“What can I do? How can I live? To show my world the treasure of Jesus? What will it take? What could I give? So that they can know the treasure he is? If I can sing, let my songs be full of his glory. If I can speak, Let my words be full of his grace. If I should live or die, let me be found pursuing this prize: The One who alone satisfies. The treasure of Jesus.” – Steven Curtis Chapman
It has often been true that many people, even Christian people, do not have a great appreciation for the Old Testament. As a pastor, I’ve even had church members complain to me personally that I was preaching far too much from the Old Testament. “We’re a New Testament church, Pastor. That was the Old Covenant. We’re people of the New Covenant.” I didn’t feel at the time like I really wanted to debate him on the foolishness of his argument but this attitude seems like a prevalent Christian attitude which, when you think about it, really doesn’t make sense when you realize how much New Testament truth is based in the Old Testament. The New has been immersed in and is proverbially dripping with the Old.
Now people may have this opinion of the Old Testament for two reasons:
- They may not see the relevance of the Old Testament to their particular lives. They find it rather archaic and out-of-date; believing that it may have had something to say to a previous generation, but they have serious doubts as to whether it has anything to say to ours.
- They don’t like history. For some, history was that boring class of dates and names they had to memorize in high school, but that had little to do with their life practically. For them, history was something that they endured, not delighted in. Unfortunately, no one can fully understand or correctly interpret and apply the teachings of the New Testament without studying the historical, contextual ground from which it grew!
Perhaps I’m a nerd, but I find it fascinating that something as simple as geography; the particular placement of where a nation is located could teach us something profound about how we live our lives today. Yet, in the Book of Ezekiel, we find this curious statement,
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her…”
Why did God set Jerusalem in the exact spot where she is located?
Perhaps you’re asking: “What does that have to do with my life at the present moment as a harried housewife with screaming babies who need to be fed; or the piles of laundry that threaten to engulf me? Or what does that have to do with my life, if I’m a stressed-out businessman trying to please a micro-managing boss or a poor befuddled freshman at college living on my own for the first time, far from the influence of my Christian parents?”
Well, hang on because there is a connection to be made here!
Three millenniums ago, where three continents meet, the most fertile land in the ancient world was called home by hundreds of nomadic tribes seeking their place in the world. It was called the Fertile Crescent. It stretched in a semi-circle for thousands of miles north from the Persian Gulf in the east, following the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is today Iraq, to the river Nile in the west. This highly desired land sandwiched between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was known as the land of Mesopotamia. (Literally: “the land between the rivers”). This land was some of the most cultivatable soil in the region and was therefore highly prized by many different nations. It was for centuries considered, The Center of the World!
There were also major east-west trade routes established all along its route. It was a place where many fortunes could be won or lost. Therefore, the nation who exercised supremacy over this region controlled more than just the destiny of millions, but the flow of trade and commerce, making whoever exercised dominion over it, a veritable boatload of money.
Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation actually followed this route from ancient Ur in Mesopotamia, up and around the Fertile Crescent to Haran on his way to Canaan. For centuries, armies and empires fought pitched battles within the Fertile region. And given that Israel was located on the west end of the Fertile Crescent, merchants and armies traveling from east to west or north to south; all had to pass through Israel to get where they were going.
And that’s extraordinary because it wasn’t blind luck that Israel just happened to be located where it was. No, according to the prophet Ezekiel, Israel’s location was sovereignly chosen by God so that she could make the greatest impact upon the ancient world for Him. Kings, warriors, and merchants all had to travel through this ancient land to get to any other part of the known world. This made it possible for many different tribes and nations to hear about Yahweh from the lips and lives of God’s chosen people. They had been strategically placed for maximum beneficial impact.
The same is true of you…if you follow Jesus!
Have you ever considered the reality that you are where you are in life, from the city and the street where you live; to the circle of friends and acquaintances you find yourself surrounded by because God in his sovereignty and providential working has strategically placed you where he wants you to be? So that like Israel, others who have never heard of him can, perhaps for the very first time in their lives, know the One who died for them?
How awesome is that?
The apostle Paul made this statement to the Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, he said, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” Acts 17:26
Here in this Scripture, we make a startling discovery: That we live where we do; in the time and place in history that we do; not by our own determination and choice but because of God’s pre-determinative plan. In other words, you live where you do, not so much because of a choice that you made; but because of a choice that God made.
Perhaps you protest? “What do you mean I didn’t make a choice? How can you say that? Are you saying we don’t have free will?”
Not at all but understand this: We are the product of millions of providential occurrences that have happened in the past without our involvement that have affected why we are here right now. For example, more than likely you didn’t pick your first name to which you identify, someone else did. You didn’t decide which state you’d be born in; someone else made that determination.
If you think about it, an incalculable number of seemingly random circumstances have coalesced before, and during your life that have guided you to where you are now. The decisions and choices of others have helped make you what you are today. These small, seemingly unrelated happenstances have ultimately affected your life; being orchestrated by a benevolent providence for your ultimate good and his ultimate glory.
All of this means then that we are not self-made people! We owe the blessings of our existence, who we are…and even, where we are, to the One who has orchestrated time and circumstance to our advantage. We live, not by willful self-determination, but by the grace of God. As a wise man once said, “We live by permission, not by good management.”
In all of this then, we learn something extraordinary about God. He’s not who many might perceive him to be; he’s not a Mai-Tai sipping god, who sits with distracted interest on the lido deck of eternity, watching the world go by; who is as helpless as we; who is as bound to the unseen forces of fate and fortune as we seemingly are. No. He’s in fact, a God so magnificent in power; so creative in intricate design; that he orchestrates even the most random, coincidental, and infinitesimal of circumstance, about which we had no control, to bring about the blessings of life for all humanity.
And if he can do that, why would we ever then think that he’s a God who cares nothing for us personally; or that he’s indifferent to the myriad of devastating, and disappointing events which touch our lives, since even where we “hang our hat” has been lovingly determined by his Almighty hand?
You are where you are; to be “an Israel” set in the midst of the pagan nations of people surrounding you! Who knows that whether you have come to this place, for such a time as this?
My advice? Brighten the corner of the world, where you are!