Thinking about Signs

I was driving through a neighboring town this past week and my route took me past one of the mainline denomination churches there.  It was one of those old, majestic buildings with plenty of stained glass and large, wooden front doors.  Personally, I’ve always appreciated those buildings because they were often built as a testimony to a creative, majestic, and beautiful God.  This church also had one of those old style signs out front.  I’m sure you know the type:  black with a pointed top, with white interchangeable letters behind glass.  As I drove past, I noticed the “church sign saying” that was on there:  “Don’t make me come down there.  ~God.”  Perhaps you remember that marketing campaign from a while back, with the black billboards and the plain white letters with sometimes amusing, sometimes sarcastic sayings attributed to God.  I’ve seen this one before (maybe you have, too), but it made me start thinking about what that saying was communicating to the world – especially those who do not have a solid understanding of who God truly is.  Here are some of those things, in no particular order:

• Isn’t God coming “down here” a foundational truth believed by Christians?  Isn’t that at the very heart of our faith?  When the announcement was made to Joseph in Matthew 1:23 about the birth of Jesus, the angel of the Lord told him that the boy’s name would be called Immanuel – “God with us.”  The Incarnation is what we might call a marvelous mystery, because it is in many ways impossible for us to understand precisely how in the one Person of Jesus Christ both a fully divine nature and a fully human nature can coexist.  But they do, and the fact that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human should cause us to praise God.  Were it not for this, Jesus could not have fulfilled the Law and therefore could not have been our Savior.  I don’t know about you, but I’m really, really thankful God came “down here”!
• Isn’t Jesus (again, fully God!) coming “down here” again what each of us longs for?  In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John was given visions of what the judgment of God would look like on this earth, which must take place before Christ returns to usher in the new heavens and the new earth.  If you have read John’s words in that book, you know how frightening and devastating those things will be.  Still, the “disciple Jesus loved” would write, “Even so” (Rev. 1:7) and, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20).  Paul, at the end of his last letter (2 Tim.), would also speak of the reward awaiting him after he was poured out “as a drink offering” (2 Tim. 4:6), and not only him but also “all who have loved his [Jesus’] appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8).  Again, I don’t know about you, but I long for the return of Christ.  I’m so thankful for the grace of God in my life and His sanctification, but I’m very much ready to experience that grace in its full conclusion, when we receive our glorified bodies that will be free from even the ability to sin.
• Doesn’t this make God out to be very distant from us?  This saying makes God sound like the distant dad, yelling at his squabbling children, “Don’t make me come in there!”  I get that is the point of this saying (to highlight our lack of love for one another), but it communicates something quite contrary to the Gospel.  God is not only near to us, His children, but He is personally active in each us through the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  The god who says, “Don’t make me come down there!” is the god of Deism, who is created and then stepped away, letting his creatures have full control; it is not the God of Scripture – thankfully!

Each day, as we navigate our way through this world as citizens of another Kingdom, we will encounter numerous examples of how this world has a blurry, at best, vision of who God is.  The Father will be thought of as the “Man Upstairs” or some distant clockmaker.  Jesus’ meekness becomes an effeminate inability to speak hard truths and a willingness to accept everyone as they are…with no transformation at salvation or any point thereafter.  The Holy Spirit loses the ability to convict sin, relegated instead to that of a divine cheerleader who only ever encourages.  Going back to that church with this sign, I have to complete the picture for you.  That black signboard was decorated with rainbows – and not as a sign of their support of the Noahic Covenant!  The culture – including churches who have desired culture’s acceptance above God’s – has much to say about who God is; are we prepared to give a reasoned, biblical response?  Just something to think about…