Jannes and Jambres

The power of Sauron is still less than fear makes it.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

Warm–up: Exodus 7:11-12, 22

Jannes and Jambres were the two court magicians who opposed Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh. They’re unnamed in the Old Testament, but in his second letter to Timothy, Paul uses the names tradition has assigned them (2 Timothy 3:8). 

The two men appear frequently in extra–biblical sources as dark wizards. According to Jewish tradition, it was they who led Egypt’s pharaoh astray until he and his army met death in the sea, where the two magicians perished as well. One ancient traveler, Macarius of Alexandria, claimed he visited their garden tomb in Upper Egypt, an immense monument dedicated to the memory of their immense power and influence.

The essence of all the traditions regarding these magicians’ is their deliberate and determined opposition to God, driven by the forces of evil. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls relates how Moses and Aaron arose with the help of the Prince of Lights, while Belial (Satan) raised up Yohanah (Jannes) and his brother. For this reason many believe that Jannes and Jambres are the source of the German legend of Johann Faust, the magician and alchemist who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for power and knowledge. 

But the biblical record is sparse. It simple reports that Jannes and Jambres were Pharoah’s magicians who through their magic were able to duplicate the plague on the Nile.  They were also able to counterfeit the plague of frogs, but were unable to remove it, which suggests that the devil and his minions have no power to alleviate human suffering. It is our God of mercy who brings eternal consolation.

The magicians were frustrated at last by the plague of lice and confessed that their powers were limited. This is “the finger of God,” they said, in that this stroke could not be explained by natural causes. In the end, they were overwhelmed by the plague of boils and driven from Pharaoh’s court in disgrace (Exodus 9:11). 

Paul, in speaking of the opponents of the gospel in his day, says of them: “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected as regards the faith. They will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two (Jannes and Jambres) came to be” (2 Timothy 3:9). 

Interesting word, “folly.” Paul’s term means, “to lack understanding.” Those who promote error don’t “get it.” They may have a modicum of knowledge, but they have no real understanding, no answers for the deep distress of human existence, no counsel for the issues that break our hearts, which is why, in the end, even their own people turn away from them. 

Furthermore, Paul says, they are wicked—“men of depraved minds” to use his precise phrase. Under the surface lies darkness and moral corruption. Though suave on the surface, they are corrupt and ruined people, and their character will come to the surface in time and be seen by all.

The only people who are seduced into cults and ensconced in them are those who want to be. Those who truly want God will always see through evil men and women. “The Lord knows those who are His,” Paul assures us and he will not let his children go (2 Timothy 2:17-19). 

And so, we need not fear those who inveigh against the truth, though we feel their presence and they grow in strength and numbers. In due time, their folly and impotence will be manifest. “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots,” Jesus said. “Leave them (alone)” (Matthew 15:13, 14). 

David Roper

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015,  

A Defective Leader

"He has not a single redeeming defect."

 —Benjamin Disraeli of another British parliamentarian

Warm–up: Exodus 5:21–23

I read somewhere that a Huey Cobra helicopter, practicing auto rotations during a military night-training exercise, landed on its tail rotor, separating the tail boom from the rest of the aircraft. Fortunately, the aircraft wound up on its skids, sliding down the runway doing three-sixties in a shower of sparks. As the Cobra passed the tower, the following exchange occurred: 

Tower: “Sir, do you need assistance?”

Cobra: “I don’t know, tower. We ain’t done crashin’ yet!”

As I look at my life and leadership over the years, I have to admit that much of it has been one resounding crack-up after another. My best–laid schemes have crashed and burned, my brilliant strategies have augured in, and “I ain’t done crashin’ yet.” 

Yet God wastes nothing—not even our failures. He discerns the possibilities in every humiliating debacle and uses them to make us better leaders than we ever thought possible. 

God’s ways are not our ways: We equate leadership with lordship; He equates it with servanthood. We seek power so we can set things right; He strips us of importance so He can do a better job. We want strength so we can help God get on with His work; He weakens us and reveals our ineptitude so He can get us out of the way. We advertise our credentials so others can be sure of us; He lets our assets fail us so others see that apart from God we can do nothing.

