Deus Vult! (2006)

Luk 19:28-36 - After Jesus had said this, he traveled on and went up to Jerusalem. When he came near Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples on ahead
and said, "Go into the village ahead of you. As you enter, you will find a colt tied up that no one has ever sat on. Untie it, and bring it along. If anyone asks you why you are untying it, say this: 'The Lord needs it.'" So those who were sent went off and found it as he had told them.
While they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"
The disciples answered, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought the colt to Jesus and put their coats on it, and Jesus sat upon it. As he was riding along, people kept spreading their coats on the road.

There’s a lot of stuff done in God’s name. Even today, there’s a lot of bloodshed and hate in the name of a strange god called Allah. In the church’s past, there’s a lot of bloodshed and violence in His name as well. A little over a month ago I brought up the will of God and how we’ve both been faithful and egregious in determining His will in things as well as how we’ve handled ourselves in following through with His will or what we think is His will. How do I know the will of God and how do I distinguish His will from my own counterfeit claims or someone else’s. But what about God’s will in the smaller things? Let’s face it; the idea of trying to do God’s will in intense or painful situations isn’t as easy as referring to Wikipedia or Britannica. Sometimes it takes a lot of patience, listening and willingness and a lot of times it seems we have none of those qualities. Once more, we can be fooled by someone else’s dogmatic execution of what we thought was God’s will and maybe now we’re not as sure as we were or we know we were duped and are despondent. Where’s God’s will in all the other voices, including our own, and how do we know?

Knowing you’ll be called (Luke 19:29):
Know matter what you thought about life as a follower of Christ, one thing you can’t suppress or ignore is the fact He calls you into service and He also calls you into particular service. There’s no such thing as a life in Christ that requires complete passivity. In the 18th century, there was a movement called Quietism, which held to a passive life where if anything was to happen, we were to wait on God to get it done. It was sort of like a farmer whose barn began to burn down and as the neighbor rushed over to see what he could do to help put it out, he saw the farmer leaning up against the barn calm, cool and collected. The neighbor asked him, “Hey, your barn is burning down! Why aren’t you doing something?” The farmer looks up and replies, “I am. I’m praying for God to send a lot of rain.”

God calls us to do things, not because He needs us, but because He chooses for His will to be accomplished through us. There is passivity in our life with Christ, but the passivity isn’t setting our brains or our bodies aside so we don’t get in the way. It’s to dedicate our minds and bodies to Him so that He can use us every day the way He chooses. Our passivity is in acknowledging God as God and ourselves as created means in which we can cooperate with Him in accomplishing a picture that is much bigger than us.

Knowing what He says (Luke 19:30):
These days, a lot of folks have trouble figuring out where the politician they voted for stands on certain things….they are uncertain where their bosses stand on certain things….but when it comes to God’s will, they seem to be very certain about so many things. “I really believe that God wants us to be more/less…..” or “I feel that God is more/less….” How do they know? You can even talk with folks who say they don’t even believe they know God exists or what or who He is, yet they seem to know what He’s thinking, not thinking and which ball team He roots for.

The Bible is the only propositional details of God’s plans for creation we have. I know that some would argue that the Gospel of Judas should be included in that plan as well. But again, they don’t know why they think that, other than they would like to see that happen. We live in a generation where fact is determined by hardly anything but either feelings or self-determination. But God has provided us with the Bible and it culminates into His revealed plan for all creation in the Gospel of Christ. It turns out, from reading it cover to cover, that the Gospel was God’s plan in calling all of this into being in the first place. Who’d of thought? Nobody unless they knew what God really had to say.

And in order to know what God has to say, you have to go beyond your own feelings, knowledge desires and agenda. Us religious folks fail in this regard too. We split off from Catholicism because we didn’t believe that it was right to place human tradition on equal authoritative footing with Scripture. But do we Protestants really believe that? What about what we wear in church? Who determined that we’re supposed to wear monkey suits and mirrored shoes? Who determined that churches were to have tons of committees and meet in a red brick building with a white steeple? Who determined that joyful giving means putting 10% of your gross income in a basket every Sunday? Who determined that a Christian is defined as a good person? One hint: it wasn’t Catholics, unless you accept the fact that we hold human tradition just as high as they do. We’re just in denial. But unless we do refer to what God has said about things, we’re really chasing our tails and since He has said many things in Scripture, we can go there and find out, rather than rely on tradition.

Knowing we don’t get the big picture (Luke 19:31):
Here’s a big problem that is hard for the human mind to accept: our minds are finite and many times when God gives us a task, we probably won’t know or understand what it’s all about till we are at the other end, looking back, and even then, that sort of perspective may be reserved for the end of this age. Do you think the disciples were on board with what Jesus was doing or was going to do when He asked them to go retrieve the colt? They were clueless even if they went ahead and did as He said. So are we. We don’t know much of anything and when we do what God asks of us, we will, most times, not understand what the end result will be or even what role our tiny actions play in it all.

