Finders Keepers
Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein. - Daniel 5:2
When God’s people abandon God’s commandments, the riches of the Lord become the property of pagans. This has always been the case, throughout redemptive history. It’s not only the Babylonian captivity in which we see this clearly. Consider every time the Philistines were allowed to take more acreage away from Israel. Think of every wicked king of Assyria breathing threat against the people of God and so they are paid off with all the gold and silver that could be gathered from the temple. But lest we see this as something relegated to ancient history, let’s consider ways in which this still takes place in our own day. We will only look at three.
Christians are often not taught to meditate because the word has been re-interpreted through the East as an emptying of one’s mind. That is not how the Scripture uses it. The word literally means “to think about or to muse”. Interestingly, as the word has come to us, it is suggested to mean something akin to “not thinking”. We already have a word for that. Amusement means “without thinking.”
And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. - Genesis 24:63
Spurgeon used to recommend that if you were having problems understanding the Word of God, you should cut your reading time in half and spend the second half in quiet meditation on the Word. And yet, mediation is thought of by many in the Church as the property of the Babylonians and so we keep our hands off it . . . to our shame.
Another example of something belonging to the people of God that has been widely abandoned and thus irreverently retrieved by the Babylonians would be mercy ministries. A majority of those in the Church would identify as being fiscal conservatives. When given the opportunity to pull the hypothetical plug on the welfare state, however, many Christians rush to an Austrian economic defense, rather than Scriptures. They are generally not prepared to defend with the Bible the catastrophic results of such an action. This is explainable in one sentence. The state was willing to adopt the poor and the Church was glad to get rid of them. The End.
If the Church wants to recover the spiritual treasure of seeing the Gospel successfully proclaimed to the poor, and all the blessing that comes along with it, she has to make strategic steps in re-assuming the responsibilities toward the poor that God has given to her.
He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” - Luke 14:12-14
Lastly, is the issue of culture-building. Much has contributed to a view of the Church as a woman on the edge of town waiting for the last bus to anywhere but here. This isn’t the view the Bible presents of the righteous on the earth.
And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. - Luke 19:13
The Greek word which stands in the place of ‘occupy’ is a word (Πραγματεύσασθε) that means “to do business”. Why, then, would the King James translators choose the word occupy? This word comes to us from the Latin, occupare, which means “to take over, seize, take into possession, possess, occupy”. It comes from the PIE capere which means “to grasp or seize.”
Evangelicals have abandoned a theology of the Kingdom and an arc of victory in relation to what our Lord accomplished on earth. Grasping, seizing, even doing business on the earth, let alone occupying is utterly eschewed when we have bought into a tragic view of the eschaton . . . one in which Satan wins, regardless of the Cross, and the only recourse God has is to burn this whole thing down at the end of the story and transport everyone to some other project, somewhere in outer space where God has prepared a place. So, the Church has erroneously abandoned earth and it has become a windswept house.
We could go on. The Church has abandoned the truth that God gives covenantal blessings to those who keep covenant, even in our day. The result is that the prosperity gospel preachers have seized the ring of blessing and every one else feels obliged to oppose it.
He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD, And He will pay back what he has given. - Proverbs 19:17
The Church has abandoned the joy and doctrinal meaningfulness of sexual intimacy and so the ignorant and perverted have claimed it as their own. And the list goes on.
In Rossinni’s La Cenerentola, his telling of the Cinderella story, the wicked step-sisters have abandoned the articles with which Cinderella is clothed on the night of the ball. Seen through the lens of sinful appetite, the articles were despised. When grace put them on display, their beauty was clearly seen. Of course, it is not until the end of the opera that conversion is possible, when both the bride and the her royal husband pronounce forgiveness over their debtors. It is then possible for these evil women to become beautiful themselves. If the Church persists in abandoning these articles of grace, she has no defense for the criticism that will come against her, accusing her of having a greater likeness to Clorinda and Tisbe than to Cinderella. The Church needs to start gathering that which she has strewn.
