My neighbor made me a pie this past week. I don’t remember what she called it, but it was incredible. It was a chocolatey nutty crusty bit of heaven that might have been a touch too rich if she hadn’t also included a pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream to go with it. And any pretense of “Fit Life Challenge” self-discipline was gone long before I went back for seconds.

In the movie, The Help, one of the characters – Minnie – is a sassy cook is known to make the best pies in Jackson, MS. But her mouth gets her in trouble with Miss Hillie, her racist snob of an employer, who fires her and then spreads rumors that make it almost impossible for Minnie to get another job. Minnie is not one to go quietly, though, and she comes up with a plan to do a “terrible awful” to Miss Hillie. She bakes a pie for her former boss with a special ingredient: poop. She pretends it’s a peace offering and acts contrite – until Miss Hillie is about halfway into a slice (which Miss Hillie thinks is incredible). Then she shares the recipe. The full recipe. And as tasty as that pie had seemed going down, the recognition of what she’s just eaten – ahem – changes that opinion rather quickly.

This is like sin, isn’t it? It looks pretty tasty on the surface, but inside it’s got that same “special ingredient.” It certainly can’t satisfy or nourish.  Even worse, the really sinister part of sin is that if you “eat” enough of it, pretty soon you stop being able to tell the difference between a good pie and the “terrible awful.”

For the most part, we know that, don’t we?  And yet still we keep going back to it. In Hosea, Gomer leaves Hosea for lovers who don’t really love her. I don’t imagine it shocks her when they’re gone in the morning.  The Prodigal Son left his father for “friends” who were there when he was buying and left him alone in the pigsty when the party ended. Even when we know the goodness of our Jesus, we still go back for another slice of that pie.

Like a dog that returns to his vomit
is a fool who repeats his folly.
(Proverbs 26:11)

Why do we do it? Even when we know the “special ingredient” in sin pie, why do we excuse ourselves when we keep eating it? If sin was really a pie like that, we’d be shocked at anyone who went back for seconds – but we do it all the time!  You know the sins I’m talking about – the ones that seem so hard to truly leave behind for good. The ones so easy to justify. “I know it’s awful stuff, that pie, and it’s going to make me sick… but it sure did taste good, didn’t it? And I could really go for something sweet right now.”

And that’s part of our addiction to sin, isn’t it? Life is hard.  For  most of us, a lot of the time life feels empty or meaningless. Often we’re left hurting, damaged, burned. Alone. Even when we know sin isn’t what we’re looking for, even when we know it’s not going to satisfy, and even when we know it will break our Lord’s heart, we go after it because it’s anesthetic. It numbs. It distracts. It provides a moment of fleeting happiness or joy. But ultimately it’s not real. Caedmon’s Call describes this really well in a song called “Potiphar’s Door:”

So I’m staring’ through the window screen
Wishing I could do all those things I’ve seen
I know it’s sin that leads to death but it looks like fun to me
And fun is the one thing I need
Because this race has knocked the wind all out of me

Gomer, the Prodigal Son… they’re us. God’s love for us is uninterrupted, faithful, steadfast. Ours is fickle, and wavers from moment to moment. We can start off the day in prayer and before noon have ordered up a double helping of that sin pie. What makes sin so easy for us?

Ultimately, the biblical answer is pretty simple. Self-discipline – saying “no” to the pie – is a sure way to fail. We have to replace the pie with something better. God has offered us His hesed – His steadfast love. It’s a love so strong, so consuming that it utterly and completely transforms His beloved. What God wants in return is not self-discipline, not good behavior.  He wants our love.

