Forced Fast from Worship

Over the last few weeks, I have been using the biblical themes of plague and exile to interpret the current season.  Letting the Bible interpret our current situation is difficult because so many other voices demand our attention.  We are confronted by medical science, political ideologies, and economic theories—each of which has its own interpretation of the current moment.  We should learn from these sources, but their voices should be subordinate to the Bible’s voice.  The Bible describes plague and exile as goads to repentance.  When confronted with widespread sicknesses and political upheavals that displace people, our first instinct should be to listen honestly to God’s desires, examine ourselves and the church, seek his mercy in repentance, and only then worry about the economy, politics, or science.  If we miss his voice, we will have missed everything! 
 

The final aspect of exile that I want to mention is worship.  The Jews were forced into a fast from their form of worship during the exile.  What is startling is that the worship they were forced to fast from was worship God himself commanded.  God had made it clear through the prophets that they were profaning his temple and his sacrifices through their presumptuous attitudes.  They thought that they were justified before God because they were offering the sacrifices he commanded.  But their worship and offerings did not flow from the two things that God desired: love and reverence for God and the pursuit of mercy and justice for the poor.  Thus God took the worship itself from them for a season.  (Read Isaiah 1:12-20, Micah 6:6-8, or Amos 5:21-24 to hear his rejection of their worship.) The exile, when they were forced to fast from worship, became a time when the nation turned back to God.  After the exile, the Jews never again committed idolatry as a nation, and began to act with reverence towards God.  The synagogue system, which placed incredibly high value on knowing God’s word and praying together, grew out of this time.

This story should matter to us and transform how we think about our current moment!  We also have been forced to fast from worship that God himself created.  The sacraments were instituted by Jesus, and yet we have had to fast from them.  We have not been able to sing praises to God together, and God created singing and delights in the corporate singing of his people.  What should we learn from this forced fast?
 
First, we need to hear that God desires the hearts of his people.  We should perpetually cultivate hearts that love and revere God and worship him from the depths of our being.  The second thing we need to learn is that God deeply cares how his people treat those who are suffering and vulnerable.  Consistently through the prophets God rebukes the worship of his people because it is not connected to justice and mercy for the poor, the immigrants, the orphans, and the widows. 
 
This lesson shouldn’t surprise us.  After all, we recite Jesus Christ’s words every Sunday.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  God loves our worship when it flows from love for him and love for our neighbors!
 
Finally, just as the Jews developed the synagogue system during their fast from worship, we have an opportunity before us to take seriously ways we can grow in God’s word and prayer as families and as a community.  If family devotions grows in our homes because of this season, it will not be a wasted opportunity.  Be creative!  Be eager!  Let the word of God and prayer fill your homes!
 
In Christ,
Steven+

Forced Season of the Sabbath

Two weeks ago, I introduced the biblical themes of exile and plague as a means of letting the Bible (rather than the news!) interpret the season of coronavirus.  Last week, I wrote that God uses both exile and plague to call his people to repentance, and mentioned the general sins that Americans have—an over-dependence upon money, idolizing personal freedom, and the failure to care for the vulnerable.  As we move forward, I encourage you to continue to pray that God will show us how to repent and follow him in these areas.
 
Today and next week, I want to turn specifically to two major components of exile that we are experiencing.  These are a forced fast from the worship God himself instituted and a forced season of Sabbath rest.  Next week will be devoted to the forced fast from worship, and this week to the forced season of Sabbath.
 
Although there are several periods of exile recorded in the Bible, the major, 70-year exile to Babylon was explicitly connected to the Sabbath.  The failure to keep the Sabbath year (no crops were to be planted 1 year out of 7) was one of the reasons for the exile, and its length corresponded to the number of Sabbath years the land had been denied (Lev. 25:2-4; Lev. 26:33-35; II Chron. 36:21).
 
Christians can legitimately disagree on how to keep the Sabbath.  Jesus showed that we are not bound by a strict Jewish interpretation.  He used the Sabbath to heal others and allowed his hungry disciples to pick and “snack on” grain as they walked by a field.  He declared that the Sabbath was for our benefit, and certain things were permissible that a legalistic observance prohibited.  But he did not abolish the day, nor excise it from the 10 commandments!  In Hebrews 4, we learn that the Sabbath was given as a foretaste of the rest that awaits us in heaven, and therefore it is more important than we tend to think.  Sabbath, or true rest in God, is our future in the new kingdom!  We need concrete practices in the present to prepare for what lies ahead.  (This principle applies in most areas—what we do in the present should reflect what will be true of us in heaven.  Pilgrims who are walking forward to their true home live according to this true home.)  Even if the way we honor the Sabbath is more fluid than the Jewish model, it should be no less important to us to develop Sabbath practices.
 
