Two Kingdoms

In his kingdom, Jesus Christ requires surrender, an allegiance.  However, he does not demand it.  Your loyalty is paid for by his very blood.  You are bought by his sacrifice.  By this, your very salvation, your actions and deeds will declare whom you serve.  

In his kingdom, Satan bargains for your surrender.  He whispers wants in your ear, convincing you of what you deserve.  Your loyalty is paid for by your own blood.  You are bought by a lie.  By this, the loss of your very salvation, your absence from Christ the King, an absence you chose, your actions and deeds will declare whom you serve.

Jesus created all, the very fabric of existence and his Kingdom Come.  Satan rules as a Tenant King, on borrowed time, in an world not meant for him.  As you choose whom you will serve, and we all make this choice whether we are conscious of it or not, your behavior, your condition, your deeds will declare this choice.  

When Christ gets his due glory, we get joy.  But such is the deception of Satan, that when we have chosen his kingdom, we may not acknowledge him all.  When we serve in The Deceiver's kingdom, it is not him who we place upon the throne.  It is ourselves. 

"Hell...that fierce imprisonment of the self."  C.S. Lewis

Friends, Jesus Christ is offering us a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.  There is no offer that is more inclusive. It is available to all, ALL.  Yet we choke on the exclusive aspects of declaring that Jesus is King.  But an unshakable kingdom must be ruled by an all powerful King.  To suggest anything else is to put ourselves upon his throne.  Our eternal punishment for choosing ourselves is that we get our way.  Hell is the absence of God for the glorification of ourselves at the cost of ourselves.

"Save Yourself!"

Luke 23

35 The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37 and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

38 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

This is the scene as Christ and two others are hanging from crosses, crucified.  "If you are the king, then save yourself."  If...Then.  It seems that we never stop throwing these conditional statements at Christ.  All of us, believers and non believers lay out commands or arguments for why we believe or don't believe, trust or fail to trust, rejoice or sorrow.  "If God is good, then I would be happy.  If God was real, then I would see him."  This is a very human thing to do. 

The assumptions we make in these conditional statements are always that we know better.  We are in essence declaring, "If God would do what I say, then everything would be good."  This of course is ridiculous, but we rarely see it that way.  Even if we put it in secular terms, "If I only got my way, then I would be happy."  We think this is true.  We fight with the world to get our way, but we only have to picture some spoiled child in our lives to illustrate that "getting our way" does not mean happiness and certainly it does not produce a perseverance of character.  But it's more than character at stake here, it's salvation.

We act as if our salvation or our relationship with Christ were a constant bargain or negotiation.  Eternal Patience is the only way to conceive of a God that doesn't just wipe us all out.  Mercy is what it is called.  In this scene from John 18, for me one of the most dramatic in the Bible, Pilate engages with Christ.  He asks about Christ's true nature, and receives the truth.  And in a masterful maneuver that humans have used since Adam and Eve encountered the Serpent, Pilate deflects and discounts Christ with the statement, "What is Truth?"

33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

34 “Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

35 “Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

38 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate.

We are always asking the wrong questions.  What if we had asked, "What if he really is who he says he is?  If you are the Christ, Then what does that mean for me?"  In the story from Luke when soldiers ask why Jesus doesn't save himself, even though they are mocking, this seems like a very reasonable question.  But time and time again, through out world history and the history of my own heart, the failure to understand who Jesus is and why he came leaves us seemingly without answers.  

"He is not the Messiah, because he did not save himself."  What an extraordinary misunderstanding of the situation.

In the controversial movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, the story explores "What if" Christ stepped down from the Cross.  Though fundamental Christians rejected this movie/book, sometimes without actually seeing it, it is a story and a question that played a significant role in nudging me towards real faith.  The heresy in the movie is that Christ is portrayed a little too human, a little too doubting and a little too weak.  It is unsettling to see the what if Christ gave way to temptation.  The temptation in this story is the not only stepping down from the Cross, but stepping into a fully human life with sex and marriage and children.  Satan had offered to Jesus that Jesus wasn't the Messiah and that God wanted him to live and be happy.  Years after Defoe's Christ steps down from the Cross and has experienced a "normal' life, he encounters the Apostles going on with the message of Christ, even though Jesus rejected being the Messiah.  In the movie Paul says, even if the message is not the truth, it is a message that the world needs to hear.  

This fictional Paul is not wrong.  But he is not all the way right.  The world needs the message of Jesus Christ.  But that message is based on nothing if he did not die on the cross and rise from the dead.  We don't need religion to help us be better and do better.  We need Christ himself to save us.  Salvation is what is at stake when we consider Christ on the Cross.  We are always asking God to display himself for our own comfort.  Like the soldiers we ask Christ to save himself in order to prove that he is the Son of God.  We seek proof without any idea of the consequences.  Our own comfort in knowing and seeing Christ in the flesh would mean removing the work of the Cross.  Jesus said no to revealing the fullness of his power in order that the world might be saved.  If Jesus had rejected the cross, it wouldn't have been to live a normal life, it would have been to put the world under judgment.  That, my friends, would have meant the end, because without his sacrifice, none of us would be saved.  What deed could anyone do to justify eternity with God?  Jesus said yes to the Cross, for the Joy set before him, our redemption.  And all of this is meaningless if he did not rise from the dead, cleansing the world and ourselves of sin.  With sin accounted for in Christ's perfect life and death, we now have the right to claim Christ, be redeemed and live forever in the presence of God.

We must be careful what we ask of God.  Those who misunderstand Jesus say "Prove yourself!"  They are, and we are, the soldiers shouting "Save yourself!"  If he had, we would not be and salvation would be lost.  But the fact that we are here and able to ask these questions, both misguided and true, points to his Mercy and his Mercy points to his Love.  And Love is the only way to conceive of this Jesus.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.[d]”

43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

In my room.

