Standing Orders
Commentary
Some commands and instructions are for the moment. Some are relegated to the past. And then there are some that remain in force for the foreseeable future. These are our “standing orders.”
A page from home life and parenting will illustrate the point. “Go, answer the door for me” is a command for the moment. “Mow the lawn before you go out tonight” may have been an instruction that came from last Saturday afternoon. But “brush your teeth before bed” is a standing order. That is an ongoing expectation.
As we read the pages of God’s word, we want to keep our hearts attentive to the standing orders. The Lord’s instructions for how Gideon should defeat the Midianites are not for us. But we believe that some of the things God commanded his people long ago are in the category with “brush your teeth before bed.” They are not limited to their original context. They are ongoing expectations.
This week’s selected passages all have that quality, it seems to me. They represent distinct stories and contexts from the past, yet each one continues to speak to us in the present. Indeed, each one issues to us certain standing orders.
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
“What’s My Line?” was a favorite television show of my childhood. A guest would appear, and the celebrity panelists would have opportunity to ask a limited number of yes-or-no questions, by the end of which they needed to guess the guest’s line of work. Also, the show regularly featured a celebrity guest, for whom the questioning panelists would necessarily be blindfolded. Again, the yes-or-no questions were the device to help identify who the guest was.
I suspect that Haggai would have stumped the panelists. And if the game were played in our churches today, Haggai would still continue to perplex our questioning and guessing members. With just two chapters of material, and coming near the very end of the Old Testament, Haggai is unknown to most of the people in our pews.
Unlike so many of his peers, the prophet Haggai was careful to date each of the messages contained in his brief book. And those dates reveal to us that his entire recorded ministry occurred in the year 520 B.C. Haggai is among the exiles who have returned to Jerusalem following the devastation by the Babylonians (586 B.C.) and the subsequent defeat of Babylon by the Medes and the Persians (538 B.C.).
We gather from the first chapter of Haggai’s book that the returning exiles had focused on rebuilding their own homes and lives first. That is understandable, of course. What they failed to recognize until Haggai pointed it out, however, was that their focus on themselves and their own needs was an insult to God. Their houses were rebuilt and lovely; his house was still in ruins.
Haggai’s initial message, in this respect, serves as an ongoing “Aha!” moment for the people of God. We so routinely proceed on the course that comes naturally to us that we don’t see the larger implications. We have a fallen impulse and instinct to “look out for number one,” which seems reasonable enough, until the prophet of God comes along to remind us who Number One really is.
And so, with Haggai’s prodding, the people had begun to rebuild the neglected temple of God. But it seems that when the work was begun, a kind of melancholy pervaded the spirits of the people. Our pithy idiom, “well begun is half done,” does not account for the discouragement that comes when what is begun is dissatisfying, even disappointing. I’m reminded of a young couple I knew who excitedly set about painting their new home, only to discover halfway through the project that they really didn’t like the color they had chosen.
The former temple, you see, had been the temple built by Solomon in the 10th-century B.C. It was, as with everything that Solomon did, fabulous. It was grand in scale, exquisite in its appointments, and extravagant in its composition. Solomon built that temple in a time of great strength and prosperity in Israel.
But Haggai’s day was a different day. These were returning exiles carving out a new life for themselves in occupied territory. Solomon and his era were long gone. The new temple reflected the new reality, and it was dispiriting to the people of Haggai’s day.
And so the Lord sent the prophet with a word for Zerubbabel and Joshua. These were the leaders of the day -- (royal) governor and high priest, respectively -- and the Lord had a message of reassurance for them. And, by way of the leaders, the message was for the people of the day, as well.
First, the Lord acknowledges how they are feeling and why. The present temple does not compare favorably to the former temple. “Is it not in your sight as nothing?” But while they are being discouraged by comparing the present to the past, God invites them to look to the future.
The Lord reassures them that he is with them. That is, of course, the great, recurring assurance throughout all of Scripture. And that is also the great equalizer. After all, what comfort or glory would gold and silver bring if the Lord was not with them? But we are at peace with humble, even difficult, circumstances when we know the Lord is with us in it all.
And then come the promises for the future. “Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor.” The splendor of the 520 B.C. temple was less than that of Solomon’s temple, to be sure, but “the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former,” said God.
