The Tillinghasts Panama Update December 2011 - Feliz Navidad!

Happy Beneficiaries

By Todd Tillinghast

Many Christians, if asked and if they answered honestly would characterize their Christian walk with the following phrase:

If I do.......   then God will …....

and the idea is basically that if I:

• Pray
• Read the word
• Go to church
• Share my faith
• Do acts of service
• Be a good Christian boy or girl

then God will:  

• Answer my prayers
• Bless me
• Open doors for me
• Give me what I want

when the true biblical characterization of what Christianity really is looks more like this statement:

Because Christ …...  Now i can …......

Because Christ:

• Died on the cross
• Rose from the dead
• Completely fulfilled the law and lived a sinless life
• Made me righteous

Now I can:

• Die to my flesh
• Have Spiritual life within
• Obey His commandments out of love
• Rest in His righteousness and forsake my own righteousness.

When we are able to step back from the rampant humanism that consumes our media and modern day culture and look at the gospel the way that God meant it to be seen we are acutely aware that the gospel is not man centered.  The Gospel is about God and what He has done for man.  It is not about what man can do for God.  It is not about what man has to offer God.  It is not about man’s works.  The gospel effectively relegates man to a place that he was always meant to be by His creator and that is as a recipient of a great gift called Grace.  God is the benefactor and man is the beneficiary.  Not the other way around.  

When we can embrace the true gospel as it was delivered by Christ and the Apostles and communicated to us in His word a whole different worldview begins to emerge.  We begin to realize that it is not what we have but what we don’t have that qualifies us for this great Grace that we receive  (2 Cor 12:9).  It is not about what we can do but what Christ already did.  (RM 5:6) These revelations can be so freeing if we just allow ourselves to accept and believe them.  

But in order to accept and believe them we have to lay down something that we have clung to for our entire lives.  Something that we have nurtured and spent much time, money and care protecting and that is our selves.  And it comes as a death blow to our self centered, man centered worldview to accept that it’s not about what I did and it’s ultimately not about what I do but it’s about what Christ did and what He set me free to be able to do in His power.  The point in all of this is to say that it’s not about us!!!!!

But how liberating those words are.  I for one am so glad that my salvation is not based on something as flimsy as my own works or my own capacity to do the right things because I would surely loose it.  God created us to be beneficiaries of a great benefactor, Himself.  And He gifts us with grace.  Not grace that we deserve, not grace that we could ever earn but just simply Grace that he has decided to give us.  And without this grace there is no hope for any of us.  So, when I can begin to understand the gospel of grace in those terms it makes me a happy beneficiary for sure!!!!

TOO MANY PHARMACISTS AND NOT ENOUGH SURGEONS

by Todd Tillinghast

we usually approach the human dilemma as something that needs to be cured.  Sure there’s a problem in the world but it’s not man.  Man does many foolish and unhealthy things, that we readily admit but he can change and do many great things if he is just shown the way, just given the right formula, just taught how.  So many of our churches are led by pharmacists.  Pastors and bible teachers who treat man’s problem as a sickness or a malady that can be cured by exercise and the right kinds of prescriptions.  So by necessity they treat the word of God like an encyclopedia of medications for all of life’s maladies.  But when we treat the Bible, God’s living word, His redemption narrative, His holy revealed oracle to us today as nothing more than an encyclopedia meant to be leafed through to find the answers or the prescriptions for a better life we necessarily do violence to the Scriptures.  Now prescriptions by nature are simple little concepts.  They are characterized by phrases like:  

• Take two of these and call me in the morning
• Take this with food
• Take one in the morning and one at night

Prescriptions aren’t meant to be complicated they are meant to be easy solutions to problems.  So, in order to create the prescriptions that give us the quick answers that we want and think we need we have created a devotional culture in the church.  We read our Psalm and proverb for the day or we read someone Else's devotional in a devotion book and we say our little prayer and off we go living a better life by the minute.  

The problem is that when I read the Bible I don’t see it described by itself as

• A dictionary for life’s maladies
• An encyclopedia of prescriptions for a better life
• A road map for life
• God’s little prescription book

No, I see it described as things like:

• A sharp two edged sword.  Hebrews 4:12, Ephesians 6:17
• A mirror that reveals my weaknesses.  James 1:22-25
• Something that by knowing sets me free.  John 8:31,32
• A belt that girds me up with strength and prepares me to fight.  Ephesians 6:14
• Something I have to work at and be disciplined in studying in order to rightly handle.  2 Tim 2:15
• Something that, in it’s entirety, is breathed out by God and is profitable for correction, rebuke, teaching and training in righteousness. 2 Tim 3:16

Too many teachers of God’s word seem to fancy themselves as pharmacists dolling out portions of scripture, a verse here and a verse there in order to make their constituents feel better about themselves when the real issue is that the problem is their selves.  We don’t need our egos to be medicated, we need to be extricated from our egos.  This is what the teacher of God’s word is to address in His teaching because this is what God’s word deals with.    

For those of us who have been given this awesome and fearful responsibility to teach God’s word every week, we must be ready to bring our scalple to the pulpit on Sunday morning rather than a prescription pad.      

