Something in My Craw

Proverbs 21:25-26 ESV

²⁵ The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.

²⁶ All day long he craves and craves, but the righteous gives and does not hold back.

I let the proprietor know that I was praying against his business. Specifically, against it on Sunday, because I wanted him in church. He had just opened and it was great food but his schedule was still in flux. Going to visit for lunch again I asked again about his schedule and he let me know that it was firm now Tuesday and Wednesday off. Apparently, I didn’t pray as hard as was needed for the quality of his fare! After some friendly banter back and forth I found out that he would like to be open those days also but is simply unable to find someone willing to cook those days. The all too familiar song these days, “Help Wanted”.

Then again, why should they work, if all their needs are provided for? Being content with less should they be forced as slaves to work for someone else that they might receive that which they didn’t want? The demonic line we have been fed for so many years, work until you can afford not to (retire), has taken up roost. The desire of so many is not to work. Not to produce anything or love their neighbors but simply to feed the desire for “peace in [my] time”.

Studying the Proverb presses us. At first glance I would think that it is saying that he is eaten from the inside because he wants something and can’t have it. As Louis L'amour would say it “gets in his craw” and he can’t let go of it. Never taking the action needed to actually achieve it. The second verse seems to add another layer to what Solomon is trying to convey. We know it is connected because the “he” in the second verse means it can’t stand alone but requires the first. If had said “the wicked” or even repeated “the sluggard” the two would not have to be put together but the pronoun links the two and we are left with the second verse juxtaposing the craving of sluggards against the giving of the righteous.

Not only does the righteous labor, but he labors that he might give, not merely to satisfy his desire. I would argue that the desire of the sluggard is killing him today even as he is given what he wants, money without labor. He is being destroyed by his desire even as he has achieved it, at another’s expense. We are created to work, to prize creation (production) over consumption. David Bahnsen points out in the book mis·inflation that the servant who failed to wisely invest his talent was not reckoned wicked because of poor management or an investment that went south but because of a disdain for his master and the other two were not considered worthy because of the gains but because of the faithful service they rendered.

Are we the kind of people who long to work that we might give and never worry about giving too much or the kind that only works as little as possible that our desires might be provided for?

Coram deo

Growing Pains

Exodus 32:6 ESV

And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

Growing pains are a phenomenon when the body grows so fast that it is in physical pain. The reality of this physiological experience has become a metaphor for many different things in the lives of people and institutions. When they are growing so fast that things and people once enjoyed have to be “let go” because they can’t fit. In my childhood there was even a TV show, “Growing Pains' ', hashing out the comedic and painful moments that come in the life of a family when it must “grow-up”.

The people of God face moments when they are tempted to revert to childishness. When they want the comforts of a child. The nostalgia that comes with knowing how the game is played. The Israelites understood that to worship they needed and image, once they had an image, they knew that worship of a God of the harvest would be a sexual act, so “they rose up to play”. This was the desire to fall back into the childish worship they had been raised around. They had grown to resemble the culture they lived in more than the man they owed their lineage to. They had grown but they had not matured. They had multiplied but they had not been tempered by the faith of Abraham.

The people of God must give up childish ways. We are reared as children in a society adverse to the preaching of God’s word, and that is true in EVERY decade. For Christians to mature we must embrace the mature faith. Part of the growing pains of every generation of Christians is what to do with the suffering that must take place. Do they run from it and rise to play, or do they put the hand to the plow? Samuel Rutherford in reflecting on the suffering of his life said “But since I find furniture, armor and strength from the consecrated Captain, the Prince of our salvation, who was perfected through suffering, I esteem suffering for Christ a king’s life.”

He chose to see his suffering as God sees it. Not as a trial to be overcome but as a joyful part of maturing in the image of his elder brother. If he was to attain to the perfection (maturing) of his brother he too must endure. As Augustine noted “God had one son without sin, but never one without suffering.” Maturing in the Christian way, in a culture walking the broad way to hell, requires vocabulary, habits, and lives lived uncomfortably suffering for neighbors and relatives.

Taking joy in the moment you get behind the wheel license in hand, is a scary moment if you have not prepared. It is easy to get annoyed, frustrated, and angry with all that can and does go wrong as you try and learn. It is easy to get annoyed, frustrated, and angry when everything starts to break, from the car, the house, and eventually the knees. Maturing into the likeness of our elder brother tells us we are to “rejoice in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3), because it shows God’s love for us.

