Living History (Keeping the Old Testement)

So yesterday, I hauled out my Old Testement. No particular reason. I always kinda avoided it because it seemed like a bunch of morality tales with a couple books devoted to Israel's doom mixed in. Which is supposed to be brought about by the Giant Lizard People. Or something. It never seemed to have had much to do with Jesus, so it never seemed to have much to do with what I believed.

So that's when I dusted off the book of Haggai. That's right: Haggai. Yes, it's in the bible. Look it up in your table of contents. That is, if you need to. Haggai, Amos, and Nahum I always dismissed as the obscure minor prophets. I always skipped them cause I figured they were about how Israel had better shape up or there was gonna be a God-sized beat down. Which I've secretly wanted to see all my life.

Back to Haggai. It was here, I realized, that Haggai is misplaced. It should be back 20 or so books with Nehamiah. Haggai is a story, more or less. It's about Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and his efforts to rebuild the temple. Sounds like Shealtiel sneezed when his son was born, but that's the Old Testement for you. Maybe that's why I've always avoided it.

Anyway, so at this time, the people of God are in a state of flux. They're going from Hebrews to Jews. A nation to a religion. Exile is over. They're going home. To Jerusalem. Yet even with the blessing of King Cyrus, it's no rose garden. Resources are low at best. It's hard enough to build the wall in Jerusalem and a snail could build the temple faster. It's taking years to build just the foundation. Worse yet, there's no way this new temple will measure up to the old one. Soloman's temple was too glorious, too expensive to replicate. Needless to say, Zerubabel is discouraged. He wants to give up.

So the word of the Lord comes to him through Haggai. Soloman's temple was just that: Soloman's Temple. Soloman built it, but even at that time, the people of Israel were turning their hearts and minds to other gods.Soloman built it. Israel didn't. Soloman's Temple was defiled before it was even completed.

But this new temple will be a pure temple. A temple built by the Jews, united in the name of Lord. And because of that, even though the temple will be physically humble, it'll be more glorious than anything Soloman ever built.

So Zerubbabel presses on and sees the temple's construction through. Party.

Because of Zerubbabel's faith and courage and wonderfulness, in Haggai 2:20- 23, we read: "The word of the Lord came to Haggai a second time on the twenty-fourth day of the month: 'Tell Zerubbabel governor of Judah that I will shake the heavens and the earth. I will overturn royal thrones and shatter the power of foreign kingdoms. I will overthrow chariots and their drivers; horses and rider will fall, each by the sword of his brother. On that day,' declares the Lord Almighty, 'I will take you, my servant Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel,' Declares the Lord, "and I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you.' declares the Lord Almighty."

So God basically says that, through Zerubbabel, He will do great things. Through Zerubbabel, God's plan will go into motion. And so I turn a couple pages over to Matthew 1. And there, in a place of honor, is the name Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel. Jeepers. I thought the only important names in that list were David and Abraham. And Boaz.

It gives me shivers to think of that. That through all 39 books of the Old Testement, God was leading up to Jesus. Nothing is unimportant. Nothing is overlooked.

Suddenly, the Bible begins to make sense. It's a story. Not a series of stories. Not some good advice. It's a story of epic proportions. The story of Man. The story of God. It has its exciting times. It has its boring times.

It has its backround. Its complication. Its rising action. A happy time with David. Then everything goes to pot. Israel messes up.

Then God does it. He turns his back on Israel. The experiment is a failure. And, yet, in this dispair, there's this is foreshadowing. Whispers of hope. God is about to move.

And then an intermission.

But then, right before the climax, we have a recap in Matthew 1. A hall of fame. A list of men who have given their lives for this moment.

Here, in Matthew, we have the climax.

This is what we've been waiting for.

Little Things

God doesn't call us to be faithful in the big things without calling us to be faithful in little things first.

Sometimes I think it is easier for me to trust God with huge things than it is to trust Him with mundane, everyday things. It would be much simpler for me to believe that He wants me to go pick up my life and relocate to another part of the world. It is a lot more difficult for me to believe He wants me to go to a meaningless recital at 7:30 on a Sunday night that I had no intention and even less desire of attending.

I don't know why this is. Is it because we believe God should only be concerned with big things? Is it because we think He only notices the larger things? Why do we put God "outside a box", so to speak? Maybe (and this convicts me a little) it's because big things don't happen often and little things happen every day. Maybe it's because we would like it if God only told us things once every few months or so. Maybe the little things are easier to trivialize to the point where we have given ourselves every reason to hold onto them as our own instead of surrendering them to Christ.