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
(Hosea 6:6)

We return to sin because our love for Him is defective. We sin because we don’t love Him enough. We accept the fleeting enjoyment of sin because we don’t trust that what He offers us is truly better and more satisfying than anything else this world has to offer. Faithfulness to God is not a matter of developing an iron will, it’s the result of being completely satisfied in Him, in what He’s done for us… in His love.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
(Lamentations 3:22-24)

Scene 1: Boy Meets Girl
Scene 2: They Fall in Love
Scene 3: Conflict/Separation/Heartbreak (due to misunderstanding)
Scene 4: Reconciliation/Kiss/Fade

The Princess Bride also follows the standard bit where it’s always a mismatched couple, a couple that’s not supposed to end up together. They’re separated – Buttercup believes her beloved Westley is dead, and she’s tragically pledged to marry another.

But then she discovers Westley is not dead, and the following exchange occurs:

Westley: I told you I would always come for you. Why didn’t you wait for me?
Buttercup: Well… you were dead.
Westley: Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.

It’s an awesome line, isn’t it?  I wish I’d come up with something slick like that.  It sounds familiar, doesn’t it – a love that mocks even death.  Paul wrote something similar to the church in Rome:

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:38-39)

If you haven’t noticed, the entire Biblical story is a romance, and in Hosea, we see the full drama condensed to one book. There are significant differences from a standard fairy tale, though. Hosea isn’t “safe,” because it’s about us.

In the beginning, we see a happy (and very mismatched) couple. But when tragedy separates this couple, it’s not because of a misunderstanding, but public infidelity, lies. Worse, we don’t get to identify with the innocent jilted lover. Instead, we’re the ones doing the cheating. And we have nowhere to hide what we’ve done.

But this is the story of the truest of true love, and it’s strong enough to overcome even this. What makes the the Biblical love story so truly amazing, though, is that in it the Hero returns anyway – knowing the full measure of His beloved’s infidelity, of our failure to reciprocate His stubborn, uninterrupted love – and He still pursues us with all His heart. And in the end, in classic romance movie form, Hosea and Gomer, God and His people are reconciled and live happily ever after.  Revelation 19 is the biblical equivalent of the dramatic music swell at the end of the movie, the scene where – as the author of The Princess Bride puts it,

Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.

Ah, but we’re not to that part yet, are we? How great it would be if we could just live in the dramatic music swell at our conversion! In reality, though, reconciliation – even with God – is messy. The video Irving Bible did shows this so well.

When we come back to God, we all come back to God with unresolved baggage. The damage caused by our sin, by our infidelity – by our “whoredom” (as the Bible puts it) – is not undone in a moment. But God is faithful, and just as the modern parable of the video, He’ll take us and our baggage, so long as we’ll leave the sin behind and embrace Him back.  He knows its going to be long process, and by now He’s proven He’ll be faithful to see the process through to the end.

Will we?

The conversion of a soul is the miracle of a moment, but the manufacture of a saint is the task of a lifetime.
- Alan Redpath

Since the beginning, God has offered us His hesed – his stubborn, uninterrupted, unfailing steadfast love. And that’s what He wants from us. Not sacrifice, not apologies. Not tithes, not service. Not good behavior. He wants our love.  He wants the kind of love that is the only possible response to the incredible love He has for you and me.  Do you know – really know how much God loves you?  It’s the kind of love that changes us, that transforms us into the reflection of Him. It’s the kind of love that will make us into the kind of bride that belongs with Him at the end of the story.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father… that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:14-21)

This is not a bad story of God’s pursuit of us. A word that (fittingly) shows up over and over throughout the Hebrew Bible is hesed. It’s usually translated “steadfast love,” although Pastor Phil maybe put it better as “stubborn love.” Like the shrew, we fight Him, rejecting His hesed – but He refuses to be moved.

In the video from Sunday, we saw a scene bursting with emotion. In handcuffs and having truly hit rock bottom, Hosea’s unfaithful wife calls the one person she knows will come for her. Hosea – who has faithfully showed up at the counseling sessions, waiting to reconcile – does not disappoint. But what does he feel when he gets the call, when he hears what she’s been arrested for? Surely he’s conflicted. His heart breaks for her, hearing her tears… but at the same time, part of him has to cry out for justice. That part would be easy: tell her she got herself into that problem, she could get herself out. “Call one of the guys you chose over me,” he could have said. But he doesn’t.

