With New Eyes

Image by Gerhard Gellinger, from Pixabay

Puttering around the house today, dealing with the inevitable clutter that piles up, I saw a plaque with a worn, plastic sleeve over it.  It was a memorial plaque, made in honor of my husband's brother, who died in 2015.  For the past 3+ years, it had been sitting in a spot I pass by several times a day.  Initially, with the best of intentions, the sleeve was left in place to protect the plaque.  Now, though, as I looked at it, I saw it with new eyes, and ... it just looked ridiculous to me.
It's best not to "assume" about such, however; so, I asked The Hubs if he minded if we got rid of the plastic sleeve.  He had no objections.  Into the trash the plastic cover went.  Now, there was nothing obscuring the beautiful plaque beneath...

Job had a similar experience.  The episode is revealed in Job 38 and 39.  He had been viewing God a certain way for years.  Repeatedly, in earlier chapters, Job described his God as he believed Him to be.  At the end of his book, though, he saw God "with new eyes".

We can get a lot of information about the character of God by studying His words and actions in the Bible.  But, at the end of the book of Job, God gave a lot of information about Himself at once, in an effort to describe The Indescribable to a mere human.  He did so in the form of questions, peppered with asides to Job like, "Can you do that?"  "Have you ever done that?"

We find God describing himself in Job 38 and 39, because Job had been busy justifying his life before God, telling God how righteous a man he was, and how he really didn't deserve all the calamity that had befallen him.  Essentially, Job was questioning God's actions in his life.  This is how God so aptly put Job's actions and attitudes in Job 40:8 (NIV) - - -

Would you discredit my justice?

Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

Here are the things God listed (not in question form, though, but in statements)

• He laid the foundation of the Earth.
• He measured the Earth and marked off its dimensions.
• He laid the Earth's cornerstone, while stars sang and angels shouted for joy.
• He brought the seas under control, setting their "doors and bars" in place.
• He gave orders to the morning and showed the dawn its place.
• He knows the location of the "springs" of the sea and walks in the recesses of its deepest parts.
• He knows the location of the gates of death.
• He also knows the way to the abode of light, where light lives, and where darkness resides.
• He binds up the snow and hail in storehouses, held waiting for when He calls on them to fall.
• He knows the point from where lightning is dispersed and where east winds originate.
• He designs the paths for torrents of rain and decides the path of the thunderstorms.
• He fathers the rain and the drops of dew.  He births frost and frozen waters.
• He brought forth the constellations of the heavens and controls them to this day, displaying His dominion over heavens and Earth.
• He counts the clouds and sends lightning bolts on their way.
• He provides food for the lioness, the raven and all living things.
• He knows where the mountain goats give birth and the does bear their fawns.
• He created and easily controls the wild donkey and the wild ox.
• He created the silly ostrich who, although created with little sense (she tends to kill her young), can run faster than horse and rider.
• He created the wild mustang, giving him his strength and spirit of fearlessness.
• He created the hawk and eagle and knows their ways as well.
• As He sees fit, He endows human hearts with wisdom and gives understanding to the mind.

After hearing this list, Job's response was much like Isaiah's when he "saw the Lord, high and lifted up" (Isaiah 6:5 NIV).  Isaiah said, "Woe to me! ... I am ruined!"  In Job 40:4 Job answered the Lord saying, "I am unworthy...how can I reply to you?  I put my hand over my mouth."

Then, God goes for round two.  

In Job 40:9-41 He continues to describe His marvelous character, attributes and deeds.
After that list, Job confessed that he despised himself, and he repented of his actions, in dust and ashes (42:6).  Humility and repentance, in the presence of One Job could not begin to fully comprehend.

Now, remember, Job was "the finest of the fine".  I don't think any of us, even those who love the Lord the most (not me, by the way), can truly see him for who He is.  The apostle Paul confessed that he saw "through a glass darkly"(1 Corinthians 13:12).  Ever look through a glass window pane into the abject darkness?  That window is clear as glass, but it is of no use.....  Darkness is still all you can see.  None of us can fully appreciate our God, because we can't approach a full understanding of His character.

Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, we do as Job did - - construct a God of our own making.  It may be we go beyond what God reveals in Scripture to do that.  Other times, we may do so out of an ignorance of what the Scriptures say.  I take comfort in this verse, though:

                       Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

James 4:8a

This is a call to shut out the clamoring voices of the world and to spend time in prayer and Bible study with the Lover of our Souls, to "draw near".  

...that our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving...

