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God's Accommodating Mode
By John R. Gavazzoni
The story is told of a farmer who only infrequently attended church. As it happened on one of those times, the pastor preached a very long sermon. Later in the week, the pastor made it a point to pay a visit to the farmer to let him know how glad he was to see him at church again after what had been a long absence. Concerned that he had made a good impression that might have encouraged the man to attend more frequently, he asked did the man enjoy the sermon.
Replying honestly, the man answered, "It was a good sermon, preacher, but more than a mite too long." To that, the pastor replied, "Well, brother Smith, you're a farmer, and don't you make sure your farm animals are well fed?" "Yep, that I do," replied the farmer. "But, you know, from time to time I load up the wagon with enough hay for several day's feeding, and you must know, being a preacher here in farm country, you don't dump the whole load for just one feeding."
God never dumps the whole load. He feeds us what we can bear so that we'll progressively "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, Jesus Christ." In fact, that mode of moderation on God's part, also involves accommodation along with the moderation. What I mean, is that we, ourselves, almost always, almost inevitably, insist on bringing to the table food of questionable nutrition to mix in with what God is serving. God accommodates....that is, He makes concession for.... our acquired taste of food from other sources.
It seems, we just can't swallow what God is putting on our plate without mixing it with what has become culturally tasty to us. God puts up with it deliberately, meeting us where we're at in order to bring us to the place He has for us. Please reckon on that way of the Lord with folks. He comes to where we're at to take us to where He's at.
The Lord goes along with where we're at in order to bring us to where we need to be. Sometimes He'll even give us the impression that our direction of thought is consistent with His, when actually ours is utterly inconsistent with His. I'm not going to dissect the story of how the Lord dealt with the rich young ruler. Just, read it carefully again though you may be very familiar with the account. You'll see what I'm saying. Jesus ended up driving home a very important point to the young man while answering his questions as if the man was right in his presumptions. Don't, by the way, presume that your spiritual maturity level is such that God would never resort using that mode with you.
Did you ever notice how the Lord dealt with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus? I'm referring to that point in His walking with them, that the two decided to stop at an inn for the night. There it is, right there in scripture: Jesus made "AS IF" He would travel on. He pretended to do something that He did not intend to do. How do you handle that according to your concept of how God should act? He momentarily led them to think He was about to do something He had no intention of doing. Yeah, He did. Yes, yes, yes, He did. But what was the Lord up to?
Keep in mind, that in the case of the Lord, perfect wisdom and pure motive were at work to sublimely bless those two disciples. As I've been granted insight on what the Lord was up to, I came to the understanding that by acting as if He was about to travel on, it caused the two to realize how much more they needed to hear from Him, especially in regard to His crucifixion that had so confounded them. Profound had been their disillusionment at the humiliation of Him in whom they had had such messianic hope.
The recollection might have slipped away of how their hearts had burned within as He spoke to them of all the things written of Him in Moses and the prophets. But Jesus acted in a way that made concession to that inclination....the inclination that lets such precious interaction with the Lord lose its impact as time goes on. Jesus, making concession for that inclination, and, acting as if He would go on and not spend more time with them, He effectively manipulated them into realizing how intense was their desire to hear more from Him. Just like He did with Peter, when He kept asking him if he loved Him. His mode was that of really putting Peter in touch with his love of Jesus, when his shame of having betrayed the Lord wouldn't allow him to openly confess His love of the Lord.
In like manner, the Lord once told me, "Sell the house; get ready to go." It was as close to actually hearing God audibly as ever I've experienced. He knew I would presume that He meant I was to get ready to travel as a Bible teacher for an association of brethren that I had become involved with. It turned out, that wasn't what His instruction was about at all. I just immediately presumed a connection that seemed obvious to me. He actually meant something altogether different. I eventually came to understand that "where" I was to go, was to a place in my walk with Him that never entered my mind at the time. By doing so, He made me realize how we add our presumptions to the word of the Lord, and for the need to wait on Him for a fuller explanation of His meaning.
The Jews, during Jesus' ministry among them, had all kinds of notions, for instance, about demons and unclean spirits: mostly dumb, awful, soul-shattering stuff that had infiltrated their thinking through the sect of the Pharisees who introduced ideas into Judaism from the paganism of the nations that had held them in captivity. What Jesus delivered people from was not at all what those people thought was the source of their oppression. Those looking on did so with the same misunderstanding that Jesus, at that time and place, did not choose to address. There was the occasion when the Lord revealed the actual source in His warning, to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.
Deliverance was His priority at that point....not theological accuracy. Often, the Lord may do miraculous things for us, while, for a season, leaving our theology uncorrected. Aren't you glad you can be blessed by Him without fully understanding His ways? Demonization really has to do with deliverance from such a terrible pit of perceived worthlessness that we give up, and give in to an identity, or even a legion of identities, that fit how disgusting we think we are to God. We end up giving into, and acting out, a depth of identity-despair rather than any longer subjecting ourselves to the intolerable pain of trying to....as we suppose....be something we really aren't.
Also, toward understanding how the Lord dealt with Israel after delivering them from their bondage in Egypt, we must keep in mind that He was dealing with a people, most of whom, had never known anything but slavery all their lives. They had a slave-mentality. He formed them into the nation from which the world's Messiah would come, spoon-feeding them with freedom in a way, and in the measure, they could handle. Keep the above in mind, those of you who are repulsed by some of the things God commanded of the Israelites on their way to the promised land, during their 40 years of wandering in the desert, and during their time in the land, especially in respect to their dealings with opposing nations.
Not only were the Israelites on their way out of bondage to freedom, but those nations that opposed what God was doing with them and through them, those nations also were being dealt with through Israel according to where they were at the time, with God having a purpose and plan for them also, nationally and individually, that extended beyond this life. Do you think that when God destroyed Sodom, that He was done working redemptively on behalf of inhabitants of that city beyond this life?
The very fact that God gave Israel the law was a matter of accommodation, of concession, for they, already suffering from the toxic effect from Adam and Eve eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil=law, their needed was for grace packaged within law in order to ingest some measure of grace, so that the law became their schoolmaster (child attendant) to bring them to Christ.
That's how they thought: everything was either good or evil, either right or wrong. They were unable to think beyond such conceptualization. What you do is speak to a people so mentally toxically-infected by speaking to them within a right vs wrong paradigm. Whether it is THE law of Moses as the archetypal law, or any law-basis for living; it's all the same generically. Trace a people's problems to the root, and there you'll find an obsession with trying not to be wrong, and desperately trying to be right, even when horrific distortion enters the picture. ".....the law is the power of sin," not only in the case of THE law, but all law, for man is meant to live from the inside out, not from externally-imposed requirement. We're all missing the mark BECAUSE law leads us to try to hit the mark. If you don't try to hit the mark, you won't miss the mark.
People are horrified at what God required of the Israelites in the conquest of Canaan. How about keeping in mind the existential state of both the Israelites and the peoples they were to drive out of the land, and that God was dealing with both from where they were at to bring them to their destiny in Christ. I have to ask those who can't imagine God commanding the extinction of a nation who regularly sacrificed little children on the white-hot extended arms of the image of Molech roasting them alive. Well, would you rather have that nation still around doing the same thing?
Ponder prayerfully and carefully the ways of God that you might find repulsive to your sensibilities, considering that, given evil's undeniable existence....traced to God subjecting all creation to futility....who would you prefer to be directing that evil?
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