Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church
What Is This Generation Like?
How Can I Give You Up?
What Are You Doing Here?
Your Kingdom Come
How Have I Wearied You?
Where Were You?
Who Are These People With You?
Who Made Your Mouth?
Where Are You?
by Walter Henegar
Jesus knows that it can be hard for us to trust him, just like people did when John the Baptist got thrown in prison. On top of that, every generation or age has its own unique distortions of reality, bullying dissenters while blind to its own contradictions. To help us navigate these challenges, Jesus gives us two simple, interlocking tests: 1) Is there consistency between how a person lives and the message they profess to believe?2) Is there consistency between the message they believe and the way things actually are?When all three are consistent with each other – the person, the message, and the real world — we gain greater confidence to trust Jesus in every aspect of our lives.
After hundreds of years of persistent unfaithfulness to God, the Israelites were finally reaping the consequences of their actions—exile is imminent. Even so, the Lord did not abandon his people, but redeemed them and pursued them. He does the same with us: we are betraying him every time we sin, but he keeps loving us anyway. Because God’s heart for his people is unchanging, we never have to wonder how God feels about us, even when we don’t feel good about ourselves. His never-stopping, never-giving-up, unbreaking, always-and-forever love is for us, because of Jesus.
Elijah’s moment of despair illustrates how God relates to us when we do the right thing but things still go wrong. He does not rebuke Elijah but leads him with gentleness and compassion, ministering to Elijah’s physical exhaustion with sleep and bread and water. And when Elijah begins to doubt the effectiveness of God’s Word, God gives him a special manifestation of his word in the form of a “low whisper.” Then God gives him a new job to do that will enlist the help of others, including a pagan king and his own soon-to-be successor, Elisha. Finally, God reminds Elijah that he is not actually alone, because God has kept 7,000 faithful in Israel. In Romans 11, Paul cites these verses as evidence of the “remnant, chosen by grace” who are included in God’s eternal family through person and work of Jesus.
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When our relationship with God goes sideways, God pursues us to repair it. In the 8th century BC, God sent the prophet Micah to Israelites who had grown spiritually complacent, economically corrupt and socially unjust. Micah’s “covenant lawsuit” called them to clear the air, review the facts, stop bargaining, and sync with the heart of God.
The book of Job is not just about why bad things happen to good people, but about how to trust God in a world where all kinds of things happen that we don’t understand. By asking Job dozens of questions, God presses Job to recognize the natural limits of his own understanding and the necessity of trusting him. Yet instead of making Job smaller, this dependence actually expands his dignity and his capacity to engage in God’s world. The paradox of Job is just one example of the paradox of the Gospel: We are utterly incapable of saving ourselves – not by knowing things and not by doing things, but when we recognize that and trust in Jesus, he actually expands our capacity to know and participate in his rule over the world. In Jesus, the last become first, and the humble are exalted.
The strange story of Balaam illustrates four vital principles for how those who trust in God should relate to those who don’t: 1) People change people. For good or ill, the people we spend the most time around will inevitably shape our perception of what is possible, desirable or good. 2) If you belong to Jesus, you are blessed – but only because of grace. Balaam’s prophecies and their fulfillment in Jesus mark the life of every Christian as fundamentally blessed.3) Total isolation from “the world” is not only impossible; it’s ungodly. God calls his people to be distinct, and then to bless the world around them. David Mathis says we should be “not of, but sent into” the world.4) It’s possible to see a great deal and still be blind – just like Balaam, the great “see-er” whose donkey saw more than he did. Ultimately, we must all answer God’s question to Balaam, “Who are these people with you?” Some should be fellow believers whose influence we welcome, and others should be non-believers we are seeking to bless.
God asks Moses, “Who made your mouth?” to shift his focus from his own limited self-knowledge to God’s own powerful knowing. And so we also see that God knows our story, because he’s the one writing it. We see that God knows our capacity, because he made us and is with us. And we see that God knows our frame, because he is does not leave us alone. All this is only possible because of Jesus, the Greater Moses, who experienced every hardship we do, and much worse, in order to lead us to God’s eternal Promised Land.
The first question God asks humanity is still the central question for all of us: Where are you? – that is, Where are you in relation to God? To help us answer it, God asks three more questions. The second, Who told you that you were naked? invites us to consider what other voices we are listening to to define reality, other than God’s? We can never silence those voices, but we can pursue habits and practices that make God’s voice loudest in our lives. The third and fourth questions are similar, asking Adam and Eve to admit their particular role in the fall. There really is blame to go around, but in order to have a relationship with God, we must own our part. Paradoxically, this radical honesty with God (also known as repentance) is the only way to avoid hiding from ourselves. The cross of Jesus gives us this freedom to repent and be covered by God’s grace, living humbly and gently before others.
The incarnation of Jesus transforms our experience of Given Family, adopts us into his Eternal Family, and challenges us to build an ever-changing Pilgrim Family along the way. Your Given Family is the family you grew up in, whether biological, adopted or otherwise. Your Forever Family is the family of God, into which you were adopted through faith in Jesus, and with whom you will spend eternity. Your Pilgrim Family are your believing friends who walk through life with you until Jesus returns. Every Christian needs to find Pilgrim Family members through our various stages of life, and the cast of characters in it is always changing.