Jared Longshore's Blog, page 6

To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice

One of the most memorable lines of Scripture comes out of the mouth of the prophet Samuel during his encounter with King Saul. Saul had just destroyed the Amalakites. He was to destroy all of them and all they had, including all of their animals. He and Israel, however, kept some of the animals for sacrifice. After the battle, Samuel approaches Saul and Saul says to him, “Blessed be thou of the LORD. I have performed the commandment of the LORD.” And Samuel replies, “What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears” (1 Samuel 15:14)? Trouble.

Samuel reminds you of every good mother coming up to check on the bedroom cleanings. The boys say, “We have performed the commandment.” Mom replies, “What meaneth then the smelling of those socks beneath thy bed?” “Ah, mom, those are for sacrifice.”

Samuel went on to say that “to obey is better than sacrifice.” Sacrifice is glorious, of course. We have assembled as the saints of God today, a kingdom of priests, ascended to Mount Zion with the holy angels to offer our bodies as living and holy sacrifices. Our songs, confessions, and thanksgivings around Christ’s table are full of wonder. And the prophet says that obedience is even better.

Obedience often gets a bad wrap. The great lie being that obedience is cold, lifeless, boring, and a sign of a rigid fundamentalist. By contrast, sacred service is often portrayed favorably: Give me well-dressed people in a well-lit cathedral, kneeling in a religious posture: that is the good life.

But do you know what is even better? Running in the way of God’s commandments. This we will do when He enlarges our heart.

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Wise Counsel for the Nitpicker

Don’t pick each other’s nits.

Luke Jankovic

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Diversity in Unity

One of the wonders of this table is that it testifies about everything. It is a single light that enlightens every corner of the world. One of those dark corners is the topic of diversity and unity. The well worn leftist phrase, “Diversity is our strength” is dumb enough on its face. But it is the kind of statement that can make conservatives overreact and say, “Unity is the ultimate thing.” But surely that is silly like the former. You can be unified in evil. Those men at Babel had one language, one aim, and their unity was rotten to the core.

This table speaks to the unique Christian witness concerning diversity and unity, which is namely diversity in unity. This is true of our Creator: God is three in one and one in three. So it is with this table. All nations stream to it. All nations (there is diversity) stream to it, one table (there is unity). The Jews and Gentiles reach into the same dish. They partake of the same bread, the one wine. So it is with black and white, rich and poor, male and female, old and young, they all come to one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one table.

Paul said that as you were baptized into Christ, you put on Christ. So there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28). Paul did not mean that Christian women cease to be female or that men cease to be men. Jews did not stop being Jews and Greeks did not stop being Greeks. But these diversities were plunged into one man at baptism and the one man is poured into them at this table. The death of Christ puts an end to all carnal divisions and it puts an end to all carnal unities. And it grafts the many children of Adam into one man better than us all. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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The Generous Farmer

One of the interesting things about people that have reaped a significant crop in life is that they can’t tell you exactly how it happened. They will often tell you that they stumbled into blessing. The harvest found them more than they the harvest. Now these people worked hard, sowed bountifully, and they could tell a good deal from a bad one. But they weren’t precious about their seed and they weren’t arrogant in their judgment.

The temptation that comes as you grow in discernment is to grow thin, narrow, and snooty. In the name of only making the most excellent meals for your children, you make very few of them. With an aim to invest in only the best start ups, you invest in none. No suitor for your daughter will do. No doctrinal books but the most pristine. No house comforts but the most elegant. No steak crosses the threshold of your lips, but Waygu. In the name of pursuing perfection, which you ought to be pursuing, your life becomes tiny. So tiny you actually miss the dark horses, the shepherds out in the field, the younger sons, the Nazarene, surely nothing good will come from Nazareth.

The point is not to look for diamonds in the rough. The point is to sow your seed liberally. Give a portion to seven and also to eight. The solution is to be like the generous farmer. He has his a fair idea of which crops will grow and which fields will produce, but he’s happy to scatter his seed far and wide because he is humble enough to admit that he doesn’t have a clue at the end of the day where the crop is really going to come in. Ecclesiastes 11:6—”In the morning so thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.”

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Slimy either Way

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

George Carlin

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Abundant εὐχαριστέω

If you want to be more thankful, then it is wise to start with the most thankful man in the world. You are something of the moon in this regard, with no gratitude of your own. You can reflect the gratefulness of the Son, but you cannot conjure up gratitude apart from the Son.

In Matthew 26:27, Jesus took wine, and giving thanks, He gave it to His disciples. The Greek behind giving thanks is εὐχαριστέω from which we get Eucharist. That εὐχαριστέω is a participle, which means that Jesus was giving thanks while doing other things. His thanksgiving was attending His wine giving.

While it is true that Jesus gratefully gave wine to His disciples 2,000 years ago, the striking thing is that His wine has not run out. If you think His miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee was impressive, you should see what He has been doing every Sunday for the last 2,000 years of Christendom. The same Christ who gratefully gave wine to His disciples then, gives wine to you now. This is an abundant εὐχαριστέω, an abundant thanksgiving. For 2,000 years, Christ’s ministers have been popping bottles and pouring out this gift with gratitude. And those ministers have only barely and vaguely represented the Good Shepherd who thankfully gives His very blood to His sheep.

