Priorities and Providence

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger. We are in the book of Ezra. So do I have to have a building permit?

Well, that depends on what you’re building, where you’re building it, and what the use regulations in your particular district say.

What if I’m Hebrew, I’ve just come out of Babylon, and I’m rebuilding the temple in the city of Jerusalem in the 4th century BC?

The track record of your city is questionable. We’ve riffled through our files and it seems that your city has caused a lot of trouble in the past.

That seems like racial profiling – just saying.

What is this strange thing you are talking about? We are treating a conquered province the way we treat all conquered provinces, with blunt silence.

So this is kind of the situation that Zerubbabel and Joshua found themselves in. They’d been told and given permission by the Persian government to rebuild the temple, and along with that the city, but the temple got priority and got mentioned in more permit forms than anything else. So when they started building the temple, they started building the city, and adversaries showed up.

After first pretending to be friends, these Samaritan people turned on them and said, in so many words, “Where are your building permits? Who’s doing the building? What are their names? We need to check with the relevant authorities back in Persia and find out if this is really legitimate,” and so they send letters. We have a record of a few of them.

This really indicates that their offer of help before was very not-genuine.

Very very not-genuine.

If there were any doubt at that point, we see now, “Oh, you’re not going to let us help? Well, we’re going to shut you down.”

Maybe they just got their feelings hurt, and if they had been treated with more respect they would not be enemies, kind of like the Soviet Union and the United States.

It seems like when what you care about most is the worship of God, your feelings come pretty low on the list.

You’d think, wouldn’t you? Strangely, no. A lot of people who care about the worship of God define the worship of God in terms of their feelings.

Zerubbabel and Joshua have a clear mandate from the Lord to be about this business. The city was included both in prophecy and more broadly in Cyrus’s instructions, but time has passed. Cyrus has been away. The project took a while to get off its feet and get going, and the people’s labors were divided between building the temple and building their own homes.

All of that together gave Cyrus time to, well, die, his son to die even faster, an imposter to try to seize the throne and then he died even faster, and the empire now fell into the lap of one Darius, one of the great generals, so right now Darius is busy stabilizing his new empire.

When he gets a message from these Samaritans saying, “There are these people here who are trying to build this city, and we think it’s a bad deal. We think it’s bad for you, it’s bad for the empire.” We don’t exactly mention it would be bad for us economically too, besides the fact of ethnic rivalry going on here. “So why don’t you look and see, check your histories, check your records, and you’ll find that this city is not a city you really want rebuilt.” The King James even has them saying, “It’s a bad city. It’s guilty of rebellion, insurrection, and it’s just altogether a bad place, so you probably want to do something about this.”

The emperor has enough guys who work for him that he’s able to task it to someone who does the record-keeping and looks through things and finds out, “Oh, Jerusalem. Yeah, we’ve got records on that city. Yes, it has a tradition of insurrection and rebellion against whoever’s in charge of it at any given time, whether it be Assyria or Babylon or whatever.” So the word comes back from the king, “Yeah, no. Tell them to stop right now,” but then he adds significantly, “until you hear word from me otherwise.”

He had learned something from his namesake, a previous Darius who had thrown Daniel in the lion’s den and who was probably himself Cyrus. That Darius/Cyrus got in trouble for not leaving loopholes. “You have to do this, or else lion’s den,” and there was no way out. This emperor says, “I’m leaving loopholes because some new information may present itself, but for the moment, shut them down.” So the Samaritans show up with force and say, “You’re not going to build anymore.”

Now, what they told them was, and what the decree from the emperor said was, “You’re not going to build your city. You’re going to stop building the walls and the gates and all of that.” It did not say anything about the temple, because the question hadn’t really been raised.

Unfortunately, God’s people looked at the whole situation and said, “Well, this just stinks. Where’s the promise of God? Where is God’s sovereign intervention? Where are the miracles? Why isn’t this going our way? We thought this would just be a cinch. We got started, but it’s obviously not the time. If God is in control then it’s not his time, it’s not his season, it’s not his way. Let’s go concentrate not on the walls, which we’re forbidden to do, but maybe on our own homes. Oh, we need wood. Well, I saw a lot of wood laying out by the temple site. No one’s using it now.”