Instead, Hosea redeems her.  In the biblical account, Hosea literally buys her back, both wooing her and purchasing her from bondage. Imagine what that would look like in a small town: everyone knew she’d run out on him.  What would the walk to her house have been like for Hosea?  He went to buy her back – not as a slave, but as a bride. He wants her heart (Hosea 6:6, Matt 9:13), and so Hosea gets vulnerable and offers his heart to her – even though he knows her heart is at best conflicted… She’s not fully his, even when it’s clear that he’s the only one she’s always been able to count on. And that’s gotta hurt Hosea.

But Redemption always costs the redeemer dearly.  On the Cross, Jesus – in incredible physical and emotional pain – looked down on the people spitting curses at Him, and begged His Father to forgive them. In an “all-out love war,” God, through His Son, will not be moved. He is steadfast, not allowing us to chase Him off – no matter how bad it hurts Him to love us.  Like Hosea, God won’t give up on you.  The only question is how long we’ll continue to hold out, how hard we’ll fight Him, how long  we’ll reject His advances, refusing to be caught.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
- Lamentations 3:22-24

In the awesome video from Sunday, we see what might be an all too familiar scene: a husband and wife fighting.  In this case, she walks out on him, rejecting her husband and choosing a “fun” life over the stability and safety of her husband’s love.  They try counseling – but she’s not really into it, and stops making any effort at reconciliation after the first session.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells a maybe better known version of this story: “the Parable of the Prodigal Son.”  In the parable, a younger son does the unthinkable and demands his inheritance before his father’s death.  Even more shocking, the father obliges his son, sells off land and livestock, and hands his son the money.  The whole town would have known about this, and the father’s shame would have been very public.  The son, ignoring the effects on his Dad, takes his windfall and travels to “a far country,” where he lives it up.  He has a good time with his new “friends.”  But the money dries up and the “friends” disappear – and soon the formerly rich kid is in rags feeding hogs.  Remember, this is a Jewish boy… feeding hogs.

Having hit rock bottom, he finally comes to his senses and realizes that not only is the grass not greener on this side of the fence, but that he had already had all he ever wanted back at home.  ”How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!” (vs. 17).  He begins the long journey home, no doubt practicing his speech all the way, expecting the justifiable anger of the father he rejected.

But that’s not what happens, is it?  His father sees him coming from a distance, hitches up his robes and – in an embarrassingly undignified display – runs to meet his dirty, smelly son.  His son never gets the well-rehearsed speech out.  His father has been waiting all that time, ready  to reconcile, to welcome his son “back from the dead” (vs. 32).

The Other Prodigal Son

There’s another story in Luke 15 that we often overlook – the story of the older brother.  He’s been the good kid, the obedient kid.  As often happens in a family with a rebellious child, the older brother may have responded by finding his identity as the “good son.”  He was a rule follower, and probably was well-respected in town – especially compared to his screw-up of a younger brother.  When the younger son returns, the older brother is doing what good sons should do: he’s out working in his father’s fields.

His reaction is predictable: he’s angry.  He feels like he’s missed out – after all, if the younger son can live it up, embarrass the family and then come home and apparently not suffer any consequences, then why should the older brother keep doing the right thing?  Grace is rarely acceptable to older brothers, because grace is for those who don’t do the right thing.  So the older brother stops obeying, stops doing the right thing, and rebels in every bit as public a manner.  Instead of being the public face of the family at the “welcome home” party (as would have been expected of him), he stands outside, seething – knowing full well this would have raised eyebrows and brought shame on his father.  And so once more, the father stoops to accommodate a prodigal son.  He leaves his guests and goes out to his older son and patiently explains himself (v.31-32).

