Tag: waiting

The Spirit and the power

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 12 – Launching the church

The Spirit and the power

[Bible references: Genesis 25-19-21; 1 Samuel 1;1-20; 2 Samuel 7; Proverbs 2:1-5; Matthew 7:7-8; Mark 11:12-26; Luke 11:113; 12-26; John 20:21-23; 3:14-16; Acts 1:1-14; 2:1-41; 1 Peter 5:6-7]

There are remarkable parallels between Genesis 2:7 and John 20:22. We see from Chapter 2 that in Genesis 2, God breathed life into Adam who was then commissioned to take care of the sacred space that God had created. That sacred space was initially identified as the Garden of Eden, but we know from Genesis 1 that God had dedicated the entire universe as his temple. We also know that since God’s image-bearers were given the commission to “be fruitful and fill the earth” that the sacred space allotted to the care of the image-bearers was intended to be the entire earth.

After the resurrection, when Jesus met with the apostles in a locked room, He breathed on (or into) them.[1] This is the same word used in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament describing God breathing life into Adam and thereby giving him life. Immediately after this gesture, Jesus instructed the apostles to “Receive the Holy Spirit” who were then commissioned to continue the task that Jesus had begun.[2]

“The very same Greek verb (here only in N.T.) is used by the LXX. in Genesis 2:7 (Wis 15:11) of breathing life into Adam. This Gospel of the new Creation looks back at its close, as at its beginning (John 1:1), to the first Creation. We are probably to regard the breath here not merely as the emblem of the Spirit (John 3:8), but as the means by which the Spirit was imparted to them. ‘Receive ye,’ combined with the action of breathing, implies this. This is all the more clear in the Greek, because pneuma means both ‘breath’ and ‘spirit,’ a point which cannot be preserved in English; but at least ‘Spirit’ is better than ‘Ghost’ We have here, therefore, an anticipation and earnest of Pentecost; just as Christ’s bodily return from the grave and temporary manifestation to them was an anticipation of His spiritual return and abiding Presence with them ‘even unto the end of the world.’” [3]

Previously, in John’s gospel, we saw that “the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” Now that Jesus was crucified and was soon ascend to heaven, the apostles were given the task of sharing the gospel so that people may believe unto eternal life. It is at this moment, in the locked room, that the apostles were given the commission to share the news of forgiveness.

Ten days after Jesus ascended, fifty days after Passover, the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem, waiting for “what the Father had promised.” It was the time of Shavuot, which was known in Greek as the Pentecost. Shavuot is one of three pilgrimage festivals where Jews are supposed to travel to Jerusalem so Jews from all over the Roman Empire were in Jerusalem.

It was at this gathering that Spirit came upon the disciples in great power, revealing the fulfillment of Shavuot. While the disciples were gathered in a room, the Holy Spirit manifested himself with a great wind and tongues of fire that touched the apostles. The apostles then proceeded to prophecy and the people who were there from around the world were able to hear them speaking in their own languages. On that day 3000 people accepted Jesus as their Lord.

The full meaning of Passover and Shavuot was now revealed.

  • Jesus was executed on Passover, a holiday commemorating the celebration of freedom from slavery in Egypt which was observed by the slaying of the Passover lamb whose blood protected all the Israelites from the angel of death who had killed all the firstborn children in Egypt.
  • The miraculous outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles which enabled them to speak in many different languages occurred on Shavuot, which had many different meanings for the Jews. Shavuot was associate with:

  • the giving of the commandments 50 days after the liberation from Egypt. Now the commandments were written on hearts instead of stone.
    • the first harvest of crops in the year, with those first portions being given to God, the provider of harvest. There were now 3000 souls harvested for God.
    • marriage, where Passover was considered the betrothal and Shavuot the marriage where the bride and groom commit themselves to each other. The period in-between the betrothal and marriage can be considered as a time of testing and waiting as the bride and groom prepare for life together. With His sacrifice, Jesus, the Bridegroom committed himself to the Church, His Bride.