This is where we run into the prophet Haggai. Actually, Haggai and Zechariah both begin prophesying about this time. Haggai says to these people in chapter 1 –

Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD'S house should be built. Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.

Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD. Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the LORD of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house.
Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.

Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the LORD.

They start getting back to work.

Now, that’s a cute sweet little story, and it’s easy to reduce it to that. “Well, that’s a cute little story.” This is a crucial moment in redemptive history. God had promised the temple and the city would be rebuilt, that worship would be conducted there, and that God would reveal his presence in this restoration temple in more glorious ways than he ever had done. You can’t just stop here. But also the hearts of the people are very distracted by worldliness.

“This seemed like a great exciting thing to do for God, but the government said no so let’s go do something that’s more comfortable for us. Let’s not only spend our monies and energies on our homes, but this money that we had dedicated to God, the stuff in fact that Cyrus himself had provided, we’re not going to be using it on the temple so let’s use it for our homes.”

So God says, “And that’s why your crops aren’t growing, and the rains aren’t coming, and nothing’s going right for you, because you screwed up your priorities.”

That wasn’t the kind of miracle they wanted.

No, that was not at all the kind of miracle or special providence or even ordinary providence they wanted. They wanted God to do something really extraordinary that would relieve them from a whole lot of effort and any kinds of difficulties or uncomfortableness, but God basically has the command, “Get to work. The government has not told you that you can’t do this, and I’ve told you that you should, so go do it.”

Now, the story doesn’t end there. Yes, they get back to work, but the Samaritans are ever-vigilant and they see, “Oh, you’re building this temple thing.” They understood, as not everyone does these days, that religion is a major financial center of operations and influence.

If you have a place that draws hundreds and thousands and more from your immediate area and from far off and they’re coming there, you know what? They’re going to need places to stay. They’re going to need to buy food. They’re going to have their horses shod. They’re going to buy souvenirs and trinkets. In this case with the temple they’re going to buy animals for sacrifices. This is going to draw a lot of money to this particular place.

The Samaritans are still not happy because they see this not merely as religious rivalry, although it was that. They had their own version of Yahweh worship, they thought. But it also again is another financial/economic challenge. “So, writing letters worked really well last time. Let’s write some more letters.”

They go back and confront the Jews and say, “What’s this all about?” and they say, “We are building the temple that Cyrus king of Persia told us we could.” The Samaritans try to kick up a fuss, but it’s not going anywhere because these people are standing pat and saying, “No, we have an order.”

Well, the Samaritans don’t believe it, or at least they’re hoping this is a bluff or they’re hoping that something has been lost in the paperwork that they can use here. So they write another letter to Darius, and it goes something like this –

Unto Darius the king, all peace. Be it known unto the king, that we went into the province of Judea, to the house of the great God, which is builded with great stones, and timber is laid in the walls, and this work goeth fast on, and prospereth in their hands.
Then asked we those elders, and said unto them thus, Who commanded you to build this house, and to make up these walls? We asked their names also, to certify thee, that we might write the names of the men that were the chief of them.
And thus they returned us answer, saying, We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many years ago, which a great king of Israel builded and set up. But after that our fathers had provoked the God of heaven unto wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house, and carried the people away into Babylon.
But in the first year of Cyrus the king of Babylon the same king Cyrus made a decree to build this house of God. And the vessels also of gold and silver of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that was in Jerusalem, and brought them into the temple of Babylon, those did Cyrus the king take out of the temple of Babylon, and they were delivered unto one, whose name was Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor; And said unto him, Take these vessels, go, carry them into the temple that is in Jerusalem, and let the house of God be builded in his place.

So the bottom line of the letter –

Now therefore, if it seem good to the king, let there be search made in the king's treasure house, which is there at Babylon, whether it be so, that a decree was made of Cyrus the king to build this house of God at Jerusalem, and let the king send his pleasure to us concerning this matter.

They’re being polite and respectful – the great temple of the great God – and again “Our concern is that they have permission to do this. It’s quite a story. Would you mind checking it out and seeing if it’s actually accurate and if they do in fact have the proper permit. Did this Cyrus (who’s four kings back now) actually authorize this?”

In chapter 6 of Ezra we’re told –

Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the rolls, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon. And there was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written.

They looked in Babylon and they didn’t find anything, but unlike many bureaucrats they did not stop there. They said, “Well, where else could it be? Cyrus was a Persian. How about the Persian capital?” The King James calls it here Achmetha. Archeology knows it as Ecbatana, well-known in archeological circles and Persian history books. And lo and behold, they found it. It’s not exactly the one that’s recorded in scripture, it’s another version, probably for administerial purposes, but it said what they needed it to say.

Darius, in light of this, says –

Let the work of this house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house of God in his place. Moreover I make a decree what ye shall do to the elders of these Jews for the building of this house of God…

“Here it is. He’s going to let us do something to them.”

“Take out of your treasuries and give them money for the house and for the sacrifices and for the salt…

That they may offer sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king, and of his sons. Also I have made a decree, that whosoever shall alter this word, let timber be pulled down from his house, and being set up, let him be hanged thereon; and let his house be made a dunghill for this. And the God that hath caused his name to dwell there destroy all kings and people, that shall put to their hand to alter and to destroy this house of God which is at Jerusalem. I Darius have made a decree; let it be done with speed.

It seems like they might have rediscovered the story of Esther there and been inspired by some elements of that history.

That or it’s likely in fact that this Darius is Ahasuerus of Esther. The question would be timing. But hanging someone and making their house a dunghill, it sounds like the same king, doesn’t it.

Yeah, like the rich dramatic irony and the Wiley coyote of it all.

Yes, there is a certain Wiley-ness in this whole thing, because these people are trying to stop God’s work, and in the end all they manage to do is acquire federal funding for it, with no strings. With the best of intentions they basically say, “Everyone keep their hands off. This is the God of heaven. We’re not going to dictate to him or his guys what they have to do. They’re doing this religious thing and we approve. In fact, we want them to do it for us.”

“And you have to pay their legal fees.”

“Yeah, and their material fees to keep this thing running. It’s coming out of your taxes. I’m sure you’ll be happy with that, knowing it’s the God of heaven you spoke so highly of in the beginning.”

There’s a little more, but that’s basically the story. Out of this there are some things that we can talk about. I have six points or lessons that we can consider, and feel free to build on my suggestions.

The first thing is that the people of God got themselves into trouble when they had an opportunity to pursue the worship of God. Remember, worship always means the gospel. We worship through the gospel and worship presents to us the gospel.

Their worship started with building up the altar with its sacrifices, which is a testimony to substitutionary atonement and justification by faith and everything else that was going on there. All of the temple structure that would make room for the various feasts and Day of Atonement fast and all the rest was all designed to preach the gospel to those who came there or to those who heard about it. This was the major thing. It had been destroyed, apparently by pagans.

You may remember that in the prophets and all the way back to Solomon when he first built the temple and dedicated it said, “When this thing goes down, when this thing is destroyed and lies desolate, people are going to say, ‘What happened here?’ and you are to tell them. This is because they sinned against the God of heaven, against the God who redeemed them, and that’s why he destroyed it. This is not that God lost control. This is not that God failed. This is that his people turned to unbelief and rebellion and they got what they deserved, and you can see it in the ruins.”

Rebuilding the temple was the major focus and center of evangelism for the Jewish people at this point. God did not send them out to the four corners of the earth, as he later will his church. He planted them at the crossroads of three continents.

Yes, it was going to be a financial center that would draw people. They would come and they would see the temple. They would be drawn into the court of the Gentiles. They would hear the reading of God’s word. They would be told about the ritual. They would hear about the great acts that Yahweh had done for his people in the past and they would thus hear the gospel.

This is major. This is not as simple as, “Well, we want to build a big church.” You can carry on the gospel ministry without a big church building or a lot of programs or light and sound or go down the list, but you can’t carry on church without the gospel, and this is the presentation of the gospel.

God’s people thought, “It’s not that important. What’s important is that I have a nice house.”

