It's Not Easy Being A Pharaoh

For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."

(Romans 9:17)

This morning I was meditating on the story of the Exodus. Obviously, this is a well known story for Jews and Christians alike, but I have been thinking about it in a new light recently. There are some basics of the story that I find to be devastating when I apply them to my own life. For instance:

• God's people are slaves in a foreign land
• God uses an exile (from two groups of people) to free His people
• God's speech to the powerful goes ignored
• 9 plagues aren't enough to get Pharaoh's attention
• It takes the death of the Pharaoh's firstborn to break him

As much as I wish that I could write about how I can relate to the oppression and yearning for freedom of the Hebrews, I have more in common with another character in the story. Unfortunately, that character is the Pharaoh. Pharaoh believes that he has power over the world, and his own nation's religion tells him that he is the most important. Pharaoh has a very clear message spoken to him by God's appointed messenger, but his response is very much like my own. I make excuses, I justify myself, and then I refuse to listen. Pharaoh's whole existence is built around preserving the status quo, if he can just keep going about his normal business and just ignore God's voice, everything will be fine.

Unfortunately, this is not the reality God has in mind. God's plan is to turn the status quo upside down. Things cannot continue as normal because only God is allowed to dictate what is normal. We would prefer for God to comfort us and love us for "who we are," but that is not the message of the Bible. Instead we hear:

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thought.

(Isaiah 55:6-9)

People like reading the second part of this passage as encouragement that God has a plan for their life and it will all work out well. While this may in fact be the case, they need heed the first part. We are called to forsake our wicked thoughts and ways. Just because we are forgiven by God does not mean we may continue living in open rebellion to him. If our sin is a sword of destruction, we must begin beating it into a plowshare of obedience (Isaiah 2:4).

When Jesus says, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39), he is not being poetic. God made demands of Pharaoh and unfortunately Pharaoh refused to comply. I do not want to live like Pharaoh refusing to listen to God's clear commands on my life. Jesus, save me from the plagues of disobedience to your will.

The Gospel of Inactivity

"Like a pregnant woman

who writhes and cries out in her pangs

when she is near to giving birth,

so we were because of you, O Lord;

we were pregnant, we writhed,

but we have given birth to wind.

We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth,

and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen."

- Isaiah 26:17-18

I have been reflecting on Isaiah recently, and these verses really stuck out to me. Isaiah is lamenting over Israel, God's agents of deliverance in the world, who are a people who cry out for God, but accomplish nothing. Israel as a people sought God when they were in distress and God continued to deliver. This however, made no change in the way God's people lived.

What is so striking to me personally about Isaiah's bemoaning is what actually is to saddening him. Most of the time when people are mourning, they are mourning the loss of a person, a possession, or maybe a place. Isaiah is clearly mourning over his nation's sins. He wishes that his people had done more to change the world acting as God's emissaries. His last line there is convicting, "We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen."

I believe the church needs to consider Isaiah's words. Sometimes I fear that Stephen's words to the Sanhedrin are coming to true for Jesus' church:

"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it."

(Acts 7:51-53)

We Christians claim that the ultimate miracle of miracles happened in the form of the incarnation: God came to earth. Jesus' ministry on earth was not neither ambiguous nor deceiving. He taught, he healed, and he made it possible that people would come into a right relationship with God. If it weren't enough to have God on earth, Jesus called apostles to preach and teach the word for years after his ascension to heaven. There has never been an absence of God's word to the world, there has only been an absence of hearing.

Nowadays the church (particularly in the United States), spends it's time largely ignoring Jesus. We relegate him to Lord of Heaven and Earth, but not of our houses, businesses, families, political parties or lifestyles. Jesus is a means to an end, namely salvation. He is a tool in the divine toolbox of our comfort. This ethos of passivity that I too am so guilty of cannot stand in light of the true Jesus. Christ does not speak words of comfort and rest to us. He says, "Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire" (Matthew 3:10).

I need to have the same spirit of Isaiah, one that compels him to action and sacrifice. I do not want to look back at my life and mourn over my failures for the world. I want to celebrate the beautiful ways God has worked in my life to further the Kingdom. When I look at the world around me I see people striving after some ounce of power or control in their life. I think this lust for power is actually a good sign. As Thomas Traherne puts it:

The noble inclination whereby man thirsteth after riches and dominion, is his highest virtue, when rightly guided; and carries him as in a triumphant chariot, to his sovereign happiness. Men are made miserable only by abusing it. Taking a false way to satisfy it, they pursue the wind: nay, labour in the very fire, and after all reap but vanity.

All of our life's desires for power, control and authority are but misguided aspirations for our life's true calling. I hear many people say that they do not want their lives to be boring or meaningless. People who have no relationship with Jesus pursue philanthropy because they want to connect with some greater purpose. The Body of Christ needs to preach and live the fact that following Christ is neither boring nor idle. True salvation as Stanley Hauerwas puts it is coming into the middle of God's story. A story that "began without us, as a story of the peculiar way God is redeeming the world, a story that invites us to come forth and be saved by sharing in the work of a new people who God has created in Israel and Jesus."

Things I need and other things...

Things I Don't Need:

• 10 pairs of shoes
• multiple jackets and sweaters (it isn't even cold in Phoenix)
• the box of random electronics that sits idle in my closet
• four tennis racquets...i'm not as Roger Federer as I think I am

Things I Think I Need, But I Really Don't Need:

• my giant book collection
• my car...walking+bicycle+bus+light rail= getting to 99% of the places I need to go
• my snow skis and boots...they get used once or twice a year at this point
• two longboards (skateboards not surfboards)...anyone want a free longboard?
• In'N'Out Burger, Chipotle or Hungry Howie's pizza at least once a week

Things I Need:

• enough clothes to get me through about a week and a half in a couple seasons
• my bicycle
• my Bible...I think I have too many of these in fact
• my guitar...as much as I talking about wanting a new one, I just need this one
• simplicity in lifestyle and in mind
• to meet the people and remember the names of the people in my apartment complex
• to find ways to serve the poor around me
• to eat healthy, but not too healthy
• the church
• to figure out what I really need and what I really don't
• to follow Jesus as closely as possible...i see this as the only viable option