Don't Mess With THE PLAN

You are The Plan. So get your act together.

It appears from the New Testament that there was really only one thing that truly upset Christ, and that was when the vessel for the message of God's salvation was messed with or compromised. That seemed to get Him mad - real mad. Mad enough to call Pharisees "white-washed tombs" full of "dead men's bones." Mad enough to fashion a whip and overturn some tables. Mad enough to say to one of His beloved disciples: "Get behind me, Satan!" Messing with The Plan is not a good idea.

In Isaiah 49:6 He says that the Israelites will be a "light for the Gentiles" and in 57:7 He says that the Temple will be called "a house of prayer for all nations." In other words, the Israelites and the Temple were The Plan to bring God's salvation to all people. He had plucked them out of Egypt, cleaned them off, gave them His holy Law, and then placed them down in the center of the world - at the very crossroads of all the major trade routes - so that they could be a light for the Gentiles and a house of prayer for all nations. If He had simply wanted a special people for Himself, He could have moved the entire Israelite nation to some island in the Pacific. But they were to be something greater - they were The Plan to the lost.

So when Christ came and saw the compromises and the heavy burdens placed upon these lost people by the religious leaders, He took offense and cleaned it out. Then He condemned it, saying that it would no longer be The Plan, that every stone would be knocked down before that generation had passed away.

He then took The Plan to the people: dying, rising, destroying sin's power and imparting His Spirit upon all who believe. To them who received Him, He gave the right to be called a son of God. These receivers are now The Plan. (I like the phrase "receiver" better than "believer.") The light to the world is now brought through individuals to the lost and dying. We are movable Temples - in the world, bringing that very same Light to the lost that the original Temple was meant to do.

So - get your act together. Any continued dysfunction in your life is messing with The Plan. We tend to think in a very self-centered way, moaning about our inability to have enough faith, to conquer sin, to reach the deeper place with God that we desire. In the meantime, people are dying because we've kept The Plan in check by this same inability to get our lives in order under the Spirit. It's not about us - it's about them. Our dysfunction only feeds the Great Beast of Inactivity.

Our "religion" tends to feed this self-centeredness. Every focus is on making the receiver/believer comfortable, having our best life now, yet not asking (demanding!) that we put off the old clothes, put on Christ, and get into the world in the way the original Temple was meant to be in the world. So don't be surprised if Christ takes the same action upon your heart that He took in that Temple. He doesn't seem to like it when you mess with The Plan.

Again - your dysfunction is not just about you - it's about others that need you to get your act together.