by RobertCummins | Sep 12, 2016 | 37. Time
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.
After spending some time with our passage, I am tempted to try and put the Byrds’ “There Is A Season” to the melody of Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera.” Solomon’s fatalistic tribute to time may be beautifully poetic, but it is barren of New Testament optimism. He sounds like a ruler, fatigued by 900 wives and jaded by worshipping their idols. At one point Solomon may have been the wisest man on earth, but his unwise choices regarding wives and worship may have corrupted his judgment. Nevertheless his pen is active. Here is another of his (tarnished?) gems:
Humans and animals come to the same end—humans die, animals die. We all breathe the same air. So there’s really no advantage in being human. None. Everything’s smoke. We all end up in the same place—we all came from dust, we all end up as dust. Nobody knows for sure that the human spirit rises to heaven or that the animal spirit sinks into the earth. So I made up my mind that there’s nothing better for us men and women than to have a good time in whatever we do—that’s our lot. Who knows if there’s anything else to life? (Ecclesiastes 3:19-22 The Message)
Unless Darwin has trumped Paul, Solomon seems to have sacrificed his hope to the idols he and his harem worshipped. In the estimation of the wise king, God has intentionally obscured any transcendent future, perhaps even obliterated it, so that men might focus more completely on their brief allotment of years. Listen to his sermon….
He has also set eternity in their heart, so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end… That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by. (Ecclesiastes 3:12 & 15)
I recall Country Joe McDonald’s impartation of wisdom after his cheerleading debut at Woodstock. Joe, too, may have just listened to the Byrds’ rendition of this scripture passage and been under Solomon’s spell. Sadly, Solomon’s fatalism was present in the “Whoopee, we’re all gonna die,” live-for-the-moment, 60’s moral devolution.
I have to keep in mind that not only was Solomon weighed down with the benefits of much wealth and many women, he also had no idea a new covenant was on the horizon. Do you think Solomon might have liked to edit his work after learning of Jesus the Messiah? Being wise, I think he would have quickly deferred to the hope-filled gospel of the kingdom.
Regarding time, Paul’s heart was more closely aligned with Moses, who said, “Teach us to number our days that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”
Paul was a man bursting with hope regarding the future. Listen as he lays open his heart to the Philippians (from chapter 3):
I long that I may be found in Him…that I may know Him…that I may attain to the resurrection of the dead…I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
While I agree that there is an appointed time for every event under heaven, I believe mankind kept their appointment with the old covenant and now is the appointed time-window of the new covenant, with its own unique glory. I do hope God revealed this to Solomon before he discovered he was, in fact, a good deal more than an animal whose future was nothing but “dust in the wind.”
Father, thank you that our lives in Christ are anything but vanity, that our advantages over the beasts are infinite. Thank you that even though our vision is not comprehensive, it is sufficient to see your resurrected Son. Thank you that we, too, share the inheritance of resurrection life and that we have been created for a future and a hope. Thank you that we have not only been called to fear you but to love you as well and to live in a place you have gone ahead to prepare for us.
by RobertCummins | Sep 23, 2015 | 37. Time
Time – Hebrews 3:7-19
Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.
Here, somewhere near the buckle on the Bible Belt, many of us speak (or at least think) this thought about eternal security; “We were once saved, therefore we are always saved.” Our salvation has no force majeure clause, whereby eternal security, in certain instances, could be rendered null and void. When we asked Jesus into our hearts, we were born again. We reason; “One cannot be unborn – We invited Jesus into our hearts and that was that!” Yet, with one word, the writer of Hebrews casts a shadow on our security.
We have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.
Here on the range, where the skies are not cloudy all day, it didn’t say “never” was heard a discouraging word. The seldom word today is “if.” “If” is not a comforting word, at first blush, since it implies that to win the prize (heaven), we must be holding the baton of our security firmly when we cross the finish line. In fact, if we aren’t, today’s passage implies our hearts are evil and unbelieving!
With all my heart I believe I have been born again. I believe, in Christ, I have been buried and raised from the dead. I have become a new creation. So….If I entertain the “if” in Hebrews 3:14 will I be loosening my grip on the baton, drifting towards the evil of unbelief? I don’t believe so. In spite of its apparent discouraging nature, we need to face off with this “if“, crediting it instead, with encouraging possibilities.
The verse presents the troubling concept that a born again believer’s heart could be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. This idea is often covered here in Bible Land by the doctrine of backsliding. Backsliding is a hardened state of heart where God has been shoved of his throne and an individual is functioning as the lord of his own life. With God overseeing the race, classic backsliding doctrine still has the wayward soul crossing the finish line, baton in hand. Exactly how it got there, without the rebel’s grip, no one seems to know – but a sovereign God is credited for the grace that accomplished it. I don’t think I would question this photo finish if it were not for the word “if.”
