You’ve got to reckon with three central truths in order to navigate through life properly, according to Old Testament Proverbs.

First, the universe operates on the principle of cause and effect; or to apply the truth more directly to human action: the principle of action and consequence. This explains the Proverbs’ preoccupation with metaphors of development. “A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth.” “The root of the righteous bears fruit.” “The righteous will flourish like a green leaf.”

Seeds grow into fruit. Roots branch out. Things develop for better (“The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn which shines brighter and brighter until full day”) or worse (“The way of the wicked is like deep darkness”). Whatever the effect, Proverbs tells us that it did not eventuate in a vacuum, but only after a series of causes.

Not only do actions lead to consequences, but inactivity, also, leads to…nothing. Sometimes that nothing is good: “For lack of wood the fire goes out/ and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.” Sometimes that nothing feels unpleasant, as when the lazy person refuses to act: “The desire of the sluggard kills him/ for his hands refuse to labor.”

You should buy into this law. Accept it and don’t chafe under it. Life is, to a large degree, predictable. The diligent will have. The man who cultivates wise speech succeeds. The person who works on causes can (to a large degree) fashion particular effects.

Secondly, the universe functions this way because the Creator made it this way: “The LORD by wisdom founded the earth/ by understanding He established the heavens/ by his knowledge the deeps broke open/ and the clouds drop down the dew.”

So, behind (or in, or whatever preposition you want to use!) this principle of cause and effect is a Person, the God. There is no so-called spiritual world (where sometimes we wish God would stay) where the laws of cause and effect turn to mush and everything becomes unpredictable.

Truth # 2 renders things more complex. For example: Let’s say we buy into truth # 1, the rule of cause and effect. We like the fact that life has become predictable. We start to program the vast machine and come up with a list of winners and losers in life. And according to our programming, the fatherless (especially in the ancient Near Eastern world) will come out a loser. He has no protection against the strong; little opportunity to develop causes that will lead to success; little guidance.

But hear! “Do not move an ancient landmark/ or enter the fields of the fatherless/ for their Redeemer is strong/ He will plead their cause against you.” Some of understanding the universe of cause and effect is being told there is a God (here, the strong Redeemer) who takes up for the fatherless. Here is a Cause, or better, a Causer, that we didn’t reckon with! This truth of the Causer (pardon the awkward, unbiblical title) does not negate the law of cause and effect, but it does expand it and personalize it.

Part of the savvy and cunning of living well is factoring in a God who has declared His investments and opinions, and then making decisions accordingly. In other words, living well is not just doing the smart thing, it is also doing the good thing.

Thirdly, because of the combinations of truth # 1 and truth # 2, life is, to some degree, inexplicable. “It is the glory of God to conceal things.” You can never totally figure out life. First round draft picks are sometimes busts. The laboratory cannot simulate life. What’s that about “mice and men”?

But Proverbs is no house of cards that collapses with truth # 3. Life is still largely predictable. It is still wisdom to work the causes, to develop a work ethic, a pattern of speech, a self-control, qualities that comprise the righteous roots of the good life.

And how does the Proverb end? “It is the glory of God to conceal things/ but the glory of kings to search them out.” And again, “The eye for seeing/ the ear for hearing/ the LORD has made them both.” It is good to observe, to reverently question, to scratch below the surface of things.

And now, for the dear people of EBC, a Proverb for you: “The sluggard does not plow in autumn/ he will seek in harvest, and have nothing.” There it is, a good wall to lean against, something that we can stop wondering: The tedium of plowing must precede any harvest – in child rearing, prayer, personal wisdom, understanding God, vocation, etc.

According to truth # 1 we will plow. According to truth # 2 we will hope that the effort of our plowing will be outmatched by the harvest’s bounty, because there is a Redeemer. According to truth # 3, we will not busy ourselves with comparing the effects with the causes, but we will work the causes.

Let us believe in a process. Let us not be the sort of persons who are dissatisfied unless they meet with the spontaneous and unexplained. Let us not neglect the process and then hope for a miracle. Sometimes God works miracles but always He commands work. And our faith is neither in a miracle nor in a process but in the God who has spoken – yes, even in Proverbs.

When John stood in Herod’s jail and had some time on his hands, he began to second-guess things. So he sent a couple of his followers to ask the man Jesus from Nazareth: “Are you the One who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

This question helps us see that the daily activities of Jesus surprised even the purest of hearts and stoutest of souls, those who had been keenly aware of His greatness. But why exactly were people surprised?

There is probably a complex answer to this question, but I’m going to hone in on one side of it: People were surprised at Jesus’ attention to detail. Following I will quote from three Old Testament prophecies that are at least partially fulfilled in the word and ministry of Jesus. I will show that the way in which these prophecies are fulfilled is surprising because of their small beginnings, their lack of pomp, and their mundaneness (I think that’s a word).

1. Ezekiel 36, 37 – Thus says the Lord GOD…I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you…And I will put my Spirit within you…And I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live.

