Giving and Taking

Now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told to the house of David, saying, “Syria’s forces are deployed in Ephraim.” So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind.

Our story begins with an invasion.  The ten northern tribes who had abandoned the Sons of David, and the Syrian king Rezin were getting ready to attack Jerusalem.  They had their army camped not far from the city, and the people of Judah and especially their king Ahaz were terrified.  God was about to graciously offer them some comfort.

Then the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-Jashub your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool, on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, and say to him: ‘Take heed, and be quiet; do not fear or be fainthearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria, and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, Ephraim, and the son of Remaliah have plotted evil against you, saying, “Let us go up against Judah and trouble it, and let us make a gap in its wall for ourselves, and set a king over them, the son of Tabel”— thus says the Lord God:
“It shall not stand,
Nor shall it come to pass.
For the head of Syria is Damascus,
And the head of Damascus is Rezin.
Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be broken,
So that it will not be a people.
The head of Ephraim is Samaria,
And the head of Samaria is Remaliah’s son.
If you will not believe,
Surely you shall not be established.” ’ ”

Isaiah was sent to comfort the king with the news that the invasion would fail and that his enemies would crumble, in short that his trouble was only for a season

Moreover the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.”
But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord!”

Because He knew how weak Ahaz's trust in Him was, how weak all of our faith is, the Lord told Him to pick a sign so that the Lord could prove to Him that His grace was real.  But Ahaz did not want the Lord's grace, presumably he had already made plans of his own to deal with his problems. 

Then he said, “Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also?

God is gracious.  All the time in every way to every person.  It is an inescapable fact of His nature.  We often confine our thoughts to so called "saving grace", but it is worth remembering that every minute of every day what happens to each person is better than what they deserve.  God always goes above and beyond the call of justice.  Graciousness is more of a defining characteristic for Him than omnipotence or wisdom or eternity or whatever.  To know Him in any meaningful way always means knowing Him as a Provider, a Giver of Grace.  Isaiah puts it bluntly, God is tired of our rejecting His gifts.  Jeremiah says that the Lord is exhausted from rising up early and sending prophets all day to a people who will not listen.  Maybe He is frustrated at our sins and our trespasses and all of that kind of stuff, maybe He has had enough of our lovelessness, and faithlessness, and hopelessness.  Maybe.  But what the prophets continually harp on is that we won't take what He is offering.  The church wants to talk about the importance of giving, but the message of Scripture is that our problem is that we aren't taking enough.

The calling of Christians isn't to make contributions to the kingdom, deposits in our heavenly bank account, but to make withdrawals from Christ's account, the bigger the better.  Just as God is fundamentally a Giver; we are fundamentally Takers.  Our culture showers praise on giving and heaps insults on taking, because we are essentially poor.  We can't abide takers because we don't have enough already.  Maybe that is the root of our self-hatred?  We are disgusted by our own neediness and the way our urges to meet those needs by taking eventually become irresistible.  We want to see ourselves as having something to contribute, but the keystone of Christianity is our need for a benefactor.  To know yourself, you must know that you are a Taker.  And to know God, you must know Him as the Giver.   I remember being told years ago that Christians begin by receiving from the church but that as we mature we move to giving instead.  I wish I had known then what it meant to be one of the least, like a little child; I wish I had known then that Chesterton said, "We have sinned and grown older than our Father."  That kind of maturity is another Gospel, and it is no Good News.  Ahaz didn't want God's grace; He wanted to save Jerusalem himself, a way to advance the Kingdom of Heaven if ever there was one.  But what happens when we reject God's grace?  It has been suggested that this is the sin of sins, that to reject grace is the final straw.  What happens in Isaiah's story?

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings. The Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you and your people and your father’s house—days that have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah.”

And it shall come to pass in that day

That the Lord will whistle for the fly

That is in the farthest part of the rivers of Egypt,

And for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

They will come, and all of them will rest

In the desolate valleys and in the clefts of the rocks,

And on all thorns and in all pastures.

In the same day the Lord will shave with a hired razor,

With those from beyond the River, with the king of Assyria,

The head and the hair of the legs,

And will also remove the beard.

It shall be in that day

That a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep;

So it shall be, from the abundance of milk they give,

That he will eat curds;

For curds and honey everyone will eat who is left in the land.

It shall happen in that day,

That wherever there could be a thousand vines

Worth a thousand shekels of silver,

It will be for briers and thorns.

With arrows and bows men will come there,

Because all the land will become briers and thorns.

And to any hill which could be dug with the hoe,

You will not go there for fear of briers and thorns;

But it will become a range for oxen

And a place for sheep to roam.