The human mind craves resolution. Why else do we sell crypta-quote and word find books or have them published in the daily paper? We have to know. We won’t rest until we know….and many times, knowing is a precondition to doing. The fact is, we are asked to do things and we aren’t given the game plan….just the admonition to go forward. This is another issue us religious people get caught up in. We can be certain of what God wants from us but then we move forward thinking we know what it should look like when we’re through. Most times, it looks totally different. Many times, we see things come about that doesn’t meet our expectations and we think we’ve either screwed up or that God has it in for us. It’s just that we never knew anything except the admonition to go forward in His name….period. Dallas Willard defines disappointment as unrealized expectations. In regards to God’s will, those who love Him and want to serve Him can experience huge disappointment in this regard. But the main admonition through all Scripture is to trust Him with everything. Many times, there’s an apposing relationship between the will of an infinite God and the expectations of a finite creature. I can’t tell you how many times I have realized this through my own disappointments. The crazy part of this is that I still have strong expectations and I can probably bank on getting the apple cart toppled again. But it’s usually after the cart has toppled that I discover His closeness.

Knowing a person’s authority holds tons of weight (Luke 19:33-34):
There’s a subject in philosophy called Epistemology, which is the study of knowledge. Many philosophers struggled with how we come to know things and how can we be sure we really know what we say we know. I’m not a philosopher and I can’t say that I have a clear explanation to this topic. However, when I read the Bible and then check it with my own life and what I see in others, I know one thing: a lot of what we know isn’t based on much of anything outside of our trust in the authority in which we received it. That goes for Christians, Buddhists, atheists or Rotary Club presidents.

Another aspect of human beings is, first, the human mind craves resolution and, two, it hardly ever gets what it knows directly. It usually has to come from another authority. Talk about the pink elephant in the living room! We’re tiny creatures that live around 75 to 80 years and during that time, struggle to understand what little we know….yet we’ve decided we know how old the universe is, how it came into being, what it smelled like and what color it was. We’ve also decided we know how we got here, how long it took and what happened along the way. But even with little things, our audacity is just as incredible. We think we know what is going on in the Middle East, why gas prices go up and down and why John Q. Politico is a dork and his opponent is the messiah.

The fact is, we don’t know and the only reason why we think we do is because we’ve placed our trust in authority in which it came. We read Steven Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Michael Moore or Sean Hannity and so we now we know a lot of things. Actually, it isn’t that we know it, but that we read it and think what they know is the truth and we adopt it. And us Christians get the reputation for being people of faith! The fact is, faith is the foundation to knowledge, rather than being opposed to it or in another category. We place our trust in God, rather than another human being (on our good days) and so we engage in knowing the way other’s who don’t trust in God do. The only difference is the authority our knowledge is based. There’s no better authority than the Cause of the world and the Cause of our Redemption. We can trust and move forward, even in the fire, because what we know is based on good authority.

Knowing you want a part of what He’s doing (Luke 19:35):
Even when you move forward in the trust of His authority, not knowing where it will specifically take you tomorrow, when we do trust a little, there is excitement in getting involved with what He’s doing. It may even end up making you look out of place….like a weirdo, but you don’t care, because you are involved with huge things….ultimate things….eternal things. The problem is that many times our circumstances can be used to take our attention off of those things and onto our circumstances. I can’t tell you how many times I have, in one moment, been so glad and excited to be placed right where God wanted me and doing what He wanted me to do, and in the next, worried to death about what was going to happen next and even doubting my own motives. What we see, hear, touch and smell around us can take priority over everything and that is the deception that this world and our corruption has on our ability to move forward in His name. But when we do, circumstances are a side bar. Circumstances are of little consequence in the big picture.

It’s a trust issue, in case you couldn’t see that theme through out the text and this topic. Do we trust in our circumstances or in Him who lies beyond all of them? I’m not saying it’s easy. In fact, a good definition of trust is abandonment and surrender, because the alternatives are impossible. Why do you think God created a Sabbath rest? Not only was it for the day of rest but pointed to our eternal Sabbath rest in Christ. Following Him is easy, rather than hard. It scares us because it seems hard, but the rest He offers us in the midst of His will being accomplished surpasses all circumstances. We can rest in that because we can rest in Him. We can rest in knowing we’re called to His service, knowing we can tell His voice from all the others. We can move forward without having to rely on our expectations. We can trust in His ultimate authority over all others be excited in our involvement with incredibly great and eternal things. You think about that.