or Calling Security

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

Years ago, I remember a preacher listing for his audience all the sins that will make you prematurely old. I figured the second part of his sermon to us would be a list of all the benefits of Christian living that keep you young. Well, they are obvious. Don’t tick the boxes in list one. Very wisely, that’s not what he gave us. He listed all the things the Lord expects of us, things that also make us prematurely old. His point was, grow old doing good, not evil.

Tying this to Jordan’s Bread and Wine theology, we understand that bread is made to be broken. Proud young men and women (as we were when I heard that sermon on growing old) won’t stay that way. They will be broken. But one life offered can feed five thousand.

The media sells us a lifestyle of security. This is not biblical prudence. It is paranoia, a worldview without faith, where God and His people cannot be counted on to come to the rescue. The Bible is full of leaders and institutions who pulled back from being broken. God has no pleasure in them. It is the Tabernacle of Lamech, the Temple of the Herods, a hoarded bread that God fills with worms. Bread is not eternal. It is expendable.

Worldly dreams will be shattered. Christ calls us beyond that, to an expectation that we will be broken and poured out. In fact, He calls us to look for opportunities to become prematurely old, to lay down our lives for the next generation. We understand this of parenting. Do we understand this of discipling others?

I’m not talking about pastor’s burnout. Paul knew how to disciple and delegate. Discipleship was a buffer against burnout. For sure, he had his failures, and he excommunicated them to bring about repentance. I’m talking about being a human shield, as Jesus was, standing between the curse and the cursed.

Adam’s sin, as a proud young man with faculties even our most gifted youths can only dream about, was believing that he wasn’t expendable. The single Law called him to be broken under it when tested. He seized a false security instead of becoming security. He was to be a priestly guard, a human firmament, a watchman, cut by the Word to create a safe place, a Holy Place. His failure made us into slaves. As Doug Jones observes, the next question for everyone who is redeemed, in every possible station of life known to human beings, is “Whose freedom are you?”

Calculated risks are the order of the day. As with the Christian life, we don’t set out to build a tower without adequate preparation and prudence. In parenting, in discipleship, we plant with an expectation, not a guarantee, of an increase. My point is that life in the flesh is expendable. Whatever we choose to spend it on, it will be spent. That is its very nature. It was never supposed to last, not even in Eden. The natural would become spiritual. But the path to glory, to security for others (those in the house) and spiritual offspring (bringing in those outside the house), is expensive.

As a perceptive pastor once said, “If you want to be a highway into the kingdom for other people, don’t be surprised when you get walked on.” And as my grandfather said, “The trials of life will make you bitter or better.” Either way, you are food.

“And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls;
though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved.”
2 Cor 12:15

The world sells us on youth and security, the glory of fresh bread somehow kept in suspended animation. But the world doesn’t even believe the lie, not in the end, when the eulogies are read. When there is no reason to lie any more, even the world recognizes lives spent in such an honorable way.

“Cast your bread upon the waters, For you will find it after many days.”
Ecclesiastes 11:1

Amongst all the recent calls to be “radical,” security is actually good. That question, “Whose freedom are you?” helps us to discern between the guilt trips and the true calls to service. God doesn’t call us all to live on the edge. There’s nothing wrong with living a life of quiet faithfulness and nurturing of others. We all have different gifts. Sometimes it takes more courage and strength to be non-radical. [1] Whether it’s being radical, or just teaching your kids the Bible and being faithful at work, at home and at church, the goal is a legacy in history for God.

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[1] See A Tale of Two Brothers.

God chooses certain men to do great works. Their work is duplicated and multiplied in the institutions they found. When these men are gone, those who remain tend to rely on systems. The machine must be maintained for pride’s sake, regardless of whether it is being used by God or not. This violates two basic biblical principles.

The first is the head-and-body principle. God lifts up the head (some great teacher) and a body naturally forms.[1] This is good. This is discipleship. But it should result in more heads. Every church should be an academy. Every church should be able to find their next pastor within their ranks.

The second is the principle of harvest. It has a beginning and an end. When that Bible study you started which was highly enjoyable and edifying comes to its natural end, let it go. When that home care ministry is running out of steam (and volunteers) but you want to keep it running in honour of the now deceased woman who founded it, let it go. (She’s in heaven thinking “Let it go, people. Let it go.”) Some churches come to a natural end. There’s no shame in that if it is a natural end. What’s creepy is when it is kept going for no good reason. Somebody new turns up with fresh ideas and they are the weird one (like Marilyn!).

God’s work is always fresh because it is cyclical.[2] New life comes from fresh seed.[3] Watchman Nee wrote:

“David served in one generation—his own. He could not serve in two! Where today we seek to perpetuate our work by setting up an organisation or society or system, the Old Testament saints served their own day and passed on. This is an important principle of life. Wheat is sown, it grows, it ears, is reaped, and then the whole plant, even to the root, is plowed out. God’s work is spiritual to the point of having no earthly roots, no smell of earth on it at all. Men pass on, but the Lord remains.

Everything to do with the Church must be up-to-date and living, meeting the present—one could never even say the passing—needs of the hour. Never must it become fixed, earth-bound, static. God Himself takes away His workers, but He gives others. Our work suffers, but His never does. Nothing touches Him. He is still God.”

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[1] This is true for both good and evil, although evil is always eventually exposed as impotent. See Totus Diabolus.
[2] I don’t know Watchman Nee’s position on Bible prophecy, but this has a huge bearing on eschatology. Postmillennialists, to my mind, have the best understanding of history and how God works in and through it (typology). And yet this results in postmillennialists being the very ones who don’t live in the past. Closed ranks with open minds. For a great read, see James Jordan’s How To Do Reformed Theology Nowadays.
[3] This death-and-resurrection sequence of living ministry is the true apostolic succession. See Apostolic Succession?