Elijah has come from the destruction of the prophets of Baal and seeing the worship of God restored. In response, Queen Jezebel has threatened his life and he went into hiding and asked for death. This is the end of God's response to him. This passage is generally used to point out God's provision and care for Elijah, to address depression, to encourage those who feel they are failing or alone or hopeless. And all of that is there, and one of them is probably the actual theological point of the passage. But with today's readings, I was really hung up on that last line.

​It can be easy to get so hung up on the great heroes of the Bible and the big name prophets and apostles that we forget that God is using a whole lot of regular people all the time. Elijah believed that he was alone among the remaining servants of God, but not only was that not true, but God was actively working with and could readily identify hundreds of people whose names do not appear in scripture.

One of the most notable churches in the New Testament in the church of Antioch, where the term 'Christian' was first applied and where Paul was accepted and then sent out. We don't know the names of the people who founded that church, though, nor do we have the names of the people who laid hands on Paul and Barnabas and sent them out on the first missionary journey. But we know that Paul never forgot that the body of the church was important, active, and working.

In his final address to leaders in Asia on his way to be arrested in Jerusalem, Paul's focus is turned to the safety of the people in the churches. Let's not overlook the fact that the enemy has reason to attack the people who sit in the pews, the laymen, the people who are not working in pastoral ministry or doing missionary work abroad. It is important that we support, encourage, and pray for our leaders; and it is just as important that we pray for and support and encourage one another. We should see the importance God places on each individual in the church, and seek to be useful to Him and to see how He is working through others. There is no Christian who too lowly or unimportant to be a great servant of Christ.

Are we seeing ourselves and our fellow church members as equal participants in the mission of the church? Are we devoting ourselves to the work with the understanding that God has something great for us, as well? Our leaders will struggle, as Paul and Elijah did, and they will need to be helped. Let us not lose sight of our own service to God and each other as we do so.

The end times hold a special place of interest in the hearts of many Christians. I've even addressed it to some degree here. But in all the discussion about details and timelines and symbols, the one thing that stood out to me in today's reading was the promise of full completion. I don't mean simply that salvation will be fully manifested, that we will be glorified as Christ promises. The final restoration God has planned includes a completion of everything we find ourselves longing after.

​How great is this promise of God! Not only will our spiritual need for restoration be met, but our desire for true knowledge and understanding will find completion as well! God's promise is not just to fulfill our needs, but to bring fulfillment even to our wants, in the most glorious and holy way. We have in this age prophesies and parables, but in the age to come we will have truth, tangible truth, readily available and so perfect that we will have no need of partial visions into God's great nature. We may know in part now, but then we will know fully. The love that endures is one that includes revelation, honesty, a clear delivery of truth. God has designed us to know Him, really know Him, and in the end those who seek Him will be satisfied in knowing Him fully and intimately. God leaves no desire unfulfilled in the end.

At the very end of John 16, we get the sobering reminder from Christ that we will have trouble in the world. This life of walking with God will not be easy and it will put us at odds with the world around us. Consider just the thoughts from yesterday, that we must be open doors even while the world around us erects more walls. But Jesus doesn't end that thought with the warning of coming trials. That there will be trouble is part of a sandwich of encouragement, as He says that "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NASB).

Paul understood this well when he told the Corinthians in chapter 16 of his first letter to them that he will be staying in Ephesus until Pentecost because of an opportunity that had arisen that was accompanied by adversity. He does not offer the adversity as a counter-point, but as part of his explanation for why he had to remain.

What drives this? Joy. If our hearts are fixed on Christ and take their pleasure from Him, we can face troubles in this life with peace and courage, and view them as a part of our joy rather than a hindrance. Paul reminds Timothy of this very idea twice in rapid succession.

In the first, he is contrasting our joy and contentment with controversy and the arrogance of opposing the gospel. In the latter, he is commanding Timothy to remind people to look beyond their Earthly circumstances to find their joy in service to Christ. Isaiah, on the other hand, offers warning to those who do rely on their own circumstances to give them meaning and hope and joy.