Waiting. The virtue we want to bypass. Yet even though God has set seasons and times before us and insists on letting his ordained processes complete, from the beginning, we have wanted things immediately and we have been paying the price ever since. But there was a process God wanted to complete. After His resurrection, Jesus waited for the apostles to gather before He came to them, Jesus waited for many days to go by while He interacted with various groups of his disciples, then after His ascension, Jesus waited for his disciples to stay in Jerusalem, while they waited for the “gift His Father promised … to be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” And so, the apostles waited and prayed.

[1] Biblehub ἐνεφύσησεν Bible Hub biblehub.com/greek/enephyse_sen_1720.htm

[2] Scrivener, Glen. “What does John 20:21-23 mean” Christ the Truth christthetruth.net/2013/03/26/what-does-john-2021-23-mean; Skinner, Matt. “Commentary on John 20:19-23” Working Preacher www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=887; Lewis, Karoline. “Commentary on John 20:19-23” Working Preacher www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=76; Flattery, George. “John 20:19-23 Receive the Holy Spirit” Global Christian globalchristiancenter.com/sermons/dr-g-flattery-sermons-on-gospel-of-john/26192-john-2019-23-receive-the-holy-spirit

[3] Biblehub “John 20:22”Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges biblehub.com/commentaries/john/20-22.htm

Reflect

There are times when we need to take action and times when we need to wait for maturity or for “the fullness of time.” How can we discern the difference?

Observe

Read Mark 11:12-26; Luke 11:1-13. What should we expect when we pray?

Passion unto death

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 2 – The Kingdom Revealed – Chapter 11 – The Kingdom Enters

Passion unto death

[Bible references: Genesis 3:12; Matthew 16:21-23; 21:4-5; 26-27; Mark 9:30-37; Luke 22:54-62; John 1:14; 12:12-19; Romans 1:18-32; 5:20; 6:23; Ephesians 2:1-10]

There is a sense in which each moment of history is equally important to the next. Each moment is a moment which God pursues us as he guides us to our ultimate flourishing. There is no reason to suppose that our continuing flourishing will cease once heaven and earth are reunited, but we should expect that our flourishing will continue as a manifestation of his glory.

However, in our current state of affairs in which earth is broken from heaven, there are moments, epiphanies, in which heaven more noticeably breaks through. There are moments in which angels are more visible or in which Yahweh reveals himself through his prophets. Even more remarkable is the moment in which Yahweh submitted himself to taking on human form, even to the point of being conceived as an embryo inside the body of a human woman and then enduring the normal process of physically growing to become a human adult. Yet even that was not sufficient. Yahweh may have taken the form of a human, but it wasn’t a glorified human,[1] not yet the human as he intends for us to be.

To do that would require him to suffer the shame and justice that we ourselves have earned. The sin that brought us death would have to overcome by a sacrifice that would bring us life. In becoming human, Jesus identified himself with us, but in order for us to become like him he would have to make us ready to receive his spirit. We were helpless to make ourselves acceptable to God, to make ourselves free from sin and its consequences. Bonhoeffer once related his prison experience to Advent. He could not free himself – he needed someone to come from the outside to rescue him.[2] And that is our dilemma, we need someone to come from the outside to rescue us. The covenant revealed to Moses was given to increase our sin, to make it more evident than before about our inability to rescue ourselves. We were condemned by our sin to remain separated from God.

We saw in the previous chapter, that the world was very much like it is now, full of factions and frictions, the powerful and the poor, and everyone waiting and wanting the world to be a better place. The world into which Jesus was born was as broken as it is now. Jesus came into this world with a message of love and hope and with acts of healing and casting out of demons, but that would not be enough. Sin and death had a power over the world that needed to be broken. To rescue the world, to restore it to what it was intended to be, sin and death would need to be defeated. And there was no one who could carry out the rescue except God.

