much time in each other’s neighborhood.

Ah, but Jesus felt at home in both neighborhoods. He probably hated the stench of one and grieved the sight of the other, but his love compelled him to look beyond the facades of stereotypes and labels to find his mark, his mission – the human heart.

The city-girl, out of some bold desperation could not wait for Jesus to come back through her part of town, that day she decided to make her move towards life itself. She must have heard, she must have seen the kinds of things this rabbi had done. She must have felt that she could risk everything to not just get out of the hood, but out of a lifestyle that was killing her – eating away and stealing every small morsel of moral fiber she had left. This desire drove her to go uptown, to walk the cold quiet streets of glaring eyes and the invisible cloud of judgment and shame to get to the rabbi-Jesus. And with her she clutched her most prized and protected possession. She brought with her escape plan, her nest egg, her only lifeline to a possible retirement from the hell-hole from which she was either born into or chose to make a living. Bringing her alabaster jar appears to be her statement saying, “I’m never going back.” Maybe she didn’t know what she would do with her expensive retirement plan when she, if she, actually met Jesus. Maybe she was planning to pay her way into his group. Maybe she was going to give it to Jesus thus paying for her sin and hopefully the transaction would free her from a life of pain or guilt. But when she arrived at Simon’s complex and saw Jesus reclining, relaxed, possibly smiling, literally being the LIFE of the party, something overwhelmed her.

She looked at Jesus dirty feet and knew what she had to do. She decided she would go all in and use her life savings to clean the master’s feet. She didn’t care who saw her. She didn’t care what anyone in the room thought. She served the rabbi with the only things she owned, her tears, her hair as a towel and her ointment as a way to seal and heal Jesus, now clean but rough feet. And Jesus let her do it! We forget, there was so much tension in that room. It must have vacated the air, time must have slowed to a crawl and everyone one else’s brain went into shock. I’m am positive that eyes were wide, dialated and mouths were gaping open. No one could move. No words could come out of their mouths because their vocal cords were also frozen.

But Simon’s and the others thoughts were written all over their faces. It was the only thought their tiny, tightly-wound, religious minds could think – IF JESUS KNEW… Bah ha ha. If Jesus knew? Are you kidding me. IF Jesus knew? EVERYONE knew who this woman was. Her clothing, her mannerisms, her gender – oh my goodness. If Jesus knew! That is hilarious. Then Jesus speaks. What is he going to say? Jesus had 100% attention in the room. EVERYONE was absolutely captivated by this dramatic, cliff-hanging curiosity of what would happen next. It wasn’t WWJD, what would Jesus do it was WWJS, what would Jesus say?

Jesus tells Simon he has something to say. Remember Luke tells us that Jesus answered Simon’s thoughts, but Simon did not know he’d been read like a cartoon strip! I always wondered, was this Jesus’ human, gifted ability to read the room or was this a supernatural move of the Holy Spirit giving Jesus the unspoken thoughts of humans? I like to think maybe it was both! Either way, it’s important to remember Jesus did not do anything that he didn’t fully expect his followers to do as well. We can’t keep using the, “yeah, but he’s God” excuse to dodge both the gift and the responsibility of all those who believe and follow Jesus.

Then Jesus tells a story that lowers Simon’s pride and elevates God’s grace. Who has greater love? The one with the greater debt! Powerful. Especially because Simon and all the other religious leaders in the room had a wrong perspective in their heads. They believed they had zero debt to God, they were perfect because they kept most of the law. I’m fact, they believed that God owed them! What about the woman? I love the fact that Jesus never winked at, minimized or excused the woman’s own sin. That would have been dishonest and insulting to her.

Jesus said, her sins “and they are many…” have been forgiven. Done. Complete. In the past. Why? Because she cried? Because she served? Because she spent her future to care for Jesus calloused feet? No, because in her act of service she gave Jesus everything! Her repentance was in her tears, her love was in her hair, now becoming a dirty towel, and her salve/lotion gift of generosity was proof of her changed heart. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

If anyone wants to see how God looks at our human sin coming to him in brokenness, this is the picture. If anyone wants to see what makes God sick to his stomach just look at the human pride assuming that God won’t come near to those who are broken. The paradox of Simon’s sin to look down on another compared to this woman’s salvation to look up to God in repentance is stunningly clear!

PRAYER:

Dad,

Oh let me never ever forget from where I have come and from who I have come from. Help me to never look down with judgment and arrogance on a life that is not only different than mine, but much more complicated than mine. Help me to be an broker of hope, generous in grace and approachable because of your joy and peace.