There can be only one!

So many times I've heard preachers quote the phrase "touch not the Lord's anointed" applying it to themselves as the anointed one. I've done it, at least in my mind. We make this application hoping to discourage/warn people against messing with us unfairly (since we see ourselves as leaders in the work of God's agenda). After all, the thought goes, it would be foolish to risk experiencing God's retaliatory justice on our behalf. There is some sense in which such an application might be extrapolated from God's word. But not as flippantly as we are prone to use it.

In 1 Chronicles 12, I believe there is a great reminder to every Christian leader who is quick to spout "touch not the Lord's anointed" in his own defense. Verses 16-22 caught my attention within the context of the whole chapter. Men came to David whom God had anointed KING while Saul was still technically in that office. They came from every tribe of Israel (even from the tribe of Saul himself) and from peoples outside Israel to "help" David and even from beyond the people of Israel. They did so because they could see that God's hand was on him and with him (v.18, etc.). They came over time "until there was a great army, like an army of God" (v.22).

As I journalled through this passage today, several things struck me:

• God built an army to help his anointed (v.22)
• This army was a diverse and heterogeneous group
• I couldn't help but see a connection to Matthew 16:18 where Jesus said: "I will build my church" (emphasis mine).
  
• The people of this growing army were loyal to God's anointed KING (v.18)
  
• These people joined with David because they were motivated by the clear evidence of a movement of God (v.18)
  

But what struck me more than anything was the stark realization that I AM NOT THE LORD'S ANOINTED. I AM NOT A/THE KING. There is only one of those. The anointed was and still is God's King. Who is that? The same one for whom David is a mere foreshadowing. JESUS IS THE LORD'S ANOINTED KING. He is also the Lord of the church. My job is not to build an army of God or even an assembly (church) for Him. My job is to be loyal to Jesus, and like the mighty men who joined David, to see myself as one of his "helpers" (v.18) with him "to help him" (v.22).

No matter what position you occupy in the church, let's agree that there is only one "anointed one" and we ain't HIM!

Unwrap at Your Own Pace

We all remember those times as a kid when we wanted to open or at least know what our gift was before we could open it. You know, those times when you’d try to sneak a peek inside the wrapping paper of the gifts under the Christmas tree or the birthday gifts your parents hid in the top of the closet. I’m more patient in waiting for my gifts these days. But I absolutely cannot stand to wait when I have a gift that I want to give to someone else. My wife has to make me keep her gifts until Christmas or until any other special day arrives on which I plan to give her a gift. That’s because the very moment I get her gift I can’t wait to give it to her so she can go ahead and use it, enjoy it.

Sometimes it’s the same way with preaching and teaching. This past Sunday was one great example. A smarter man than me would have had the forethought to teach for 3 weeks on Acts 16 because there are so many gifts wrapped up in the story of that passage, all of which are incredibly encouraging and helpful for life. But as a teacher, sometimes I get over-eager and want to give all the gifts at once, right now. I get so excited about helping people unwrap the gifts God has given them, use them and enjoy them that it’s hard to pick just one then wait to give the others next week. Since I dumped all of Acts 16 with all of its wonderful gifts on folks in one sitting last week…more than most people can unwrap and carry with them at one time, I thought it would be good to give them again in a form that you can unwrap at your own pace. Use them all. Enjoy them all. And take some time to find the ones still tucked away in the passage. I'm sure there are more, but here are some that we touched on:

1. God tends to steer moving vessels

• Paul was actively searching out God’s will, not passively sitting still until he understood perfectly the next 10 steps he was supposed to take. In Proverbs 3:5-6, we are told “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.” God will bend your road where it needs to go if you are genuinely seeking Him and His will. Or as in Paul’s case, God will redirect you: “You’re cold. No, getting colder…let me give you a hint”. This seems to be what he did for Paul.

2. We can assume that the needs of people, especially their calls for us to come and help, are also God’s command for us to GO AND SHARE CHRIST WITH THEM.