The Lord's response when we refuse grace?  When we exhaust Him?  He stops offering.  He compels us to receive His gifts like the servants compelled the hobos to come to the wedding feast, I think that is the way the story went.  There is no end to the Lord's goodness.  We need to take from Him and no Father would allow His child to do without good that is essential to the child even if the child is a stubborn ass. 

But the sign seems a little unrelated to the problem.  Ahaz had an army camped at his door, the news that in some six hundred years a baby would be born must have struck him as rather irrelevant.  Is that why we refuse grace?  We have pressing problems and God's promise is pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye.  Before the child will even be born Judah is going to be carried off captive, the two nations that are threatening her will be similarly annihilated.  The world that the baby will be born into will be unrecognizable to Ahaz, God might as well promise that a baby will be born on Mars.  God is offering to provide for us, but His provision doesn't seem to meet our needs, any of them.  God tells Ahaz that pretty much everything he is afraid of is going to happen, but that it will be alright in the end.  We can see how to get what we think we need, what seems good to us.  A Messiah who might come in six hundred years and might come back any century now doesn't solve any of our problems.

God seems distant and incapable of sympathizing with us.  He is looking at this big picture of the whole universe and the microscopic details of our lives are beneath His notice.  No doubt He is a good god on the whole, looking out for the greater good, but we feel like maybe our life is small enough to slip between the cracks.  I mean He is looking out for the big things, Israel will have a future, the Coming Messiah guarantees it, but it looks like God's plan for Ahaz is not so sure, I mean all of the things that Isaiah tells him don't even start for sixty five years, probably after Ahaz's already in the ground.  His despair seems so reasonable.  In effect, Ahaz and us too, believe that as a Giver, God is fundamentally flawed.  He gives what is needed for the big picture, for the greater good, but the ones(us) who fall by the wayside are left behind.  God looks out for His Chosen Ones and the rest of us had better look out for ourselves.  Ahaz wouldn't ask for a sign because his view of God was that God's salvation was defective, and the sign that he was given seemed to confirm that.

But this distrust of God is what the sign was sent to address.  The charge that God is distant from us is met with a ringing answer, a single word that has resonated to past and future coloring the whole world.  Immanuel-God is with Us.  God is not distant.  He loves us.  And love never sacrifices the beloved for the greater good.  Love will wreak the big picture for the sake of the beloved.  Love will beat God Himself to a bloody pulp chasing one lost sheep, and a black sheep at that.  I don't know if Ahaz saw that, but I want us to.  The God who loves is a perfect Giver, He is in perfect sympathy with His brethren, He has lived a life like ours, been tempted like us, doubted like us, feared like us, He has looked up at His Father and felt the same loneliness and distance that we do.  And the whole world, visible and invisible, was made by this compassionate High Priest, nothing that is was made without Him, and all of His works, which is to say everything, physical, mental, or spiritual, resonates with the compassion that He has for the children of men.

We, are fundamentally Takers, and the Church condemns taking, because she is basically poor, just a Taker herself and afraid that anything that someone else takes from the Giver will not be there when she needs it.  We are all Takers and we all condemn taking.  Thus we all condemn and hate ourselves.  This is not a sermon on the importance of Giving, there is only One who has anything worth giving and He doesn't need a lesson from me.  This is a sermon on the importance of Taking, God does not condemn the Takers, He made us needy and filled us with urges to get what we lack that become irresistible eventually.  He condemns us for not taking what we lack from the only One who truly has it to give.  We are obsessed with giving because we are poor and needy.  He is obsessed with giving because He is rich and gracious.

The church has many flaws and I think that her hypocrisy and self-hatred over giving and taking is close to the center of the corruption.  If I could reform one thing in the church, to try and move them from Law and Sin to Gospel and Grace, I think that I would get rid of the collection plate, get rid of the sermons on tithing, and get rid of the "mature" Christians who contribute to the Kingdom, and if that meant getting rid of the institutional church then I can only think of Kierkegaard who said that in the world we live in anyone who tries to bring in Christianity looks like he is trying to abolish Christianity.  I don't believe that there is some action that we can take to fix the church, this is more of a thought experiment, I am certainly not recommending any action to anyone as one that will help the Gospel, He doesn't need us to save Him.  So, I would replace the offering with a simple basket at the doors of the church with a sign saying, "Give Freely, Take Freely".  I would replace the sermons on giving to the kingdom with encouraging everyone to take freely, to take advantage of the liberality of Jesus Christ.  And I would replace the "mature" Christians, with babies who eat food off of their Father's hand without any thought of making a contribution.