Conversation 7: Know Thyself

Transcription

1 Conversation 7: Know Thyself When scripture and Struggle Intersect Day 1: (Paul is talking) 1Th 2:4 No, we speak the way we do because God has given us a mandate. Know Thyself was a phrase important to the Greeks stemming from hundreds of years before I was born. For them, it represented the ultimate precondition for a life properly lived. Delphi So important, the phrase was said to be on the doorway of the Temple of Apollo in the Greek city of Delphi, that place where the Oracle, a kind of mystic prophetess or medium, had for centuries spoken words supposedly as the mouthpiece of the god Apollo, son of Zeus. (Of course, there are no gods, save the one God and Jesus Christ as LORD.) Know Thyself was the last thing seen by those ushered into the temple to speak to the Oracle about their lives and what was to befall them. 1

2 I never went to Delphi. 1 Nestled, as it was, in the central mountains of Macedonia, just off the Gulf of Corinth and tucked away from Athens and Corinth, it was neither on my path nor in God s plan for me. Besides, in my lifetime, it was no longer the centralizing force of Greek life that it had been before the time of Alexander the Great when Greece was still a loose collection of city states. Once it was a lavish political and spiritual hub, a hive of ornate pagan shrines and devotion, as well as a cultural center where the city states could come and show off their wares in a kind of ancient world s fair. It also hosted the Isthmian games, which was surpassed only by the Olympics in importance and popularity, and these were well attended even during my lifetime. Know Thyself was pursued in two ways in Delphi: introspectively, through the worship of Apollo, god of reason, order, and control (i.e., through the mind), and externally through the worship of Dionysus, god of emotion and the senses (i.e., through wine and sensuality). Who You Are But what the Greeks sought through these ways of knowing thyself, God proclaimed through Jesus Christ in a wholly different manner. God revealed a divine secret that only through Jesus Christ can one truly know oneself. I have already shown you (in our previous conversations, although I haven t said it quite like this) that, in Christ, you 1 There is no record of Paul going to this city, or any reason to believe he did.. 2

3 are no longer merely dust and breath, but a Being of Christ, a Being of Election, and a Being in Communion with God. And in our most previous talk, I laid out for you that you are a Being of Mission. Let s talk more of this. At Delphi, the Oracle s mystical frenzy was nothing compared to what I was to experience, for I came to know myself, not through the a heady study of Greek philosophy, even though I was well versed in such study, nor through a mystical encounter, channeling, as it were, a so-called god. Rather, I came to know myself most deeply through the struggles and conflicts which befell me. You heard me correctly: through struggle. God worked in me during those times to reveal things about myself that I never knew, especially in the way I was to find resonance with the call of Jeremiah, the great prophet of old. Knowing yourself is crucial. Knowing what God expects of you is also crucial. But knowing that who you are and what God expects of you are intricately tied together is something that many people don t ever figure out. That s why mandate is such an important word, and I want you to hear this. For this is a fact about you that you cannot escape: you have a mandate a directive from God for who you are to be and what you are to do. You can run from it or try to hide; you can ignore it or pretend it isn t so. But it is a fact. And it gets spelled out for you in no place more clearly than your struggles. Not thru philosophy, mystical pursuits, or pursuits of the flesh; not through self-improvement, or deep study of anything; not 3

4 through music or poetry or the attainment of the good life. All of these things might be valuable or helpful; they might even be necessary. But the mandate of God for your life is focused in your struggles as you hold faith in Jesus Christ; this is the sculptor s shop where you learn what it means to be a Being of Mission a person of purpose. Levels This works on a couple of levels. First, there is the shared level, as you participate in your existence with all others in Christ. On this level, the secret of God for your life has been made clear. 1. You have been elected in Christ into a new shared existence. (That s who you are.) 2. Follow him in everything you do. Be faithful in all your decisions. (That s what you do.) It s that simple. Name any situation and plug-in those answers. They work. Carrying this forward, then, we come to the second level, the distinctive level. The question is often asked: Does God have anything in particular or special in mind for me? Many people wrestle with this for years: What particular plan is it God has in mind for me? as if being faithful through thick and thin is not enough. Many doubt they have any unique calling. But being faithful is all that is needed. Does God have a mandate for you? Yes. How do you discover it? By being faithful through good times and bad. God s 4

