Broken Cisterns, Purses with Holes, Bland Food: These are a Few of Our Favorite Things.

"Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, 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 2:13-13

"You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes." - Haggai 1:6

"Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food." - Isaiah 55:2

The Lord graciously continues to reveal to me a clearer understanding of how depraved and without hope humans really are without Jesus. Between watching myself and my closest friends, I have been able to see many things lately that exhibit the deficiencies mentioned in the above verses, of which I will not go into detail. It matters not what exactly happened; only that humans - myself included - continue to prove that unless we are regenerated and renewed by the Holy Spirit, we will always seek that which is lawful and unprofitable over that which is most valuable. In fact, that may be the definition of sin - the forsaking of our greatest Treasure in order to love what is worthless; at least, that is what I take the verses from Jeremiah to mean. "My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken ME, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water." That is God's definition of evil. As we read about Israel and their idolatry, God sums up their sin by saying that they have forsaken Him and chased after worthless idols. And over this the heavens are to be appalled and shocked; utterly desolate. For the angels, who see God all day, look down from heaven and watch what seems to be insanity: the people of God exchanging Him for things that are not Him. And I'm sure they can't believe their eyes! To them we must look like a people trying to store water in "broken cisterns" and trying to fill with money a purse with holes. We spend the majority of our efforts on things that are lawful and unprofitable rather than becoming obsessed with Him who is the treasure of the universe. We dine on bland food when we have been freed to "eat what is good and delight ourselves in rich food."
And what furthers this sadness, is the justification of the convicted. We read the Word - "a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart" - and we justify to ourselves and, ultimately, to God why we do what we do. We make the mistake of thinking that God desires for us to spend time playing video games and mindlessly watching T.V. We mistakenly believe that God is fine with His people pursuing that which is merely lawful. He murdered His own Son on the cross to free us from lives of pursuing the dull and meaningless; but sure, He'll understand. I say this not looking down on those who read, but looking eye to eye with people who struggle with the same things I do. Do we not do this? We read about abundant life, yet live as though it is not available. The verses above point to eternal and abundant life, but we look to mediocrity and lawfulness to entertain us.
I think perhaps I'd like to end with a question (or questions): What is the Bible's stance on this? Is it not insanity to give time and love to things not conducive to loving Jesus? Is it idolatry when we are anxious for the cares of this world (no matter how small), yet uncaring when it comes to knowing Jesus?

I'll have to admit that I am quite inexperienced when it comes to noticing license plates, so there may be one much more humorous out there than this one. However, I will say that seeing this at 11:30 at night as I walked into West Campus Library was slightly more than a "hoot". There is another one I'd like to submit along with this, but we'll save that one for next week.

"The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand." - John 3:35

I was thinking, when I read this, that I am one of great talent when it comes to justifying certain things in my life; particularly how I spend my time and where I place my affections. But once again, the Word proved to be a "discerner of the thoughts and the intents" of my heart. At first glance, I assigned this verse a big "duh" and almost moved on; however, I remembered that the Word does not exist that I might gain merely ideas and notions about God. It exists that the Spirit might use it to cut me to the heart and expose reality, and through conviction, mold me into someone who looks a bit more like Jesus. It was about that time that it hit me: this verse exposes the heart of the Father...the very thing that Christians are supposed to be hungering and thirsting for. (And I was gonna just move on!) Perhaps even more stunning, was that it reveals the meditation of God's heart: Jesus. If God were to reveal his innermost thoughts to us, we would find Jesus there; constantly on his mind in an obsessively loving way. Now, I don't mean to be abstract, because most of the time when people discuss abstract ideas it is only to sound smart, or present some mind-numbing thought that never really helps us live out the Christian life any better than we were before we heard the idea. I believe this to be extremely applicational in at least two ways:

1) If Christians claim to be seeking to have the heart of God, then we should want to have the same obsession as the Father: Jesus. "The Father loves the Son." The Son is always the focus of the Father and the ultimate end to which the Father does all things. Jesus is the center of the universe. We must stop looking past Jesus to get a glimpse of the Father, because "in him the fulness of the diety was pleased to dwell." If we want to know God, we must focus on Jesus who said, "I and the Father are one." In all things, we must seek to know Jesus more.