I find myself in a quandary. I am son of God, a new creation who has become a partaker of Christ, if I hold fast the beginning of my assurance firm until the end. This sounds absurd though. Its like saying, “I am the son of Bob Cummins if I fly airplanes as he did. Is sonship dependent upon performance?
I have a real problem – two apparently incompatible ideas are pressing me for their allegiance. It feels like works versus rest. My options – I could discard one of the puzzle pieces because it obviously doesn’t belong to this puzzle, or I could take a high view of scripture and say, the puzzle is a deep mystery and I can’t understand it. By design, the puzzle is beyond solving. In other words…
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. (Psalm 139:6)
When I say I have a high view of scripture what I mean is that it is too high for even John McArthur. (And admittedly, that’s pretty high!) Having a high view of scripture means God’s words are critical but they are only the approach lights to the airport. We will eventually deplane and find ourselves at a very high elevation where we see things from the Puzzle Maker’s vantage point and say, “Oh – That’s where that piece fit!”
We can always relieve intellectual pressure by discarding one the other puzzle pieces, but we would have to forfeit, what I think of as, that high – really high – view of scripture where if’s are inspired. Granted, “ifs” destroy the convenience of airtight, theological-puzzle solutions but they more than compensate by leaving us with a lasting security which rests in Christ alone – an unfailing foundation who exists apart, and high above, even our best doctrinal puzzle speculations.
A final word about evil unbelieving hearts. I believe they exist and I’m not confident they will cross the finish line. However, for clarity’s sake, an unbelieving heart is not synonymous with a doubting heart. I believe a doubting heart can still be searching. In fact faith is redundant without doubt. Doubt is the ever present context where faith is worked out; this is why fear and trembling are required. It is in the midst of our doubts where we persevere. Further down the trail, we discover doubts are not the intimidating giants they first appear to be. Over time, they prove to be mere phantoms.
The evil and unbelieving heart is at risk because it has faced doubt and found it to be a convenient excuse to do its own thing. (Check out the famous atheist, Aldous Huxley’s reasons for abandoning his faith in college. It was directly connected to lust.) Here, in its freedom from God, a most frightening thing happens – God gives the heart what it desires – its’ independence. Does this heart cross the finish line with baton in hand? God knows. I don’t know, but I have my doubts.
Father, teach us to watch over our hearts, that there not be in any of us an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from you. Help us to encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of us will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Thank you that we have become partakers of Christ. By your grace alone, we shall hold fast to our baton from the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.
by RobertCummins | Sep 19, 2015 | 37. Time
Time – Luke 12:35-48, 54-56
Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps lit….Blessed are those slaves whom the master will find on the alert when he comes….Be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect.
Jesus reveals that time has been entrusted to men. Today’s Blue Book passage reveals the startling incentives and disincentives associated with our stewardship. He even reveals his sliding scale of responsibility….
From everyone who has been given much shall much be required.
To mine as much wisdom as possible from Jesus’ words, let’s fast forward 20 years and listen in on an imaginary conversation between Timothy and his spiritual father, the apostle Paul.
Timothy – What did Jesus mean when he said, “Be dressed in readiness, and keep your lamps alight?”
Paul – Recall the context of Jesus parable was a wedding feast; “Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding feast, so that they may immediately open the door to him when he comes and knocks.” Both Peter and John told me how much Jesus loved to use this parable. They said something came over him when he spoke about the wedding feast; he seemed to invest himself into this particular parable like no other. To Jesus, this feast obviously represented an actual event at the end of time where the guest’s attire was critical.
Allow me to answer your question about readiness by speaking of our baptism which ties directly into this issue of our wedding feast attire. For those of us who have repented and been baptized for the forgiveness of our sins, Christ has become our righteousness – Jesus himself has become our attire. This is the critical thing; being in Christ is the only clothing allowed at the wedding feast.
Recall Timothy, it was by grace you were introduced to faith. And, it was by faith you have been justified before God and can now – clothed in Christ’s righteousness – stand continually and boldly in God’s presence with great joy. It is no longer about you and your performance. In fact, truth be known, you are no longer even alive. You died and were buried with Christ. You have been raised from the dead with Christ and Christ now lives in you. Christ is now your very life.
Timothy – OK. I think I understand this, but later in his discourse, Jesus scolds the multitude, saying, “You people are great at predicting the weather based on your experience and observation, why then are you so dull in appreciating what is happening right now? What do you believe Jesus was trying to say?