5 mandate for you will then blossom like a flower in the spring. If you are faithful, you will end up being distinctively faithful in specific ways that only you could be. You will discover God s more distinctive calling for you, his mandate for you, through the process of struggle. Certainly, we who believe are all one body in Christ, having a shared existence; but we each will live out that calling in ways that are distinctive to ourselves. The battles we fight, the struggles we face, the conflicts we encounter we will all deal with them within the shared existence in distinctive ways depending on many variables in our lives. It is in this way that God helps us work out and define the mandate he has for us. It is a mandate in process, a calling that gets worked out instead of merely blurted out. Later I will tell the Philippians to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, referring precisely to this issue of deliverance from spiritual defeat through the training ground of struggle and hardship. To say that you are a work in progress is more than a cliché. Who you are to be and what you are to do are things that often take shape and are revealed over time and through experience. It is your job to be faithful through hardship and sufferings, engaging in and embracing the process. My Life From early in my life, I knew what I wanted to do, and I pursued it. The study of the ancient scriptures (even then they were ancient!) was exceptionally important to me 5

6 and, when I was old enough, I pursued this passion with incredible zeal. It was my life. Then, as you likely know already, I reached a point at which I believed I was called by God to stamp out the new Jesus-sect, and so I gave it everything I had. The things I did arresting people, throwing them in jail, and the like were all done from a clear conscience. It was because I energetically pursued this from a clear conscience being faithful as I knew how to be faithful that God kept on working on me the whole time. I heard the messages from those I was persecuting in the name of God and they enraged me with what I considered heresy. Then Jesus himself came to me in a light from heaven, blinding me, stopping me in my tracks. That wasn t all. I traveled to Arabia for a time not as some think for a desert retreat, but in mission and then back to Damascus, and then to Jerusalem, and then to Syria and Cilicia, then back to Jerusalem again. During all of this time, I faced incredible conflict, even among those who were following Christ, and there were those who would have me stop what I was preaching and doing as I began working among the Gentiles. I did not stop, however, even for a moment, because God had shown me, through the scriptures and through the Holy Spirit and through the risen Jesus himself, that in the midst of all the conflict and struggle, I was to go to the Gentiles with a message of freedom in Christ instead of bondage, whether bondage to law, or bondage to a love of the world, it is all the same a bondage that leads to death. 6

7 My very birth in Christ was of conflict, and that is how my life in Christ continued. The Scriptures and Crisis You see, there is more to this than merely traveling around from place to place and then suddenly changing my message, drastic though it was. For, student of the scriptures that I was, it was revealed to me through my crisis and my very intense struggle, that just as Jeremiah had been called by God, so had I been called in nearly identical terms. O Lord, who judges rightly, who approves minds and hearts, show me your vengeance against them, for I have revealed my righteous deeds to you. (LXX Jer 11:20) 2. When I wrote to the Thessalonians that it is God who approves our hearts (1Th 2:4), I was intentionally echoing the Jeremiah text just quoted above. Actually, I saw the whole prophetic context of Jeremiah 11 as parallel for what God was doing in my life. So, we ll be looking at that together this week, you and I. You should look at that text. It begins with the Word from the LORD coming to Jeremiah: You shall speak to the men of Judah (v. 2). They are so disobedient, the prophet is told not even to pray for them! Can you imagine God telling you that? Don t even pray for these people, they are so evil! Indeed, they were plotting to kill him and 2 The Greek OT is often referred to as the LXX (Septuagint), which refers to the tradition that 70 translators (or so) brought the scriptures from Hebrew into Greek in 70 days. 7

