I attended
an Archaeological Society meeting and the topic of prehistoric rock art panels
had the potential to be dry, dusty and over my head. The speaker said, “If you
know your topic you can talk about it in terms that people can understand.” Jesus
often spoke figuratively using parables, which at time confused even His
disciples. Jesus was a master at using parables as a tool, but for those of us entrusted
with spreading the Gospel, speaking so people can understand is imperative. Jesus’
disciples said to Him, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of
speech. Now we can see that you know all things and that
you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe
that you came from God” (John 16:29-30 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----God has done things we find difficult to understand. Some Canaanite cities He commanded to be utterly destroyed, men, women, children, and old alike with all their dogs and cats and pigs and chickens and cows. Nothing of their utensils were even to be kept. And how many times did He send snakes and plagues and death through the camp of Hebrews wandering homeless in the desert. But everything is for a purpose, “The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.” (Prov 16:4)
-----Jesus stated His purpose for using parables, “…from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” (Mat 13:12b) Can we say the called are a peculiar kind of people? Does God call a person merely because He went “eeny, meeny, miny, moe…?” Or did He make people like they are, some for Him to call, some for Him to ignore? Or, are those He calls peculiarly desirous of the truth (I AM THAT I AM), but have just not yet stumbled across its telltale evidences? What better evidence could there have been than Jesus? And anyone genuinely desiring to know the truthful way out of his confusions quickly recognizes Jesus as the truth.
-----Jesus has two objectives in His dealing with this world. His primary objective is to make an eternal reality of peculiar creatures sharing in the Godhead like no other has. That’s a place requiring peculiarity indeed! His other objective is the cleanup of the dross from the process of raising up those peculiar creatures. The dross can not come along with the creatures. The creatures must be sifted out of it so it can be trashed. His parables were like the sieve. Those who had not flowed through it like water. They knew too much, that is, they knew what they wanted. But what the mind of man can figure out is inconsequential to God, too small to be caught by the sieve.
-----However, those who desire the truth don’t know what they want because they don’t know the truth. If they knew the truth they would not desire it; they would delight in it. And since the truth is God’s stuff, it is consequential to Him; it is large enough to get caught up by the sieve, and those desiring it are caught with it. “For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance.” (Mat 13:12a) Desire for the truth is the substance of eyes that see and ears that hear.
-----But desire to know the truth is none of that. The difference is big. Desire for the truth is a desire to have it, to live it, to be a part of it, that is, to even be it. Desire to know the truth is desire to have a mental tool. What does the mind want with the truth? What does a chicken want with a button? The truth in the hands of a deceiver is not only dangerous, it doesn’t grow. It does not attract and attach more truth, because deceivers have no interest in the processes of the truth. The truth they know remains a limited possession of not peculiar creatures. Thus Paul could write “If any one imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” (I Cor 8:2) The person investing in the truth he imagines he knows is like a chicken so preoccupied with a button that he does not see feed. He has no eyes to see.
-----If Jesus did the “Spock” thing in reverse, transferring the reality of the whole truth into the souls of the not peculiar people, they would follow Him simply to avoid Hell. They are not interested in the truth, but only in what the truth can get them. Heaven would be polluted by them, because heaven involves the processes of truth acting upon the true. So it grows. Forever.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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