Conventional wisdom contends that weakness is a hindrance. We must be strong and able. But in spiritual matters, flaws and frailties are valuable leadership traits. For one thing they help others count less on our leadership and make them more dependent on God to find their way.

Moses is a good example of this notion. His experience, his background, his talents, his training had earned him the admiration of God’s people. They looked to Moses for their deliverance. Ye they soon learned that all such hope was vain, that their leader, at best, was as weak and frail as they. He could not break through Pharaoh’s defenses; he could not reduce Israel’s servitude; he could not set his people free. And thus the way was prepared for Israel to lean on God.

We are inclined to fix on personalities, to be impressed by intellect, education, leadership skills, the passion of a leader’s causes or strength of will. We believe that wisdom and power are vested in that person. Such adulation, however, is nothing more than humanism—making man or woman the measure of all things. What’s worse, it’s idolatry: a false centering on someone other than God.  

And so God lets our leaders fall off their pedestals. Failure, indecision, and inability to achieve what they’ve set out to do bring humbling certainty of their inadequacy and strip their followers of illusion and their dependency. Such weaknesses show us that they, as do we, “shuffle along on feet of clay,” to use Brennan Manning’s phrase. They teach us that the only good thing about us, whatever our position, is the goodness of God. 

Our Lord knew this truth well. He was fully aware that anything good in him came not from his himself but from His Father . When an effusive disciple began to gush, “Good teacher...” Jesus stopped him in his tracks. “Why do you call me good?” He said. “No one is good—except God” (Mark 10:18).[1]

David Roper

[1] There is mystery here for Jesus was fully God. Yet in the Incarnation he was fully man and as such he acted as a man wholly dependent upon God (cf. John 5:19, 30). 

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015

  

Holy Laughter

Fairy tales do not deny the existence of…sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat….giving a glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

—J.R.R. Tolkien.

Warm–up: Genesis 21:1-8

It is a commonplace of Christian thought that joy is deep tranquility, yet it seems to me that biblical joy is something more: it is “holy laughter”—the laughter of Sarah, for example: “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” 

Behind Sarah’s laugh lay a promise. Twenty-five years before, a mysterious visitor, actually God in disguise, promised Abraham that he would have a son (Genesis 18:9–15). Sarah, eavesdropping on the other side of the 

tent flap, chuckled to herself in disbelief. 

Why did Sarah laugh? Was it a belly laugh over the naivety of men? Was it the self–depreciating laugh of one who considered herself unworthy of God’s grace? Was it a bitter laugh over the disappointment of past hopes? We're not told. What we are told is that Abraham’s body was dead, and, as the KJV text so quaintly puts it, “it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women” (Hebrews 11:12; Genesis: 18:11).

But, though it seemed impossible, the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised: Sarah “bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” God created new life in Sarah’s dead body—the promised seed, the link to the One who would bring salvation to the world. And Sarah laughed again, this time the laughter of joyous surprise. 

Joy is akin to humor, which, they tell me, is the sudden perception of an incongruity. A story takes an unexpected twist, jerks our minds around and we laugh. A joke, in other words, is a “surprise.” 

The etymology of the word “joy” suggests a similar idea—surprise. (That’s the basis of the pun in Lewis’ autobiography, Surprised by Joy.) God sends a happy surprise and the emotion we feel is joy.

G. K. Chesterton claimed that joy, “which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian…and the dominant theme of Christian faith. By its creed (i.e., what we believe) joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special (occasional) and small.” In other words, certain things we believe lead us to laugh. We “get the joke.” 

Joy comes with a sudden perception of truth, when some word of God breaks into our minds. George McDonald says, “[The Christian] does not take his joy from himself. He feels joy in himself, but it comes to him from God.”  

Joy is an “Aha!” moment, a startling revelation, a sudden awareness, an abrupt remembrance of God’s goodness and grace. [1]

I think of a friend who spent four years and thousands of dollars pursuing a Ph.D. at a West Coast university only to be told shortly before graduation that his Christian pre–suppositions precluded the degree. For a moment Bob envisioned dollars and days sprouting wings and flying away. Then a truth came to mind, accompanied by the words of an old hymn: 

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold,

I’d rather be His than have riches untold . . .