As we look at Hosea – and specifically his unfaithful, cheating wife – it’s important that we all understand that we are Gomer.  None of us gets to be the good guy in this story. While they were very different, both of the sons in the story were rebellious, disobedient.  Both wanted their father’s stuff instead of their father.  And when they didn’t get what they thought they were entitled to, they didn’t have any problem acting in ways that would embarrass and shame their father in front of others.

We’re just like this, aren’t we?  Our “love” for God is often very pragmatic, very transactional.  We obey God because we want His stuff, His blessings.  And – like Israel, if He doesn’t give it to us, then we go looking for it elsewhere (a job, title, or paycheck?  Social esteem?  A relationship?).  It’s not until we see the emptiness and futility of life in “a far country,” over “on the other side of the fence” that we return to seek God on any terms He’ll offer.  That’s also where we find Him waiting, with open arms.  Like the rejected husband in the video, He’s been been watching, waiting to reconcile, because His love is bigger, deeper… and more stubborn than even our repeated rejection of Him.

So – regardless of which prodigal son you are – will you return to Him?  Will you recognize your need for grace on any terms God will give you? In Luke 15, the story ends with the son still outside.  It doesn’t say whether he went in to the celebration, to the joy, to the love or whether he stayed outside, bitter and angry.  How will you respond to your Father’s love?

As a typical little boy, I had to learn this the hard way. She took me out to the fence of a cow pasture and pointed to the electric wire that ran along the other side of the fence. “Don’t touch it,” she said simply and bluntly, then walked back to the house. Well, I was curious and wondered if Granny was holding out on me – so I checked to make sure she’d gone back inside, and then I reached out with both hands and grabbed it.

Ahem.

It’s not hard to see why God describes us as sheep, is it? We think we’re pretty bright – more than that, we often think we know better. We think He’s holding out on us. Phillip Keller, in his book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, describes his frustration with a particular ewe.

She was one of the most attractive sheep that ever belonged to me. Her body was beautifully proportioned. She had a strong constitution and an excellent coat of wool. Her head was clean, alert, well-set with bright eyes. She bore sturdy lambs that matured rapidly.

But in spite of all these attractive attributes, she had one pronounced fault. She was restless – discontented – a fence crawler…

No matter what field or pasture the sheep were in, she would search all along the fences or shoreline (we lived by the sea) looking for a loophole she could crawl through and start to feed on the other side.

It was not that she lacked pasturage. My fields were my joy and delight. No sheep in the district had better grazing. With “Mrs. Gad-about” it was an ingrained habit. She was simply never contented with things as they were. Often when she had forced her way through some such spot in a fence or found a way around the end of the wire at low tide on the beaches, she would end up feeding on bare, brown, burned-up pasturage of a most inferior sort.

This is a pretty good description of how God describes Israel in Hosea… and it’s also not a bad picture of you and me, is it? We always seem to think God is holding out on us, that what He’s given us is not enough – and so we look for alternate providers. But like “Mrs. Gad-about,” all we end up with is burned-up, inferior pasturage.

for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.
- Jeremiah 2:13

Empty cisterns… burned-up pasturage.  We don’t find what we’re looking for on the other side of the fence, do we?  But we still get upset at God when he closes doors we really want open (even when we know they’re not what He wants).  We kick and yell and rage (mostly on the inside) at the fence He builds.  In the Hosea video we saw Sunday, we see the husband taking back his unfaithful wife’s credit cards and cell phone. He won’t pay the bill for her destructive choices, he won’t enable her.  This is a great modern illustration of what God does in Hosea 2:

Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,
and I will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
- Hosea 2:6-7

At first this might seem pretty vindictive or petty – especially to Gomer (Hosea’s wife). And it probably feels that way to us, too, when God “fences us in,” when He closes doors. But given the emptiness, the “burned-up, inferior pasturage” that lies on the other side of the fence, what better picture is there of a loving God than one who would restrain us?