8 were telling him, Don t ever prophesy in the name of KURIOS (the LORD) (v. 21 LXX). Does this sound at all familiar to you? Especially when you read Jeremiah 11 against what I wrote in 1Th 1:6-8; 2:3-16 and 3:3-4, it should be plain to you that I saw myself as speaking the Word of the Lord in a similar hostile situation; I saw myself as a prophet of God in the same sense as Jeremiah. That is who God called me to be and it became clear to me, not merely through a vibrant and careful life in Bible reading, but as that deep knowledge of the scriptures came crashing into all the conflict I was facing. In that way, God spoke to me through the scriptures, and the scriptures began chiseling away at my life. It wasn t me reinterpreting the scriptures, it was the scriptures that began reinterpreting my life! Please look at that last statement again: that the scriptures began reinterpreting my life. I am quite serious about this. It is the interaction, the interplay between (1) your life as it moves along, and (2) the scriptures as you continue to read and ponder them, that God s specific will for you begins to come clear. Many sit around, waiting impatiently for a voice in their head without any time at all in the scriptures. They don t get it! But if that is not enough, consider this: I soon began to see that the very call of Jeremiah describes my situation exactly: And the Word of the Lord came to me saying Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born, I set you apart. 8

9 I destined you as a prophet to the Gentiles (nations) And I said, Oh lord KURIOS. 3 I don t know how to speak, I am just a young man. And KURIOS said to me, Don t be saying, I m just a young man, because to every place that I send you out, you shall go; and whatever I command you, you will speak it. Do not be afraid to face them because I am with you to rescue you, says KURIOS. (LXX Jer 1:4-12) Does this not remind you in several respects of Moses call (Exod 3:10-15; 4::28; 7:16; Deut 34:11)? Well, it should, and it should also remind you of my description of my own ministry among the Thessalonians. For just as God sent out Jeremiah (exaposteilō is a Greek word meaning to send out, ) I use the noun form apostolos ( one who is sent, envoy ), to describe my own mandate and mission by God, all of it from the LORD (KURIOS) himself, just as in Jeremiah. In other words, I identify myself as a special envoy of God, appointed by KURIOS, sent out for a particular purpose of proclaiming the Saving Message of God. 4 You see, through this marvelous intersection of (1) a passionate pursuit of the scriptures, and (2) continual struggle in my life, God revealed to me, through his Holy Spirit, that he had set me apart as he did Moses and 3 KURIOS is the Greek word used in the Greek Old Testament (known as the LXX) for the divine name of God, Yahweh or Jehovah. This word is also a title used for Jesus and is normally translated as, Lord. See Finding God part 3 section 2 for detailed comments on this extremely important word and what it meant for Paul s writings. 4 Envoy or apostle is a key word in Paul. See Finding God part 3, Paul as Envoy for details on this section. 9

10 Jeremiah. There was quite a while that I did not understand that, and though thinking I was doing his will, I was not. Yet, he showed me that I am no different from the prophets of the scriptures who were described using the same terms, having essentially the same kind of call and mission, and facing the same kinds of opponents and struggles. I also received the same kinds of abilities and responsibilities in receiving and delivering the Word of the Lord. Distinction My point in all of this is that God worked very specific things through me in particular that he did not through anyone else. It is how he decided to work distinctively through me. However, this very same process is what describes how God works in every person who gives himself or herself to a deep and prayerful pursuit of the scriptures and who through it, from the very depths of every struggle, faithfully seeks the heart of God. This is how the scriptures reinterpret our lives, showing that the struggle itself is a divine force taking place within us, God fighting for us to transform us. It is through struggle that the heart and soul of the scriptures take root in us, through his Holy Spirit, in this way or that, and works on us distinctively to accomplish the will of God as he sees fit. In conflict and struggle, you are called to know who you are" in Christ, accepting the mandate of God. 10

11 Knowing Yourself is not the result of the heady pursuit of philosophy, or the frenzied rush of sensuality, but the refining fire of Jesus Christ as the scriptures come crashing head-on into hardship and struggle. There is nothing wrong with formal education; it can be very useful, even vital. I myself was highly educated, and I certainly made every use of it I could. Our chosen careers are fine, and the pursuit of them is commendable. But it is through our battles that we find God most at work defining what his mandate looks like distinctively for our individual life The Next Step So let us take another step. For the next several days, engage me in conversation. Put aside any hesitations or negative talk that may come from stubbornness, or laziness, or reluctance, or even old tapes in your head that tell you things like this don t work. Participate in this conversation with me. Days 2-5: (You Respond) And so once again, I implore you, for the next 4 days (days 2-5), open your Journal and engage in the conversation with me. 11