The Psalmist famous observed that “unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1 NASB). It’s not that the Lord builds the house apart from the laborers. No, from Eden to evangelism, it has always been God’s preference to employ human apprentices. But if the human beings are relying entirely on their own efforts, the end result will be futile and disappointing.
So it was that, in Haggai’s day, the people needed, on the one hand, to get on with the work of the Lord. There was building to be done for him, and they had neglected to do it. And yet, at the same time, the glory and majesty and splendor would not be their achievement. No, those would be the achievements of God.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
The letters to the Thessalonians are commonly thought to be the earliest of Paul’s epistles -- at least the ones that we have -- and perhaps the earliest books of the entire New Testament. These early Christian texts come perhaps just two decades after the death and resurrection of Christ. And in them, we detect a significant concern about the Lord’s return.
As readers and believers so many centuries removed, we must bear in mind the relative speed with which the events surrounding Jesus had happened. John the Baptist had appeared on the scene and spoke about one who would come after him. And then, next thing you know, the spotlight is shining on Jesus. The timing of these ministries might be telescoped somewhat by the Gospel writers, but given their relative ages we may safely presume that John’s public anticipation of Christ and Jesus’ baptism were only separated by a few years, at most.
Then, at some point in Jesus’ ministry, he began to tell his disciples what would happen to him in Jerusalem. The timing is impossible to reconstruct with precision, but one senses that it was probably only a few months between Jesus’ first prediction and the eventful week when he was arrested, tried, and crucified.
Meanwhile, Jesus had also told his disciples that he would be raised up. And, sure enough, they were not left waiting and waiting for some great length of time. No, it was just a few days after his death that he appeared alive. Indeed, they still had not completed caring for his corpse before it was no longer a corpse!
And then, as a final piece of the puzzle, there was the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus had instructed his disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they would be clothed with power from on high. The day of Pentecost followed within just a few weeks.
Given the rapidity of these other events surrounding Jesus -- he says it’s going to happen and then, in short order, it happens -- there was a natural expectation that his return would be soon. He had given several indications that he would be coming back. But now it had been many (they thought) years, and he had not yet returned.
Or had he?
Evidently, one of the false teachings floating around the early church in Thessalonica was that Jesus had already returned. From our vantage point nearly two-thousand years hence, of course, that sounds like a ridiculous thing to be mistaken about. But nothing is obvious until it is. And for as long as it’s not, human beings are apt to worry about it.
I wonder, for example, how many teenagers have incredulously asked their worried mothers, “Why were you so anxious? I was fine!” Of course the teenager knew he or she was fine -- it was obvious to them. But until the mother knew for sure, she couldn’t not worry.
And so Paul opens chapter 2 of this letter with reassuring words on precisely this matter. He is eager that those young believers not be “shaken in mind or alarmed.” “Let no one deceive you,” he says, and then explains a sort of timeline for the day of the Lord. It’s not a timeline with dates attached, but rather events.
We long for dates and times, of course. There is always something of the child in us, crying out from the back seat, “How much longer?” and “Are we there yet?” But we recognize the genre in which Paul is dealing nonetheless.
I think of the days before we all carried a GPS with us and we had to stop and ask folks for directions. I remember, for example, when I was the new pastor for a rural two-point charge in Virginia. Each place I needed to go required some helpful instructions from a local. “Keep going until you come to the fork in the road, and take the left one. Then follow that road until you see the Walkers’ dairy farm on your right. That’s where you’ll want to turn. Keep going just up over the hill, and the O’Brians’ place will be the second driveway on the left as you come down the hill.” No times or distances, you see, just landmarks. But that’s good enough to keep you on the right track and to let you know whether you’re there yet. And that is the nature of the “directions” that Paul gives about the day of the Lord.
Finally, in the second section of the pericope, Paul personally redirects the attention of the Thessalonian believers to the real timeline of their salvation. The love and grace of God gave rise to his choice and call in their lives. That call was effectuated by Paul’s proclamation of the good news, to which they responded in faith. And that brings us to the present circumstance, in which their task is to “stand firm and hold fast.”
I expect the contours of our own individual testimonies are the same as the Thessalonians’. And, accordingly, I expect that our calling and challenge in the present moment is also the same as theirs. “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. 16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”
Luke 20:27-38
The context is a foreign one to us, and so a bit of background explanation will be required. Specifically, we’ll need to explain two things. First, there is the system of levirate marriage. And, second, we’ll need to introduce the Sadducees.