I’d rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today. 

And Bob laughed, a clear, ringing laugh—at which point his advisor thought he’d lost his mind. But this was not insanity. Bob just “got the joke.”

I think of another example, this time from C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The White Witch, with deep magic, had put Aslan to death on the Stone Table. The children, distraught at his death, wandered back to the table to mourn him, only to find that he had risen from the dead! (A deeper magic had brought Aslan back to life.)

[Aslan] stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table. Laughing, though she didn't know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again. A mad chase began. Round and round the hilltop he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had, except in Narnia! 

“The joy of the Lord is your strength!” Nehemiah chortled (Nehemiah 8:10). This is gigantic joy, a joy that only God and His people can know!

May our sides split with holy laughter!

[1] The devil hates our laughter. “Joy,” C. S. Lewis’s demon, Screwtape, writes to his nephew, “is a disgusting and a direct assault to the realism, dignity and austerity of hell.”

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015,  

A Friend of Souls

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn,

In the place of their self–content;

There are souls like stars that dwell apart

In a fellow-less firmament;

There are pioneer souls that blaze a path

Where highways never ran;

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,

And be a friend to man.

— Samuel Walter Foss

Warm–up: Genesis 14:18–20

Consider Abraham, returning from the raid on Chedorlaomer and his coalition of Mesopotamian kings—battle scarred, exhausted, fearful, aware that he had angered four of the most powerful kings of that era.There in the Valley of Shaveh, Abraham is met by Melchizedek, King of Salem, who brings out bread and wine and blesses him. 

Who is this great high priest who blesses our father Abraham? “Without doubt the lesser is blessed by the greater” (Hebrews 7:7).

We know very little about Melchizedek—only that he was the king of Salem (ancient Jerusalem), that he was “a priest of God Most High,” that he fed and blessed the famished Abraham, and then passed off the scene. 

Much is made of his name, which means “King of Righteousness,” but it was a common throne name in those days. (The name is written in two parts if it were a title rather than a personal name.) 

So, I ask you, who was this king–priest who has been lionized in the history of Israel and in the Church? The Essenes of Qumran thought he was an angel; the philosopher Philo believed he was the divine Logos; the historian Josephus said he was just a righteous man, “but as such was by common consent…made a priest of God.”

David rightly saw Melchizedek as a prototype of the promised Messiah who would establish a new order of king–priests (Psalms 110:1-4). 

The author of Hebrews, taking the argument further, said that he is like Jesus, who is a priest despite his non–levitical ancestry, whose title is “King of Righteousness” and “King of Peace,” and who, because he appears in the account without beginning or end of life, “remains a priest forever” (Hebrews 7:2-3). 

David and the writer of Hebrews have the last word, of course— Melchizedek is a type of Jesus. But, as Josephus correctly noted, he was also a man, and as such is an example of the kind of man I want to be.

I want to be a friend of souls. I want to stand by the way as Melchizedek did, waiting for weary travelers, “….laying low, in the places where the ragged people go.” 

I want to look for those who have been battered and wronged by others, who carry the dreary burden of a wounded and disillusioned heart. I want to nourish and refresh them with bread and wine and send them on their way with a benediction. 

I cannot “fix” those who pass by, though I want to and frequently try to, but I can love them and listen to their hearts. I can pray with them. I can share a word of scripture when it’s appropriate. I can sing “sustaining songs,” as every good Poohphile knows to do. And I can leave them with a blessing. 

A “blessing” is more than a parting shibboleth, or a polite response to a sneeze. We bless others when we bring them to the One who is the source of blessing. Melchizedek blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High…” As Billy Graham would say, he blessed him real good.

“To bless,” is to “bestow something that promotes or contributes to another’s happiness, well-being, or prosperity.” The Hebrew word comes from a root that means, “to kneel,” perhaps because of an old association between kneeling and receiving good from a benefactor.

In the Old Testament God is the benefactor. He alone bestows the blessing. “This is how you are to bless the Israelites,” God commanded Moses. “Say to them: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace’” (Number 6:24-26). 