It was as true then as it is now, ever since Adam and Eve, people look at the problems around them and think that the problem lies somewhere else besides inside them. In particular, the more factions and frictions there are, the easier it is to find someone else to point to. So, when Jesus came, teaching, healing, and identifying with the common people more than the elite, it seemed that the more Jesus revealed himself the more the people seemed to think that Jesus would be the one – to rescue them from the Roman government.

Even Jesus’ chosen twelve disciples, the ones who would spend three years with him day and night … even they couldn’t understand the type of rescue they would need. Jesus would explain many times about what he needed to do, but the disciples couldn’t understand. The truth is, though, that even as we look back and see what Jesus had to do, we also have a hard time fully understanding just how desperately that we need rescuing. We don’t understand the depths of our own depravity.

When Jesus approached Jerusalem with his disciples for the last time, some of the disciples argued about which of them was the greatest, or who would sit next to Jesus on his throne. When Jesus showed his power with his resurrection of Lazarus, the crowds got more excited about the possibility of Jesus throwing out the Roman government and then they gave him a grand entry into Jerusalem. However, Jesus refused to act as they wanted, and the crowds eventually turned against Jesus. Even one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, gave up on Jesus and agreed to betray him to the Sanhedrin. Then, when Jesus was arrested, the rest of the disciples went into hiding. Even Peter, who tried to follow the lynching party at a distance, refused to be identified with Jesus.

[1] Got Questions “How does the Bible describe glorified bodies we will possess in heaven?” Got Questions www.gotquestions.org/glorified-bodies.html

[2] Kincaid, Elisabeth Rain, “Bonhoeffer: Advent is Like a Prison Cell” Christianity Today www.christianitytoday.com/women/2018/december/bonhoeffer-advent-is-like-prison-cell.html

Observe

Read John 12:12-19. In this scene, the crowd is expecting a rescue from the Romans,  the Pharisees are worried about their competition becoming too popular, and the disciples are not comprehending what is happening. How did the disciples eventually understand what was happening?

Testing and waiting

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 8– Kings and kingdoms

Testing and Waiting

[Bible references: 1 Samuel 13:14; 26:11; 1 Samuel 24:1-7; 26:1-12; Acts 13:22]

Meanwhile, God had selected David, someone who was described as “a man after God’s own heart,” to be the next king. However, David’s reign did not begin until many years later. This meant there was going to be a long and difficult in-between time of testing:

  • Saul’s heart continued to be tested as he was rejected by God, but it would be a long time before the end of his reign. In the meanwhile, he had his duties to perform.
  • David had been anointed to be the next king, but it would be many years before it happened. In the meanwhile, there would be much conflict in which David had to trust God and do what he thought he needed to do. David didn’t test God by unnecessarily putting himself in harm’s way, rather he looked to God for wisdom and acted accordingly. When David had opportunities to kill King Saul, he refused to do so and instead waited for God to act.

This is an area where we typically fail: Adam and Eve could not wait for God to give them knowledge so they grabbed for it; Abraham and Sarah could not wait for God to give them a son through Sarah and so they used Hagar; Jacob could not wait for his inheritance so he and Rebekah had to trick Isaac; Moses could not wait for God to provide water by just speaking to the rock and so he had to strike it. In contrast, to be obedient, David was willing to wait for God to replace Saul and did not take advantage of the opportunities he had to kill him.

Reflect

How can we gain a sense of when we should act vs. when we should wait for God?

Observe

Read 1 Samuel 26:11; Acts 13:22. What did God say that David was “a man after my own heart?”

The plan to restore creation

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 4– Retreating to chaos

[Bible references: Genesis 3:13-15; 50:20; Isaiah 53; Micah 6:8; Zechariah 7:9; Matthew 10:28-31; Luke 19:11-27; 1 Corinthians 12; Galatians 3:13-14,23-29; Ephesians 1:11-12; Hebrews 1:1-3]

The apparent penalty for sin, physical death, was actually a blessing. Unlike the angels who rebelled against God, death provided the rebellious image-bearers a means of avoiding an eternity separated from the source of goodness and grace. But for the image-bearers, death provided a means where not only they but all of creation could be rescued from decay and death.

The plan of restoration slowly unfolded in ways that would sometimes be baffling and confusing and on a timetable that is beyond our comprehension. Over time though, God gradually revealed how he intended to restore our relation to him, to end our pain and suffering, and to overcome the evil that seems to pervade everything.

God started the process of revealing hints of how he would restore creation right at the beginning. God gave the initial clue in the curse given to the serpent, although the hint must have been a cryptic comment to His newly broken image-bearers. But since we have the privilege of looking back, we can see that God’s then cryptic reference was to the death and suffering of the character revealed in the Old Testament as the Messiah. As time went on, the Creator gradually revealed more and more clues about the plans He had to restore His creation. This gradual revelation was, and still is, a painfully slow time of waiting as we suffer the consequences of broken relations and a broken creation.

Fortunately, as we have waited in our broken universe, God’s grace has continued to intervene throughout history so that things are not as bad as they could possibly be. Our rebellion has not deterred God from providing for our everyday needs nor has he ceased to work on his plan to rejoin heaven and earth.

Meanwhile, God invites us to take part with him in the continued creation of the universe, bringing healing, health and hope directly into the midst of our now broken world, a task that he and we will continue until God fully restores his kingdom. Towards that end, he has provided spiritual gifts, gifts that we can share with one another, to build up one another and to bless the world as his ambassadors.

There are many things about the plans of God that we do not understand. God’s plans for us seem to be drawn out over a long time in which there is much suffering and pain. But even the suffering and pain we endure can be redeemed to help us become more like the Desire of our Hearts, the One who gave all Himself so that we all may become more like Him.

Reflect

What would the world look like if there was no goodness?

Observe

Read Isaiah 53. What did God need to do to restore our relation with Him?

Dancing through the pain

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

Dancing through the pain

[Bible references: Luke 17:20-21; Hebrews 12; Revelation 21:1-3; 22:1-5]

Right now, it might seem hard to see images of the Dance of God’s Kingdom. We look at the news and wonder where things are headed to. Sometimes we look at our own lives and wonder … If there is a God where is God? What’s His plan for the world – for the church – for us? Then we pick up a book called the Holy Bible and read the stories and wonder how they all fit together. Then we look at the church – well, churches, there are so many of them – and wonder why it’s so complicated and messy and wonder if anybody’s got it right. And, what about me, my story, my mess? How do I fit into it all that?

But hints of God’s activity with His people are there to be found. God has been working through and intervening in the lives of many people that have been dancing the Kingdom Dance through the years, bringing hope and healing to the world. Their stories can be found in the Bible and in the rest of history[1] and sometimes even inserted into the news of the day, in the middle of all the stories of our brokenness.

I dance because it makes me happy! My experience is that when I dance, I can express something from my heart to God that cannot be expressed in words. Dancing is a point of contact with God for me. It gives me an experience of God as the origin of creativity and beauty … “I dance because I want to spread a message of love, joy, hope and faith to the world … Among the dimensions added by the dance expression itself is the meta-message that there is room for the whole human being and life in its fullness in a Christian religious setting. Dance can teach children and adults a body-embracing way of living, believing and being in God’s world. One participant says that through dance in general, “we want to communicate heaven to people down here, the message of salvation, our freedom in God, the joy in God, and the joy of dancing with fellow Christians.” … Through dance these Christian dancers experience and practice their religion in a bodily way. This means that their spirituality takes an embodied form and that dance for them is not only a bodily practice, but also a spiritual one.[2]

Dancing seems to be a human attribute, not necessarily linked to just Christianity[3], it is a gift from God that can be used in the manner expressed here; to be a human means of expressing our God-given joy through our bodies. While dancing can be done alone, when done in community it can help to bind participants together. Joy and community are part of God’s purpose for us. We are tasked as God’s image-bearers to be his representatives and stewards. But our tasks are not to be burdensome but rather they are meant to be joyful. If you will, our tasks are meant to be a joyful dance we do with each other and with our Creator.

For us to dance the Kingdom Dance we don’t have everything figured out, He does. We don’t even have to worry about the results of the dance because the results are not dependent on us but on Him, who is working through us. As much as we have messed things up and will continue to do so, He will ultimately restore us and the rest of creation, making us all into what He had intended from the beginning.

Among all the creatures that God created, we are uniquely made, even if we are not the physical center of the universe as some people may have thought at one time. Through the pursuit of science, we now have instruments that make it very clear that we are not physically at the center of everything, not that we can prove anyway. We are only specks on a small planet spinning around a star in an apparently random solar system in an apparently random galaxy in a universe we cannot even see the edges of. Although we don’t know where the center is, the universe seems to have been created with us in mind. The properties of the universe, the physical constants, the atomic structures, were all created such that it would support our existence.[4] Interestingly, although we are creatures made of the stuff of the universe, not only can we study and reflect on the properties of that stuff, but we can also study and reflect on and even reflect the one who created us.

In the meantime, we do not know when He will return, and we find ourselves in the middle, in-between those two times, between the beginning of the restoration of God’s kingdom on earth and the time when it will be fully accomplished. In this in-between time, sometimes we see some signs of God’s restoration – and sometimes we can’t – and it’s hard to figure out what God is doing, especially when there are times that He seems to be absent. In those times, we need to call upon our faith to hold onto the hope that God is still working out His plans. We need to recall all the times that we did see Him at work, and then we also need to remember that getting to the end of the plans that He intends for us may require some pain on our part just as it required pain on His part. And like Him, our pain will be ultimately overwhelmed with the glory that will be revealed.

Our ultimate destination is not a mere returning to the way we started out, but to the full flourishing of our potential, where God will establish a kingdom of image-bearers released to display God’s character and reflect His glory.

“And salvation only does what it’s meant to do when those who have been saved, are being saved, and will one day fully be saved realize that they are saved not as souls but as wholes and not for themselves alone but for what God now longs to do through them. The point is this. When God saves people in this life, by working through his Spirit to bring them to faith and by leading them to follow Jesus in discipleship, prayer, holiness, hope, and love, such people are designed—it isn’t too strong a word—to be a sign and foretaste of what God wants to do for the entire cosmos. What’s more, such people are not just to be a sign and foretaste of that ultimate salvation; they are to be part of the means by which God makes this happen in both the present and the future. That is what Paul insists on when he says that the whole creation is waiting with eager longing not just for its own redemption, its liberation from corruption and decay, but for God’s children to be revealed.” [5]

With that in mind, we can not only wait and hope. We can participate with God in bringing His kingdom to earth and bringing a taste of healing and hope into a broken world that desperately needs it.

“Within the biblical story, the Christian discovers a constant call for justice on behalf of the weak and forgotten. In the biblical tradition, justice is an aspect of God’s shalom, a notion that carries with it the idea of completeness, soundness, well-being, and prosperity, and includes every aspect of life – personal, relational, and national.”[6]

The suffering and pain in the world can be overwhelming, challenging our ability to maintain hope and persist in our effort as we try to bring shalom. That challenge forces us to focus on the taste of shalom that God has given to us knowing that it is just a foretaste of the fullness of the shalom that awaits us in the fully restored earth.

[1] See Appendix G – The contributions of the Church for some examples

[2] Schurr, Hildegunn Marie T. “Dancing Towards Personal and Spiritual Growth” Nordic Journal of Dance – volume 3, 2012 (pp. 31-40)

[3] La Mothe, Kimerer. “The dancing species: how moving together in time helps make us human” Aeon aeon.co/ideas/the-dancing-species-how-moving-together-in-time-helps-make-us-human

[4] Slezak, Michael. “The human universe: Was the cosmos made for us?” New Scientist, 29 April 2015. www.newscientist.com/article/mg22630190-400-the-human-universe-was-the-cosmos-made-for-us

[5] Wright, N.T. Surprised by Hope, Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection and the Mission of the Church. Harper Collins 2008. Kindle Edition

[6] Katongole, Emmanuel. Rice, Chris. “Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing,” Intervarsity Press, 2009 (p. 72)

Reflect

Think about how the universe seems designed for us, our capacity to think about and explore it and then think about our capacity to reflect on the One who created it all. What does that suggest to you about what God has intended for us?

Observe

Read Hebrews 12. What does this passage say about how we should be living now?

David

Dancing in the Kingdom – Table of contents

Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom, Chapter 8 – Kings and Kingdoms

[Bible references: 1 Samuel 13:14; 26:11; 1 Samuel 24:1-7; 26:1-12; Acts 13:22]

Meanwhile, God had selected David, someone who was described as “a man after God’s own heart,” to be the next king. However, David’s reign did not begin until many years later. This meant there was going to be a long and difficult in-between time of testing:

  • Saul’s heart continued to be tested as he was rejected by God, but it would be a long time before the end of his reign. In the meanwhile, he had his duties to perform.
  • David had been anointed to be the next king, but it would be many years before it happened. In the meanwhile, there would be much conflict in which David had to trust God and do what he thought he needed to do. David didn’t test God by unnecessarily putting himself in harm’s way, rather he looked to God for wisdom and acted accordingly. When David had opportunities to kill King Saul, he refused to do so and instead waited for God to act.

This is the area where we typically fail: Adam and Eve could not wait for God to give them knowledge so they grabbed for it; Abraham and Sarah could not wait for God to give them a son through Sarah and so they used Hagar; Jacob could not wait for his inheritance so he and Rebekah had to trick Isaac; Moses could not wait for God to provide water by just speaking to the rock and so he had to strike it. In contrast, to be obedient, David was willing to wait for God to replace Saul and did not take advantage of the opportunities he had to kill him.

Friendship

[Bible references: 1 Samuel 18-20; Proverbs 17:17]

In this difficult period, David would form with Saul’s son, Jonathan, the best friendship he ever had. Jonathan recognized that his own father, Saul, was rejected as king, but instead of jealously trying to hold onto what he could not have, he accepted David as the heir to the throne.[1] In fact, Jonathan was crucial to David’s survival.

The war King

[Bible references: 2 Samuel 2-5, 11:1]

In time, Saul did die, and David became king, although it would be in phases. Initially there was a civil war as people that were loyal to Saul did not pledge loyalty to David but to another king. As in many conflicts, in addition to the overt conflict, there was much subterfuge and political intrigue as well which would have consequences later. Then, even after uniting the kingdom, David had to lead Israel through constant warfare as he expanded the kingdom. So even though David was called and anointed to be king, that did not mean that there was a clear path to becoming king and it did not mean that there would be no conflicts once he became king. It also did not mean that David would be perfect.

Repentance

[Bible references: 2 Samuel 12:1-14; Psalm 51:1]

There were a couple of instances where David committed sin but, unlike Saul before him, David responded to Yahweh’s rebuke with repentance. The most egregious sin David committed was to have an affair with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his soldiers, getting her pregnant. Then when he failed to cover it up, he arranged for that soldier to be killed on the front lines. When the prophet, Nathan, confronted David about the sin, David repented and confessed his sin. The baby born from that affair died shortly after being born, but later David would have another child with Bathsheba, Solomon, setting up the next story line.

Messy family life

[Bible references: Deuteronomy 17:14-20; 2 Samuel 13:1-21; 2 Samuel 13:23-29; 15:7-23]

David did have many wives and concubines, but unlike Solomon, the king who reigned after him, David’s polygamy had not led him to worshiping other gods. The Bible doesn’t condemn David for his polygamy, but it seemed to exasperate a weakness in David. David had many children through his wives and concubines, but he failed to discipline them. His inability to discipline his sons resulted in rape of one of his daughters by one of his sons, who was murdered by another son to avenge the rape, and then attempted to dethrone David. This all meant that the path to succession to David’s throne would not be straightforward, but in the end, David selected his son Solomon to succeed him.

[1] This brings to mind, a quote from a missionary, Jim Elliot. “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose.”