The Old Testament Law had instituted for the people of Israel a system of levirate marriage. When a married man had died without any offspring, his brother was required to marry his brother’s widow, with the expectation that the child of that union would be counted as heir to the deceased man. The Old Testament nation of Israel, you see, was a nation of tribes, clans, and families. The land was divided accordingly. And so the Law was designed to protect and preserve those family lines.
Meanwhile, in the time of Jesus, one of the major sects of Judaism was the Sadducees. In addition to their political role within first-century, Roman-occupied Palestine, the Sadducees were known for what we, in our day, might call a materialist theology. That is to say, they believed there was no reality other than what we can see. They did not believe in a resurrected life beyond this life, and they denied any spirit world (angels, demons, and such).
The Pharisees, meanwhile, were another sect within Judaism of that time. We have a negative impression of the Pharisees because of their reputation for hypocrisy, yet it is worth noting that theologically the Pharisees were on the same page with Jesus and with Paul. Indeed, when Paul was on trial late in his life, he cleverly shifted the attention of his Jewish jury away from himself by setting the Pharisees and Sadducees against one another with an affirmation of the resurrection. That point of ongoing debate between the two major parties won Paul the immediate approval of the Pharisees, who resumed the old argument, then, with the Sadducees.
This is the argument that the Sadducees undertake with Jesus in our Gospel lection. During Jesus’ final, eventful week in Jerusalem, Jesus is the target of many Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, all of whom are trying to catch or trick or trap him in some way. In this episode, the Sadducees are endeavoring to stump him by proposing a scenario that will make his assertion of a resurrection seem ridiculous.
Using, then, the well-established culture of levirate marriage, Jesus’ opponents raise the image of a woman who, having married seven different men sequentially in this life, would be married to seven different men eternally in the resurrection. That prospect would have been a noxious one, of course, to contemporary ears, and would have seemed quite contrary to the will and design of God. But that, they thought, proved that the idea of a resurrection of the dead was nonsense.
I am mindful that, in most debates, there is a terrific difference between the arguer who thinks they’re right and the one who knows they’re right. I don’t mean that they are merely confident in their opinion; I mean that they have the facts. The former tends to be strident in the face of opposition. The latter, however, is equipped to correct patiently the errors of their opponent.
The Sadducees are speculating about the resurrection. Jesus is not. Jesus knows the facts. And so he begins by identifying two differences between “this age” and “that age.”
The first difference is that there is marriage here but not there. Or perhaps it would be preferable to say not “here” and “there” but “now” and then.” In any event, what is clearly a part of God’s design for the present age does not seem to be a part of the plan for the age to come. That seems, at first, like a diminishment of our present experience. I assume, however, that it means a great love and intimacy will be experienced between us than what we know here. Just as a jumbo jet and a two-seater prop plane both fly and get people from here to there, the one is a dramatically enlarged experience over the other.
The second identified difference is that “they cannot die anymore.” The hypothetical situation that the Sadducees had presented was filled with death, you see. Eight people were involved in the story, and so there were eight deaths. But that which is an unavoidable part of the story here and now will not be at all a part of the story then and there. Instead, Jesus says that those who are part of that age will be “like angels” and “are children of God.” The former characterization has led to the common, popular notion that people become angels, which is not what Jesus is saying here, nor is it consistent with what we know of angels from the rest of Scripture. Meanwhile, the affirmation that those in the resurrection “are children of God” makes passages like John 1:12, Romans 8:14-17, and 1 John 3:1 still more meaningful.
Finally, Jesus concludes with a kind of proof of the resurrection that should have carried weight with the Sadducees: he cites an experience from the life of Moses. When the Lord introduced himself to Moses at the burning bush, he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6 NASB). Jesus sees in that self-identification a great significance.
If the Lord had merely said something along the lines of “I am the God who spoke to Abraham” or “I am the God who appeared to Jacob,” then it would read like a reference to people and events in the past. But the wording of the Lord’s self-introduction does suggest a present rather than merely a past reality. The implication of Jesus’ teaching is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not actually dead. Instead, the Lord “is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” And that, according to Jesus, is proof of the resurrection that the Sadducees denied.
