Hero #4 Baruch the son of Neriah

Baruch is another man who I really want to meet when I get to heaven.

You may not remember Baruch.  He is very much a secondary, though very important, figure in the life of Jeremiah the Prophet.  Indeed, we might not have Jeremiah’s prophecy without his work as a scribe!

Baruch was a man destined for stardom.  Being a scribe, he had important skills which would get him noticed, and hired, by important people.  He was educated and well connected.  He held an important role in King Zedekiah’s palace.  For him, there was great opportunity, great responsibility, and a chance to become quite wealthy.  A seal was found in Jerusalem a few years ago with his name on it.  It is an amazing find because it is tied to this biblical character.  Its a doubly amazing find because it also preserves a finger print, likely his, which is found on the upper left of the seal.

Then he met Jeremiah.

Baruch was not an ordinary man.  He was not an ordinary skilled man.  He was not an ordinary man of his day.  He was a man of faith and devotion to the one true God.  But he also lived with the common wants and desires that every man has.  He wanted to make money, put some away, make purchases, have the material goods of this world, and experience success.  He looked forward to a life one day in retirement, perhaps even working as a scholar.

In his working and dealing, somehow, he and Jeremiah became linked.  He was the prophets junior by several years.  Perhaps he was fresh from scribe school when they became acquainted.  He was charged with the task of writing down the words of the prophet.  They were not “happy words.”  They were not words which would bring comfort.  Rather, they were words that spoke anything but confirmation of Baruch’s bright hopes for his future.  One could say, Jeremiah told Baruch things that “wrecked his life and dreams.”  This is what Jeremiah said, when he listened to and wrote the words that Jeremiah dictated to him: “Ah, woe is me! For the LORD has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning and have found no rest (Jeremiah 45:3).”

How would you respond if a prophet revealed to you that the next 18 years of your life would see the destruction of pretty much all you loved?  How would you react if you were told all the life you had dreamed of would all go up in smoke, and that you would be hated and hunted for standing with the one true God?  Baruch’s reaction, as much as it reflected disappointment, is a reaction born out of faith.  He believed God!  He did not discount God’s words through Jeremiah, as most did.  He did not become angry, threaten or leave God’s spokesman.  He believed.  And God promised the reward to Baruch that he was giving to all those who were faithful:  his life would be preserved wherever he went.

I sympathized with Baruch even as a high school student.  I thought of myself then as a young hot shot.  I had big dreams and big ideas.  Study of scripture convinced me, however, that I will probably see Jesus’ return in my life time.  His return “interfered” with my big plans.  Like Baruch, God was telling me:

 “Behold, what I have built I am about to tear down, and what I have planted I am about to uproot, that is, the whole land.”  5  ‘But you, are you seeking great things for yourself? Do not seek [them]; for behold, I am going to bring disaster on all flesh,’ declares the LORD… (Jeremiah 45:4-5).”

He would read God’s prophecy in public to a people who did not want to hear messages of doom and gloom, and rejected it.  He would be forced to run and hide from a king who refused to believe.

He is regarded as a hero of Judaism to this day.  It was a hard message, but he believed, and embraced the message and the messenger.  He became a support to his friend, the prophet.  According to tradition, he later went to Babylon from Egypt, where he delivered the book of Jeremiah to others.  His work would be read by Daniel to cause him to pray for his people (Daniel 9) resulting in one of the most important visions in all of the Old Testament.  

#3 Paul

The third person that I want to meet when I go to heaven is Paul.  

Now as I am sure you can guess by now, one reason why I might like to meet Paul is because I want to clear up some things which, to my mind, are not clear enough for me in my thinking as a western philosopher/theologian, or just details which I am not sure really sure of.  For example, that “thorn in the flesh” that he refers to in 2 Corinthians.  What exactly was that?

Many of the theological examples of “unclarity” may already be cleared up by the time I meet with Paul.  I certainly do hope that God holds a “Theology 101” class, taught by Himself, where He teaches “how it really is.”  But whether God has or has not, it certainly will be interesting to get Paul’s views of other things, like our formulation of the doctrine of inspiration, or the Calvinist/Arminian controversy.  

