Not So Strange

All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them.

(John 10:8)

A few years ago I learned about a pattern of the brain that causes people to give the most attention to what frightens them the most. It is called fear-tracking. This tendency is produced when a person is brought up in an atmosphere where fear is used as a means of motivation. Whatever or whomever can produce the most fear in a person is the direction they will tend to go or the people they will tend to submit to.

There are many variations of this tendency that can be seen in much of our lives. Many enjoy watching movies that frighten them. Of course there are the hard-core horror movie fans, but even a casual overview of many of the mainstream movies offered on TV or in the theater reveal a great amount of fear woven throughout the themes. It is part of our condition of sin to somehow be attracted by violence and fear. Our addiction to force causes us to thrive on stories or movies that involve the use of force in various ways. Fear is one of the main staples of most entertainment and is also reflected in the way we treat each other in most of our relationships.

As soon as the labels of thieves and robbers comes up, fear is very likely to be involved. No one really wants to have their possessions stolen or their bodies or houses robbed. This involves a violation of our privacy, our dignity, our safety and well-being. Yet we often find satisfaction in watching these very same things happen to others on the screen. We become very fascinated both in watching scenes involving these things or in listening to accounts from others about the latest robbery or someone's account of a house being vandalized.

Recently I have come under strong conviction that I need to take a much more active role in limiting the amount of such thinking that I allow into my imagination. Like everyone else, it is very easy for me to become quickly absorbed by the entertainment magnetism of such accounts, whether it be in a movie or related by the news. Most news is designed to relay as quickly and graphically as possible all the terrible things happening around the world. Our culture has an obsession with feeling we have to be up on the news or somehow life is incomplete for us. We feel guilty if we are not aware of all the latest tragedies and violations going on around the world like everyone else.

But I see something rather compelling and convicting in this verse. Jesus says explicitly that His sheep don't hear the voices of those who are thieves or robbers. Does that mean they are deaf and can't hear them? Of course not. It means that they have not chosen to listen to those voices and become acquainted with them through repeated listening. They have chosen to listen consistently to a different voice that is very unlike what is so familiar to nearly everyone else. They are listening to the beat of a different drummer.

We have very little concept of how urgent this is or how important our daily choices affect the formation of our character and determine our destiny. We are so used to listening and watching what is viewed as just normal and even important in our world that we give little thought to what this is doing to our heart and how it affects our spirit. Yet the more honest I become in observing what goes on in my mind and imagination whenever I listen to accounts of injustice, the more horrified I am at the response of anger, bitterness and the potential for violence inside. Just because no one else can perceive what is elicited in the secret recesses of my heart makes little difference. The world's system of communication is designed to produce these very things in the soul and it is my job to pay attention to and control as much as possible the channels through which they come to me.

It is very easy to assume that I am one of God's sheep while paying little attention to the condition of my own spirit and imagination. But this is the nature of deception and sin. I need to examine Jesus' descriptions here of what His sheep are like and measure my own life with those things to see what is really true. Many will come to find out too late that all along they were certain they were faithful Christians only to discover that they really didn't know God personally at all. They knew a great deal about God and religion and how to keep up appearances, but they allowed too many other distractions to fill their heart and find themselves unfit to live in the presence of holy angels and with God. They thought they were God's sheep but discovered to their horror that they were deceived all that time.

Jesus says that His sheep know and hear His voice and follow Him willingly. They do not have to be compelled or driven or frightened into submission. They love Him and eagerly follow wherever He leads them because they know His voice. This, according to Jesus, is their primary motivation for following Him. At the same time they are unfamiliar with the voice of anyone else who tries to get their attention through other means and they stay away from such strangers.

Either the voice of thieves and robbers is going to sound strange to me or the voice of Jesus is going to be foreign. Which one is true is going to be determined largely by how I choose to relate to both of them. If I spend my time immersed in the usual channels of thinking familiar to those all around me, it is likely the voice of thieves and robbers is not going to sound very strange to my heart. But the mortal danger in this is that if these kind of voices remain familiar to me, then the voice of Jesus is most likely going to be strange no matter how much I may profess otherwise.