Application
In almost all of his letters, the Apostle Paul is explicit in his instructions. He is subtle with Philemon and gentle with the Colossians, but he is quite direct the rest of the time. And so it is that, in our sample from his correspondence with the Thessalonians, we hear his straightforward tone and plain commands. He urges them “not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed.” He warns them to “let no one deceive you in any way.” And he commands them to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us.”
I have no doubt that Paul’s word to the Christians in that Macedonian city would be his word to us wherever we live, as well. It is the ongoing counsel to the people of God at all times and in all places not to be quickly shaken, not to be deceived, and to stand firm in what we have been taught. We need not keep these instructions at arm’s length, as though they were like the military instructions from God to Gideon.
The message God has for the people of Haggai’s day, meanwhile, is removed from 2 Thessalonians by six-hundred years and over a thousand miles. And it is even further removed from us. Yet there, too, we sense some timeless and universal instructions for the people of God. Those were precarious times for people of Jerusalem in 518 B.C. They could easily have felt frightened and discouraged. Yet the Lord spoke in that day, saying, “Take courage, O Zerubbabel” and “take courage, all you people of the land... Do not fear.”
Now if the reason for the people’s mandated courage and fearlessness had been some assurance that their circumstances weren’t so bad, then we would have to set aside these words. If they were rooted in ancient Jerusalem’s circumstances, after all, then they are not for us. But they were not. Rather, these commands were rooted in God. They are to take courage, God says, “for I am with you.” And he explains that they need not fear because “My spirit abides among you.” And so we see that, for all the years and miles that separate us, the most important factor in their existence and ours is precisely the same. We take, therefore, the instructions be to courageous and fearless as standing orders.
And then we come to the passage from Luke. No instructions or commands here. Yet a picture is painted. Jesus recalls how God had introduced himself to Moses as “the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And from that identification, Jesus affirms that “he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."
We see in this text the God of eternity. He is not bound by time: limited to the days of Moses, the world of the Sadducees, or our parochial lives. He spans all, sees all, encompasses all, and gives life to all. He is eternal -- the one who says, "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14 NASB). And as such, he is the one who does not change.
Our standing orders -- literally, Paul’s instruction to “stand firm,” which seems to capture all of the others -- not only come from God, they are rooted in God. It is his constant presence that gives us courage and makes us fearless. And it is his unchanging nature that keeps us from being shaken and steers us clear of being easily deceived. To stand firm in what we have been taught is to hold fast to the one who does not change.
Alternative Application(s)
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 — “Where Things Used to Be”
The congregation I presently serve has been worshipping in its current location for more than a century. Of course, the property surrounding the church has changed a great deal over the course of time. And longtime members will sometimes tell me what used to be over here or what once was over there.
For example, the church parsonage once stood on the church property, but there is a garden in that spot now. No physical remnant or sign of the parsonage remains. A passerby would never guess that a house once stood there. But I have a number of members who remember it well.
Once the last member of a certain generation passes away, of course, there will be no more personal recollection of certain things that used to be, like that parsonage. Perhaps we’ll have an old photograph or two. But no one will be around to tell us how it used to be.
This serves as a sort of analogy for a very serious spiritual risk. The Apostle Paul urged the Christians in Thessalonica, saying, “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.” Those believers, you see, had received the truth of the gospel from the apostle himself, yet he knew that they needed to be deliberate about holding onto that truth. It was necessary for them personally. But it was also necessary for their spiritual posterity.
A day was bound to come, you see, when the apostolic generation would be gone. And, eventually, gone too would be the folks who had received the gospel truth from the apostles. And in that generation had not been faithful about ‘standing firm’ and ‘holding fast,’ then what? Then the world would have been like the clueless passersby who have no idea of the house that used to be here on this property, only with a reality far more profound and personally impactful.
History gives us some sense of the risk involved here. We think of how the book of the law had been lost in ancient Israel, and its contents was news, therefore, to King Josiah (see 2 Kings 22). We think, too, of some precious truths of the gospel, which had been lost sight of in the medieval church in Europe, and which needed to be rediscovered by the heroes of the Reformation.
So it is, then, that the exhortation from Paul to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions” is a word to us in our day, as well. We must deliberately retain what we have received. For if we do not, it will be lost for our children and our grandchildren.