BAD TIMING

it was the evening before Christ’s death and it was also the time for the passover meal to be eaten according to Jewish custom.  John 13:1 sets the scene for us as John explains how Jesus knew that it was the hour that he would depart from the world and that “he loved those who were his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”  So these words immediately draw us into the kind of evening Jesus had in store for his own, his disciples those who he loved.  Luke tells us in chapter 22:15,16  that he had earnestly desired to eat the passover meal with them and that it was to be the last meal he would eat with them on the earth.  The last supper.  So we understand by just the introduction of this story that this was a very important evening for Jesus and the men that he would use to start his church and spread the gospel through out the world.  Then, what he goes on to say and the events that unfold are heavy to say the least:  

• He tells them that Judas will betray him and Judas leaves
• He tells peter in front of everyone that he will deny him
• He tells them that he is going to die
• He shares the first communion with them and tells then that the bread and wine signify his broken body and shed blood.  
• He washes their feet in a demonstration of servant hood and how they are to treat each other.
• He prays His high priestly prayer over them.  

During this special and somber evening Jesus was more focused on his disciples then He was on himself.  And he was trying to impart to this group of men who were to carry on His legacy and be the forerunners of this new movement that looked and sounded and tasted different than anything the world had ever known the characteristics they were to have as leaders.  How did the disciples, the men who would become the apostles of the church, the men, some of which would write the New Testament, who would be used by God to heal the sick and cast out demons and who would carry the gospel across the known world respond?  

Luke 22:24 tells us how.  “A dispute arose among them as to who was to be the greatest.”  Bad timing guys!!!  Jesus must have been thinking “here we go again.”  Now we don’t know for sure based on a study of the parallel accounts what the order was of all of these events.  Maybe Jesus responded to this dispute by humbling himself and washing their feet or maybe he washed their feet before the dispute arose. The order of events does not matter.  The point is that they were still discussing these things which seemed to be a regular concern of theirs even now in this desperate hour before Christ’s death.  He was sharing His last supper, the very first communion with them and praying for them and telling God how much he loved them and telling them how much he loved them and in the vicinity of all of this they are still concerned about who would be the greatest?  

Now no doubt there were a few things happening at this supper that made this concern rise to the surface.  With all the talk of Jesus dying they must have been very agitated at the fact that he said nothing about who would take over after he left.  Who was going to be charge after Jesus died?  I mean, how could Jesus not understand that this was an important matter?  

They also must have been concerned, in the event that they would die with Him the next day, about who would sit at his left and right hands in heaven?  I mean, Jesus hadn’t answered that old question adequately to their satisfaction either.  And here it was, the night before he was going to die.  It was time to put everything on the table (no pun intended) and stop procrastinating on these important issues.  

And there was one more issue that presumably had them perplexed and that was where everyone was seated around the table.  Now in the ancient world (the Jewish culture was no exception) the order at which people sat at the table had a great level of significance.  The guest of honor or the head of the family would sit at the head of the table.  And the next important people in order of age (especially if it was a family) would sit at his right and left sides. Well we know from John 13:23 that the disciple whom Jesus loved, which was John was sitting there at his side close enough to lean back against him.  Now John was one of the youngest among the disciples, maybe the youngest.  So this must have caused a great deal of consternation here because they must have been thinking “is Jesus going to make John one of the youngest the leader after he leaves us?”  And of course this would not be fair or culturally sound.  

Now, Jesus does two things in response to this kind of behaviour.  He tells them that the greatest is the youngest and the one who serves.  Then he demonstrates that by taking all of his garments off and wrapping himself with a towel in the manner of the lowest servant in the household and he washes their feet.  Imagine the impact of that visual on the disciples.  The incarnate, God--man Jesus Christ, the king of glory, wrapping himself in the garment of the lowliest servant of the household, doing the lowest, most detestable and demeaning job there was, cleaning another person’s feet.  And they still didn’t get it!!    

It is very easy for us to look at the disciples with judgement but don’t we usually do the same things?  Aren’t we concerned with the same questions?  But notice that Jesus never answered their question.  He never said, “Peter is in charge” or “John is in charge.”  One would think that it would behoove him to do just that considering the fact that he was entrusting the building of His church to these men.  But he did not focus on what their titles would be. He concentrated on what their character needed to be.  

It is so easy for us to get caught up in our status.  Most of us aren’t as bold as the disciples and just blurt out our fears, concerns and questions.  Most of us know how to pretend like we really don’t care who is on the worship team at church or we don’t care if they failed to ask us to teach a bible class because hey... we are just servants.  But the reality is that we are all struggling with the same things the disciples were.  

The disciples exhibited a classic case of bad timing.  They were more concerned with themselves than with what Jesus was saying.  How many times have we sat through a bible study or church service and have been more concerned with who was on the stage and who was not on the stage and who we thought should be on the stage or in the front or in the spotlight rather than focusing on the message of life God was trying to communicate to us at that specific moment?  I know I have, how about you?  

Our response, when we see this in ourselves should be identical to that of Christ’s.  Just humble ourselves and strip ourselves of all the garments and titles that make us feel important and find a way to serve.  God help us, because we all know how difficult that truly is!!!!!!   

The Tillinghasts Panama Update January - February 2011