Wilderness Wonderings

“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”
Matthew 6:22-23

I work for a tech company in Austin, TX that bills itself as a “digital experience platform” and our CEO is a woman who has led the company through some tremendous challenges over the last few years. One statement that she uses quite often is “Where there is focus, there is progress.” And this maxim has played itself out as we have experienced tremendous growth in our company and industry over the last 4+ years that I have been with the company. Part of this concentration on focus has been to strategize around the challenges that face us as a company. Often that strategy requires a shift in focus as we make data driven decisions about what our customers need in order to enhance their experience on our platform.

Focus drives vision. But if you have no vision of what you wish to accomplish in life, you will flounder and be left wondering why others are passing you by. If business leaders do not have a vision of where they want to take their company, it is impossible to build an effective strategy to get there. The same principle applies to the spiritual life of believers, except that our vision ought to be the vision that God has planted in our hearts to advance His kingdom.

Proverbs 29:18 says it best: “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, but happy is he who keeps the law.” It is interesting that the writer of this proverb equates vision with obedience. And where we focus our attention will determine the degree of our obedience. If you invest your time and energy in worthless pursuits that do nothing to further the reach of God’s Kingdom, then you are effectively not living in obedience to the calling for what God expects of us as His children.

If you were to take an honest inventory of the daily activities of your life, what would that tell you about where your focus lies. Do you spend hours vegetating in front of your Netflix screens or do you invest time sitting at the feet of Jesus studying God’s Word? Do you spend time carousing the local party scene or do you invest time in discipling other believers? Do you hide yourself away in the cave of your isolation or do you reach out to touch the lives of others with the grace that God has given to transform your heart? Do you pollute your mind with worthless wanderings or are you transformed by the renewing of your mind with the wonder that comes from gazing upon the glory of God? Does your vision extend no further than the hand in front of your face or do you have a vision the extends to the uttermost ends of the world?

Truth be told, I am very afraid of what such an inventory would say about my own investment in God’s vision for His kingdom. Am I doing enough to shine light upon the glory that is His kingdom? Am I investing enough time in His word? Am I allowing my eyes to follow after the glitz and glitter of shekels of men? Am I allowing my pride to dictate that my rights are more important that His mandates? Do I treat His measureless grace as a license to sin believing that it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission?

Citizenship in the Kingdom of God doesn’t come with individual rights; it comes with the privilege to confidently approach the throne of grace and the responsibility and duty to serve our King. When we come to Christ and kneel at the foot of the cross of Calvary, we lay down our rights to ourselves and take on the responsibility of being an ambassador for the Kingdom. Often we will find our vision clouded by our sin and blurred by our self-interests. It is then that we need the corrective lens of the Word of God to see clearly His vision for His Kingdom.

When we focus our eyes upon His word and start to read it not for what we can get out of it, but rather study it to get to know Him so that we can answer the question “Who is the King of Glory, the LORD strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” (Psalm 24:8) We must learn to “Lift up your heads, O gates, and lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.” (Psalm 24:9) We must open our eyes to who He truly is and let Him into our daily hearts and lives. Then and only then can we truly and honestly declare “Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory.”

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:17-20

In order for a Kingdom to exist, there must be a King. In order for a King to have any authority, there must be laws that undergird that authority. Otherwise there is chaos and anarchy, with every man for themselves. And if every person is a law unto themselves, then what happens when you have mutually exclusive, opposing moral compasses? How then would we know who is “right” and who is “wrong”? By necessity, that would require a standard that is external to ourselves in order for it to be equally applied to everyone.

Unfortunately, there are many within the Kingdom that ascribe to the idea that because we are under grace, that somehow the Old Testament law has been done away with – that somehow, the Law of Moses is no longer valid. As Jesus said Himself, He did not come to abolish or do away with the law, but rather to fulfill the law. The word here for fulfill literally means to make it complete.

The Old Testament law required payment or sacrifice for breaking the law. There was a prescribed punishment or offering required depending on what the law was that was broken. Typically the sacrifice was of apparent equal value to that which was lost as a result of the sin. If you stole from your neighbor, then restitution would be required. This would also mean that if you commit murder or a crime of violation against another of God’s image bearers, then often that would mean equal dismemberment or even death.

And Jesus said the standard of the law of Moses has not changed. His standard for our behavior is still the same. And the prescribed penalties are still in place, except with one difference. Jesus fulfilled this prescription. “For the death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God.” (Romans 6:10) The writer of Hebrews made a clear case for Christ as the substitutionary payment for the our sin of breaking God’s law in chapter 10: “First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all…Then he adds: Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.” (Hebrews 10:8-10, 17-18)

Now grace and forgiveness do not mean we are given free reign to go back and continue to live a life characterized by sin and not in keeping with God’s law. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This is evident even as far back as the time of the prophet Samuel:

“Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the LORD?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to listen than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the LORD,
He has also rejected you [Saul] from being king.”
1 Samuel 15:22-23

Contextually speaking, Saul had disobeyed God by taking spoils from the victory over the Amalekites, specifically against God’s orders. Saul then decided to take those spoils and offer them in sacrifice to God as an act of worship. Let me rephrase it like this: Saul offered the very act of disobedience as an act of worship on the altar of God. How much more blasphemous can one be? And the worst part about it is even when he was confronted with his sin, he blamed the people instead of taking responsibility for his own disobedience.

Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.”
1 Samuel 15:24

Well, you might say, “I would never do such a thing.” But do we not? Do we harbor grudges against our brother/sister as we enter into worship? Have you ever wished harm to someone in the name of “justice” for the sake of our own self-righteousness? Do you judge the appearance of the person sitting in the pew next to you, or decide instead to sit on the other side of the sanctuary to avoid them? Do you sit in worship and ignore the sermon in favor of following your social media feed? Have I relegated my tithe to the end of my budget, giving God only a portion of what remains, instead of the first fruits of my harvest? Do you give your offerings expecting a blessing from Him in return, as opposed to expecting to be a blessing for the Kingdom? Have we ever done an actual honest assessment of our heart in the midst of our ritualism?

It’s not the sacrifice that God desires, even though the law prescribes it. It’s obedience. He desires our obedience to His word. But not obedience out of blind obligation. Not obedience out of ritualistic incantation. To do so reduces the name of Jesus to an act of witchcraft – which is blasphemy of the highest order.

Jesus wants our heart. He wants our devotion. We obey His word because we know that He loves us and He proved His love for us by taking the punishment that we deserve. That doesn’t mean that we escape consequences for our sin that we commit today, even though we are forgiven. Consequences are still inevitable.

The very idea that there is a moral concept of “right” and “wrong” is evidence of a natural, moral law that we are all bound to. If there is a natural or moral law, then by common reason there is a moral law giver. A law giver who has given us a guide by which we as His people are called to obey.

And Jesus challenges us in our obedience. Our righteousness must “exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.” These scribes and Pharisees were keepers of the law. They knew the letter of the law down to the smallest mark. And they followed it to the letter, but did not hide the spirit of the law within their hearts. They followed the law out of a spirit of ritualistic obligation rather than heartfelt devotion to the God who delivered Israel from the bondage of slavery to Egypt. But God desires our devotion – that we follow the law out of reverence and humility, as opposed to vanity and pride. Then and only then will our righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees for it will be a righteousness that is imparted to us by Him through the Blood of Christ due to our faith in His word.

The Vision of the Kingdom

The Law of the Kingdom