Nicodemus, a ruler in the sophisticated political/religious Jewish governance, comes to Jesus at night and acknowledges that God must be sponsoring him. (Where else could he get this kind of power?) But behind this acknowledgement was an unspoken question: Is this the end of the age? (Meaning) Will all the hopes we’ve been taught to hope come into being? (Meaning) Is it time for Israel to trounce all her enemies and her Messiah to become the world’s ruler?

Jesus replies to these unspoken questions and says, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The ruler is not surprised that Jesus here brings up the “kingdom of God,” – that’s where he was going with his initial question. But “born again” throws him for a loop. As does (and here is my point) Jesus’ emphasis on “one.”

Jesus’ response to Nicodemus harkens back to Ezekiel 36 and 37, where clean water is sprinkled on the house of Israel and they are washed from their uncleanness, a renewed spirit is given to them, and thus new life is breathed into them. Nicodemus imagined this as a national event; Jesus demurs, “Unless one is born again…”

2. Isaiah 11 – The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him– the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD– and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears

A woman comes away from a conversation with Jesus most impressed that “[He] told me all I ever did.” She is surprised that the “spirit of wisdom and understanding” given to the Messiah could be useful for more than crafting public policy, but also for piecing through a single tawdry life.

3. Isaiah 49 – This is what the LORD says: “In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, 9 to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’ “They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. 10 They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.

Again, the OT foretold that the reign of the Messiah would be a time when the natural world is restored. Many OT prophets imagined this restoration as a river coursing its way through a desert and then…the desert greens! Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ (Now this he said about the Spirit).” In other words, Jesus says the prophesied restoration of all things begins in the secret place of a person’s heart, as he recognizes his soul thirstiness and comes to Jesus for drink.

John the Baptist (returning to our first paragraph) stumbled at the process. He thought of the restoration in general and cosmic terms, but Jesus set himself to the restorative task one blind eye at a time. John was surprised that there was a small beginning. Seen from this perspective the miracles of Jesus were many times surprisingly anticlimactic.

John was waiting for the Messiah to exert his righteous power in a spectacular display, but Jesus was subduing one life at a time.

Is there a lesson here for us? Probably. A hankering for the spectacular and grandiose is not a first century Temple Judaism problem; it is a human problem; as is being captivated by generalities and broad slogans; as is choosing the abstract concept over the concrete reality.

For example, how many times did Jesus remind us of our duty to love humanity? The answer is, surprisingly, zero. Instead you are to love your neighbor as yourself. You see the difference, right? How many times have you been offended at a warm and fuzzy concept? But how many times have you been irritated by your neighbor?

It is dismayingly easy to discuss the homeless problem (concept) and ignore the needs of the financially pinched and cramped within the assembly (reality). We can strain at wide-spread injustice (concept) and live comfortably with a thousand little lies (reality). We can design global initiatives for the sake of Jesus, but never begin on our street… Ok, you get the picture.

Dwell with humility. Think small, think persons. As my colleague Bill Edmondson reminds me, “They’re people, not contacts.” Have a bent toward action and away from talking. Constantly remind yourself that plans are only that. Begin.

The big question that Hebrews 1 & 2 addresses is: Who will rule in God’s world to come?

The phrase “world to come” threatens to turn our minds into mush, unless we ascertain the big truth: that it denotes God’s goal of history, the time in which His various purposes will be accomplished: 1) A new creation that has as its genius the “summing up” of all things in the Messiah 2) God’s dwelling with man in a righteous and harmonious and productive relationship 3) The defeat of evil 4) The manifestation (someone give me a less ponderous word) that God is “All, and in All,” when everything is seen in its relationship to God, or truly.

In other words, the world to come will make this world seem decidedly unreal. C.S. Lewis makes this point (again) at the end of his Chronicles of Narnia series:

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Hebrews begins with a statement contrasting God’s speech to the readers’ fathers with His speech to the readers “by His Son.” Notice that the writer places this unique speech in the “last days,” – the introduction of the Son into the world is the signal that the final Act of history is beginning and the props from the previous Act are being removed.

Then the Son’s credentials are listed, and we can only be impressed by His Curriculum Vitae: The appointed heir of…everything. The One through whom God created the world; Himself the exact imprint of God; who is presently upholding the universe by His powerful word; and the One who (and here is the first discordant note of the letter) “made purification for sins.”

Next there is a string of God’s speeches to the Son, He designates Him as the One who is to rule, who is to wrap up the old, tired aeon and bring in God’s new world, whose enemies will gradually be placed under His feet. The Son gains this status because of His unique relationship to the Father and because of His love of righteousness and hatred of evil.

Evidently there was a movement in this community to venerate angels as God’s selection to govern the world to come. This idea is inexplicable to a modern reader, until it is seen that 1) angels are eminently impressive creatures and would, by any standard, seemingly fit the bill for governance and 2) angels are already, to some extent, mediating God’s rule in this age. But as the Son is extolled in this passage, the angels (both implicitly and explicitly) assume a rank somewhere below Him.

