Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
November 2009
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
One of the most obvious and devastating effects of the Fall in Genesis 3 is that we human beings are unable, spiritually speaking, to see and hear properly. We usually manage to see other people’s sins more easily and quickly than we see our own. Our minds are beset with futility and our understanding is darkened (Eph. 4:17-18). To cite Augustine in his prayer to God in his Confessions: ‘I could not find myself, much less find You.’ By nature, we do not understand ourselves, nor others, nor God. We are in darkness, but we do not, or will not, realise it.
When King Ahab saw Elijah, he hailed the prophet with a confronting question: ‘Is it you, you troubler of Israel?’ (1 Kings 18:17) Elijah’s reply was: ‘I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals’ (1 Kings 18:18). Obviously, one of these two men could not see straight! Of course it was Ahab who was blaming Elijah for the drought when actually it was God’s chastening of Israel because she followed the wicked ways of Ahab and Jezebel. We fallen human beings have a way of transferring blame from ourselves to someone else, and then living out that lie.
Elijah’s rebuke did not dislodge Ahab’s firm commitment to misunderstanding all things spiritual. When King Jehoshaphat of Judah asked if there was a true prophet of the Lord in Israel, Ahab responded: ‘There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah the son of Imlah, but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil’ (1 Kings 22:8). To Ahab, this was Micaiah’s problem; it never seems to have occurred to the king that he was in fact the problem.
Human nature has a way of exceeding our lowest expectations. When Saul suicided because of the injuries he sustained in battle against the Philistines, an Amalekite saw an opportunity to cash in. He lied to David, telling him that he had killed Saul at his own request (2 Sam.1:4-10). He evidently thought that David would be delighted to hear the news, and would reward him. As W. G. Blaikie says: ‘He was evidently one of those base men that count all men as base as themselves.’ Instead, David responded with grief and anger, and had the Amalekite executed.
Something not dissimilar happens later when Rechab and his brother, Baanah, beheaded Ishbosheth, the son of Saul. They brought the severed head to Hebron to David, where they announced: ‘Here is the head of Ishbosheth, the son of Saul, your enemy, who sought your life. The Lord has avenged my lord the king this day on Saul and on his offspring’ (see 2 Sam 4:7-8). Again, they assumed that David would be as ruthless with his enemies as they had proved to be with a man they were meant to be serving.
The unbelieving world has this terrible propensity to miss the point. It works itself up into a lather of righteous indignation over something fairly trivial, but cannot see what is truly evil, especially in itself. Jokes are taken seriously, and rank assertions are treated as self-evident. Assumptions are made about life which are obviously baseless – obvious, that is, except to the one making them.
On the last night before His crucifixion, Christ told His disciples: ‘Yet a little while and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me’ (John 14:19). The other Judas amongst the disciples – not Judas Iscariot – found that bewildering: ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?’ (John 14:22) Somehow there is something or someone that enables God’s people to see and hear what others do not. Years ago there used to be dog whistles that emitted a high frequency sound that could be heard by dogs but not by humans. Some people used them to their dogs without disturbing their neighbours. I have a hound that howls at the sound of police, ambulance or fire sirens, and so he invariably howls about ten seconds before I hear anything at all. By the Holy Spirit, the Christian is enabled to see and hear what the unbeliever cannot see or hear. This is all of God’s doing: ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him’ (1 Cor.2:9). This is what the Holy Spirit reveals to God’s people. Without Him, we are a mystery to ourselves, the world around us is beyond us, and God cannot be apprehended at all.
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes