Occupy Until I Come: Following the Long, Long Recipe

You know how a recipe lays out the instructions for your food preparation in bare-bones, skeleton order? Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Step 2: In a large bowl, cream together butter, sugars, and egg. Step 3: Add vanilla. Step 4: In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices. Etc. 

Romans 12:9-21 is a recipe that Paul painstakingly writes down for the church, as if to say: Here, follow this to get it right. 

I'm a recipe follower. I know some wonderful cooks who toss in a little of this and a bit of that and I watch in awe, because I can't do that. Inevitably, I will kill my consumers with a salt overdose. Or excoriate them with too much vanilla. Or give them an incurable disease with way too much sugar. I love recipes, because they keep me on track. They help me remember precisely what I'm doing and why I'm even in the kitchen (I tend to get distracted).

Paul's recipe keeps the Roman church (and by extension, the much wider church throughout history) on track. "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality" (Romans 12:9-13).

Paul keeps going, but this is enough to know: We as the body of Christ are given instructions -- a recipe, so to speak -- about how to live our lives until the day that Jesus returns. And that body isn't just the Roman audience to whom Paul is writing. The spirit of these instructions are found throughout the New Testament. 

Jesus Himself gave similar instructions, and He popped some of those instructions into a parable for ease-of-understanding, and then tossed it out to the people. 

But first, the context: Jesus is near Jerusalem. Zacchaeus, the "wee little man" of Sunday School song fame, the chief tax collector, has just repented, become a follower of Jesus, and welcomes Jesus and His disciples into his home for dinner. People are standing around, watching this hated servant of oppressive Rome turn his life over to Jesus. Per normal -- as people tend to do when they watch things like this -- the watchers are making judgments. This guy is a liar; he's cheated people out of their money for years. Real conversion, my foot.

Little Zacchaeus, though, stands up and says to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."

Jesus tells Zacchaeus: "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." So He clears up any confusion on the part of the people regarding the status of Zacchaeus' heart... and then, He clears up the status of the kingdom of God while He's at it, because "the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once" (Luke 19:11). They thought that this was the "end of the age," prophesied in Isaiah and Joel and Daniel and other parts of Old Testament Scripture.

But Jesus has to make sure they know... there's going to be some time sandwiched between Coming #1 and Coming #2. He says: "A man of noble birth went to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. 'Put this money to work,' he said, 'until I come back'" (Luke 19:12-13).

I really like the way the KJV says it: "And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, 'Occupy till I come.'"

Stand in position. Work in position. Stay here and work until I come. Be busy until I come. The people to whom Jesus is speaking fully understand the word: Occupy. Because Rome occupied their country. Their country was in an occupied state of being. It's highly likely that there were Roman soldiers nearby somewhere, keeping an eye on activities, especially given that one of their chief tax collectors is right there. 

These Roman soldiers were far from their homeland, occupying territory for their Caesar, busy and at work keeping the land and the people in his name. 

The people understood what it was like to live in occupied territory. So this statement of Jesus' isn't a throw-away moment in a story He's telling. It has significant political and social and spiritual implications. Occupy until I come.

Over in Romans again, Paul gives the recipe for how that occupation work should look... until the day Jesus returns for His bride. Occupy. Be about the Lord's work until He comes. "Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be faithful in prayer," etc.

I was praying as I lay down to take a nap a few days ago, and as I rested, the Holy Spirit showed me a vision of a flipbook of pictures, the kind they used to make to produce old cartoons. When the pictures flip so rapidly together, the separate pictures begin to look like moving actions, and the whole book comes to life.

The pictures flipping through this book I saw were of famous landmarks throughout the world: the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Tower Bridge in London, the Colosseum in Rome, the Forbidden City in China, etc. There were many, many pictures. I didn't recognize every structure or landform, but there were many I did recognize, and I saw them multiple times, like someone was flipping the same book over and over, faster and faster. Sometimes, the pictures were rotated on their sides, sometimes they were upside-down, but they kept flipping through so fast, I was almost dizzy as a result.

I asked the Holy Spirit what He wanted me to understand through this. I don't have a clear: "This is what I want you to know..." answer, no thundering voice from heaven (for the record, the Lord has never spoken to me in that way). But I got the sense that the Lord was placing a burden on my heart for the whole world. Not just one nation, not just for a few prime-time news-reel nations. There was this clear sense that what He is doing is global, and will continue to be so. 

The fact that the pictures sped up rapidly in the vision is, I think, significant. Matthew 24:8 -- Jesus' description of the "end of the age" -- says this: "All these are the beginning of birth pains." I've had three pregnancies and given birth three times, and I've experienced the ramping up of intensity in pain as the delivery closed in. The contractions got closer together, the "pushing" got stronger and stronger, and I had no control over what was happening. My baby was coming, whether I was ready or not. 

Similarly, the pictures speeding up in rapidity took on a life form of their own as they blurred together so quickly, beyond the perceptive control of the human eye. They became a different thing from the separate pictures from which they had begun. As world events happen, the separate pictures from various parts of the globe blend more quickly together and become their own moving picture of events. 

Out of our control. Thankfully, still in the control of the Creator God, who made us and this world. He does not abandon us. He is not cowed by threats from the enemy of our souls. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and He will return for His bride.  

All we have to do... is occupy until He comes. Follow the recipe until He comes.

I found this verse this morning: "I have told you these things so that in me, you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).