Honoring the Sabbath necessarily means resting from our work in the world’s economy.  Many of us are experiencing a form of this right now, and many are finding that it is hard and frustrating.  We long for rest, but when given too much of it, we get restless.  We define ourselves by our occupations; ceasing from work unmasks our misplaced identities.  Rest forces us to ask the question, “Who am I?”  It confronts us with the fact that our identities in Christ are fairly unformed, while our economic identities are well-established.  It is dislocating for our soul when we lose our purpose, and Sabbath reveals that our purpose is defined more readily by the world’s economy than by the kingdom of heaven. 
 
Honoring the Sabbath also confronts us with our lack of trust.  We work and save because we assume that it is only by our work that we will be secure.  Trusting that God will provide is difficult, and when we stop working, we are reminded of our dependence, our limitation, and our mortality.  We avoid these thoughts through work and amusement.  Actually ceasing from work and amusement is like fasting—our frailty and discontent come rushing to the surface.  What if my efforts aren’t enough?  What if it all comes crashing down?  What will happen to me?  Am I worth anything?  The questions come quickly when there is no work to justify our existence or amusement to distract the heart.
 
We are in a season of forced Sabbath.  Even if you are still working, you likely have more time on your hands than you want!  I encourage you to use this season to go deep into Jesus for your identity.  Let him define you.  Allow the questions of trust and identity and justification to come to the surface, and let Christ, not your work, answer them.  His answer, unlike our own, is gentle and kind.
 
In Christ,
Steven+

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What are the people of God supposed to learn in moments like this?

Last week I introduced the ideas of exile and plague as a means of understanding how to live faithfully in the present.  As I said then, I am not a prophet and am not claiming that God is judging us! 
 
Instead, given that we are experiencing elements of exile and plague, I simply want to be faithful to the word of God by asking, “What are the people of God supposed to learn in moments like this?”  It is easy to let how we think about the current situation be dictated by the media, our personal political philosophy and our understanding of medicine.  While we can learn from these sources, our ultimate guide is the word of God.  It must dictate our thinking.  What does it tell us about times of exile?  What does it tell us about times of plague?
 
As I said last week, I am addressing the church, rather than secular culture, because the pursuit of God and the willingness to let Scripture interpret history must begin in the family of God.  As the adage goes, we cannot give what we do not have.  If we are unwilling to hear what the Bible says about this season, we cannot expect those outside the church to listen. 
 
The summary of biblical theology on both plague and exile is that God uses them to call people to repentance.  His mission is the reconciliation and re-creation of the all things in his Son, Jesus Christ.  Whenever plague and exile occur, it is because mankind, as a whole, needs to be called back from its headlong pursuit of the wrong things and reconciled to God. 
 
This raises the question: From what wrong pursuits are we supposed to turn back?  By what are we tempted?  Before answering this question, I must begin by stating that each of us has our own, particular place where we are pursuing and trusting the wrong thing.  I encourage you all to ask God to reveal to you where you personally need to repent and trust God anew.
 
But we also have tendencies as a culture, and the Bible brings up certain issues frequently because mankind is always tempted by certain types of faithlessness.  As a culture, we are overly dependent on our money, and assume that money will solve the problems of life.  We are also, as a culture, fixated on the idea that the highest common good is personal freedom.  Thoughtful Christian philosophers and theologians have noted that the right to live our lives exactly as we please is the chief virtue of modern America, and that personal pleasure is the primary use of freedom.  The Bible’s explicit claim that freedom is only given so that we might become servants of righteousness and slaves of God falls on deaf ears in America.  Our cultural understanding of freedom for the sake of personal fulfillment and pleasure has infected the church.  As a whole, the church in America has abandoned the notion that the Sabbath is still supposed to be kept (more on this next week!).  We are also often deaf to the preaching of the prophets, apostles, and Jesus himself concerning the vulnerable.  Throughout the Bible, God says frequently that he longs for his people to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, protect the orphans and widows, visit those in prison, bring the homeless into our homes, and receive the sojourner (i.e., immigrant).  We are tempted to let our political systems tell us what to think about these people, rather than letting the Bible transform our political thinking.
 
Perhaps most of all, though, we face the temptation that all men and women who have ever lived have faced.  We face the temptation to depend on something (on anything!) other than God.  We face the temptation to be our own gods or let something we long for be god for us.  Faith, the absolute dependence on God alone, is difficult, and we are face-to-face every day with the temptation to trust something else.
 
I hope and pray that we would let the word of God examine us in this season, and that we would repent of the places where we have trusted in the wrong god.  I hope and pray that the church learns from this experience to worship and serve God alone.  It is only in him that we will find rest for our souls, and he alone is worthy of our adoration.
 
In Christ,
Steven+

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