I have to constantly be reminded that those “sufferings” are a show of God’s love for me. Even then my wicked heart wants to fall back into childish complaints and whining.

Coram Deo

Cultivate

Psalm 104:14 ESV

You cause grass to grow for livestock

                and plants for men to cultivate,

                that he might bring forth food from the earth

Recently we are back in the throws of training wheels. Although we have had them for a while only recently have the legs possessed the length and strength needed to reach and turn the pedals. For those that are without experience, training wheels are a set of wheels that make a bicycle a quadcycle for a time, that can be removed when appropriate balance has developed such that not too many falls occur. You learn to ride a bike without as much injury and can keep up with your brothers and sisters in the meantime. Yet, they exist always to be removed, they are always to be temporary.

Tithing was always regarded by God to be training wheels for giving, so we do not read of tithing in the New Testament we are to have grown so much in our giving that training wheels would hold us back. Giving so much and so abundantly that we don’t have to think about tithing anymore. Not that we stop giving but we do it so well we don’t have to think about it anymore. The New Testament is full of this as well. As Christians grow into the abundant life, we have training wheels that God gives us to help us come to full maturity. One of those is submission: Wives to husbands, children to parents, members to elders, the church to Christ. Once we have grown into this, we can take off the training wheels. Not so we don’t have to anymore, but because it comes so “naturally” to us, we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Growing in submission Christians become able to exercise dominion, and this is a far more difficult task than submission. The struggle with submission is obedience, the struggle with dominion is sloth and direction. Dominion takes ownership and mastery over what one has been given. It requires work and effort, direction and impetus. We struggle often with dominion, I hear it from others and my own heart as well, it comes with the exasperated cry “God just tell me what you want me to do”. With the thought that it was easier when God would speak from heaven and give clear direction, but that was for those who needed training wheels in submission.

Christian Maturity is taking off the training wheels and embracing the risk of Dominion. When you first take off the wheels, falls, cuts, and bruises happen. The slower you go the harder it is to keep balance, so my foster son simply always went really fast until he mastered it, the falls were more epic but they were less often than when my daughter tepidly peddled around the street. Learning to take dominion over property, family, and home prepares us for eternity. It was in the garden that God told man to have dominion (In perfection), why would we believe we are not called to dominion in the second Eden? Men from creation have been shown as more and had more expected from them. The Psalmist here tells us that God created grass to feed livestock, but he causes plants to grow that men might cultivate them. Man’s dominion is woven into the fabric of creation, and when we choose to shirk our call, the fall.

Another disc was on the roof. So, I made my son go up and get it, since he was the one who threw it. Being scared of heights he slinks across the angled roof on all fours and eyes well up when I make him stand and walk. Getting down the ladder is almost worse, for at this point his fear makes him dangerous to himself. Trying to get on the ladder without turning his back on his fear he contorts with one hand and one foot on the roof one hand one foot on the ladder, back to the ladder. I make him turn his back on the risk of falling so as not to endanger himself. When we refuse to take dominion, we endanger ourselves at best and others depending. When we take dominion, we live in a garden of human flourishing, where men and women are fruitful and multiply.

Coram deo

Established

Psalm 90:17 ESV

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,

                And establish the works of our hands upon us;

                Yes, establish the works of our hands!

Driving down the dirt road looking at a tri-fold paper. It was one of four that divided the county into four quarters. Each one had old buildings or trees of interest mapped out so you could get lost on low maintenance roads looking for these historic sites. Each had numerous sites on them, with one or two sentences with some background or description. One old school had the question “where did all the kids come from?” attached to it, it was a fairly remote site. Just enjoying driving the southern portion of the Flint Hills enjoying our first year as man and wife. Then we looked to the east and saw the particular site we were looking for, The Marshall House, a two-story stone home set off the road about a thousand feet. It was still in good condition but had seen better days. As always, I was dreaming of saving that home and bringing life back to that aged property. As with many things it just wasn’t meant to be, but we would regularly drive by and wish it was a little closer to the road, so we could get a better look. A few years later we went the long way back to pulpit supply while they were looking for a new pastor at our home church and it had finally fallen in the rest of the way. It seems that the dreams and money of one generation can’t establish even a beautiful stone home in the scenic Flint Hills, something else is required.