I don’t know how those things will work, when we get to heaven.  I do know that we will be having fellowship with each other and praising and worshiping God.  I am sure a big part of that will be listening to testimonies.  And I want to hear Paul tell and describe Jesus’ visit with him on the Damascus road.  I want to hear about his visit to heaven, and what he heard on that visit that he could not tell about.  I want to know what the “Bodily ailment” he suffered was when he saw the Galatian people.  

I also want to listen to him as a thinker.  What does he pounder, and how?  How much of his theology was he taught from God, and how much of it did he come to realize by his Holy Spirit enlightened intellect.  How much did he engage with the Greek Philosphers, like Socrates and Plato, and his thoughts on what they wrote.  I hope that he will also be able to show me the world as he saw it through his own eyes.  And if we have the opportunity, visit some of the ruins of the world of his day, gain his impressions of them, and also see if he will show us where he walked, and where he stood when he appeared before Gallio, and of his visits to the various agoras; agoras that you can still see the fallen columns and stones today.

He was a thinker, and a man of great passion.  I would ask him “How do those things work together while still living in a sinful body?”  

#2 The Man Born Blind: John 9

Here are my five Bible heroes that I want to meet when I get to heaven.  The first, scroll down, that I wrote about was Joshua.  The next is the nameless blind man from John 9.

The Man born blind

In His travels, Jesus comes upon a man who is likely to be begging.  He was blind.  There were no government resources for people with Handicaps in Jesus’ day, and money was tight for everyone.  It was considered a religious obligation to give to people with such needs in order that they might live.  But for the most part, they were shut out of society.

Bad things have always happened to people both good and bad.  But majority opinion in Jesus’ day was that if something bad had happened to you, it was generally because someone sinned.  Jesus and his disciples were aware that this was a man who was born blind. Unlike many that become blind, even at an early age, this person was born completely without the ability to see.  For this, fault must be assigned.  There were two possibilities: The parents sinned and this was their punishment; the child had sinned in the womb.

Can you imagine the kind of pressures this brought this family?  The pain?  The soul searching and sorrow?  

Unless you have been raised in a family that is long on blame and short on grace, you probably can’t really enter into that kind of sympathetic feeling.  And, here there really was no one at fault!  Jesus gave the final definitive “no” to those ideas.  There are other reasons why people have disaster fall on them.  Here was one of them:  It was for the demonstration of the glory of God.

God’s glory.  Some might thing that seems hard.  Yet this man, because of what he went through, brings great glory to Jesus Christ and to His Father for what he experienced.  He experienced the power of God to restore his sight.  He experienced the grace of Christ who welcomed him as a disciple.  Bear in mind that the man was a sinner, deserving of Hell, just like you and me.  But he got double grace: a healing of the body and of the soul.  But that’s not all.  He is a trophy of God’s greatness.  But this man is yet more.

Keep this in mind: to cross the leadership of your town/village was basically to cause yourself to be out cast in your community.  And they had already made it known that to identify yourself with this prophet from Nazareth was to be “put out of the synagogue.”  That meant that you were cut off from good community, from your business ties, from good people who gave alms, etc.  You were alone.

This man, when called to account for the healing (just think about that for a moment) testified to what he experienced with the Christ.  He stuck with it.  There was a powerful incentive to not own Christ. The pharisees themselves give him an opening to deny Christ.  They ask him, “What do you say about him?”  The man could have said “I don’t know” as apparently another man (the one healed by Siloam) Jesus healed did. He said, “He is a prophet.”

He simply follows reason:

I was blind

Now I see

I don’t know if this man (Jesus) is a sinner or not

God does not listen to sinners

God listens to godly men

Nobody has ever opened a man’s eyes who was born blind

He must be from God or he could not do it.

Therefore: He’s a holy man/ prophet.

Today, we might quibble a bit on who God can or does listen to. It does not matter.  He follows the assumptions he has been taught by these same men all of his life.  The inescapable conclusion is that Jesus is a holy man and a prophet.

He tells this boldly to these men who by now in this process have become very hostile.  Its so strange to see this hostility!  The Blind man has done nothing!  He was the recipient of a benefit, and that’s it.  Instead of questioning their own assumptions about God and their doctrine, they accuse him of wrong on the basis of the assumption about the connection between sin and his blindness.  They throw him out.