God is not particularly concerned, as Schaeffer would say, about our personal peace and affluence. He’s concerned about his gospel. He may call us to spend our time and energy and monies on things that deprive us of comfort, convenience, and luxury, so that the gospel can be promoted and presented to a sinful world. He does not require that all the time. Oftentimes he lets us do both – have an effective gospel ministry and have air conditioning in our houses – but sometimes it does not work that way.

And when it comes to making a choice, the Jews had to learn a lesson. This is a real choice, and the gospel ministry has to come before our personal comforts. This is a huge lesson that we as Americans have trouble with.

Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow him – self-denial, death to self, death to conveniences and pleasures and luxuries, death to things we think we have to have because everybody else has them. But sometimes that money could have been spent reaching a new people with the gospel, or promoting a struggling ministry and refueling it with gospel ammunition, or funding and creating gospel ammunition by the Bible translated into a different language, Bible studies and books translated into different languages, printed and shipped across the seas.

There’s a lot that money can do, and sometimes we have to make choices. As I’ve said, God doesn’t insist that we spend every single dollar all the time on gospel ministry, but sometimes it needs to be a lot higher priority than we sometimes make it.

And if you’re looking for a percentage, there’s a convenient one.

If you’re looking for a percentage you can start with God’s, which is 10% of your net.

Some of the common objections to that percentage is, “Well, we shouldn’t be legalistic. We should just give joyfully to God out of our hearts as the Spirit leads us.” Okay.

“That doesn’t tell us how much.”

Well, if you’re objecting to legalism and you want to give joyfully and thankfully, don’t you think that 10% would mark a bare minimum then?” Why is it we suddenly drop down to 1%, if that sometimes. God told us 10%. That’s just the tithe. He demands offerings on top of that. Malachi rebukes the people because they robbed God in tithes and in offerings.

“How much does an offering have to be?” That’s where your joy and thankfulness gets to kick in, and the Spirit’s leading can do what it will, once you’ve paid your 10%. The 10% is just a lesson to teach us, “Oh, it’s all God’s, isn’t it?” And if we have a problem with the 10% then we’ve got a problem with the whole picture of what giving is.

Next, we must not let our desire for comfort rewrite our hermeneutics and our eschatology. “You mean God wants us to fund a major missionary program to reach a dark corner of the world, and it’s going to cost X amount of money, plus we’re going to have to train missionaries. They’re going to have to learn the language. They’re going to have to go with their families very far away. We’re going to have to support them the whole time they’re there, because there’s nothing there. And once they’ve planted a church we’re going to have to keep supporting it? This is going to require logistics and publications and communications and note-keeping. This is a major thing.”

“This sounds really hard. It really seems like there just aren’t open doors for that right now.”

“Sure. Don’t open doors just kind of – some guy walks in full of the Spirit of God and everybody gets converted? So this seems a little hard, which no doubt means that this isn’t really what God wants right now. We’re a small denomination. We don’t have this kind of funding, or vision either. Our view of the future really says that before Jesus comes back the church is going to keep shrinking and shrinking, so it’s nice that you care about these people and want to see souls saved. If you can find somebody who wants to go there, that’s great, but we think we should spend more money right now on updating the Trinity hymnal site, buying a piano that’s not quite as tinny, updating the sound system, putting our pastor’s messages online so that people can stay home and watch them.”

I’d like to say these are exaggerations. Unfortunately, they really aren’t. When we don’t have God’s vision for the worldwide powerful effective spread of the gospel, when we don’t believe the gospel is that he’s going to bless all nations, then we are content not to do an awful lot of things.

There was a radio pastor in the ‘50s and ‘60s who had a favorite line. “You don’t polish brash on a sinking ship.” Well, that’s true, but that now presupposes that your ship is sinking. If that’s all Western culture is and there’s nothing beyond and we’re on a time limit, and within X number of hours, weeks, or months Jesus is coming back, then there’s a lot of things we really don’t have to worry about. We don’t have time for it. We don’t have time to tear down the old, rebuke the wicked, or raise up something new and good. We just say, “Well, that’s what our prophecy said would happen. We said the church would shrink, and look, it’s happening. We said wickedness would grow. Wow, we were so right.”

I think people of my age are probably looking around right now and saying, “Wow, we said it’s going to get bad, but we thought this would all happen after the rapture. This culture is very, very wicked. Where’s Jesus? He was supposed to come back in 1988 or 1980 or 2000 or someplace. No doubt he’s coming any minute now, because that’s what our eschatology says, because the opposite would be to say we have to do something.”

God’s actually got a plan for us and for his gospel, so there comes a point where you can look at how difficult ministry is and you can take that as a message from God to give it all up as you say, “Well, that door is closed.” Or you can look at the promises of God as they appear in scripture and say, “God has a glorious future for his church. He did not promise it would be easy, so looks like it’s not going to be. Let’s go do it.”

Next, God rules in the created order and in the government of men, and his action in both spheres are covenantal. It is not that if we obey God X amount and pull the lever we will get Y blessings in a particular measure. We know that. But it is also true that in general when we seek God in faith and do what he has plainly told us to do, somewhere in there he probably is going to reward what we’re doing with the kind of successes that please him.

They may not be the kind of successes we had in mind. We may think we’re ministering to Group A, and suddenly something leaks through to Group B and they get all on fire, and we say, “But wait, we didn’t plan to work with them.”

“Well, that’s the door God just opened. That’s how God is blessing you.”

“Okay, I guess.”

You start some kind of missions drive or evangelistic drive in your community and you expect all the wealthy people to come, and all the homeless people come. That’s blessing. Are we ready for it?

We have to recognize, as they did in Jerusalem in those days, that God rules all of it. God has a plan here and it involves the governments of men. He is on our side, which means that the way he manipulates governments is on our side. It just may not look the way we think it should, and we shouldn’t give up too easily because of that.

Next, we too quickly cower before kings and bureaucrats. I don’t know about you, but I saw this during the pandemic where people far too quickly backed down and said, “Well, they’re going to shut us down. We don’t want that. We might end up in prison. That would be inconvenient.”

I was never prouder of one of our elders than when he said, “We’ve been told we have to shut down. Let’s wait until they do,” and the rest of us kind of nodded and said, “Okay.” And guess what? They didn’t. They actually called our pastor – or our pastor called them to check on it – and they said, “You can’t do that, and you can’t do that, and you can’t do that, and you can’t do that.”

“So can’t do anything?”

“No.”

“But we’re trying really hard to comply as best we can.”

“That’s good, but you can’t do any of these things.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Good, then we’ll consider this closed. Bye!”

Our pastor did not say we’re complying. He just said, “I understand.” And I suspect the guy on the other side probably was not an idiot. He probably said, “Good. You’re not protesting. I can mark this case closed,” wink wink, nudge nudge. They never bothered us again, but some people did get thrown into jail. I assume they’re out now, I would hope.

Again, we have to trust God. Paul and Silas ended up in jail. The apostles were arrested by the Sanhedrin more than once. Sometimes that happens and that’s not something that should stop us from doing what God calls us to.

David and I were just reading Romans 13 for a different reason, and we’ve talked about this before on the podcast, how that “submit to the ruling authorities” is very much given in the context that they’re the avenger of blood. They have negative sanctions to enforce. That’s their job.

That doesn’t mean everything they tell you to do is godly, and it doesn’t mean that your obedience to them is absolute, as it is to God. In the context of having done something that needs to be avenged, submit to the vengeance. It’s just very context-specific.

There’s a couple things here and I’m just throwing these out. First, we don’t live in Rome. We are not ruled by an emperor. Our founding documents say funny things like, “We, the people…”

The supreme law of the land is the Constitution.

If we are appealing rightly to the Constitution – we the people are appealing to our founding document – that is not lawlessness. Now, there are channels we should use. There are court systems and other ways of approaching this, but we are not lawless because we appeal to our rights as Americans, any more than Paul was lawless when he said, “I’m a Roman.”

“Uh-oh.”

I love that. Every time he’s like, “Oh, I’m going to use this. This is well within my rights.”

Yes. So there’s that. There’s also sometimes – and I think this is very much what these people were facing – where are you going to stop backing down? We let them back us down on the wall, although technically Cyrus had said they could, and they just didn’t have any handy documents to prove it. God had told Cyrus, “You’re going to order the city rebuilt,” so presumably he had done what God had said. He certainly intended to.