A page from home life and parenting will illustrate the point. “Go, answer the door for me” is a command for the moment. “Mow the lawn before you go out tonight” may have been an instruction that came from last Saturday afternoon. But “brush your teeth before bed” is a standing order. That is an ongoing expectation.
As we read the pages of God’s word, we want to keep our hearts attentive to the standing orders. The Lord’s instructions for how Gideon should defeat the Midianites are not for us. But we believe that some of the things God commanded his people long ago are in the category with “brush your teeth before bed.” They are not limited to their original context. They are ongoing expectations.
This week’s selected passages all have that quality, it seems to me. They represent distinct stories and contexts from the past, yet each one continues to speak to us in the present. Indeed, each one issues to us certain standing orders.
Haggai 1:15b--2:9
“What’s My Line?” was a favorite television show of my childhood. A guest would appear, and the celebrity panelists would have opportunity to ask a limited number of yes-or-no questions, by the end of which they needed to guess the guest’s line of work. Also, the show regularly featured a celebrity guest, for whom the questioning panelists would necessarily be blindfolded. Again, the yes-or-no questions were the device to help identify who the guest was.
I suspect that Haggai would have stumped the panelists. And if the game were played in our churches today, Haggai would still continue to perplex our questioning and guessing members. With just two chapters of material, and coming near the very end of the Old Testament, Haggai is unknown to most of the people in our pews.
Unlike so many of his peers, the prophet Haggai was careful to date each of the messages contained in his brief book. And those dates reveal to us that his entire recorded ministry occurred in the year 520 B.C. Haggai is among the exiles who have returned to Jerusalem following the devastation by the Babylonians (586 B.C.) and the subsequent defeat of Babylon by the Medes and the Persians (538 B.C.).
We gather from the first chapter of Haggai’s book that the returning exiles had focused on rebuilding their own homes and lives first. That is understandable, of course. What they failed to recognize until Haggai pointed it out, however, was that their focus on themselves and their own needs was an insult to God. Their houses were rebuilt and lovely; his house was still in ruins.
Haggai’s initial message, in this respect, serves as an ongoing “Aha!” moment for the people of God. We so routinely proceed on the course that comes naturally to us that we don’t see the larger implications. We have a fallen impulse and instinct to “look out for number one,” which seems reasonable enough, until the prophet of God comes along to remind us who Number One really is.
And so, with Haggai’s prodding, the people had begun to rebuild the neglected temple of God. But it seems that when the work was begun, a kind of melancholy pervaded the spirits of the people. Our pithy idiom, “well begun is half done,” does not account for the discouragement that comes when what is begun is dissatisfying, even disappointing. I’m reminded of a young couple I knew who excitedly set about painting their new home, only to discover halfway through the project that they really didn’t like the color they had chosen.
The former temple, you see, had been the temple built by Solomon in the 10th-century B.C. It was, as with everything that Solomon did, fabulous. It was grand in scale, exquisite in its appointments, and extravagant in its composition. Solomon built that temple in a time of great strength and prosperity in Israel.
But Haggai’s day was a different day. These were returning exiles carving out a new life for themselves in occupied territory. Solomon and his era were long gone. The new temple reflected the new reality, and it was dispiriting to the people of Haggai’s day.
And so the Lord sent the prophet with a word for Zerubbabel and Joshua. These were the leaders of the day -- (royal) governor and high priest, respectively -- and the Lord had a message of reassurance for them. And, by way of the leaders, the message was for the people of the day, as well.
First, the Lord acknowledges how they are feeling and why. The present temple does not compare favorably to the former temple. “Is it not in your sight as nothing?” But while they are being discouraged by comparing the present to the past, God invites them to look to the future.
The Lord reassures them that he is with them. That is, of course, the great, recurring assurance throughout all of Scripture. And that is also the great equalizer. After all, what comfort or glory would gold and silver bring if the Lord was not with them? But we are at peace with humble, even difficult, circumstances when we know the Lord is with us in it all.
And then come the promises for the future. “Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor.” The splendor of the 520 B.C. temple was less than that of Solomon’s temple, to be sure, but “the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former,” said God.