This is a brave man.  He is my hero.  I have stood with my knees shaking when people have begun talking about faith in God, and questioning my faith.  I have felt the doubts and fears I think everyone experiences when confronted about what I believe.  Here is a man who has only met Jesus once apparently, has not been grounded in his faith, and he is so firm in his conviction about what he has seen and heard that he cannot be induced to lie about it...even to the point that he is cast out of the synagogue.  And community life.

He is a brave man. He is a warrior in the soul.  

I don’t know why he remains nameless.  Perhaps he dies soon after this incident. Perhaps John seeks to protect the family of the man.  I don’t know.  All I know is that this guy is incredibly brave.  I look forward to meeting him in heaven.

Bible People I want to Meet in Heaven

Consider some Bible personalities that would like to meet when you get to heaven.  Since in our culture we often like lists of a top 5, make out said list, but don’t feel constrained to put them in some kind of order.  Who did you choose and why do you find them fascinating?

There are a few things which I noted were important to me on my list of personages.

I noted that when I made my list, I included some names because they have answers to questions I ask, and I know they can take care of them.  I am not one of those who believe that God will make us “omniscient” as He is when we get to heaven.  I do believe that our minds and eyes will be opened to make it easier for us to discover truth, and our capacity to remember and learn will be greatly increased.  But I do believe that part of life with God will also include an endless journey of discovery of his greatness and goodness that will last forever.

Joshua

Joshua is one of the few Biblical Heroes that we don’t see had massive glaring weaknesses.  Samson, Saul, David all had big weaknesses of character.  Samuel was a poor father, as were Isaac and Jacob.  Abraham, not the best father himself, could be rather deceptive, as was his grandson.  The list goes on, with the scriptures being very honest about the failure of its characters.  That’s good.  If they were all Joshuas and did not fail, we would feel that that there would be no hope for us, right?  I don’t admire Joshua because he’s like me.  I have more of David, Abraham, Hezekiah and Jacob in myself than I do of Joshua.  

But that’s one reason why I really like reading about this man.  He’s so humble, with a heart for serving the people of Israel.  He’s a lot like our own George Washington who turned down an opportunity to be King after the revolution.  Joshua was only concerned fulfilling his commission to bring Israel into the promised land.  He was not after being a king.  He was not after self aggrandizement.  When it was all over, the only thing he wanted to do was retire to the country and lead his family in serving God.  Like Cincinnatus of the Romans, he was simply one of the citizens of the (heavenly) kingdom, and took up his call without desire to hold it after it was completed.  

Such figures are compelling to us today most of us feel like we entitled to certain benefits and honors if we have success.  “To the victor goes the spoils” is the rally cry of businessmen, generals and politicians.  We have deeply imbibed these sentiments in our culture.  

Washington, Cincinnatus and Joshua all understood that there is such a thing as duty, humbly performed and closed when completed.  Washington would not be king, and only kept accepted presidency for two terms in a day when he could have had three terms. He returned home to retirement.  Cincinnatus was the “Anti-Caesar,” holding the office of Dictator through a war crisis, and resigning it when it was over.   Joshua held a status as a respected elder of the community, but he did not crown himself king of God’s people.   What a model!

I also would like to hear from Joshua about his experiences in Egypt and about the historical circumstances of his life.  I am a diehard and lifelong fan of ancient history.  I would like to question him as a Western style thinker about the details of what he had seen.  Simple questions about things like “who was the pharaoh of your day,” to details about how he wrote and what he wrote, and how he learned to write.  What was his childhood like? What about his faith experience?  How did he develop such a conviction about what God was going to do, when so many people who saw the same things he had did not?  What was the road of the Exodus? Jebel Musa or Jebel El Lawz? And it goes on..

Being that his writings are not intended to be a historical work, but rather a diary of how God revealed himself in bringing his people into the land, it does not have these details which so fascinate and concern the western mind.

There is also the whole “manly” warrior archetype thing that I would like to hear from him. 

You know what I mean…  Warrior’s tales.

I would like to hear from him his views on Pharaoh’s army and fighting him.  How he trained his warriors and how they fought (Skirmishers, shock troopers, order of battle, communications, etc.).  What were the great individual combats he saw, and who were his heroes, and why.  Did he have a fitness routine, and what did it look like (yes, seriously).  What about the whole giant thing, and how big they really were?  Were they skinny skeezicks or were they tall and broad like an old oak tree?  Did he like a sword best over spear?  What battle was he most honored to have participated in?  Did he ever deal with PTSD?  If in heaven there is wargaming would he like to play one with me, and his views on how the game reflects reality or does not?