I cannot strengthen feeble hands, nor can I straighten knees that have given away, but I can bring weary travelers to the one who can. His bread gives endurance, strength and eternal consolation. His wine gladdens the heart and sustains it.

I cannot undo the cruel or dreary circumstances of anyone’s journey, nor can I take away its travail, but I can remind those who trudge by that there is one who walks with them—who holds them with his right hand, who guides them with his counsel, and afterward will take them into glory.

I cannot help the helpless, but I can pray with them and bring them to the throne of grace to find help in time of need.  I cannot show them the way, but I can “show them God” (John Piper).

This is my benediction. 

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015.

My Times; His Hands

Psalm 31

“My times are in Your hand..." (Psalm 31:15). 

Two small words in the Hebrew text. Two nouns with pronominal suffices. No verb. “My times; your hands.” 

"My times; your hands.” I think of days when I feel ignored, marginalized, overlooked, forgotten, set aside. When “I have been forgotten like broken pottery”—a useless, discarded chard (31:12). Yet I will trust in you, Lord. I will say, “You are my God.” I will shelter myself in his unfailing love and the good things he has stored up for me (31:16).

My times; your hands. I think of all that is contingent and changing around me as I age. Change is not chance. God’s hands control and contain every circumstance, even events that seem random and arbitrary. “God is the stability of (my) times,” Isaiah wrote. “An abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge…” (Isaiah 33:6). 

My times; your hands. Good times; bad times.  “Into your hands I entrust my spirit (31:5).”

David Roper

2.24.20

The Voice

Psalm 29

The voice of the Lord strikes

with flashes of lightning.

The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;

the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh.

The voice of the Lord twists the oaks

and strips the forests bare.

And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”  

The Lord gives strength to his people;

the Lord blesses his people with peace —Psalms 29:7-9

Many years ago my father and I were fishing a beaver pond in Colorado when it began to rain. We took cover under a nearby grove of quaking aspen, but the rain continued to fall, so we decided to call it a day and ran for the truck. I had just opened the ruck door when lightning struck the aspen grove with a thunderous fireball that stripped leaves and bark off the trees, leaving a few smoldering limbs…  

And then there was silence.  

Voltage! Percussion! Shock and awe! “The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare.”

David saw thunder and lightning  as “the voice of  the Lord,” as did Job: ”Listen, O listen, to the blast of his voice and the sound that issues from his mouth. His lightning is hurled across the heaven, it strikes to the extremities of earth. After it comes a roaring sound, God thunders with majestic voice. He does not check his thunderbolts until his voice resounds no more” (Job 37:2-4). 

God speaks with thunderous, irresistible power through His Word—to bless us with “strength." Strength to overcome, to endure, to be patient, to stand, to wait, to get up and go, to do nothing at all. 

And then there is "peace." 

“Gloria in excelsis is the beginning," German theologian Franz Deitzsch comments, "and in terra pax the close."

David Roper

The Days of Mourning

The Lord will be your everlasting light,

And the days of your mourning shall be ended.

Also your people shall all be righteous;

They shall inherit the land forever,

the branch of My planting, 

the work of My hands,

To the end that they may share my beauty.

—Isaiah 60:20,21

Did Isaiah know that these predictions would find their ultimate fulfillment in Heaven?  Perhaps he used what he knew—the promises made to Israel—to describe what he saw—Heaven and the hereafter. 

If so, there is a promise here that someday soon our righteousness will be perfected and our salvation and glorification will be complete. Further, the Vinedresser will “plant” us in the place he has prepared for us, to the end that we may share his beauty forever.  

All good, but the phrase that comforts me this morning is this: Very soon, “the days of your mourning will be ended.” 

It’s intolerable to think that sorrow will go on forever. But to know that our mourning shall be ended is to gain fresh hope and strength for the day. When we go to be with Jesus (or when he comes to be with us) our disappointment, grief and pain will be over, “sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.” Someday the last tear will fall and we will enter into joy. Our mourning will be turned into dancing—a hope that keeps us going in this present vale of tears. 

David Roper

2.11.20