Ezra 9:8

Sketch and Shadow

When I was a child I would see in magazines this exercise:  the reader would be asked to copy a drawing presented there in the magazine.  If he or she could take a pencil and accurately reproduce the drawing, so that the rendition closely resembled the original, the reader/imitator was supposedly had artistic ability. (And, could purchase an art course, lol!)  I was a dismal failure at such tasks, because I possess not one iota of visual art talent!  My sketches did not bear more than a shadow of resemblance to the original!

In Hebrews 8:1-7 (ESV), our main text for this morning, we are reminded of a similar relationship between the Temple of God in the third heaven and the earthly Temple(s) here on earth.

1Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 2a minister in the holy places, in the true tent^a that the Lord set up, not man. 3For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer.4Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. 5They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” 6But as it is, Christ^b has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 7For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

First, a clarification:
What is this term "third heaven" I mentioned just now?  Paul referred to the dwelling place of God as the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2.  Our earthly atmosphere is the first heaven.  The universe beyond the earth's atmosphere is the second heaven.  What Christians generally refer to as "Heaven", and the "heaven" mentioned in verse 1 here, is the "third heaven".

Verse 1 reminds us that, when Jesus ascended to Heaven, He ultimately sat down at the right hand of God the Father, referred to here as the Majesty, where He began to carry on as our High Priest.  But, do we have a scriptural record of that occurring?

And, what's all this about tents?  Verse 2 refers to "the true tent", and goes on to remind the Hebrews of how Moses was given the "specs" (as builders say) for the first "temple" when he was spending all that time on Mt. Sinai with God.  You can find this in the book of Exodus, ch. 24-31.  The first "temple" was actually a grandiose tent, which the Hebrews called the Tabernacle.  (All of the Hebrews lived in tents in those days, as they were vagabonding it across the desert on a regular basis.)  The Tabernacle was the first place that the people of God met together WITH their God, as His presence, the Shekinah Glory, came down to meet with them, filling the tent (Tabernacle). However, the true tent, "the original", is now and evermore in Heaven.  Later on, when the people were established in the Promised Land, a more permanent structure was built by King Solomon, a Temple based on "specs" given by God to Solomon's father, King David.  In both the Tabernacle and the Temple, the structures were built to God's exact specifications.

The writer, in Hebrews 6-13, spends a great deal of time examining the importance of the heavenly "tent", the Tabernacle and so forth.  We'll look at this theme in more depth as we move on through this amazing book of the Bible.  But, this morning, let's hone in on this point.

It was not until our Melchizedekan high priest, Jesus, finished His work on earth and presented Himself before God the Father in Heaven that mankind was finally granted access to the Heavenly Tabernacle.

I just went and read Revelation 5 again, end-to-end.  It depicts Jesus Christ presenting Himself, immediately after His ascension, before His Father's throne, having been found worthy to take the scroll and break its seals.  Look at verses 5-10 (The Message)

One of the Elders said, “Don’t weep. Look—the Lion from Tribe Judah, the Root of David’s Tree, has conquered. He can open the scroll, can rip through the seven seals.”

6-10 So I looked, and there, surrounded by Throne, Animals, and Elders, was a Lamb, slaughtered but standing tall. Seven horns he had, and seven eyes, the Seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. He came to the One Seated on the Throne and took the scroll from his right hand. The moment he took the scroll, the Four Animals and Twenty-four Elders fell down and worshiped the Lamb. Each had a harp and each had a bowl, a gold bowl filled with incense, the prayers of God’s holy people. And they sang a new song:

Worthy! Take the scroll, open its seals.

Slain! Paying in blood you bought men and women,

Bought them back from all over the earth,

Bought them back for God!

Then, you made them a Kingdom, Priests for our God,

Priest-Kings to rule over the Earth

We can rejoice in this, Christians!  We can exclaim with the writer of Hebrews (6:19-20) that we have this "hope", this steadfast expectation, as an anchor for our souls:  a certainty which reaches behind the separating curtain in the heavenly Temple's Holy of Holies, where Jesus our forerunner entered on our behalf, since He became a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.

And, as our forerunner, He opened the way with the payment of His blood, to redeem us, to buy us back - - Believers of every tribe and from every nation - - not only giving us an eternity in Heaven with Him, but also making us into a Kingdom of priest-kings, who are empowered to walk in spiritual victory here as mortals, yet who will one day rule over the Earth.

I really cannot even grasp that with my finite mind.  Paul stated that our understanding of such things in this earthly plane is like looking into a cloudy mirror.  But, in that day, when we leave this mortal life, we will "know even as we are known".  The original Greek of that verse, 1 Corinthians 13:12 puts it like this:  "I will know fully, as also I have been fully known."

No more "sketch and shadow" in that glorious day!  Hallelujah and amen!