• The man in Paul’s vision said “come over to Macedonia and help us” and Paul and his fellow laborers “conclud(ed) that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them”

3. Act NOW on what you know for sure of God’s will

• “Immediately” after Paul had the vision and understood it to be God’s call to go and preach in Macedonia, “(they) sought to go on into Macedonia”

• We spend so much time waiting on what we do not know before moving, when God in all likelihood is waiting on us to act on what He has shown us before revealing the next steps.

• Knowing God's will for sure can be tricky if you don't know how to discern it. Soon you will be able download from www.riverchurchonline.com a "checklist" that I have used for discerning God's will in every major decision of my life over the last 10 years.
  

4. God’s will for you is not mutually exclusive of intense suffering

• Paul obeyed God’s call to go to Macedonia and share the good news of Jesus. As a result, Lydia and her whole household believed in Jesus (and with her family & trade connections in Thyatira would take the Gospel to Asia where Paul had been prevented from going). In addition to Lydia and her household, an exploited slave girl who was in bondage to a demonic spirit was freed. All of these are incredible God-sized results! Nevertheless, obeying God’s command and being an instrument of God’s love still landed Paul and Silas in the hands of angry magistrates and an angry mob who stripped them, beat them, and threw them in the bowels of a jail and placed them in stocks.

5. THE SWEET SPOT OF LIFE IS THE CENTER OF GOD’S WILL NOT THE CENTER OF FAVORABLE CIRCUMSTANCES!

• Beaten, bloodied, naked, and bruised while in stocks in the bowel s of a Philippian prison, Paul and Silas began to pray and sing! It surely was not because they were masochists who loved being beaten and abused and placed in chains! It was because they were in the center of God’s will! They could rejoice in what God was doing in and through them—Lydia’s whole household had come to know Jesus, a slave girl was free of a demon—THEY WERE IN THE SWEET SPOT!

• Furthermore, when an earthquake opened the prison doors and broke loose the stocks that held them in bondage in the prison, Paul and Silas did not bolt through the door interpreting it as a windfall for them to be relieved of their discomfort. Why? Because they were in the center of God’s will. Therefore, why would they leave?

• We tend to look for joy and happiness in situations that are comfortable, convenient, and pleasant, but Paul and Silas had joy that most modern Christians don’t know—joy that sings in dark smelly prison cells, from lips swollen by beatings—joy that transcends circumstance.

6. “Suffering is God’s megaphone”—C.S. Lewis

• It’s not that God speaks louder to us when we are suffering. Perhaps to us, our own suffering might be said to be our hearing aid, helping us to listen for God and hear him like we were not able or willing to hear him before. But through our suffering, if like Paul and Silas we are singing and not complaining, God shouts to people around us who see where we are and hear our songs!

• Acts 16:25 not only tells us that Paul and Silas were singing, but “the prisoners were listening to them”. Are you going through something difficult, something painful? People are listening to you. What are they hearing? A song? Or a complaint?

• As a result of their song and their staying when they could have escaped perhaps, the jailer and his entire household came to hear of and believe in Jesus!

Afterwords--Take Off Your Prison Clothes

"This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life." These were the words Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke to an English officer and fellow prisoner as two men arrived to lead him away on the day before he was executed. Bonhoeffer had previously written, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

The prison doctor later wrote of observing him on the day of his execution, "Through the half-open door of a room in one of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, still in prison clothes, kneeling in fervent prayer to the Lord his God. The devotion and evident conviction of being heard that I saw in the prayer of this intensely captivating man, moved me to the depths."

Long before that early morning when he was ordered to strip naked and walk to the gallows where he would be hanged for his participation in the resistance movement against Hitler's Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer had already laid down his life. Being stripped of his prison clothes, facing injustice, facing death itself was not nearly so daunting for a man who had already crossed what Craig Groeschel calls the Third Line of Faith. That's the line where one moves past loving Christ enough to benefit from Him (1st Line) or even contribute comfortably to Him (2nd Line) to loving Him enough to lay down your life and follow Him where he has already gone...to death.

What do you need to be stripped of? What prison clothes are you desperately holding on to? Are you willing to take off those things peacefully, calmly, willingly...even joyfully as Bonhoeffer did, and make your way naked to the gallows with Christ? What part of your life are you still "leading" rather than simply following Christ? Cross the Third Line.