It is God’s stubborn grace, the unrelenting love that will not give up on us that fences us in. Like the painful lesson I learned as a boy, God often allows us just enough pain to change us from “fence-crawlers,” from unfaithful wives constantly looking for love in all the wrong places. Like the husband in the video from Sunday who shows up for every counseling session, hoping to reconcile – even though he knows his wayward wife probably won’t show up.

God is not holding out on us, He is not keeping us from the best. He IS the best… and by His grace, He often limits how much damage we can do to ourselves, because He loves us more than we truly know.

What will it take for you and I to finally be satisfied in Him?

You’d think with such impressive and obvious evidence of their success in not only helping their patients keep their teeth but give them an impressively white smile – despite a sugar-saturated diet – that people would be more eager to go to the dentist. But the results – a bright, healthy smile – typically don’t overcome the well-documented fear of going to the dentist. And in order to save my teeth from my love of anything with sugar in it, my dentist has to use sharp objects in sensitive places to ruthlessly go after plaque and decay.

God’s words to the northern kingdom of Israel in Hosea 1:2-9 are likewise shockingly harsh. As a result of their pervasive sin and idolatry, because of the complete moral wreckage of their culture as a nation, God pronounces judgment on the rebellious 10 northern tribes of Israel. He commands Hosea to be a living object lesson to them, and commands Hosea to go and marry “a wife of whoredom,” comparing Israel to an unfaithful wife, a prostitute (vs. 2). As part of the object lesson, God next commands Hosea to name his firstborn son after a place that was synonymous with Israel’s defeat (vs. 4-5). Next, He tells Hosea to name his wife’s next child, a daughter, “Lo-ruhama” – which means “no mercy” – because He’s not going to have mercy on them “or forgive them at all” (vs. 6). Finally, Hosea’s wife has a third child, whom God commands Hosea to name “Lo-ammi” – meaning, “not my people.” God was rejecting the 10 northern tribes of Israel. “You are not my people, and I am not your God.”

This doesn’t sound like the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” that we learned about in Sunday School, does it? In The Problem with Pain, C.S. Lewis described the common view of God:

“We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?”

Like the dentist, when God goes after sin and decay, He is ruthless and he is going to scrape and drill until the rottenness and decay is gone. Israel’s sin and decay is His enemy. His goal is to present His bride to Himself “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). And Israel – just like Hosea’s cheating wife, Gomer, and just like us – was pretty rotten. What if a dentist looked in your mouth, saw cavities and decay everywhere, and then – because he was a nice guy and wanted to avoid causing you any pain – smiled and said, “looks great!” For God to ignore Israel’s sin would not have been loving, and so – sharp tools in hand – God went after the rottenness with all the ruthlessness that an all-powerful God could muster.

Beginning in verse 10, God offers a picture of the result.

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

As Sam Gamgee said in The Lord of the Rings, “is everything sad going to come untrue?” God’s promise to Israel – and to us – is exactly that.

You and I should take this promise very personally. We owe our salvation to it, as we’ve been “grafted in” (Romans 11) as part of God’s fulfillment of His promise to redeem His people. As Peter writes to Gentile Christians:

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10).

We have this idea that for God to be loving, He has to care above all else about our happiness. That’s a very shallow view of love, though, isn’t it? To truly love someone is to want the best for that person. And what is “best” is often not what makes a person happy (as any parent knows!). And God – who is the embodiment of Love – won’t tolerate the imposters, the short-term, false gods that all too often we chase after.

Are you ruthless with the sin, the rottenness and decay in your life? Jesus commanded us to be.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:29-30)

In a sermon series on Hosea, if you’re elbowing your spouse or thinking of someone who needs to hear this, you’re missing the point. The message of Hosea for us doesn’t leave any room for that. We – you and me – are each guilty, we all tolerate sin and rottenness and decay in our lives. Instead of treating it like gangrene, we pretend it’s not that bad. After all, everyone around us is doing it, right?