Over and over again, scripture warns us that looking to anything of this world to bring us joy will end in misery, placing our hope in Earthly things and circumstances will bring terror. We must learn to look beyond this life to the giver of all life, the One who is Life itself. In Him we may find our true joy. But while we dwell in this flesh and look with these fallen eyes, we can expect to struggle against despair. We must continually go to God in prayer and in His word, and ask Him to renew the joy in our lives. He who is our joy, who made us to find our joy in Him, surely knows how to deliver joy to us.

I'm not a very good American, if I'm being honest with you.

I hold to a view called Christian Nonviolence, which in essence teaches that the church has not been granted the right or power to take human lives or endorse the taking of human lives. It is distinct from pacifism, in that I don't necessarily believe all violence is wrong, or that there can be no right application of war and the death penalty, simply that I, as a follower of Christ, cannot participate or favor such avenues. This is not the post in which to detail why I believe that, but I mention it because it leads people to discuss my larger point. See, when I'm asked about the citizen's obligation to defend this nation, I answer that if this nation can only be saved by my disobeying what I believe is the command of God, then I'm comfortable letting the nation fall. And that answer is never received well. Nor is the fact that I have not stood for the national anthem in a number of years, simply because I viewed the entire affair as an unsuitable act of flag worship.

You see, I am not a very good American (nor, in the mind of some, a very good Baptist) because I happen to believe that the expected behavior of Americans is a form of idolatry that places the nation above, or at least co-equal to, our God. We have, for some time, allowed ourselves to view politics as a religious activity, to define Christianity as including certain political views as doctrine, to put our trust in our nation to supply all the promises of God, and as the perceived deliverers of some of those promises our troops and police are treated almost as a class of priests. And I find this to be simply unacceptable. Let's do a brief history of what I mean.

When the nation of Israel was founded, it was founded on God. It wasn't a theocracy, as we now understand the term, where the government was operated by the religion, but rather God ruled the people directly and would, as needed, raise up a judge to act on His behalf. This judge was generally outside the religious authority, and operated simply by doing what God had commanded them and frequently calling the people to participate. But that was it, there was no long-term human governing structure in place, there was no standing army, there was no capital. God delivered them from their enemies and provided their needs. But during Samuel's term as judge, the people of Israel sought to have a king like all the nations around them. God did not respond well to this; He gave them a king, Saul, but He condemned the request. Their hearts were described in 1 Samuel above where God called them out for trusting in human authority rather than His provision.

Now, because Saul was followed by David, I think there's a tendency to view the rule of kings as a generally good, or at least morally neutral, thing. In light of this, the promise that a descendant of David would sit on the throne forever was taken as a promise that there would be a restoration of the human government that would never fall again. The church, in light of Constantine, looked to the kings of Israel as an example of how religion should be bound to political authority. But remember, God condemned the very concept of a king over His people. We cannot read the rule of kings as anything other than a human plan inferior to God's design.

If Christ is the fulfillment of the promised descendant of David, then it makes more sense to read this promise as one in which God Himself will again rule over His people. And if that looks anything like judges-era Israel, then that means that we put our trust in God to provide our needs and stand as our defense. And such is promised throughout the New Testament. Christ reminds people that God is a good Father who knows what we need before we ask and will surely provide for us much more than He provides for the grasses of the field and the birds of the air. Paul reminds churches that God is faithful to provide. We have promises that the wrongs committed against us will be avenged by God's hand and not our own, that He will be with us through trials and tribulations, that God will be our shield and He ultimately wields judgment.

