HONORING THE MESSENGER
A Sermon by Rev. Grant H. Odhner
"As He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying,
`If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the
things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from
your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies
will . . . surround you on every side, and level you and your
children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave
one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of
your visitation'" (Luke 19:41-44).
Here the Lord, both through His tears and His words,
expresses a deep desire to give us peace. He regrets that
Jerusalem, in that "time of its visitation," did not recognize
nor honor the Greatest Prophet, Messenger of Blessing, Prince
of Peace.
When He was in the world, the Lord was both a prophet and
the one who sent the prophets. He was the faithful witness and
the one to whom He bore witness. He was both the messenger and
the one sending the message.
I am not trying to introduce a paradox here. Both things
are true. The Lord was the Source of all Divine messages,
because as to His inner soul and character He was God Himself.
He was not a mere "Son" or an intermediary of any other sort.
On the other hand, insofar as He was seen and experienced by
people in the world, He remained a messenger, for what He
could communicate to them was many steps removed from His
innermost will. At that time He had a physical body which was
not yet glorified. True, His looks and His actions represented
His Divine will before the world, as did His words, but they
could not themselves present it fully.
"No man has seen God at any time," John said. " . . . the
only begotten Son, . . . He has revealed Him" (John 1). The
Son revealed the Divine essence. The "Son" in the gospels
stands for truth. Truth sets forth the Divine will and its
goodness. Truth is a messenger and not the source itself. As
it comes to us, truth is subject to interpretation. In other
words, all truth is natural in its outer form, in the form in
which it greets our minds. We hear the sounds of words, we
look at letters and symbols on a page, we note gestures, we
view art. From these we infer meaning.
Jesus did indeed ask to be accepted as the Truth. But not
on account of the mere form of His message but on account of
the essence of His message. Form is essential, because it
alone leads us to a perception of what lies within. Yet it is
not until the essence is grasped that the form is fully seen
and honored.
This is why the Lord as Son did not demand rigid accep-
tance of Himself. He wanted people to grasp His Divine Spirit.
He said, "Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it
will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks a word against the
Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him" (Matt. 12:32). The
Lord does not expect us to accept every outer statement of
truth that meets our senses. A great many truths do present
themselves to us daily, and most of these we either reject,
abuse, or fail to see. But it is one thing to do this out of
ignorance or temporary stubbornness, and quite another to do
it out of firm opposition to the spirit of truth. Truth on all
levels exists to convey to us what is good, and to lead us to
it. This "good" is the spirit within the truth. Behind "Don't
steal" there is the good of honesty, of mutual respect for
what is another's, of mutual love. If we honor this spirit
then, though we may fail to see certain forms that stealing
may take and may go against them as a result, still we are not
intending to reject the good behind them. If we do not honor
the spirit that's behind "Don't steal," we are incapable of
grasping any form of this truth! We are incapable of attaining
the good that it's meant to convey. By this rejection of the
essence of truth we effectively place ourselves beyond
forgiveness, that is, beyond relief from evils like stealing.
I noted a moment ago that we must infer meaning from
natural statements of truth from words we see and hear, and
more broadly from other physical objects and experiences. How
accurate our inference of meaning is, though, depends on many
things. It depends on our life experience, both its quality
and quantity. It depends on what we know. If we do not know
Chinese or Chinese culture, we will find it difficult to
understand what their art or writing or music is trying to
communicate. How accurately we infer meaning from a natural
"messenger" also depends on our mind-set and attitude. It
depends on how "in harmony" we are with the essence of what we
are trying to "read." We easily get the point of messages that
are in basic harmony with our own life and outlook.
Most fundamentally, what we see in a message is limited
by what we are willing to see. Our will is our life. What is
in our heart determines our aims and our motives, our mind-set
and our attitudes; it determines what we hear and see. As the
Lord said of some people, referring back to Isaiah 6:9,10:
"Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing
you will see and not perceive, for the heart of this people
has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing and they have
closed their eyes, lest they should see with their eyes and
hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their
heart and turn so that I should heal them" (Matt. 13:14,15 em-
phasis added).
The heart sees truth and understands and turns. This was
evident in people's acceptance or rejection of Jesus. People
often wanted more proof from Him that what He said was true,
thinking that this would convince them. In one case He
responded: "If you believed Moses you would believe Me; for he
wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how
will you believe My words?" (John 5:46,47).
"Moses" here stands for the Hebrew Scriptures. The Lord
did not mean literally that these Jews with whom He spoke did
not believe in their Scriptures; they did on one level. He
meant that they did not believe in the true spirit of those
writings. Only when seen from this spirit does its letter
testify of Him.
And why couldn't they believe in the true spirit of the
Hebrew Scriptures? The Lord points to their will, to a cloudy
motivation, a bad heart. He tells them: "The Father Himself,
who sent Me, has testified of Me . . . . But you do not have
His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not
believe. You search the Scriptures for in them you think you
have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But
you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. I do
not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not
have the love of God in you. I have come in My Father's name
and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name,
him you will receive. How can you believe, who receive honor
from one another and do not seek the honor that comes from the
only God?" (John 5:37-44, emphasis added).
The problem with their ability to believe Jesus lay in
their lack of "love for God," in their being "not willing to
come to Him," in their selfish desire to seek out and to
identify themselves with people and ideas that brought them
honor, rather than seeking "the honor that comes from God." If
they had had this inner love of God, willingness to approach
Him, thirst for true honor, they would have seen Him in the
Hebrew Word.
