Hebrews 11:39
And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised
For every time I have heard or read someone invoke "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" there is this passage in Hebrews that serves as an interesting corrective. And yet that is not exactly what I want to discuss now. Anyone can make fun of a prosperity-gospel that appropriates "For I know the plans I have for you ... " as a personal fulfillment mantra. In context Yahweh was telling His people through Jeremiah that even though they were going to be in exile for seventy years (and then, later, through Daniel, that the exile was really going to last four hundred and ninety years, which should make any Christian think twice about too cheerfully employing the phrase "progressive revelation") that THIS plan of generations of exile was a plan to prosper them and not to harm them. The plan credited to Yahweh by false prophets was that in a few years Israel would gain its freedom and shake off the yoke of oppression and exile imposed on them by a godless empire, THAT was the false prophecy!
Yet here is the thing, though Hebrews is right to point out that none of those saints of old received the fullness of what God had promised they did receive in part. Abraham DID live to see the birth of his son Isaac. Isaac did live long enough to have two sons. Jacob did live long enough to have at least a dozen sons and lived long enough to know that Joseph was alive. Abraham even received a promise that for four hundred years his descendents would be slaves in a foreign land. Daniel received word that Israel would be stuck in their situation for at least four centuries and that then their deliverance would come.
Let us consider Ps 72, for instance. Those things prayed for in the psalm for the king Solomon (or by Solomon, let's suppose for sake of broadness) did not ultimately come to pass in Solomon's reign. They are, obviously, fully realized in Christ. And yet even now we do not see Christ fully and obviously enthroned. We, too, are shown that God's promises are all "yes" in Christ and yet we do not yet see all those things fully manifest. God is faithful and yet it is not false to say that God gives us the Spirit as a downpayment and seal as the promise of a future fulfillment yet to come. Paul wrote that we know in part and we prophesy in part but that when that which is perfect comes all prophecy and knowledge will cease. This perfection has not yet come and contrary to cessationists it is patently obvious that Paul is referring to the return of Christ, the great eschaton, the day of the Lord, and not merely the canonization of the Bible.
What I continually struggle to remember is that the Christian life is one in which it is good and right to be thankful for God's faithfulness in mercurial or even bad circumstances. I have had friends suggest that we should be confident that God has a good plan for us. Yes, He does, but we do not know what that good plan entails in our lifetime. I don't know whether my mother will or won't die of some health problems in the next year. Certainly I pray that she lives many, many more years. But there was a stage in my life where I hoped I would get married before my maternal grandmother died and that most assuredly was not the case!
At one point I thought I might be a professor of New Testament studies by the time I was in my thirties. That, most assuredly, has not turned out to be the case! In fact nothing seems more alien or unlikely to me now than that I should either 1) be married or 2) be a teacher of any kind. What I hope for in this life and what God providentially permits or directs may be completely different things. My mother certainly never wanted me to have the poor eyesight that I have or for me to have a macular detachment at 21. I didn't want that either.
Now in a time and place where Christians may wish to speak of God's faithfulness in terms of a job or a spouse or children or ministry success or anything like that, any outward measure of status or prosperity as an indicator of what we consider godliness I have something else to share. Yes, all those things are, indeed, signs of God's blessing. What distinguishes a Christian's disposition toward those things is to realize that all these things, blessings as they are from the Lord, are at most partial fulfillments of promises yet to be fully kept. Do you have a spouse you consider to be a blessing? Wonderful. Do you have children you love? That is also wonderful. Do you have a job? That is great. Do you have a job you enjoy? Even better.
Christians can talk glibly about idolatry and about how we as Christians should not take good things and make them gods. That's all true but I wonder if I haven't idolized things while thinking they were signs of God's favor. I do not doubt for a moment that a person can make one's own church an idol by leaning on it and idealizing it. I've done it and am likely to do it again. In the bluntest and crudest way possible--the difference between an idol and a blessing for which you or I can be thankful to the Lord may consist of this; the idol is something which presents itself as the complete fulfillment of any kind of promise we make to ourselves or dream we have; or a promise that is made to us in any way or a dream we are enjoined to have. By contrast, a blessing is something that we can see is, for all its beauty or value, as nothing more and nothing less than a partial manifestation of the faithfulness of the Lord toward us or people we love.
Let me restate this observation another way. Even a partial fulfillment of a promise of God is better for us than the fullest realization of any hopes or dreams we may have or of promises we have made to ourselves or received from others (i.e. others who are not Yahweh). The fullest fulfillment of someone else's promise to you is not necessarily a bad thing but it is still not as great as a partial fulfillment of the Lord's promise to you. In many cases that fulfillment may be a providentially partial fulfillment of a promise from the Lord.
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.
This is a promise from the Lord Himself and yet even this promise is, at most, a partial fulfillment of the promises that Yahweh gives that all, ultimately, find their fulfillment in Christ. It may be the key to contentment for the Christian throughout life is to be content in the partial fulfillment of God's promises to us through Christ and His body.
I suppose at this point the momentum of this blog post has me thinking out loud. I have heard many Christians talk about this or that being an idol and I agree with much of it in principle but too much is made of the false nature of the promises made by idols and not enough is made of how those false promises appeal to us. God's promises seem weak to us because they are partly fulfilled at most in the life of any one believer. God delivered Israel out of Egypt but when they grumbled that they were being led through the wilderness they turned from the Lord. Moses himself did not get to enter the promised land because he disobeyed the Lord yet Moses was glad to at least see the promised land even though he did not enter it himself.
By contrast the serpent's promise was fully realized and realized immediately after Adam and Eve ate the fruit. The power of temptation and the seductive appeal of an idol is not merely what it promises but that it delivers on that promise here and now. We as Christians should not kid ourselves about how and why idols are so appealing, whatever our idols may be. The eyes of Adam and Eve were opened and they did learn the difference between good and evil, just as the serpent predicted! To prevent them from eating of the tree of life and living forever God banished Adam and Eve from the garden. Even God's declaration that in the day they ate of the fruit they would die was no more than partly fulfilled in the day that they disobeyed! Of course we don't have reason to doubt that Adam and Eve died.
In the scriptures ever there after we see God giving promises that saints of old have never seen more than partly fulfilled even after Christ Himself rose from the dead! If we as Christians convince ourselves or each other that what is necessary is for God to be "fully" faithful in whatever we think He has promised us or others in scripture then we should consider whether or not we need to repent of putting God to the test and grumbling against Him in some way.
If even Christ Himself prayed that the cup would pass from Him yet drank the fullness of it anyway then we have an example to follow in obedience that goes to the Cross even after a prayer to not go to the Cross received an answer. I have to ask myself daily whether it is better to trust in the Lord whose promises have every single day at most been partly fulfilled with a promise of a full fulfillment in the final day, or whether it is better to trust in the tiny promises made by everyone else that are fully fulfilled.
Since today is Valentine's day imagine that you are a woman with two suitors. One promises that you can be married today if you will accept him. He comes with an engagement ring, a concrete plan for and vision of the future for you both, and chocolates. The other comes with nothing but a declaration of his love for you, not even a ring. He promises that you will be his bride in the future if you will accept him and that you will be married after he has set his affairs in order. He declines to tell you when that is but assures you that, basically, everything is already in place, is being put in place, and will be worked out soon so he would like your answer now. He asks that you trust in the goodness of his character and his promise. Is that promise, coming from him, good enough for you to say "yes" to his proposal of marriage?
Well, obviously for the sake of this illustration the Lord is like the suitor who holds forth the great promise of marriage but has not told us when the day of the marriage supper of the Lamb will be. Idols tell us exactly when the marriage supper will be and invite us to it daily. I too often accept the more immediate, concrete offer that has a specific timeline. This is, to the best of my limited ability, why I am so easily swayed by promises from idols that distract me from the Lord. Since the serpent in the garden we have been swayed because the Lord promises a whole but has only ever fulfilled in part while idols promise and deliver in whole. It is only after we have discovered that the whole we were sold was itself not only incomplete but a devourer of our selves that we begin to rue our decision. Hebrews and the rest of scripture reminds us that the partial fulfillment from God is more precious than the full fulfillment of the promises of anyone else or anything else.
Sin promises us the moon and gives us the moon every single time. It is only after we have agreed to the moon that we realize the plants in our garden need sunlight to grow and that we have just agreed to an eternal eclipse that will darken the dawn. The faithfulness of the moon we see now outstrips any confidence we have in the sun that has not yet risen but that we are told has risen before.
I had not originally intended this as any uniquely Valentine's Day meditation but I suppose it will suffice for one.
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