4.5
Beyond knowledge
Security in who we are and how we live is established by knowledge, both what we know and how we know. The more our knowledge is familiar and predictable, the more security it fosters. Knowledge is so important to our basic need for safety that we often prefer to stay with what we know even if it is miserable and the unknown promises to be far better. Even when the knowledge we have is destructive and distorting, we cleave to it. What guarantee, knowledge asks, can the unknown offer except that it will expose our ignorance and increase our risks? If we give up the power knowledge gives, what will fill its place of power? If we loosen our grip on what we know, what unknown will we be gripped by?
These are some of anxiety’s questions that the changes of life stir up. Anxiety is bred in the uncertainty and insecurity of the unknown, and its primary way to control its fears is by clinging to the predictable and familiar. Whether the familiar is situations or ways of thinking, feeling, believing, remembering or doing, anxiety finds safety by clinging to the known and avoiding the unknown. It is just this security we get from knowledge that God wants to infiltrate and dispel. God penetrates our secure knowing and moves in it in ways we can’t predict or manage. He wants to release our focus on the surface sameness of every day that blinds us to His altogether unknown and new
It is one of God’s baffling mysteries that He uses the mundane and ordinary to do His extraordinary works. All His miracles in the exodus used the ordinary. God made Moses’ ordinary rod into an ordinary serpent. He poured streams of common water from a typical desert rock. The miraculous manna appeared as fine flakes (like miniature corn flakes?) from the same dew that covered the ground every morning and evaporated (Exodus 16:13, 4). Every plague God sent the Egyptians involved natural phenomena and familiar creatures. The plagues of blood, frogs, bugs, darkness, boils, hail are all well known realities. Even the last and greatest plague - death to all Egypt’s firstborn - is the predictable end of every life. God’s miracles in the exodus changed only the order and magnitude of the ordinary that led to great consequences. Neither these changes nor their consequences were enough to convince Pharaoh and most of Egypt to believe. For them, God’s miracles weren’t enough to WOW their hearts into obedience. They were enough, though, to deliver Israel forever. Focusing only on the familiar is prone to lull us in their predictability that we skim over because we already know and see nothing new in it, certainly not God
Two thousand years ago in the little town of Nazareth in Galilee, there lived a common Jewish girl whose given name was Miriam, the most common name given to Jewish girls in her time. Miriam was from the tribe of Judah. She seemed to have no ambitions to be anything other than a simple girl who would follow the life of all girls in her community. She was engaged to be married, expected to have children and raise them in her small town, and die there. But for reasons God alone knows, all that was common in her world was God’s opportunity to show His unique grace and salvation
God revealed His grace to Miriam through an angel who visited her and told her God’s Spirit conceived life in her while she was a virgin. Her child would fulfill the prophesy in Isaiah of Immanuel, Hebrew for God is with us. The angel confirmed this promise to Miriam’s fiancé Joseph in a dream, and told him to call his baby Jesus, Greek for the Hebrew name that means God is salvation, because He would save His people from their sins. When the baby Jesus was born to Miriam in a dirty manger in a common stable, local shepherds came to worship Him because God’s angel told them this baby was King of the Jews. Wise men from the east came to worship Jesus soon after His birth because God revealed to them that He was the Messiah of Israel. God opened the eyes and ears of these witnesses to see and hear what He was doing in their apparently mundane life, so they could know and witness God keeping His promises now
The child Jesus was raised by His parents according to Jewish customs. They went up to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage feasts, made blood sacrifices as commanded in the law, attended synagogue and read the Tanach, the Jewish Bible. Jesus and His family were known to His neighbors, but none knew -- not even those who witnessed His birth, not even His mother -- who this child uniquely was in relation to God. Not until God’s appointed hour was His purpose for Jesus’ life on earth revealed, to do what God spoke before time began
Preparing the way
After Jesus’ birth, Jewish oppression continued under Roman rule. Jews were forced to submit to Roman law that did not protect them, to worship God in ways that didn’t challenge the Emperor’s ultimate authority, and to pay large taxes to appease the government. Four hundred and thirty long years had passed since Malachi spoke in the name of their God, the same number as the years of Israel’s slavery in Egypt. It seemed once again that her God was silent and had long forgotten her. Why was He letting His people be broken down by this earthly empire?
In those days, a rabbi named John came to his people, preaching their need to repent of their sins and return to their God. Many Jews thought he was a prophet because he preached like the prophets from Bible days. He lived in the desert, ate locusts and wild honey, and wore a garment of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. He reminded some of the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 1:8) who God said would return before the day of the Lord (Malachi 4:5). John spoke with the power and clarity of God’s Spirit. His message was as simple as the ones the prophets of old spoke, distilling God’s essential truth for His people into one word that means both repent and return: turn. “Shuv, shuv” John repeated again and again, turn, turn from your ways to God and His ways. Be baptized and cleansed from your sins and turn to God, John preached to all who would listen
One day, while John was baptizing, he saw Jesus coming to him to be baptized. On that day, God showed him that Jesus is the One through whom God would deliver the world from their sins. John did not know until then that the message he was preaching in God’s name would assume flesh and blood before his eyes. He did not know God was preparing a way back to Himself in a person who would fulfill God’s promises in the Law and Prophets. But on the day he baptized Jesus, John saw God’s Holy Spirit physically appearing like a dove and lighting upon Jesus as He rose from the water. From the heavens, God’s voice was heard speaking over Jesus: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:13-7). After that day, Jesus would walk in and among God’s creation, living His life for the world to see