The Psalmist famous observed that “unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 127:1 NASB). It’s not that the Lord builds the house apart from the laborers. No, from Eden to evangelism, it has always been God’s preference to employ human apprentices. But if the human beings are relying entirely on their own efforts, the end result will be futile and disappointing.
So it was that, in Haggai’s day, the people needed, on the one hand, to get on with the work of the Lord. There was building to be done for him, and they had neglected to do it. And yet, at the same time, the glory and majesty and splendor would not be their achievement. No, those would be the achievements of God.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
The letters to the Thessalonians are commonly thought to be the earliest of Paul’s epistles -- at least the ones that we have -- and perhaps the earliest books of the entire New Testament. These early Christian texts come perhaps just two decades after the death and resurrection of Christ. And in them, we detect a significant concern about the Lord’s return.
As readers and believers so many centuries removed, we must bear in mind the relative speed with which the events surrounding Jesus had happened. John the Baptist had appeared on the scene and spoke about one who would come after him. And then, next thing you know, the spotlight is shining on Jesus. The timing of these ministries might be telescoped somewhat by the Gospel writers, but given their relative ages we may safely presume that John’s public anticipation of Christ and Jesus’ baptism were only separated by a few years, at most.
Then, at some point in Jesus’ ministry, he began to tell his disciples what would happen to him in Jerusalem. The timing is impossible to reconstruct with precision, but one senses that it was probably only a few months between Jesus’ first prediction and the eventful week when he was arrested, tried, and crucified.
Meanwhile, Jesus had also told his disciples that he would be raised up. And, sure enough, they were not left waiting and waiting for some great length of time. No, it was just a few days after his death that he appeared alive. Indeed, they still had not completed caring for his corpse before it was no longer a corpse!
And then, as a final piece of the puzzle, there was the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus had instructed his disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they would be clothed with power from on high. The day of Pentecost followed within just a few weeks.
Given the rapidity of these other events surrounding Jesus -- he says it’s going to happen and then, in short order, it happens -- there was a natural expectation that his return would be soon. He had given several indications that he would be coming back. But now it had been many (they thought) years, and he had not yet returned.
Or had he?
Evidently, one of the false teachings floating around the early church in Thessalonica was that Jesus had already returned. From our vantage point nearly two-thousand years hence, of course, that sounds like a ridiculous thing to be mistaken about. But nothing is obvious until it is. And for as long as it’s not, human beings are apt to worry about it.
I wonder, for example, how many teenagers have incredulously asked their worried mothers, “Why were you so anxious? I was fine!” Of course the teenager knew he or she was fine -- it was obvious to them. But until the mother knew for sure, she couldn’t not worry.
And so Paul opens chapter 2 of this letter with reassuring words on precisely this matter. He is eager that those young believers not be “shaken in mind or alarmed.” “Let no one deceive you,” he says, and then explains a sort of timeline for the day of the Lord. It’s not a timeline with dates attached, but rather events.
We long for dates and times, of course. There is always something of the child in us, crying out from the back seat, “How much longer?” and “Are we there yet?” But we recognize the genre in which Paul is dealing nonetheless.
I think of the days before we all carried a GPS with us and we had to stop and ask folks for directions. I remember, for example, when I was the new pastor for a rural two-point charge in Virginia. Each place I needed to go required some helpful instructions from a local. “Keep going until you come to the fork in the road, and take the left one. Then follow that road until you see the Walkers’ dairy farm on your right. That’s where you’ll want to turn. Keep going just up over the hill, and the O’Brians’ place will be the second driveway on the left as you come down the hill.” No times or distances, you see, just landmarks. But that’s good enough to keep you on the right track and to let you know whether you’re there yet. And that is the nature of the “directions” that Paul gives about the day of the Lord.
Finally, in the second section of the pericope, Paul personally redirects the attention of the Thessalonian believers to the real timeline of their salvation. The love and grace of God gave rise to his choice and call in their lives. That call was effectuated by Paul’s proclamation of the good news, to which they responded in faith. And that brings us to the present circumstance, in which their task is to “stand firm and hold fast.”
I expect the contours of our own individual testimonies are the same as the Thessalonians’. And, accordingly, I expect that our calling and challenge in the present moment is also the same as theirs. “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. 16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”
Luke 20:27-38
The context is a foreign one to us, and so a bit of background explanation will be required. Specifically, we’ll need to explain two things. First, there is the system of levirate marriage. And, second, we’ll need to introduce the Sadducees.