If you haven’t noticed yet, this is the story of the entire Bible, though. While God’s judgment on the pervasive sin of Israel is merciless, stark, and complete, the point is not to destroy them. God – the faithful spouse – is there, waiting to reconcile. His promise remains for those who are willing to drop the temporary fun of false gods and give ourselves completely to God, the embodiment of Love. Despite our unfaithfulness, God continues to wait with open arms.

Will you continue to ignore the rottenness and decay of sin in your life? Or will you embrace the fairy tale of an eternity in the consuming, uncompromising, perfect love of God?

In the movie above – which Irving Bible Church did an incredible job with – who do you identify with? I’ll be honest: my response was pretty visceral. My gut reaction was anger. I was mad at the girl, shocked at how easily she discarded her husband’s love for a quick fling – and before the shoe-polished “just married” had even been washed off her car!

But the truth is, we – you and me – we are the unfaithful wife, the cheater. The liar. We don’t like admitting that, do we? We like to identify with the mistreated husband – the good guy who has done nothing but love… and has been burned and hurt. But in reality, you and I are the ones cheating, we’re the ones who are unfaithful. And you and I can’t hide our unfaithfulness from God.

Hosea is a book that gets far too little attention, maybe for obvious reasons. It uses “salty” language, for one. But it also describes God in all His complexity. God is absolutely holy and just. God is also love itself, perfectly, completely loving. We regularly affirm both of these things…but have you ever thought what a storm our sin must cause Him? If He is just and holy, then our sin must be dealt with – but if He is loving, then it tears Him apart to do what justice demands.

In the context, Hosea was writing specifically to the Northern Kingdom of Israel – 10 tribes who had abandoned the God who delivered them from slavery in Egypt and traded His love for the shocking religious practices of their neighbors. Worshipping the Baals meant ritual sex. It also meant infant sacrifice. And while we’re rightly shocked that any parent could place their infant on the red-hot metal hands of an idol. do we understand the consequences on our kids when we abandon God to chase after modern, more discreet idols? Until we are brave enough to plumb the dark caverns of our own sin and how truly awful and hurtful it is to God, we will never really understand the depths of His stubborn grace.

As we study the book of Hosea, we’ll be asked to probe those dark corners of our own hearts – the places where we sweep the sins we don’t want to face or admit. As we study the guilt of Israel, described in terms that don’t leave any excuse or escape, we’re forced to face our own guilt before a God we’ve done wrong. Will you go there? Because here’s the thing: when we begin to come to grips with the many ways we’ve cheated on our God, when we travel deep down into those dark, dank caves… we find that He’s already there, waiting to woo us back. Even as we hurt Him by walking out the door, He’s already there offering us His love and forgiveness. When we understand His right to demand justice for what we’ve done to Him, the John 3:16 Gospel we’ve heard maybe too many times begins to make sense in ways it hasn’t before: the holy and sovereign God of the universe has paid the price justice demanded because He loved His bride and could not give her up.  And for those who are truly His, the fairy tale that began in Eden comes true in the end.

if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
for he cannot deny himself.
(2 Timothy 2:13)

It’s a great movie, if you haven’t seen it – and it got me thinking Sunday as Clay described how God brought about a similar crisis to reroute Paul of Tarsus.

Paul (his Greek name; his Hebrew name was Saul) was born into a college town on the southeast coast of modern-day Turkey, into unique circumstances. His parents were strict Jews and also held Roman citizenship. Paul inherited both of these by birth, and took great pride in them – particularly in his Jewish religious and ethnic nationality. After his conversion, he described his identity this way:

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. (Philippians 3:4-6)

Paul was “a Jew’s Jew,” and he was very proud of that. When a new sect began to threaten the purity of his people, Paul reacted swiftly.

For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. (Galatians 1:13-14)

So when Jesus revealed Himself to Paul as the risen Messiah, the promised one of Israel – it meant that everything he knew – everything he was! – had to be rethought. I’m not surprised he didn’t eat or drink for three days. I imagine he had to be convinced to eat and drink even after his sight had been restored. If that was truly Jesus – and Paul doesn’t seem to have been able to deny that it was – then it meant he only had two options: he could pretend it hadn’t happened, essentially plugging his ears (he may have even tried this one for a little while). Or he could turn traitor to all those who had known him, supported him. He would have to redefine how he understood everything in his world, and how he understood who he was himself.