At the end of the first chapter we have the first mention in this letter of “salvation,” – the angels are not the rulers of the world to come but are ministers of those who will inherit salvation. This is a staggering statement – and one that would be decidedly arrogant if it weren’t true. Angels are not God’s choice to govern the world; instead they are ministers (as in a royal court) of those who will inherit salvation.

Then the writer warns against belittling salvation to the point of drifting away from it. If the word spoken by angels (at the giving of Torah) was certain, how much more will the word from the Lord Himself, which the Father confirmed through signs and wonders and gifts of the Spirit. The Trinity Themselves worked and also assigned all kinds of human ambassadors to release the news of this salvation. When God speaks, the only important thing is to listen!

But what is this salvation and what does it look like to neglect it? It is here that I need to make my point and then stop for the week. “Salvation,” as it is framed in Hebrews 1-2, is the restoring of individuals to a place in God’s original plan for humanity e.g., that man would be his delegate, or vice-regent, to rule over the Creation. We can only just mention that this restoration is made possible by the Representative Man, Jesus, who has entered into this reigning glory and foraged a way to bring “many sons” with Him.

It is healthy, oh-so healthy, to remember the pit from which we were rescued. Our case was a severe one, even apart from symptoms: We were dead in trespasses and sins; we were at enmity with God, the source of Life; we were children of wrath; we were racing toward the cosmic trash pile – the place of darkness and fire that God forgets about.

We were drowning and we were rescued. That is true. But we cannot leave things there. God didn’t extract us from the churning waters and leave us in a gasping heap on the riverbank. Or, to put it precisely, he didn’t just save us from a bad future and tell us we can go to heaven. It’s not just rescue; it is just as much restoration.

He intends for us to rule over His creation. I understand that that idea is embarrassing in its claims. I understand that the “Dominion Mandate” of man has been blamed for all sorts of environmental disasters. I understand that it is more than we have asked for, and perhaps even more than we want.

But this is our salvation. How could we neglect it? Many ways, really: Embarrassment, triumphalism, wrong timing, one-dimensional ideas of salvation, false humility, spiritualizing, ignorance – to name a few. We are expected to believe this, but even more, we are expected to think practically about this.

In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul speaks to a situation where believers are taking other believers to court. You can understand his outrage, if for no other reason than the threat that his hard work would be undone. But listen to what he says to the believers: “Do you not know that we (followers of Jesus) will judge angels?”

For Paul, the Hebrews 1-2 understanding of governance in the age to come is not only the accurate one, but it also has implications for one’s deportment in this age.

In the Biblical record, one of the first titles a human gives to God is “El Roi,” the God of Seeing (Genesis 16). Actually, “title” is not quite the right word; “El Roi” is more of a gasp of wonder from Hagar who is startled at the God who finds her in the middle of the wilderness and explains to her past, present, and future situations so personally and precisely.

But Hagar’s unreflective awe at the awareness of God was well-placed. The rest of the Hebrew Scriptures and into the New Testament insistently repeat the truism that nothing is hidden from God.

In Psalm 139, David sets out to articulate God’s exhaustive understanding of a person, but quickly gives up – “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me/ it is high, I cannot attain to it.” Solomon punctuates his oh-so-practical warning against infidelity by rehearsing the old truth: “For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD/ and He ponders all his paths.”

Job, in a despairing revision of Psalm 8, says, “”What is man, that you make so much of him…How long will you not look away from me/ nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?” For him, at this stage of the Job story, God’s interest in man/Job is obsessive and threatening. We think he misapplied a truth, but the point is that it is the truth, of El Roi.

God says to Jeremiah, “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind.” This leads to an observation: Very rarely is God’s knowledge portrayed as automatic, as in, ‘Of course I know everything – I’m God.’ This is not to say that He couldn’t have put things that way, just that He rarely does.

Instead the Bible presents things this way: God questions everything (Job 1:7). He searches every heart (see above). He investigates the projects of men (Genesis 11, 18). He receives scouting reports (Job 1; Zechariah 1; Revelation). Before He judges, God studies the situation and takes everything into account – which explains why, in OT and NT imagery, a city ripe for judgment gets measured.

For those who are theologically in the know, please don’t think that I’m endorsing anything so boring as “open theism.” God knows all, past, present, and future. But to read the Bible is not just to lift concepts from its pages; it is to wrestle with words and let all the words – even the metaphors, anthropomorphisms, anthropopathisms, analogies, and so on – give us our ideas of reality.

Knowing that God sees, that He has studied all situations, that He has found out me after searching is a great concept, first of all, because it is true. It also lends a dynamism and complexity to life. And it gives me pause.

Here’s why: Mark Twain famously said, “Every man is a Moon, with a dark side he never shows to anyone…” But if God knows, and if there is a Day – variously described as a “shaking,” when everything unsubstantial is removed, a “burning,” when everything will be exposed,” or a “court,” “when the secrets of men will be revealed” – can we afford to live crookedly, to report vaguely, to work listlessly, any longer?