Now I know that some of this has yet to be fulfilled. I do not believe that Christ has instituted the fullness of an earthly kingdom, or that we have nothing to do with the nation in which we live. But when I hear Christians talking about how they need their guns because they have to protect their families, because they have to be ready to oppose the government with force if it tries to stifle our faith, the simple answer is that no, you don't. You are not the source of your family's security, and no amount of guns will make you the source of your security. We have ultimate freedom because Christ died to free us from sin, and no number of troops have ever or will ever die to secure us a freedom on par with that. Similarly, no law providing food or healthcare will ever match the provision that God promises to His people. Listen, the government and its programs are not necessarily bad things, but we cannot make them ultimate things. We have Christ as our ultimate ruler, and our desire to put our faith in earthly governments and armies and weapons and programs instead of His provision puts us in the same place as Israel when Samuel declared that they had rejected their God by putting their hope in an earthly king. It may be that God will choose to provide protection by means of a military, to provide food by means of a government program. He has that right and power. But when He does, we cannot lose sight of the fact that He is still the one providing it. We make our nation an idol when we hear the promises of God and put our faith in human rulers to deliver on those promises. We make our nation an idol when we treat the honoring of that nation's flag as important as the honoring of our Lord. We make our nation an idol when we declare assistance programs to be the only way to bring life to people that Christ died for. We make our nation an idol when we play at sharing even an ounce of His glory and reverence with the human agents He has chosen to use. But, "my beloved, flee from idolatry" (1 Corinthians 10:14, NASB).

If I had a dollar for every person who I've seen hurt by the church, or who told me about how a similar hurt drove them out of Christianity, I could likely begin my future missions work today with little, if any, fundraising.

Now, there is a certain degree to which the severity of pains suffered at church are inflated simply because of the nature of the church. This is a place that people invest deeply in, where we are encouraged to consider each other family, where we look at the love described of Christ and then find our fellows to fall so short of that mark. But rather than belittling these concerns, this should highlight the fact that the blows do happen, and they stand in stark contrast to Jesus' description that "by this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35 NASB). But what can we do?

In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul is explaining that there are some things the mature Christian can do and environments they can enter because they have come to know Christ well enough to discern a healthy way to do so, but there are other Christians who may, even if mature in other ways, struggle with those particular things and environments. Now, this is not the specific nature of the examples I gave above, but the principle he then describes still applies: we, as Christians, need to consider the spiritual well-being of those around us as more important than ourselves.

Neither I, nor Paul, argue that we should let sin reign in the church just so we can hopefully keep the people comfortable with that sin around long enough that they might catch religion. But when someone who needs a word of advice or correction is approached in a painful way because the one approaching is not comfortable doing it in a way that is healthy for the recipient, that is a problem. When the deacon puts the goals and expectations of their own little area of ministry over the needs of the body or even the needs of an individual within that body, that is a problem. When we drive someone out and openly condemn them because they, while holding sound doctrine and a visibly growing relationship with Christ, don't practice Christianity in the exact way we want it practiced, that is a problem. We have this understanding, that I've heard attributed to a number of church fathers, that withholding resources that we have in abundance is the same as stealing from those who need those resources; is that not true also of withholding a word of comfort or an apology or a promise to correct errors, when we have the full power to do so and a brother or sister is in need of it?

Paul tells us to put others in the body before ourselves, to the point that we may even have to give up things that we know we don't do in sin, if it helps someone else not fall into sin. And he tells us in Romans that this is done in line with the example set by Christ. Consider:

Christ gave up Heaven, He gave up all status and glory and authority to accept us. In the end He regained all of it, but Christ gave up everything that was rightfully His in order to accept us. If we are to accept our brothers and sisters in Christ just as Christ has accepted us, then we need to set aside our preferences and our desires and our comforts whenever they would hinder the spiritual health of those around us. But the example Christ gave isn't even limited to those in our family of faith. After all, everyone Christ died for was an enemy of God when He died. Following the example of Christ means spreading this love even to those who are not in the church, even to those who would oppose the church, even to those who would kill us given the chance, just as Jesus loved those who mocked Him as He hung on their cross. Jesus, having just told His followers to love even their enemies, observes:

It is not enough to simply try to do these things, however. We cannot love each other perfectly, but Christ can love perfectly through us. We cannot build the perfect church through our own efforts, for "unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it" (Psalm 127:1a NASB). We must allow God to change our hearts, guide our relationships, love those around us with our hands and our mouths and our feet and our resources.