The Old Testament Law had instituted for the people of Israel a system of levirate marriage. When a married man had died without any offspring, his brother was required to marry his brother’s widow, with the expectation that the child of that union would be counted as heir to the deceased man. The Old Testament nation of Israel, you see, was a nation of tribes, clans, and families. The land was divided accordingly. And so the Law was designed to protect and preserve those family lines.
Meanwhile, in the time of Jesus, one of the major sects of Judaism was the Sadducees. In addition to their political role within first-century, Roman-occupied Palestine, the Sadducees were known for what we, in our day, might call a materialist theology. That is to say, they believed there was no reality other than what we can see. They did not believe in a resurrected life beyond this life, and they denied any spirit world (angels, demons, and such).
The Pharisees, meanwhile, were another sect within Judaism of that time. We have a negative impression of the Pharisees because of their reputation for hypocrisy, yet it is worth noting that theologically the Pharisees were on the same page with Jesus and with Paul. Indeed, when Paul was on trial late in his life, he cleverly shifted the attention of his Jewish jury away from himself by setting the Pharisees and Sadducees against one another with an affirmation of the resurrection. That point of ongoing debate between the two major parties won Paul the immediate approval of the Pharisees, who resumed the old argument, then, with the Sadducees.
This is the argument that the Sadducees undertake with Jesus in our Gospel lection. During Jesus’ final, eventful week in Jerusalem, Jesus is the target of many Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, all of whom are trying to catch or trick or trap him in some way. In this episode, the Sadducees are endeavoring to stump him by proposing a scenario that will make his assertion of a resurrection seem ridiculous.
Using, then, the well-established culture of levirate marriage, Jesus’ opponents raise the image of a woman who, having married seven different men sequentially in this life, would be married to seven different men eternally in the resurrection. That prospect would have been a noxious one, of course, to contemporary ears, and would have seemed quite contrary to the will and design of God. But that, they thought, proved that the idea of a resurrection of the dead was nonsense.
I am mindful that, in most debates, there is a terrific difference between the arguer who thinks they’re right and the one who knows they’re right. I don’t mean that they are merely confident in their opinion; I mean that they have the facts. The former tends to be strident in the face of opposition. The latter, however, is equipped to correct patiently the errors of their opponent.
The Sadducees are speculating about the resurrection. Jesus is not. Jesus knows the facts. And so he begins by identifying two differences between “this age” and “that age.”
The first difference is that there is marriage here but not there. Or perhaps it would be preferable to say not “here” and “there” but “now” and then.” In any event, what is clearly a part of God’s design for the present age does not seem to be a part of the plan for the age to come. That seems, at first, like a diminishment of our present experience. I assume, however, that it means a great love and intimacy will be experienced between us than what we know here. Just as a jumbo jet and a two-seater prop plane both fly and get people from here to there, the one is a dramatically enlarged experience over the other.
The second identified difference is that “they cannot die anymore.” The hypothetical situation that the Sadducees had presented was filled with death, you see. Eight people were involved in the story, and so there were eight deaths. But that which is an unavoidable part of the story here and now will not be at all a part of the story then and there. Instead, Jesus says that those who are part of that age will be “like angels” and “are children of God.” The former characterization has led to the common, popular notion that people become angels, which is not what Jesus is saying here, nor is it consistent with what we know of angels from the rest of Scripture. Meanwhile, the affirmation that those in the resurrection “are children of God” makes passages like John 1:12, Romans 8:14-17, and 1 John 3:1 still more meaningful.
Finally, Jesus concludes with a kind of proof of the resurrection that should have carried weight with the Sadducees: he cites an experience from the life of Moses. When the Lord introduced himself to Moses at the burning bush, he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6 NASB). Jesus sees in that self-identification a great significance.
If the Lord had merely said something along the lines of “I am the God who spoke to Abraham” or “I am the God who appeared to Jacob,” then it would read like a reference to people and events in the past. But the wording of the Lord’s self-introduction does suggest a present rather than merely a past reality. The implication of Jesus’ teaching is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not actually dead. Instead, the Lord “is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” And that, according to Jesus, is proof of the resurrection that the Sadducees denied.
Application
In almost all of his letters, the Apostle Paul is explicit in his instructions. He is subtle with Philemon and gentle with the Colossians, but he is quite direct the rest of the time. And so it is that, in our sample from his correspondence with the Thessalonians, we hear his straightforward tone and plain commands. He urges them “not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed.” He warns them to “let no one deceive you in any way.” And he commands them to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us.”
I have no doubt that Paul’s word to the Christians in that Macedonian city would be his word to us wherever we live, as well. It is the ongoing counsel to the people of God at all times and in all places not to be quickly shaken, not to be deceived, and to stand firm in what we have been taught. We need not keep these instructions at arm’s length, as though they were like the military instructions from God to Gideon.
The message God has for the people of Haggai’s day, meanwhile, is removed from 2 Thessalonians by six-hundred years and over a thousand miles. And it is even further removed from us. Yet there, too, we sense some timeless and universal instructions for the people of God. Those were precarious times for people of Jerusalem in 518 B.C. They could easily have felt frightened and discouraged. Yet the Lord spoke in that day, saying, “Take courage, O Zerubbabel” and “take courage, all you people of the land... Do not fear.”
Now if the reason for the people’s mandated courage and fearlessness had been some assurance that their circumstances weren’t so bad, then we would have to set aside these words. If they were rooted in ancient Jerusalem’s circumstances, after all, then they are not for us. But they were not. Rather, these commands were rooted in God. They are to take courage, God says, “for I am with you.” And he explains that they need not fear because “My spirit abides among you.” And so we see that, for all the years and miles that separate us, the most important factor in their existence and ours is precisely the same. We take, therefore, the instructions be to courageous and fearless as standing orders.
And then we come to the passage from Luke. No instructions or commands here. Yet a picture is painted. Jesus recalls how God had introduced himself to Moses as “the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And from that identification, Jesus affirms that “he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."
We see in this text the God of eternity. He is not bound by time: limited to the days of Moses, the world of the Sadducees, or our parochial lives. He spans all, sees all, encompasses all, and gives life to all. He is eternal -- the one who says, "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14 NASB). And as such, he is the one who does not change.
Our standing orders -- literally, Paul’s instruction to “stand firm,” which seems to capture all of the others -- not only come from God, they are rooted in God. It is his constant presence that gives us courage and makes us fearless. And it is his unchanging nature that keeps us from being shaken and steers us clear of being easily deceived. To stand firm in what we have been taught is to hold fast to the one who does not change.
Alternative Application(s)
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 — “Where Things Used to Be”
The congregation I presently serve has been worshipping in its current location for more than a century. Of course, the property surrounding the church has changed a great deal over the course of time. And longtime members will sometimes tell me what used to be over here or what once was over there.
For example, the church parsonage once stood on the church property, but there is a garden in that spot now. No physical remnant or sign of the parsonage remains. A passerby would never guess that a house once stood there. But I have a number of members who remember it well.
Once the last member of a certain generation passes away, of course, there will be no more personal recollection of certain things that used to be, like that parsonage. Perhaps we’ll have an old photograph or two. But no one will be around to tell us how it used to be.
This serves as a sort of analogy for a very serious spiritual risk. The Apostle Paul urged the Christians in Thessalonica, saying, “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.” Those believers, you see, had received the truth of the gospel from the apostle himself, yet he knew that they needed to be deliberate about holding onto that truth. It was necessary for them personally. But it was also necessary for their spiritual posterity.
A day was bound to come, you see, when the apostolic generation would be gone. And, eventually, gone too would be the folks who had received the gospel truth from the apostles. And in that generation had not been faithful about ‘standing firm’ and ‘holding fast,’ then what? Then the world would have been like the clueless passersby who have no idea of the house that used to be here on this property, only with a reality far more profound and personally impactful.
History gives us some sense of the risk involved here. We think of how the book of the law had been lost in ancient Israel, and its contents was news, therefore, to King Josiah (see 2 Kings 22). We think, too, of some precious truths of the gospel, which had been lost sight of in the medieval church in Europe, and which needed to be rediscovered by the heroes of the Reformation.
So it is, then, that the exhortation from Paul to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions” is a word to us in our day, as well. We must deliberately retain what we have received. For if we do not, it will be lost for our children and our grandchildren.
