“At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘he LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.'”

How subtle is the human heart. “I am no idolater” it says, “I serve the one true God, I believe in Jesus Christ, I have faith.”

Oh so confident in your theology, in your practice. You fulfill all the criteria, know all the right things, you even read your Bibles and pray and serve the church. How upright you think you are. And in addition you are reasonable; you are not like the radical church down the street that preaches a health and wealth gospel, or the one that has an exagerated application of spiritual gifts, or the crazy Christians who yell their heads off down-town as they street preach. Surely such Christians give Christ a bad name by their emotionalism. You are more balanced; you live quiet lives as good Christians, not expecting too much or being too dissappointed that your church doesn’t grow. After all, God is sovereign, this is where he wants you, so you’ll just stay put.

What a fine line it is between contentment and complacency! Or perhaps not. To be content is to be always filled with the knowledge of God’s grace. To be complacent is to ignore that God’s grace even exists. Do you believe? Are you one of Christs? Well Christ works mighty things! God is a just God who move on behalf of his people for the sake of his name. Is it any better to say “The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill” than to say that God does not exist at all? For the latter condemns himself and lets it be known, but the former insults God. For he claims the name of Christ and recieves the gift of God’s Spirit in the gospel which is the power of God for all who believe, and yet in their complacency they deny it all again to the world. They make God out to be a liar and make a mockery of the cross.

You have relational problems, so Christ died to make us one in his sacrificial love. So you struggle with temptation; Jesus did too and won, and now he gives you the power to do the same. These aren’t nice thoughts or right statements to be assented to; they are a life to be lived! This is the redeemed life: to live God’s gifts.

There is a power which softens hearts, which opens blind eyes, which releases from bondage, and this power is real! Believing in the cross and life of Jesus is to live the cross and life of Jesus, suffering without hesitation for your neighbor, living in a joy that is only eternal life welling up in you. Belief is an experience, faith is an experience, not just some rational assent. It is a transformed life by the power of believing that God does work in this world and that he does so for the good of his people.

So don’t wait for God to search you out with a lamp, you who do not expect anything from God. Get on your knees before him. The arrogance of complacency is the lie of self-sufficiency. Humble yourself before him and pray the words that he gave you, and know that God is at work in you, through you, for you, for his glory.

Our Father in heaven, may your name be most feared and loved in the eyes of your people. You come from your heavenly throne to your beloved and chosen ones and give yourself to them. You reign among your creation for the sake of your glory. So may you be sanctified by those who are near you and glorified among all the people.

You give us your life in the creation of our being and formed our souls in the mystery of your plan. You seek us when we are, wandering from the love of your communion and setting up the abomination of ourselves in your place. We not only reject you as our God, but reject what you put in us that makes us people. We flee sacrifice of the self, loath love that has eyes only for the beloved, hoard what is not ours rather than giving what has been lavished on us by your grace.

But by your mercy your forgiveness is unending. You seek us not as the master of a runaway slave–though master you are and slave is all we will ever be, be it slave to the freedom to love, or slave to the death of our sin. Nor do you pursue us with the veangance of wronged lover–though love is what you are and wrong is all that we have repaid you with.

Rather your veangance and justice are poured out on the Most Beloved that the Beloved might love the hater and thus consume both the hatred and the its death in one mighty act by the power of him who is all in all, the first born of all creation, and the first born of the dead, the one who is an all consuming fire, becoming that which the fire consumes so that in all things he might be preeminent and thus making peace by the blood of his cross.

For Nadab and Abihu, priests unto God and representatives of your people, offered unto God that which did not come from God. They offered the pride and arrogance, the folly and insult of human nothingness to the eternal God who is the author of all things. In a mockery of the sacrifice that God desires–the sacrifice of his own self given to and for us–they gave what was godless and empty; their religiosity and false piety. And for this they were consumed. As their souls were already consumned by the death of human self-governance so their bodies were consumned by the eyes of him who seeks the glory of his governing Word. What they offered was not a sacrifice but a rebellion and an abomination to the very word sacrifice. The incense they gave, meant to be the prayers of a people wholy given up to their maker, was used as an expression of a people consumned with their own naked selves.

But praise be to you oh God, we have a greater priest who goes before our God and father offering the blood of his own life to you who are the author of that same life. And the incense he burns is the prayers of his Holy Spirit, the holy power of God for the humble repentance and patient perseverence of his people. He is the seal of our inheritance in Jesus Christ until we acquire possession of it in eternal dependence of him through whom and for whom all things were made.

So now give us this spirit of worship, that our sacrifices might be pleasing to you as we grow in the knowledge and spiritual insight, understanding the depths of your will that has been revealed to us who believe in Jesus. May our prayers to you be the humble and contrite spirit of those who have been consumed by the eternal fire and been purged of all pride and guile in order that they might be raise by the power of the Holy One to be presented before you blameless and above reproach. And may our lives be those of complete sacrifice unto you who demand nothing less our all and give nothing less than your own self. For in this is your glory known.

Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Every spiritual blessing? How can that be real? Why don’t we feel like we have been given every spiritual blessing? I still suffer loss and sadness, pain and frustration, selfishness, exhaustion, and do not feel in the least bit spiritual. Where are the blessings? It’s fine to preach a great sermon, an eloquent exposition on the nature of God and his rich grace that gives us all that we need, that gives his own life to save us from sin. These things can be said and believed, but speak to me of blessing and I ask “why don’t I feel it?” And to what purpose if I don’t feel it?

…even as he chose us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

Certainly, we are his holy people, but we are clearly not blameless! Is the blessing failing to do its work? But the blessing is not to make me superficially happy, it is to change my spirit before God. But in what way? I have repented and still repent; the question remains: how do I see this blessing in reality, in real time working real things?

In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Here’s the ground work: what ever God does in and for us, it is to the praise of Jesus Christ and his work of love! It is his act of predestination, his adoption, his will and the it’s for his praise as he blesses us in the beloved. If this blessing is for the sake of Christ how does it effect us still?

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

United with God! All things in heaven and earth are to be united in God! So this is why we have every spiritual blessing; for surely in God himself is found every spiritual blessing, and it is in him that we are to be made one according to his purposeful plan.

Lavish, what a word! His grace has been lavished on us! But this lavishing is not random or just for our feeling of fulfillment, it is according to his plan. God is generous because he purposes to be with wisdom and insight. He is intentionally generous about his grace, because he is intentional about bringing about the unity of all things in himself, and in himself is an abundance beyond measure.

But this all for the fulness of time, and in the mean time we have been given his Spirit “who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

In this we see our nothingness, for all that we have been made to be and all that we are in Christ is not us but God’s masterful plan. And yet, we are everything! For God’s masterful plan is us! So be encouraged, though you weep and are without strength and do not feel in your flesh the power of the blessing given. For God has a plan and he does not fail. We move on because we have this hope which is incorruptible.

Mean time, the purpose of God’s plan is to make us holy and blameless before him. This is the greatest of spiritual blessings; indeed it is every spiritual blessing, for holiness is the life of God that gives and keeps on giving to sustain the life and joy of his creation. For this reason it is in love that we were predestined. And in this we see that even in this life of pain, we are receiving every blessing. For the sufferings of Christ are dwelling in us and transforming us through the tears to be a people who knows how to live for another, disregarding the shame of the cross for the joy set before us in the one who bore it and in whom the fulness of God was pleased to dwell so that we might be pleased to dwell within the fulness of God.

“They shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.”

This is the heart of God! This is the promise and hope that is set before the people of Israel time and again as he gives them his covenants, laws, and provisions for a relationship with him. Did God not originally create the garden of Eden to dwell with he people, to walk and talk with them in the cool of the garden as they abided in his rest? Sin entered the world, the abiding ceased, and humanity was cast out of the garden.

The drive of all that God reveals to us is his ardent desire to be present with his beloved creation! In Colossians 1 it is written that all things were created through Christ and for Christ, and that in him the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, that through him he might reconcile to himself all things. All things! The cry of God’s heart is heard over and over; he wants complete reconciliation with his creation that he might be present with us, his people.

In I Peter it is written that we are living stones, being built up into a dwelling place for God founded on the corner stone of Christ Jesus himself! This is the mystery that is spoken of in the book of James when he writes that in Christ the walls of division are broken down to make one people for himself. He makes peace by his blood, again, Colossians 1, and this peace is a dwelling place built for himself…out of us!!

The mystery is that we are miserable sinners, divided and at odds with God (Romans 2) but that by his blood we are redeemed, bought back, and made beautiful for him in every good work.

Take the picture of the Tabernacle. God told Moses to take acacia wood to make almost all of the larger objects in the Tabernacle and the poles that held it together. As we think of ourselves as the dwelling place of God, we may like to think of the altar, the holy place, the lampstand, or any other beautiful, special object in the meeting place. But according to I Peter, we should see ourselves as the rudimentary elements that hold the dwelling together as we suffer for one another. In this case, we are the poles that are used to build and hold the Tabernacle up.

God told Moses to take the poles of acacia wood that had been made and overlay them with gold. What a beautiful picture of the righteousness of Christ! There is the image of the tree that keeps on popping up in scripture. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the burning bush, the tree on which Christ hung, the use of the image of a tree to describe us, his people, as a tree that should bear good fruit, etc. The image is of humanity, created essence, that God nourishes and cultivates so that it produces good fruit. Or in the case of the judgement of sin it is the human flesh which must die and be destroyed in order for the spirit to rise to new life. It is also our humanity that God clothes in his righteousness that we might produce fruit in every good work for him. This is the image that the poles in the Tabernacle should evoke. We are “living poles” if you will, holding up the Tabernacle. Not because we are special or innately deserving, but because we were chosen by the master designer and builder of this heavenly kindom. We were made straight and true by his loving sacrifice and overlaid in the gold of his righteous life through his ressurection from the dead to be useful and beautiful as we serve in his house!