John 14


“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God[a]; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?"

In my Father's house he has kept a room for me.  Though that room has always been there for me, there was a time, there was a chance when it looked like it would remain empty forever.  I might have never seen it, occupy it and live in it, with him in his house.  

But he is a good Father and he wants me there.  He has given me every opportunity to claim it.  By his Grace, I did claim it.  I haven't seen my room, but I imagine it.  I don't think much about what it looks like, but what it feels like.  I imagine waking up there in the excitement of his voice, and the peace of his touch.  
My Father has given me a gift.  It is mine, but he keeps it for me.  He keeps it there in my room.  In a beautiful chest glows my eternal salvation.  It is a treasure that will never decay.  

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

This is not a treasure I can work for or earn, but if I believe it is there. If I believe my Father is good, it will change me from the inside out. My salvation is waiting for me and protected by my Father, protected by the Promise of Christ and made possible by his Life, Death and Resurrection. Though I cannot work for it, if I believe it is real I must work towards it: seeking his justice, his mercy and telling the world of his great love. And though I am troubled by this world, I can live in the joy that is set before me in my room.

"3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Soil.

The soil of my heart is shallow, choked by weeds and hard like a well worn path.  God's grace continues to rain good seed all over it, even though I struggle to make use of it.  Even in this time when my heart seems so hard, his Grace makes me remember my vow to him.  And a vow exists expressly for this time.  A vow is thoughtless and easy to keep when we are in the center of his will.  But critical when we don't feel like it, when the goodness of his Grace cannot be received and feels like stinging pebbles instead of a promise of his love.  In this time, clinging to a vow, I will gather his seed and take it to him.  More than that I will hand him the harsh tools of sowing, their sharpened edges ready for work.  I surrender to Him, not because I feel like it, but because Satan is ready to consume me if I don't.  Even in my despair and rebellion, Christ has made a way for me to see enough to turn to him.
I do so out of desperation, just like I did ten years ago.  And in his mercy, he decides that it's enough.  Though my heart is wicked and my motives are questionable, simply turning to him is enough.  In that moment, something creeps in that I had forgotten about: hope.  

Have thine own way Lord...

The Lie (2).

What is a Lie, but the promotion or protection of our will over all others.  If we Lie because we say we want to protect others, then we are in fact saying that we know what's best.  We are declaring that we do not trust Christ to work out his will.  We are taking it upon ourselves to rule, to betray him for our own status or our own comfort.  A Lie is an obstruction.  A Lie prevents light from penetrating where it needs to go.  Whatever the reason may be, it is never God's intention for there to be darkness.  A friend reminded me that in heaven, there will not be any shade.  Such is the Light of Christ that it is all encompassing and no shadows can be found.

Truth is hard.  Being a Christian is hard.  Sometimes I wonder if I do a disservice to my Faith because I talk so much about how hard it is to follow Christ.  But the reality of this world is that the hard things remain.  Truth haunts us whether we are believers or not.  That is why knowing who Jesus is, who he really is, is so powerful.  He is a sweet and powerful Light that comes to shine into the dark parts of our hearts and show us love, real love.  And once you have been given a glimpse of that saving light, it then becomes necessary to remind yourself and others that darkness cannot be tolerated.  It's hard, but it's not complicated...Thou Shall Not Lie.  It's not a matter of will, it's a matter of release and surrender.  It's not that you shouldn't lie, it's that you don't need to lie.  Thy Will be done.

Element: Prayer and Resistance.

I was praying for someone recently.  They were and are in great pain and we were praying for relief and healing.  I believe in the power of Jesus Christ to heal, I have faith in him.  However, I was not confidant that this man would be healed by way of my prayers.  But I hoped he would and still do.  I'm now untangling some things in my head as I think about it.  Here is the tricky part.  God put me in position to pray for that man, yet it feels now that I was very much in the way of his healing.  I was simultaneously the conduit and the barrier.  Christ put me there to call on his power to be a vessel to carry his love and healing.  It is true that we as believers are the only hands and feet on earth that God possesses.  I was there.  I was willing.  God is able.  So what happened?  There was too much of me in the way.  Pride is a funny, sinister thing.  It has a special power to make a man think so much of himself by way of thinking so little of himself.  Self doubt combined with lack of humility prevented the free flow of the Grace of God.  I, myself, was in the way.  It wasn't the doubt, because I was only doubting myself, not God.  It was my very conscious presence, my inability to get out of the way.  This is struggle to live as John the Baptist says, "I must decrease, that he may increase."  

I will give myself some Grace.  I'm just not there yet, but I want to be.  I want to be less, so he can be more.  I thought my self deprecation was humility, but it was not.  It was just a clever way of being self focused.  God is working his will out in me, yet I'm still very much in his way, but I pray I'm getting better.  Awareness helps.  Until it doesn't.  Such a subtle thing, to be made aware of something and then have to work to shed it from being a diversion.  

A heating element is terribly inefficient by design.  There is so much resistance in the conductor that as electricity tries to move through, the element become very hot.  Sometimes we as the hands and feet of God think it's our jobs to get as heated as possible for Christ.  The reality is that we are to remove the resistance, remove ourselves so that we may more and more efficiently conduct the Grace and Love of God to others.  We are here simply to receive and distribute Christ to a weary world that needs it.  They don't need the heat of our resistance and insistence of our will.  They need the unobstructed power of the living God.  We must get in position and then get out of the way.

Let.

Let every Heart prepare Him room,
Let every Hand find fuel for his Fire to consume,
Let every Mouth speak seeds for His Kingdom to bloom,
Let every Aching Soul know the fullness that lies in an empty tomb.