2) There is a very applicational issue of trust in this verse, because we see the Father has "given all things into his hand." So we see that God loves and trusts Jesus with his whole heart, giving all the universe into his hand. The perfect judgment of character by the Father is shown in his giving all things into the hand of Perfection. And if we translate that into our lives, it means that when we do not trust Jesus with all things, we express two incredible blasphemies: We question the Father's judgment of character, and we doubt the dependability of Jesus. This is our sin when we hesitate to trust Jesus. It's no small thing to call into question the acts of the Creator and his Son.

All that said...we need to love Jesus....more. So much more that our time and our affections are placed where we can continually enjoy Jesus.

"Great honor do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs, who, they think, are to be made glorious by trumpery tapers, when the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty, gives them light." - Vigilantius

I have posted this because it is just a way cool quote. I read about Vigilantius in a letter written by Ambrose (an early Catholic church father). In the letter, he is vehemently condemned by Ambrose for being an iconoclast - that is, someone who was opposed to the worship of icons or relics in the church; Ambrose, as you probably guessed, was a supporter of icons and relics (a "man of this sort"), and therefore he was determined to dirty Vigilantius' name. What I find great about his attempt, is that he quotes Vigilantius as saying the aforementioned quote and thus reveals Vigilantius' true heart: He wanted Christ to be worshipped, and not relics. I don't know all about Vigilantius and his background, but I thought it was a profitable thing to say considering we (the protestant church) still make much of idols and men of the faith, when it is Christ "with all the brightness of his majesty" who gives us light.

"And from his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace." - John 1:16

As the Lord teaches me how and disciplines me to read His Word, I start to realize all the simple statements that I just pass over. You know, I just read over them thinking that I know what it means and fully understand the height and depth that these verses touch. Since I have been studying my way through this gospel (John), many of these short, but loaded verses have come across my path. I start writing about them and before I know it I have filled up pages on what started out to be a simple comment. The above reference to John is one of those verses. As I came across it about a month and a half ago, I had to stop and think about it for a long time before any ink could go on the page. And then, as the Lord granted me a little bit of understanding about it, I wondered how many Christians are doing this same thing during Bible study; that is, missing out on the profundity of even the shortest and simplest verses.

The implications of this verse are huge for how I understand Jesus and the way he acts toward me. It gives light to my questions of why he does anything at all in connection with humans. What I mean by this, is that there are many times when I struggle to understand why God does anything for us. I struggle to understand why he even created the world. I hear in church that his love is unending and I read in Romans that nothing can separate me from it (8:38-39). And those are great reassurances...but the looming question in my mind is "Why?". Perhaps when it comes down to it, we are not supposed to know the fulness of why until we get to heaven. But for now, a lot of my "why's" are answered in that verse (John 1:16): "from his fulness." It's quite simple actually. He's just full. He is so full of his own qualities, so full of himself, that he seeks ways to let it out. And when he exudes those qualities, their level of abundance inside of him never diminishes nor decreases. They just continue to overflow throughout history.

So what do I mean by God's being "full of himself"? That statement almost sounded like blasphemy when I first heard it. As humans, we are taught (and rightly so) that this is a negative quality to have. No human is deserving, nor capable, of being full of himself; that is, their well-spring of qualities is insufficient for them to remain filled with them, and their depravity/"finiteness" prevents them from even being credited with anything good. But we can not attribute human insufficiencies to God when we think about him. He is wholly different than us. He alone is a being in which all his qualities are perfect and infinite, and therefore their supply is unending. He is definer of what is good and perfect and is thus justified in counting himself as the greatest treasure in and beyond the universe. But we should want God to be an exalter of himself. We should want God to seek his glory and his fame in everything. And we should want this precisely because if he is the greatest treasure to behold, then we want him to be supreme in all things...including his own thoughts. If God has mankind as his first love, then God is an idolater. Idolatry should probably be defined as "choosing anything less valuable when something of supreme value is available." Since God knows he is perfect, he must choose himself over everything else. We see this in the cross of Jesus Christ as well, in that God - through great cost to himself in the death of his Son - made us able to enjoy making much of him forever. It is for his own glory that he displayed his Son as a sacrifice, because as we enjoy him, he is made much of. God's glory and our joy are not separate issues.

This is what should come to mind when reading the aforementioned verse. "From his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace." It is from God being full of himself, full of his God-qualities, full of love for his own Son, full of the Holy Spirit, full of the perfect love that is between the Trinity, that we can be loved by him. This is life-giving comfort to Christians; that is, knowing that God's love will not decrease toward us simply because God's love for his own glory will never be lessened.