So with us; we can recognize and accept the Lord's
messengers only from a love of God which is a love for truth,
and more deeply, a love for good. This love is what makes us
receptive and able to notice and respond. Given this funda-
mental love, over time our ability to recognize and honor "the
messenger" is heightened, through life experience, knowledge,
committed practice.
Now it may seem unfair that one must have a love for
truth in order to see God. We might ask, "How then can one who
does not love truth `turn around' and come to see God?" The
fact is, all of us have access to a love for truth at all
times. It dwells within us from the Lord, in our inner person.
And we all experience it at times when our outer person is
less active. We can always act from a love for truth if we
choose. But choose we must!
Nothing can convince us of truth short of our choosing to
love it. Nothing can persuade us unless we freely make this
choice! The truths we have from the Word are sufficient, and
more than sufficient, to convince us of what is right, of what
we need to strive for, of how we need to live. If we aren't
moved by them, it's because we're not choosing to be, not
because the truth is insufficient! The Lord taught this in the
parable of the rich man and Lazarus when the rich man called
to Abraham from hell: "`I beg you . . . , father [Abraham],
that you would send [Lazarus] to my father's house, for I have
five brothers, that he may testify to them lest they also come
to this place of torment.' Abraham said to him, `They have
Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, `No,
Father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they
will repent.' But he said to him, `If they do not hear Moses
and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one
rise from the dead'" (Luke 16:27-31).
There is a marvelous protection of our freedom here. We
are not forced to accept God, to accept what He is, to accept
the laws of happiness simply because they are too clear to
deny. Truth can lead us to see these realities, but it doesn't
force us to see them. We have a genuine choice.
This is how the Lord works: He sends to us messengers.
And we respond to them in freedom. When the Lord was in the
world, He lamented at those who abused and rejected His
messengers. He chided them, and at the same time shared His
hopes for them. He said: "Indeed I send you prophets, wise
men, and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and
some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from
city to city . . . . O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills
the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often
I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her
chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See! Your
house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see
Me no more till you say, `Blessed is He who comes in the name
of the Lord!'" (Matt. 23:37-39).
And who are those who "come in the name of the Lord?"þ
these "prophets, wise men, and scribes"? They are people:
adults and children alike. More deeply they are truths them-
selves, truths that come to us as we meet with the people and
events in our lives, and especially as we read and hear the
Word. They actually come from within. They come into our
thought as we listen and notice and reflect.
These are the real messengers which are sent to bring us
peace! These are the messengers which we must honor! They come
all the time, often silently, unobtrusively, without the
appearance of authority or importance or glory. "He will not
cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard
in the street. A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking
flax He will not quench" (Isaiah 42:2).
Who is this who comes in the name of the Lord? Most
deeply it is the Lord Himself who "visits" us. He is the
truth.
Do we honor Him at His coming? Do we recognize Him within
the messenger's humble and sometimes unpleasing appearance? Do
we try to discern His voice even when the prophet seems
hostile to us? He is there to be seen or not seen.
Let us pray that we may grow in our sensitivity to the
truthþin our innocence and humility; in our willingness to
say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!" Amen.
Lessons: II Samuel 10:1-14; John 5:31-47; AE 1173:2-3a, 1175:4
Preached in Boston, Massachusetts December 3, 1989Apocalypse
Explained 1173:2-3a, 1175:4
[It is a law of Divine Providence] that the Lord does not
teach a person truths either from Himself or by means of
angels directly, but He teaches indirectly by means of the
Word, preaching, reading, conversation, and communication with
others, and thus by thoughts within oneself about these
things. In this way the person is enlightened in the measure
of his affection for truth springing from [a purpose to be of]
use. Otherwise the person would not act as though from
himself.
This law follows as a consequence from the laws of the
Divine Providence explained before, namely, that a human being
must be in freedom, and must do what he does from reason; that
he must think from his understanding as though from himself,
and must do good from his will as though from himself; also
that he must not be compelled to believe anything or do
anything by miracles or by visions. These laws . . . would be
disturbed if a person should be taught directly, either by
influx or by speech [with spirits].
Moreover, the Lord flows into the interior parts of a
human being's mind and through these into its outer parts,
also into his will's affection and through that into the
thought of his understanding, but not the reverse . . . .
It shall now be told why a person is led by the Lord by
means of affections and not by means of thoughts [directly].
When a man is led by the Lord by means of affections he can be
led according to all the laws of His Divine Providence, but
not if he should be led by means of thoughts. Affections do
not manifest themselves before a person, but thoughts do.
Also, affections produce thoughts, but thoughts do not produce
affections. There is an appearance that they do, but it is a
fallacy. And when affections produce thoughts they produce
everything that belongs to the person, because affections
constitute his life.
This is well known in the world. If you hold a man in his
affection you hold him bound, and lead him wherever you
please, and a single [favoring] reason is then stronger than
a thousand [contradicting ones]. But if you do not hold the
man in his affection, reasons are of no avail; for his
affection, when not in harmony with the reasons, perverts,
rejects or destroys them. It would be similar if the Lord were
to lead a person by means of thoughts directly and not by
means of affections.
Again, when a person is led by the Lord by means of
affections, it seems to him as though he thought freely, as
though from himself, and spoke freely and acted freely, as
though from himself. And this is why the Lord does not teach
a person directly but indirectly by means of the Word, and by
means of doctrines and preachings from the Word, and by means
of conversations and interaction with others; for from these
things the person thinks freely, as though from himself.