I would rather go to Haiti for a month than send a text to somebody I would rather not talk to. It is easier to feel called to a church plant than to walking down the hall to talk to that one person you don't get along with so well.

In both Matthew 25:14-28 and Luke 19:11-26, Jesus tells two parables that are very similar about three servants who are given charges of various sizes. The two servants who are responsible and even proactive with their talents or minas are praised and then given big responsibilities. "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'" (Matthew 25:21) God doesn't expect us to move mountains; that's His job. He might expect us to go to the mountain. And He might expect us to do the talking. But before we go about telling mountains to move, we should probably start telling ourselves to move. Faith for the little things leads to the bigger things for a reason, no matter how much more convenient it may seem to just do the big things for Him and handle the small things ourselves.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a concert to attend. :)

Lifeboat Theory (learning to be a snob)

This post was written by Ben Michaels

So my day goes like this: I wake up. I get coffee. My ADD brain kicks into gear. Thoughts tumble over each other like a landslide all day. I go to bed. I wait for the landslide to settle down and my thoughts to order themselves before I go to sleep around 2 AM. Repeat. Generally the last rocks/thoughts to settle down in my brain or the big, heavy philisophical thoughts. And the thoughts about girls, but that's normal and I've learned to ignore them.

So you mix these philisophical thoughts with the thoughts I was having from reading my Psychology text book (homeschool moment) and you get someone who is thinking about how humanity works and what makes people tick. I learned that some people think humanity is just trying to survive. I learned other people think people are always look for patterns, or wholes, in the universe. I learned what Freud thinks. Nuf' said. Sicko. We won't go there.

But I was thinking about Freud and people and Eden and Jesus and humanity and rocks and girls and ethics and labels and politics (and Donald Miller, who weighed heavily on my mind and inspired many of these ideas) when my brain exploded. Or something like that. You could call it a blinding flash of insight but that would make sound like I'm special or something. Which I am, but not like that. I like to leave that open for interpretation.

I remember in my 4th grade sunday school the teacher asking the class a lifeboat ethics question. The teach asked, "You, the President, a female pop star, a married lawyer, and a garbage man are in shark infested waters in a sinking lifeboat. Who do you throw overboard in order to save everyone else?" I can't remember exactly, but I think we threw over the pop star. Adios, Miley.

Looking back, with my landslide-like mind, I think that questions kinda profound. Not neccessarily in our answers to it, but more in the scenario of it all. It's a metaphore.

With that, I came up with a new theory for how humanity works. Freud was wrong.

See, a long time ago in a garden called Eden, we poked a hole in our lifeboat. Now we spend our lives running around deciding who we should throw overboard. That's key. Think about that before moving to the next thought.

Now with culture and technology and over-population we've developed more civilized ways of throwing masses of people overboard. Nowadays, instead of just whacking each other over the head, we spend our lives slapping people with labels. You call them demographics, parties, or demominations, I call them labels. Then, we decide which labels deserve to be thrown overboard and whcih labels don't. It's called politics. Republicans are yelling for Democrats to be thrown overboard and Democrats are yelling for Republicans to be thrown over board. Conservatives and yelling for Liberals to be thrown overboard and vice-versa. Pro lifers are yelling for Pro-Choicers to be thrown overboard and vice-versa. There's no love. If you want to hear what a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal sounds like, turn on Glenn Beck.

It gets worse. Thanks to Satan, even religion has become nothing more than a label. Christians are yelling for Muslims to be thrown overboard and vice-versa. Protestants are yelling at Catholics to get thrown overboard and vice-versa. Baptists are yelling for Methodists to get thrown overboard and vice-versa. It makes someone want to be an atheist. Where's the love? Even something as simple as Morality has been twisted around to be a label. It feels like if you're Moral you stay. If you're immoral, you get thrown overboard.

It goes on and on. I see it everywhere and it's affects. It explains all the war metaphore in churches nowadays. We're in a "culture war." A "battle against the world." I hate that. In war you kill your enemy to win. That's not how it's supposed to work. Nobody should have been killed in the first place, much less in order to further the "cause of christ."

I want no part in that. I hate the "Join a team and fight" mentality. I refuse to be a liberal or a democrat or an evangelical or a conservative or a republican. I hate the Culture War. I hate the lifeboat.

See, no matter how many people we throw overboard, the lifeboat won't stop sinking. Think about that.

So, as people who know Jesus, we shouldn't save the world by throwing all the people who don't know Jesus out of the lifeboat. We should save the world by teaching all the people who don't know Jesus how to swim.

--Ben