So if darkness is falling around us, and if God is coming into that, what does that mean and what are we supposed to do? I’m going to get to that in the next post. But before I can really talk about where we’re heading I need to tell us where we’ve been and, in fact, where we are now because, if we’re honest, most of us don’t have a clue.
For a quarter of a century the Church has been in the wilderness. I’m just going to throw that out there. I know some people won’t agree with that statement but I watched it happen and I’ve been experiencing its effects most of my adult life.
What do I mean? Well, the western Church has lost what it once had. When Israel went into captivity they didn’t just lose their vineyards and olive groves, their rich land, or beautiful Jerusalem; they lost the one thing that made them different from all the peoples around them – they lost the presence of God. The blessing and bounty of the land was a symbol of God being with his people in Shalom. But the Temple was the place where God actually dwelt with them. So when the temple was destroyed and Israel went into captivity they didn’t just lose the symbol of God’s blessing, they lost his very presence amongst them. And God tells them the reason why:
“I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown….
“What wrong did your fathers find in me
that they went far from me,
and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?
6 They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord…?’
8 The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who handle the law did not know me;
the shepherds transgressed against me;
the prophets prophesied by Baal
and went after things that do not profit….
11 Has a nation changed its gods,
even though they are no gods?
But my people have changed their glory
for that which does not profit….
–Jeremiah 2.1-11
Somewhere in the last 25 years the Church lost the one thing that made it distinctive; in fact, the only thing that matters – she lost the presence of God in her midst.[1] And when the presence of God no longer had centre place in our services, we just carried on, filling the void that remained with more noise and more busyness and more programs. We changed our glory for something that was worthless.
13 [M]y people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.
– Jeremiah 2.13
We forgot the glory that used to dwell among us, and we did not ask “where is the Lord” because we didn’t recognise that he was gone. We just continued blithely on with our own plans, digging our own cisterns.
But by digging our own cisterns as a substitute for the Living Water, we have ensured they cannot hold the water he wants to pour out.
Now, before I get stoned by an angry mob of Jesus-loving, Spirit-filled church huggers, let me explain. It involves a bit of Old Testament history (I can see eyes rolling at the thought) so bear with me a bit and I’ll try and make this part quick.
After repeated warnings from God to his people about their lifestyle, their treatment of each other, and their infidelity to him, and after their repeated refusal to repent (“turn”) God sends them into captivity.
In the Old Testament, Judah’s captivity in Babylon is likened to a second wilderness wandering – as if they’re wandering the deserts in Sinai all over again. In both instances the people are outside their inheritance, and in both instances practically an entire generation disappears while they wait to take possession of what God has given to them. Life goes on, they continue to worship, God is still involved somehow. But something is missing.
So what’s the point of this ancient history? The point is that a half a generation ago we lost something of who we are as the people of God. And we never got it back.
We lost God.
Now, how can I say that God left and that he’s coming back when scripture says he will never leave us or forsake us; that he is with us always, that wherever two or more are gathered there he is in our midst?
I’m not arguing that God left us alone, but rather that something of his manifest presence and glory went from the Church. This is not a unique situation. Almost every one of the latter prophets to Israel, from the Psalmists to Zechariah, speak explicitly or implicitly of the loss or hiding of God’s presence. Ezekiel sees, in a vision, God’s glory depart from the temple (Ezk. 10) and God later speaks with him about it (Ezk.39.23-29); Asaph writes of it in the Psalms (Ps.74.1-3); Jeremiah bemoans that God is like a traveller who stays only a night (Jer.14.8); the Lord tells Hosea that he has withdrawn from his people so that they will seek him earnestly again (Hos.5.6,15); Micah, too, speaks of God’s hidden face and that he will not respond to his people’s cry (Mic.3.4); Isaiah says that God’s people are like a rejected wife – abandoned, and unable to see the face of God (Is.54.6-8, also 64.7).
I don’t mean that God is no longer with us. I mean that something of the manifest presence and glory of God, at some point in the past, departed from his Church. And it’s been gone a long time.
But it’s coming back.
I don’t know why, but it seems that something in his Church had to change and God took us out into the wilderness of exile to do it. And just as Israel’s older generations died off in the wilderness and in Babylon, practically an entire generation of the Church has disappeared while we wait for God.
Now, part of this baffled me for a long, long time. If God was absent, how was it that other Christians said they felt his presence? This obviously led to a great deal of soul-searching on my part. Was I just wrong? Was I simply a person who couldn’t sense the presence of God? After all, if others said they felt him it seemed obvious the problem was with me. That self-examination wasn’t some quick discussion with myself about whether I was right or not. I spent years over it.
Against these internal arguments weighed a number of things. The first, and not the least, was that I had known the presence and voice of God since I was a little boy, and known it intimately. I had always been able to recognise when God turned up and when he left; when God was speaking and when it was just a man. The second was that God had already told me that he was going to send a famine,
Not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
People will wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.
– Amos 8.11-12
It’s not that people couldn’t preach or that there wouldn’t be good sermons (and quite a few bad ones too), but that there would be a famine of the word of the Lord – that is, a famine of what God is saying to his Church today. But more than that, there would be an inability to hear it even if it were spoken. And in scripture “hearing” always carries the connotation of acting on what is heard.
One of the most dramatic parallels of what God was doing with us is found in Ezra 3.10-13.
In this chapter, a small remnant of Israel has returned to Jerusalem and is trying to rebuild the temple. And among them is a handful of the generation who remember Solomon’s temple in all its splendour and majesty, and who remember the stories of how the cloud of God’s presence was so awesome in it that the priests couldn’t minister at its dedication. They’re now watching the foundation of this new temple being laid. And when it is finished, all the younger generation, those born in Babylon, look at it and think it’s amazing. And all the ones who remembered how the temple had been before stand there and weep. “No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise.”
You know where I’m going with this, right?
I go to a church full of young adults. Most of them have never known anything else except exile. I’m guessing most of them wouldn’t even consider it exile. For most of them it’s great. And I’m not here to dis that. I’m well aware that it was the next generation that entered the land of promise and the next generation that left Babylon behind. I’m not trying to go back to the good days of yesteryear. There’s no going back to the past. But I’m telling you there’s more – more than what either generation has experienced. Solomon’s temple, wonder of the world that it was, with the cloud of God’s presence, was so much better than the temple the returned exiles built. But it was nothing compared to the temple God is making out of us – his people.
And the thing to remember is that when God filled his temple and came “and dwelt among us,” that’s when the people of Israel – when we – finally returned from exile and began to enter into our inheritance. The return from exile and captivity was not when that handful of Israelites returned from Babylon to Jerusalem; it was when God showed up to dwell with us. (John 1.14).
There is so much more than what the Church has now. And there is so much more than what the Church had before. And I think that deep down inside people suspect there’s more, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many “done with church” Christians and so many others who merely church shop. They’re picking the crumbs from everyone’s table. And, sure, some tables may be better than others. But it’s still mostly crumbs on offer. There simply isn’t a whole lot to eat out in the wilderness, otherwise it wouldn’t be the wilderness.
God has taken us into a wilderness experience – both those in the churches and those who are done with them. And he’s done that to prepare us for what is ahead – days of great difficulty, but days when His presence is coming in ways like we haven’t known before. And that means an end to the crumbs and a whole new meaning to Thanksgiving Dinner.
- 25 years is a relative term. Some churches lost it long before that; some never had it to begin with. ↑
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