Paul – What an excellent question Timothy. I believe Jesus used this story to highlight the impossibility and the unprofitability of trying to time his return. To maintain our readiness, he is saying we should not focus directly on the “when” of his return, rather on the fact he has already come. In other words, we keep the door open for the Master best through our understanding that the Holy Spirit already resides in us! Therefore, our stewardship of time is composed in our celebration of what already is. We are new creations in Christ! Our clothing is the brightest as we recall our favored status as God’s children – those invited into, and participating in, an intimate moment by moment communion with the Lord of life.
That imaginary exchange was constructed from teachings by Paul to the church in Asia and in Rome.
Father, that we have been invited to a feast which you have prepared, where you will personally serve, is as blessed a circumstance as a man will ever enjoy. Our anticipation causes our spirits to burn brighter. May you burn so brightly within us that this world will take notice and awaken to the grand reality that today is truly the day of salvation. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Sep 18, 2015 | 37. Time
Time- Mark 13:32-37
I watched A Thief In The Night as a wide-eyed baby Christian in 1976. The film opens with a woman awakened by an emergency radio broadcast. In her half sleep, she learns millions of people have vanished from the earth. When she realizes her husband is one of them she sinks to the side of her bed as the reporter quotes Jesus,
Therefore, be on the alert – for you do not know when the master is coming,.. lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.
This film effected me. After watching it I went on high alert! For a decade I fully expected Jesus to return at any moment. That might seem fanatical but I believed, with Jesus, anything might happen. It was 1976 and the Jesus Movement and Charismatic Renewal still had some momentum. It was as if Jesus, after failing in the mainline, had sent his servants out into the highways and byways and extended his banquet invitation to a multitude of unlikely characters such as myself. It was an amazing time! People were being saved and transformed. To my impressionable eyes it looked like the promised harvest – the sovereign ingathering of souls that would occur just before Christ’s return. My bags were packed, but not so well.
In that season, large numbers of people were exchanging their religion for rebirth into actual relationship with God. While Keith Green and his Last Days Ministries were sounding the alarm, myself and others went to DEFCON 1, setting aside our vocations in order to labor in these fields so ripe for harvest. To the best of our ability, we were awake and about the Father’s business.
We were mistaken though about the timing of Christ’s return. So were the writers of the New Testament. I don’t regret this and I doubt if any of those New Testament saints did either. We were only wrong in one sense. In another, more important one, we were right, in that we attempted obedience.
I thought I knew what Jesus meant when he said to be on the alert. I didn’t, at least not fully. I missed the spirit of the command because of an unhealthy kind of fear that undermines grace. Obeying God because you fear he might leave you behind is an inferior motivation for obedience. Fear exposes our unbelief in our Father’s keeping-competence. Fear creates an inordinate focus on personal holiness. Moving forward because you are being prodded from behind by fear is not the same as moving forward because you are being drawn by His love.
Today, my bags are packed a bit differently. I’m ready to go but I don’t have a clue when it will be. This is a better way to remain alert since scripture tells us neither the angels nor Jesus himself knows at what time this will happen.
Father, whether You come today or thousands of days from now, may you find our hearts alert and secure in your love, busy loving you and those around us. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Sep 17, 2015 | 37. Time
Time – Job 7:1-10
Job was the topic of the adult Sunday School class I was leading and at least one attender was suffering over Job’s suffering. This rough terrain had not been plotted on their theological road map. The futility of Job’s life threatened the abundant Christian life as it had been taught him. He proposed a solution; “Ignore Job.” He reasoned, “Since suffering and futility are minor themes in the Bible, we should discount the book of Job.” I almost fell over! I believed all scripture was inspired by God and, from my reading, suffering seemed like a major theme. I reasoned. “Just because we are allergic to suffering, we are not exempt from its presence or relevance.”
Job is a man steeped in emotional and physical pain so intense he had asked God to take his life. His only consolation was that, maybe, if God quickly answered his prayer, he could die before he cratered to the temptation of denying God. Have you ever been this distaught in your circumstances?
I think I may have a low TfS index (Tolerance for Suffering) because I felt like this in 1990 and my situation was a cake walk compared to Job. None of my children had died and my skin was not falling off (yet). I was keeping this option open. 🙂 Here is a brief account of that season. I am telling my story because suffering is an experience we will all share. It cannot be otherwise in a world, that for a time, has been subjected to futility.
A host of problems, which had been gaining momentum, had converged on me. Some were of my own making. Some were beyond my control. The arenas of suffering included; physical health, emotional-mental health, family relationships (almost all of them), a failing business, a collapsed vision of life and huge question marks about the future. Would I find a job? Would I have a wife? Would I have my health? My sanity? My faith? When I lay down, I could not sleep. My life had become a waking nightmare and I had managed this while following jesus!
My beliefs, which I could not just off-load for convenience sake, instructed me that God knew all the details and that he was lovingly involved in all the circumstances of my life. Regardless of its origin, this implied there was a redemptive-point to my suffering. I was to take comfort that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him. In the presence of this beautiful truth, the pressure of those converging circumstances were threatening to crush me. I feared that I might suffocate. What was being squeezed out of me though was not “Hallelujahs” and “Praise the Lord’s.” I wasn’t sure just how much more of God’s intimate attention and lovingkindness I could handle.
Job’s friends were there for me too. I met them face to face, on the radio and in books. They wholeheartedly offered me their patented council for pain relief. Options they presented were: 1) Deny God exists. Relieve yourself of the burden of reconciling your miserable life with some fairy tale you have subsribed to. 2) Deny God is soverign and intimately involved in your life. This way God’s reputation can at least be salvaged; his glory will not be tarnished by the debacle which is your life. 3) For God’s sake, swap theologies for a victorious one that offers a more comfortable track to ride on. 4) Repent more thoroughly of the hidden sins which are obviously attracting God’s judgement. 5) Have someone cast out the demons that have been assigned to destroy you and rob you of the abudnant life. 6) Take the anti-depressents the doctor has prescribed and see a mental health professional. 7) Sing and dance your way to victory as unto the Lord. 8) Pray more frequently (and violently) in your prayer language. 9) Deny your prayer language. It’s a psychological aberration anyway. I came to a place in this season where my deepest conviction was…….. Christians are driving me crazy!
It felt very lonely but I knew I could not ignore Job’s experience. If I did, I believed I would forfeit the encounter with God embedded in suffering. In trying to sidestep it, I would have been guilty of trading Paul’s “all things work together” for some entitlement-blessings theology which worked “all things out for me.” While it had its appeal, I believed I would have been swapping the eternal for the temporal, making a bargain I would regret.
I want to be honest for the sake of those who will come to this same spot on the map. While my scriptural logic might sound noble, there was no sense of heroic faith going on here. My attitude was appalling. I was loosing it. Hoping against hope, I was just trying to put one foot in front of the other, all the while asking, “Why?” Fast forward 25 years…..
It was not mastery of bible truths that carried me through that period. It wasn’t any of the pat answers offered by pop-Christianity. As messy as it was, I simply trusted that God was a good Father and that he was in those storms with me. I was simply holding on by faith to a truth that I could not feel at all – that he loved me and because of that, good would come from this. Even today, I don’t know if all that was an attack, a trial, a test, or all the above. While that remains a mystery, I do know that all those things have worked to my good as Paul promised they would.
If there is an epiphany to my story, it is that our greatest blessing is currently bound up in our greatest obstacles and heartaches. The train wrecks we entrust to him are the places we will one day meet him. When we arise from the ashes, and we will, we will speak with an authority which allows us to comfort others with the comfort with which we have been comforted.
Father, you are good. You are kind. You are sovereign. In the midst of our trials and tests we are tempted to think otherwise. Give us the grace to persevere and to overcome. Whether we are escorted around or through trying circumstances, be glorified as the world sees us falling more deeply in love with you, more yielded to the soverign, mysterious paths You lead us on. Amen.
by RobertCummins | Sep 16, 2015 | 37. Time
Time – 2 Corinthians 5:11 – 6:2
Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation. 2 Corinthians 6:2
We get our word salvation from the greek word sozo, which means; to rescue, deliver, heal, protect, preserve, to make whole, to do well. When we think to ourselves or profess to others that we are saved, is this what we mean? Or, do we mean, my sins have been forgiven therefore I have been saved from eternal punishment?
Considering sozo’s larger meaning, the gospel is not just good news; it’s great news! One teacher I follow teaches that salvation is the forgiveness of sins, the deliverance from oppression and the healing of disease. Has he gone too far? Jesus’ provides us with his answer,
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because he has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.
We have not just been saved from an horrific end but saved into a glorious now; into a kingdom of perpetual new beginnings. It should be normal, with minds that are being renewed, to regularly discover that being a new creation in Christ is a bigger deal than we had previously grasped.
Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come.
Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
I don’t fully know what “all these things” refers to, but I can easily imagine that being reconciled to God would include a renewed–sozo–sized salvation which includes healing, deliverance and blessing.
Father, save us from our impoverished ideas of your kingdom. May we succeed as agents of the eternal life you entrusted to us. May your blood not be wasted upon us. May your Word return to you having accomplished that for which it was sent. Help us to align our hearts with yours. Upgrade our expectations from then to now. Upgrade our experience from good to great. Amen.