Father, help me to stay away from strangers and all that seeks to make their voices familiar to me. I want to be more intentional in learning to know Your still small voice, to have Your voice be familiar rather than the competing voices that demand attention or allure me with their attractions. Wean me away from all the media and other sources that seek to keep the world's voices familiar. Train my ears to become familiar and comfortable with the atmosphere of heaven, to become more tuned to the voices and music of heaven, to be transformed into the ways of thinking and relating that is normal in heaven. Fill my life with Your grace today and make me an instrument of Your peace.

Covenant Trust

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. (John 10:1)

As I read this verse again this morning I suddenly realized something I had forgotten. In the mid-eastern culture the issue of covenants was a major force in the thinking of people and the way they relate to each other. Covenants are mostly foreign to us in the West but for those in the middle-east even today covenant thinking figures prominently in the way people relate to society and especially religion.

There are a number of different types of covenants and one of them is referred to as the 'threshold covenant'. This is a type of covenant whereby anyone entering into your home through the normal access points of the doorways necessarily had to cross over the threshold of the door on their way into the house. The threshold has powerful significance with a lot of symbols involved that I don't have time to unpack here, but nevertheless a great deal of information is contained and implied within these symbols.

Whenever someone is allowed access into the home by passing over the threshold, a covenant of protection is automatically invoked in relationship with that person. The guest and the householder enter into an unspoken but very binding covenant whereby the guest is to treat the people of the house with respect and in turn is to be protected against all harm from others even to the point of giving your life for them as the owner of the house. The guest is to be treated with hospitality and have their needs taken care of as long as they remain within the confines of the home. Once they leave the house however, they are no longer under the obligations of that covenant and the household is no longer bound to protect or care for them.

Because of this pervasive cultural norm in these societies, it is reported that conquering leaders when entering a city they had subdued would refuse to enter into the city through the normal gates. To do so would be to imply a protective covenant relationship with the people of that city and the conquerers did not wish to be under that obligation. Therefore a hole in the wall would be made for the king or general to enter the town so as to avoid any obligations of any implied covenants and have the liberty to do as they wish and treat the conquered people any way they chose.

Given this background I realize that Jesus very well may have had some of this in mind when He spoke these words about how people might enter the fold containing His sheep. Anyone who refuses to enter through the legitimate doorway and be in agreement with the Spirit of the door (He is the door) and be welcomed by the doorkeeper was obviously not one who should be trusted. Any such person was automatically suspect in their motives and should not be viewed as a covenant partner as those who entered through the proper means could be. Only true shepherds willing to enter the proper way with proper authority should be treated as one in covenant relationship. All others were to be considered strangers, foreigners, invaders and those out of covenant with the sheep.

Of course, the sheep referred to here represent God's children who are under His care. It would be well for anyone who would like to better understand the meanings and implications of covenant thinking to research much more into this powerful concept. Our culture is largely ignorant of covenants altogether as the only thing even remotely familiar to us is a marriage covenant which has been so diluted and distorted that it no longer reflects very much actual covenant thinking today. The replacement in our culture is contracts which are a radically different relationship and function than covenants. But God still operates using covenants and it would be extremely helpful if Christians who are serious about living in close relationship with God to become much more familiar with what is involved in covenants and to learn how to live in true covenant relationship with Him. There are many benefits and protections and blessings to be enjoyed through an awareness of what is available to us in a true covenant relationship with God.

For those wanting to learn more I would highly recommend a couple series by Craig Hill called The Blood Covenant, audio series that go very in-depth into the traditions and nuances of covenant thinking. It was very helpful for opening my own understanding and introducing me to a whole different field of thought that I had never been exposed to before. It also helped to bring to light many things in the Bible that seem mysterious or strange without this background information to make sense of some of the stories and references there. This resource material can be purchased directly from Family Foundations on their web site and is excellent for unpacking this important concept.