You may be scratching your head over such questions.  Yet they are important, as the scriptures deal with real human beings in circumstances that may differ in detail but remain analogous to things we face today.  They are prominent by their absence in many ways, and in others provide important color that bring the sacred texts to life. 

There is also the manner of his “clean living.”  The only real error we see him complicit in was the matter of the city of Gibeon.  He just did not take time to consult God about these people who had come to make peace with Israel.  I think that if he had taken time, he would have found out, but God’s intent was to spare them any way.  God was just teaching them a lesson that they needed to ask Him about every step, and nothing was too trivial that they could not take time to “bother God” about it.  Otherwise we see character traits that speak of a bright faith, consuming passion for God and for Holiness, deep humility, and powerful confident bravery that stood firmly on that cornerstone of conviction- a conviction that knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Israeli’s were going to take that land and that he was God’s man to do it.  I wonder if many Pastors even have the strong of a conviction about their calling.  I know many, including myself, that have struggled at times with that.

In the end, yes, I do like to read about the man.  But I also really want to find out about the man himself and what made him tick.   I look forward in hope that I will be able to have that opportunity.  Its not like we will be rushed for time or anything.

The Man in the Mirror…UGLY Sometimes!

Sometimes I take a look at my life and don’t like what I see.  Wednesday was one of those days.  

Its not that I have anything to really complain about for how I am being treated by “life itself.”  I can only say that God is good to me.  In fact far better than I could ever deserve.  I have a good job.  I have contented family and everyone is healthy.  I have a nice house, and no current challenges in how it works. I have a budding fleet of decent cars to get my family around in.  I have a good job, with lots of people who like what I do.  I can have a positive influence on people through the things I teach, and through them have an impact on the town I live for the sake of the kingdom of God. 

Yet I still take a look inside and am disgusted.  

I think you get where I am going with this.  I look at my own self and see how far I have got to go.

We have a conference coming up that our church is hosting.  There have been some stressful moments in the preparation for this event.  I have not handled them well.  I have see a powerful resurgence of a critical spirit through out preparing for this.  I am also learning, thanks to our study of “Peacemaking” at our church, that I have a powerful “Control” idol in my life.  I have found myself saying mean things.  I have found myself angry frustrated, and lost in the details of getting things ready for Saturday (conference day) Sunday morning, and Sunday night study, all so I can restart the cycle of preparation on Monday.  

I know I have so much to be thankful for, yet I still find myself lashing out and being angry over silly things, or worried about how key individuals will feel if things don’t go well over the course of the next few days.  What a grouch!  And much of it over a conference that is going to be over in few days.  Its not that there are not other pressures too, but I also have an amazing capacity for imagining the worst possible outcomes to everything. There are the regular challenges and pressures that come with my job,  but by and large much of the stress I am feeling comes from a couple of key personality defects coming together with a challenging and time sensitive event.  In other words, I myself am a significant part of my own problem.

Of course I don’t begin to realize this until after I have been sitting on my couch, locked down and stare at the wall shaking my head.  Then, I hear Jackie telling me, “What should you be doing now?”  The answer of course is: “I KNOW! I know! I should be praying about this.”  Why do I wait to hear this from someone else before I do what really needs to be done? To pray.  

Its in the moments that I replace the anxious thoughts about what I am facing with worship that I begin to be open to any hope of seeing light at the end of the tunnel.  Its in those moments when I return  my precious idol of control back over to my God.  Its in those moments that God reminds me that He saved me not because I am a great person, but He saved me to make me like Jesus, the most amazing person, ever.  

Becoming that person means I have to come to the death of self, and sometimes that means I have to go through hard things that show me that I still cling to life and control.  I have to die to control and self to have Him become more and more alive in me.

You are no different, though you may come to these things by a different path.  Mine leads through ministry in a church, and a family home on Shiawassee St. in Bancroft.  Your path may go through a factory or out on the farm;  maybe in the school room or lab or a big office building before it winds its way back to home.  You deal with people who rub you the wrong way, all the while you are rubbing THEM the wrong way.  But all the time, the people and tasks and roles you deal with are not just rubbing but are God’s hand sanding and forming you into the image of Jesus.  Someday I will get to the place where I think about that reflexively too.