This Christ not only died for you, He was thankful when doing so. And now He tells you to drink His grateful sacrifice with Him. Follow Him in εὐχαριστέω. And as He did, so you must also do. His thanksgiving attended abundant generosity. He has spread a table before you so spread a table before others. He has fed you so feed others. And all this you will certainly do. It could not be any other way for the abundant gratitude of the Lamb fuels you. So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Black Hole Bessie

One of the facts of life is that those who think of themselves the most are the most miserable and those who think of themselves the least have the power of levity. Selfishness and grouchiness go together on one side of the ledger and selflessness and mirth go together on the other. Along these lines, Paul puts “lovers of selves” atop a list of vices in 2 Timothy, and that list sounds like a day in the life at Sodom and Gomorrah Elementary.

Pride is a nasty little monster, particularly when it comes in the wounded puppy position. It is easy enough to see pride when it puffs the chest. But it’s the mopey pride, the Black Hole Bessie pride that’s particularly sneaky. Bessie is that pouty cousin of yours who in childhood was surrounded by every possible enjoyment on vacation only to sulk, strategically positioned before watching eyes.

The central thing to keep in mind about Bessie is that she wants you to sulk with her. That’s why she has greased the landing all around her black hole with salty tears. She wants you to join her in her misery and you will ruin her and yourself if you do. She wants you to pay attention to her, ask her what’s wrong, and ask her what will make it better.

But the only thing that will make it better is for her to get turned inside out. Chesterton once said, “Oh how much bigger your world would be if you could become smaller in it.” What you must do then, in the face of her self-sorrow, is show her mirth. Show her what it is like to practice the sacred art of self-forgetfulness. And that counsel works just the same if Black Hole Bessie is looking back at you in the mirror. 

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The Table Fences Us

Throughout the history of the church there have been instances of ministers fencing this table in a fashion that would leave you thinking they were building prison walls. This has left several on the outside preferring not to enter and many on the inside secretly wishing they could exit. While there are boundaries to this meal, the only standard for participation is, “Believe and be baptized.” And it is a special glory of the Lord’s hospitality that he was a friend of sinners, welcoming the riff raff of the world to dine with Him.

It has been wisely said that we do not so much fence this table as this table fences us. And that fence around us is a fence of grace, as the bread and wine on the table is grace. Grace is before you and behind you, hounding you all the way to heaven. We have our faults but there are no faults in the bread and wine. We wobble, unstable citizens we are, but the lamb’s blood on the door post doesn’t stumble or falter. It is understandable that the saints grow anxious given our many shortcomings, shortcomings that are very much like those of the Egyptians who suffered the wrath of the angel of death.

The fundamental difference is not that their actions deserve judgment and our actions do not. The difference is the blood of the lamb. We are inside, feeding on that lamb who was slain. That lamb guards you like a lion. He fences you and yours and will until the end. To the world, the flesh, and the devil, He only roars. But to you He says, “Come and welcome.” So come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Medication vs. Mortification

When sin rears its ugly head there are essentially two roads before you: medication or mortification. The former has been tried by every man under the sun and there is nothing distinctly Christian about it. By medication, I do not only mean prescription pills—though often such pills classify. I mean any attempt to deal with little tormenting transgressions apart from the person of the Spirit, any attempt to manage the miserableness of your errors apart from divine intervention. Such medications often include the impermissible: drunkenness, marijuana, pornography, fault-finding, and modern therapeutic goo.

But they can just as well include the permissible: Netflix, fine-dining, Instagram, YouTube, and shopping. So this problem of medicating is a tricky business. There is, after all, nothing wrong with a glass of wine, or a TV show, and you would no doubt look lovely in that new pair of shoes. But you have likely experienced a long scroll on the socials only to hear God wake you out of your stupor with, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” Or in the case of the shopping spree, “What spendest thou here, Elisha?” How do we avoid this medicating?

Scripture says that if through the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, you will live (Romans 8:13). And that “through the Spirit” makes all of the difference. The peculiarity of Christianity is that the remedy for sin must come from above the sun. Nothing on earth will do, just as nothing under the earth will do. Saul already tried that with the witch of Endor. But all the help you need, and much more for that matter, is readily available to you. Just enter the heavens, tell the Most High where it hurts and what you’ve done to make it so. The Spirit will do the rest.

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A Dance of Jitterbugs

The mind of contemporary man is likewise a dumping place of the most fantastic and diverse bits of the most fragmentary ideas, beliefs, tastes and scraps of information. From communism to Catholicism, from Beethoven or Bach to the most peppy jazz and the catcalls of crooning; from the fashion of the latest movie or best-seller to the most opposite fashion of another movie or best-seller—all coexist somehow in it, jumbled side by side, without any consistency of ideas, or beliefs, or tastes, or styles . . . our intellectual life is but an incessant dance of jitterbugs. Its spineless and disjoined syncretism pervades all our social and mental life. Our education consists mainly in pumping into the mind-area of students the most heterogeneous bits of information about everything.

Pitirim Sorokin, Crisis of Our Age, 1941

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