Scripture
14that you obey this command without wavering. Then no one can find fault with you from now until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. 15For, At just the right time Christ will be revealed from heaven by the blessed and only almighty God, the King of all kings and Lord of all lords. 16He alone can never die, and he lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach him. No human eye has ever seen him, nor ever will. All honor and power to him forever! Amen. 1 Timothy 6:14-16
Observation
Paul reminds Timothy of what he knows and then reminds him of what he doesn’t know. Basically, “stick to what you know but remember you don’t know everything”. Paul commands Timothy to focus on the truth without wavering or getting distracted by all the “foolish arguments”, lies, and false teachings going around. What we know: “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation (Colossians 1:15.)” Jesus is what God looks like. We have seen Him as the Risen King but we haven’t seen Him as the Reigning King. Just as prophecies foretold of the Messiah’s arrival the first time no one was sure of the timing. It was a mystery. Everyone was taken by surprise at the birth of Christ. Jesus became one of us and walked with us. Jesus revealed God but that doesn’t mean we know everything about God. Jesus is coming back as the King of Kings. What we don’t know: When He’s coming back. The phrase “at just the right time” lets us know it’s “kairos”- God’s time/timing not “chronos”- our time/timing. There’s a mystery to all of this. We know Him but we haven’t even scratched the surface of knowing Him. We see Him but we haven’t even seen a fraction of His fullness. We are to be living in the expectation of His second coming in the same way Israel lived in expectation of His first coming. We must remember that there is only One deserving of worship because there is only One true God. Domitian, an emperor in Paul’s day, demanded worship as an immortal, but our God is the only one who lives in unapproachable light. This earthly emperor didn’t hold a candle to Christ. Paul described Jesus as “the one who alone has immortality.” There’s this tension we are called to live in as believers where we hold tightly to what we know about God while also knowing we can’t hold God. He holds us. He walks among us and reigns over us simultaneously. God is approachable through Christ and yet is far beyond our grasp to comprehend or control.
Application
God isn’t an invention of man. Unlike these monoliths that are starting to show up everywhere. The first tall shiny pillar showed up in a remote part of a Utah desert on November 18 and disappeared just as mysteriously on November 27. Around the same time, another monolith appeared on the other side of the planet on a Romanian hillside. It disappeared a few days later and another showed up on an Atasacedero, CA hiking trail. This pattern has now continued in the UK on the Isle of Wight, in the middle of a field in Belgium, and one just two days ago here in the San Diego area in a strip mall in Scripps Ranch. People love the mystery of it as it evokes the weirdness of the monoliths in Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Many artists are now taking credit for making these and placing these and now some are selling replicas of them for $45,000 apiece. Gotta love capitalism. It’s now being discovered that they are “disappearing” because, well, people are taking them and loading them in their trucks in the middle of the night as caught on cameras. The mystery didn’t last long. What seemed unbelievable and was being deemed proof of alien life has now been revealed as something man-made, approachable, removable, and, yes, marketable. Yet, just for a moment, we got a taste of what it might have been like to live in Israel at the time of Christ’s birth. The shepherds running around the town sharing what they saw, Simeon and Anna spontaneously singing of the Messiah on the day Jesus was dedicated, the rumors of the Messiah sightings all the way over in Egypt. Could this really be the Messiah they had been waiting for? All through His life and ministry man tried to understand Him, market Him, and manipulate Jesus. When they couldn’t control Him they set out to kill Him. Mary, the mother of Jesus had the right idea on how to respond to the mystery of Christ: “17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. “(Luke 2:17–19) This word for “pondering” is the idea of placing things together for comparison. Her pondering is typical of Hebrew thought patterns, which are circular, in contrast to Greek thought patterns, which are linear. Her thought pattern would look more like ascending a spiral staircase (always finding larger and more splendid rooms) than filling out an outline. She was central to Christ’s arrival and still didn’t understand what was going on. This brings great comfort to me. God isn’t going to fit in my outline or explanations. He isn't going to explain Himself to me. I really don’t know what God is up to in all the craziness of this year. I do know that, like Mary, He has invited me to be a part of the story that heralds His second coming. I don’t when and I don’t know how but I’m glad He can’t be controlled. I’m glad my God isn’t a hunk of mysterious metal that can be loaded up in my truck. He can’t be shaped by human hands for His hands have shaped me. Evelyn Underhill once said, “If God were small enough to be understood, he wouldn’t be big enough to be worshipped.” I love this quote as it sums up Paul’s point to Timothy and what we celebrate in the first epiphany. Embrace the ministry of mystery. Teach and live out what we know for sure and know for sure we don’t know everything about the God we serve. We have tried for many years to explain everything about God and yet, when it comes down to it, we haven’t even come close to knowing everything about Him. I love this about our God. Without the mystery of God we will claim mastery of God instead of dependency on God losing intimacy with God which is why He came in the first place! I don’t need to understand Him to trust Him. He fills me to overflowing even though He doesn’t fill in all the blanks
Prayer
I’m so thankful I can’t plumb the depths of your love or reach the heights of Your greatness or see to the end of Your reign. You are beyond me, above me, around me, and yet in me! Thank you for the mystery of the incarnation, God made flesh. May I never grow used to this no matter how many Christmas messages I write.
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