There are certainly some statements in this first lesson
that will raise the hair on the back of your neck if you are a Calvinist. Statements like, "It was he who created
humankind in the beginning, and he left them in the power of their own free
choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is
a matter of your own choice." If that
is so, some of what Jesus taught is problematic. When He spoke to Nicodemus Jesus said you
have to be born from above to see the kingdom, much less enter it. It is also difficult to square with words of
the prophets concerning the need for a new heart or a circumcised heart, the
replacement of the heart of stone with a heart of flesh. It is also true that Moses and Joshua laid
out choices before the people but neither of those men had any hope that the
people would choose life over death ultimately, they had seen too much not only
of the people but of themselves. Have we ever known freedom is an important
question in Christianity.
The Lord's Prayer is an example of great humility before a
sovereign God. We can see ourselves as
little baby birds seeking to be fed by our Father in heaven when we ask for
daily bread. We are those who have no
wisdom and knowledge, we have no idea how to order our steps to avoid temptation
and evil, we need Him to lead and guide us.
We accept our own sinfulness and that of others as a given, not a
variable in life. We acknowledge our
absolute dependence on Him while also acknowledging that He alone may be
trusted in all these things. Our greatest
desire is to be the coming of His kingdom which is, in itself, the rejection of
this world's allure. The best thing we
can do in this life is to accept the reality of its fallenness, including our
own. When we begin from there, we can
truly walk humbly before God and forgive other fallen humanity as we forgive
ourselves.
John sees a vision of a mighty angel with a little scroll of
judgment. What he hears, however, is not
to be written into this book, it remains a mystery which shall be revealed at
the appropriate time. Instead, he is
commanded to approach the angel, take the scroll for himself, and eat it. Eat it?
That is right, just what Ezekiel was commanded to do when he was called
to prophesy. He learned the same lesson
Ezekiel learned, because the word is the Lord's word, it is sweet but because
it is judgment on mankind, it is bitter in the stomach. Often we find the word sweet to hear but
bitter in the living out, it doesn't agree with us at a gut level as well as it
does when we hear it. That principle
illustrates the reality that we are fallen and in perpetual rebellion whether
we know it at a conscious level or not.
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