Where is your identity? Yes, yes – I know the “right answer” is in Christ. But if you’re like me, that’s where you hope to get to someday. For now, your real identity is somewhere else. And it may be in very good things! For example: maybe you define yourself as a “wife and mother.” Or maybe you’re the provider, the husband who “brings home the bacon.” Maybe you’re really good at what you do – what if you suddenly couldn’t do that anymore? What if your husband left? Or what if you lost your job or your business failed? What if something fundamental changed and you could no longer outperform everyone around you? What kind of crisis would follow your worldview shattering like that? More importantly, how would you put the pieces back together?

Here’s how Paul did it:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him… Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:7-9a, 12-14)

What are you most proud of about yourself? What would it take for you to truly consider it “rubbish” (the Greek word is pretty strong here) compared to knowing Jesus and “being found in Him?”

Or maybe you’re at one of those crisis points where your world has been shattered. You can’t define yourself in the same terms you used to. Like Paul, you’re slowly trying to put the pieces back together, and finding that the pieces don’t look much like the old picture of you on the box top. If that’s where you are, then take the advice from a guy who was there: “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus.”

For the Vikings of Burke and for Paul, it took a significant crisis that forced them to view their entire world differently. While many of us won’t (hopefully!) won’t have to go through anything so painful, some of us will. Whether God smashes your worldview or – like braces – slowly moves your identity where it needs to go, it’s never comfortable. The method might be different, but the goal is the same: what does it mean to define yourself “in Christ?”  Getting that might require “turning traitor” to the thing you value most about yourself.

But God had called them, and they had obeyed.  They didn’t go timidly, either.  They took their families into the jungle with them.  They went “all in.”  And so just as the mission was God’s, so would the fruit.  Back home, thanks to a cover story in Life magazine, America was suddenly captivated by Elliot’s story, and reminded the nation of the sacrifice and commitment of overseas missionaries.  The result was a whole new generation who made the difficult decision to leave home and share the Gospel, because Elliot and his wife and friends went all in.

Wherever you are, be all there.”
(Jim Elliot)

The story in Acts 5:17-21 is similar.  The church had put together an impressive string of “wins.” It was growing in numbers, and it exhibited a supernatural unity.  The Apostles were widely respected and did miraculous things that demonstrated that the power of God was with them and this new movement.  But new movements – Christian or otherwise – invariably run headlong into the established order, and this one was no different.

Israel under the Romans was a designated “temple state.”  In Israel’s case, this meant that most of the day-to-day governing authority was delegated to the Sanhedrin, the religious council that met in the Jerusalem temple.  So when Jesus challenged the status quo, He directly threatened that group’s authority.  When the Sanhedrin got the Romans to execute Jesus, they thought the problem would go away like so many others.  But now Peter and the Apostles refused to simply go away.  So the Sanhedrin threw them in prison, and would meet the next day to decide how to stamp out this stubborn little band.

And just like that, all the hope and joy that had characterized the first church must have dissolved into fear.  As the sun went down, it must have looked for all the Jewish world that that the Christian message was finally going to be snuffed out.

But this was God’s mission, not the Apostles’, and so He would be responsible for the results.  During the night, an angel sprung them from jail and instructed them to “go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life” (v. 20).  So – instead of going into hiding – the Apostles went right back into the most public place in Jerusalem and picked up right where they’d left off, boldly preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What has God called you to do?  It may not be to preach the Gospel to isolated stone-age tribes, just like it might not be as public or revolutionary as the Apostles in Jerusalem.  It may be as simple as modeling a Christlike attitude to your kids, coworkers or classmates.  It might be changing how you do your family finances, or how you spend your Friday nights with your friends.  Whatever it might be, two things are true: God has called you to do something, and if you do it, there will be people who are invested in the established order that will want you to stop.