Young enough to have impressions of the lasting fatigue associated with the economic decline that came through the seventies is all I am blessed to remember. Talking with a good friend as he was recounting to me, the blessing of Ronald Reagan, and his frustration with our persistent inability to learn, and therefore our repeating of former folly. It seems that man is forced to pick himself up only to falter and fall again, like the proverbial maid “I just cleaned up this mess.” Until the day comes and no strength remains to pick up Humpty Dumpty’s pieces.  This is the pattern we see as we read through 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings, good kings followed by bad kings, with the occasional reprieve of two good kings next to each other. Hezekiah would resist an empire by faith in God, only to be followed by the most wicked King Judah had known. Josiah would lead a religious revival that would expand the borders of his country and evangelize previously Northern Kingdom lands, only to die in battle and be succeeded by three evil and wicked kings, leading to the fall of Judah, destruction of the Temple, and the Babylonian captivity.

How can anything on Earth be established? What will last the test of time? God promised David that his throne would be established, and despite the fall of the Kingdom, the destruction of the City of David, and the slaughter of many of his heirs, Christ was born and though he died yet he lived and sits today on the eternal throne. God’s word establishes that which will last. We are promised that the church has been established and we thus are assured that “the gates of hell will not prevail against it”. Many dark days may come, many sleepless nights, and maybe even abandoned fields of battle, but the church has been established by the word of God and thus when our work is part of the church our work is established for all time. The immortal souls of men and women are established for heaven or hell. There is no middle ground, no nihilistic out, the word of God has spoken and it is thus established.

The League of Nations could not keep the peace. The United Nations appears to be as inept as its elder sister. We have awoken to realize that Pax Americana was a dream and that strong men are required to keep the peace of nations. Men, able to rule themselves and able to break the peace when others wish to rule them instead.

Coram deo

Liberty or Death

Acts 15:33 ESV

And after they had spent some time, they were sent off in peace by the brothers to those who had sent them.

Freedom. It is a word that the American people have come to love and cherish. Sown deep into the fiber of our being, and yet it is one whose substance many have lost out of hand, as a child thoughtlessly grabs for the new shiny toy, letting go of the old to grab the new. Not knowing or bothering to think of what has been lost entranced by that which is now in his hand, maybe to never think of the old again. No longer able to go as the Lord would please, but confined to that which will pay the bills, that I might one day retire and be free to die or do as I please, whichever comes first.

It had been ten months, and the job was done. Having pressed and worried myself into hives, it was determined I was not learning fast enough and so what to do now? One saint at church was excited for the opportunity that was before us, that we could go anywhere God called us, but we couldn’t. A little thing like student loans restricted our liberty. Liberty is the word that we have lost sight of, “Give me LIBERTY or give me death” was the battle cry of our forefathers. Yet, the church has lost sight of the necessity of liberty to a healthy church, local and foreign.

In this passage we read of the closing moments of the Jerusalem Council. The council had made an official declaration of the view of the apostles and how it understood the gospel not to require works of the Law for the salvation of the Gentiles. It had to be communicated to those who had asked for it, and two men were chosen to go to Antioch to convey the message. They were simply men who were at Liberty to Go. That Liberty allowed Silas to later accompany Paul in the next phase of his missionary journey. As we read the text of the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, we are constantly confronted with men and women able to drop everything and be of use to Christ and his bride. Not only the preachers but simple men like Silas and Judas that God would use and whose ministry would grow simply because they were at Liberty to fully serve their LORD. Silas and Judas are at liberty to stay in Antioch longer and teach and pray for “sometime” we are told.

Leviticus 19:13 ESV tells us that “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.” It is an oppression of one’s neighbor to not pay them at the end of the work day, but so as to make accounting easier and guarantee workers come back tomorrow the practice of paying a week after the work was done has become prevalent in our country. Nothing has changed in the two to three thousand years since this Law was handed down. It has always been a better policy for employers to wait and pay tomorrow so they could keep help, but that doesn’t mean it is loving said neighbor to take his liberty from him. When you are fired from a job you get your pay the day of, why? Because they don’t need you to come back tomorrow. It is a casual action by employers and it is casually allowed by employees without understanding what has been lost, the daily Liberty to decide what to do.

Some would argue that it is necessary for an economy to function, imagine a place where a business could only trust in the benevolence of its workers to come back the next day! It is true business practice would have to change, and some managers and owners could not retain people, and some homes would find that they don’t need to work today, because they have enough. Would not that be a better society than one that pays people not to work? What matters most is where you put your trust, isn’t it? Are savvy business practices with the best accounting what will make you wealthy and prosperous or God?

Deuteronomy 8:18 ESV

You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO