As both law and gospel are proclaimed, judgment and deliverance are miraculously pronounced over the hearer.
The other day, I was driving my twelve-year-old son somewhere, and it seemed like we were hitting every red light. We were basically getting nowhere. I don't like getting nowhere. Anyhow, my son must have picked up on my irritation because after about the fifth light he declared, "That's it. When I become President one day I'm banning red lights so no one has to stop ever again!"
Hear, Hear! That's a platform I can get behind!
In all seriousness, like my son, we all have our moments where we think about what we would do if we had more power. We may have even wondered what we'd do if we were God for a day because, after all, we're prone to idolatry, and his ways often puzzle us. We look for miracles to prove to us he's there, but instead, we're shown a world of uniformly repeating patterns. We ask for divine healing, but instead, we're given a drug that may or may not help us feel better. I mean, we know he CAN do it: he's rained bread from heaven (Exodus 16), struck down enemies with fire (1 Kings 18), and caused the sun to stand still for goodness sake (Joshua 10)!
Nevertheless, though God can and has revealed himself in the extraordinary and the supernatural, he most often chooses to hide himself (Deus absconditus) in the ordinary and the natural. In other words, what we disenchanted [1] modern people call "nature," God uses to both judge and save.
Very early in the Bible, God floods the world to condemn the wicked while simultaneously preserving the righteous. To judge and save, he sends ten plagues on the people of Egypt for enslaving his people. Sure, he does some undeniably supernatural works in the process (turning the river to blood, parting the Red Sea, etc.). But at the same time, he's using infestations of locusts, flies, and pestilence: all things we regularly see occur in nature today.
In the ordinary and the natural, God is working all the time for your good and for the world's salvation.
When we get to the New Testament, the same pattern continues. Though Jesus can heal with nothing but his word, he chooses to rub spit and dirt on a blind man's eyes to give him sight (John 9). In Acts 16, the Apostle Paul and Silas are stuck in prison. What does God do to provide an escape? He brings an all-too-normal earthquake (at least for those of us who live in California) to rattle their doors open and set them free. When we get to the book of Revelation, though presented to us in very mysterious and supernatural language, what we see is God using natural things like volcanoes, famines, droughts, and pestilence to bring judgment and deliverance once again.
Of course, this work of God is most clearly seen in the cross of Jesus Christ. When God wanted to redeem his world from their fallen condition, he did not simply poke his head through the clouds and say, "It's all good folks. You're going to heaven now when you die." No, we serve a God who is much more interested in getting his hands messy with the maladies, struggles, sins, and failures of nature. Thus, in Christ, he takes on flesh, submits to that flesh's limitations, fulfills the law, and suffers the penalty of that law on a cross, atoning for the sins of all mankind. As Helmut Thielicke once quipped:
Jesus Christ did not remain at base headquarters in heaven, receiving reports of the world's suffering from below and shouting a few encouraging words to us from a safe distance. No, he left the headquarters and came down to us in the front-line trenches, right down to where we live, where we contend with our anxieties and the feeling of emptiness and futility, where we sin and suffer guilt, and where we must finally die. There is nothing that he did not endure with us. He understands everything.
But how does God deliver this work to his creation? Well, I'm glad you asked: Through the simple use of vocal cords proclaiming his word and through the natural elements found in the sacraments. As both law and gospel are proclaimed, judgment and deliverance are miraculously pronounced over the hearer. In baptism, the participants and onlookers hear a person just like them speaking words from Scripture and applying liquid that was taken from a faucet moments ago. Upon receiving this sacrament, the recipient has no physical change take place in them. They still have the same family, have the same genetic predispositions, and do not have a halo added to the top of their head. And yet, what Scripture says happens in that moment is a miracle!
The Apostle Paul says in Romans 6 that in this act, the recipient has been buried (judged) and been risen to new life (delivered) (Rom. 6.1-4)); they've had their sins forgiven (Acts 2:38); they've been clothed with the righteousness of Christ (Gal. 3:27); they've been circumcised in the heart (Col. 2:11-12). To state it as simply as the Apostle Peter does in his first epistle, "They've been saved!" (1 Peter 3:21). Then, to sustain our faith, God once again uses a flesh and blood person to deliver his bread and wine word. This powerful word declares that Christ's body and blood are present in Communion, and we partakers will once again receive the forgiveness of our sins and the assurance of life to come.
So yes, God can work through the extraordinary and supernatural (who knows, maybe one day he'll supernaturally take over the traffic lights in my neighborhood and give me nothing but green lights on my way to the store), but always remember that despite what it may seem like, in the ordinary and the natural, God is working all the time for your good and for the world's salvation.
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