What will it take to shut you up, to stop you from doing and being what God has asked of you?  Personally, I would much rather do the Acts 5:12-16 thing than the “spend the night in prison before potentially being executed the next day” thing.  I don’t like conflict.  But God has called you and me to do something, just like He called Jim Elliot and his friends, and just like He called the Apostles before them.  And simply obeying God’s call is how He makes us into the people He wants us to be.

If faith thus depends on hope for its life, then the sin of unbelief is manifestly grounded in hopelessness… Temptation then consists not so much in the titanic desire to be as God, but in weakness, timidity, weariness, not wanting to be what God requires of us.” (Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 21)

It probably won’t play out like you think it will, and it may cost you everything – but go “all in” anyway and leave the results to God.  When you get to heaven, for example, you’ll meet quite a few Auca believers, thanks to the efforts of Elisabeth Elliot, Jim’s wife, who forgave her husband’s murderers and spent years showing them the love of Christ.  Remember, the story is ultimately about what God is doing, not you or me.  We’re just bit parts in a much bigger story.

The first set of Joneses rocketed to what seemed like great success (primarily financial). To all the world, they looked like winners, like everything they touched turned to gold. They had the jobs, the beach house, the perfect family picture. That was what they wanted more than anything else, and they worked very hard to get that perfect family picture.

On the other hand, there was Reuben and Sue, who – as the song goes – “had nothin’ but Jesus.” When their first child was born, Reuben’s buddies had to take up a collection to help him offset the hospital bills. They didn’t look like a “success,” at least not in the sense we usually mean. They worked very hard at being successful, too – but they had a different measure of what meant “success.”

In Acts 4:36-5:11, we see another “two sets of Joneses.” In 4:36, we’re introduced to Joseph, called Barnabas (which, so we’re told, means “son of encouragement”). We don’t know how well off he was, but he owned a field and sold it to contribute to the needs of the very rapidly growing Jerusalem church. In an agrarian culture, land was obviously a really big deal, so selling it off was a very generous thing to do – and a very public thing to do.

The other set of Joneses in this story – Ananias and Sapphira – also sold off a piece of land. It was likewise very sacrificial, generous and very public. Both “sets of Joneses” in the Acts story wanted to be successful. But like the song, “success” meant different things. For Barnabas, success focused on the first part of that sentence: sacrificial, generous. He felt blessed to have the field to sell so that he could help those in need. For Ananias and Sapphira, they focused on the “public” part. They didn’t really want to sell the field, but the status and esteem they imagined they get from the fast-growing church when they dropped all that money at the Apostles’ feet were worth the price. (Well, most of it, anyway.)

Does it kind of freak you out that God killed two people who attended church and made a big financial gift to it? It does me. Ananias and Sapphira went wrong in trying to buy honor from their peers instead of caring only what God – who sees everything – thought. It had nothing to do with their holding some of the money back, as Peter pointed out. And it freaks me out that God killed them for their misplaced priorities because more often than I want to admit, I do good stuff with one eye on the crowd.

This bad attitude, of course, is something Jesus explicitly spoke against:

Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
- Matthew 6:2-4

What does success look like in your life? There’s nothing wrong with a big house, a nice car, a pretty family, just like there’s nothing inherently good or spiritual about poverty or struggle. Why do you do what you do? Be honest: would you still be motivated to sacrifice, to love, to give if nobody ever knew it was you who did it?

Success in the Christian life is not about money. Money can only buy temporary stuff, and God isn’t into temporary stuff. As Bono famously sang, “the God I serve isn’t short on cash, mister.” But He is unfortunately short on the genuine praises of His children.

So as you do what you do today, think about your motives. Why do you do what you do? Maturity in Christ means that most of it comes from a desire to use all that He’s given us – good stuff and bad – in a way that makes Him alone proud of us.