But here they stop, and when the people come and say, “Where are your permits?” and they say, “We have one,” “Then show it to us,” they don’t show it to them. They don’t have it. “Talk to the government. The government approved it, so go talk to them about permits. It should be on file someplace.” And the amazing thing is that the government favored God’s people.

That’s the other thing, that sometimes the government actually is on our side.

And it can be the right thing to make your opponent prove their position. You don’t have to take it on their terms and accept the burden of proof when it’s not rightfully yours.

You can stand up and say, “No. Sue me. Call us into court. We’ll meet you there, but you better have your evidence or otherwise you’re going to be paying our court costs. Can you afford it?” We have that to work with, and Christ has promised that he will use emperors, kings and governors to finance his kingdom. Isaiah 60 is a good place, or Revelation 21, where the nations and their kings bring their treasures into the new Jerusalem.

In the backlash of the pandemic, we’ve seen a lot of Christian people, and a lot of people who at least speak well of the Christian faith, suddenly pop up in all kinds of local governments – as governors or court judges or mayors or whatever – and take a stand for righteousness. We kind of say, “Well, where were you earlier? But I’m glad you’re here now.”

Where were these people? They were kind of covered in all the smoke, but now that the smoke is clearing, wait. God has people out there who can help us, and in some cases even very wicked people got backed down because they realized, “Oh, this is not popular anymore. This could cost me – oh, I don’t know – my plans to become president, so I will now distance myself from this. The American people have a short memory and they’ll probably forget and I can be president in a couple years.”

No, Gretchen Witmer, we will not forget.

We’ll see how good God’s people remember things.

Just in passing, and this has nothing to do with this, but the American people or every people have their own particular spirit and character. Yes, national profiling, after a sense. The American people are not a vengeful people. Sometimes we have a short temper. When someone slaps us, we want to slap back real fast and real hard. The thing is, once we’ve knocked them down, we’re the first ones to go up and say, “Oh, sorry. How you doing? Can I help you up? Can I buy you a drink? How about a cigarette? Here’s $20 to get you home, and here’s a stuffed animal for your little guy.”

We knocked down Germany, we knocked down Japan, and who built them up? We did.

We handed them our credit cards.

Pretty much. Things happen and initially we have this intense sense of justice and things need to be righted, but it doesn’t last very long, and eventually we try to go make friends with everybody and help them. “Oh, they’re also victims so let’s help them.” That’s America, for whatever it’s worth.

Israel on the other hand had a slightly different spirit. Their spirit was, “We need to serve our God. You are in the way. We kind of cowered before you last time. We have a habit of doing that. But now God has encouraged us by his prophets and we’re not cowering anymore, and we’re going to stand our ground and see what God will do. It may mean the seas turn to blood and the frogs fall from the sky, or it may mean that some bureaucrat simply says, “Permit approved. Get to work.”

If we believe that God has that kind of power and that goodwill toward us and that plan for the future, it is going to shape how we respond to national and personal emergencies. When the world seems to fall apart, do we just assume, “Well, that’s what’s going to happen, because that’s what prophecy says will happen.”? Or do we say, “God just made things tough so that we’ll get tougher and deal with it.”? It’s a little thing, a little issue, but in the long run of the church’s history and future it’s a big thing.

What do we do when life is not easy, when the mission field gets hard, and when the challenges to evangelism and godly dominion seem insurmountable? Do we just throw in the towel and say, “Well, I guess that’s what the Bible meant about last days and things”? Or do we say, “Hmm, this looks like opportunity.”?

That’s a good place to wrap up. Do you have any recommendations tonight?

You know you’re always supposed to start.

I always forget. I would like to recommend a very easy flatbread recipe. It has flour, yogurt, a little bit of salt, baking soda, baking powder, and optional Mediterranean herbs. I use about 1-1/2 to 2 cups of flour and a cup of yogurt. I do this in a Kitchen Aid. I definitely do not recommend doing it by hand. It’s the messiest thing in the world and it will take forever, and yogurt will be everywhere, and it’s not fun unless you use a stand mixer.

It's really great. You just sort of put all the dry ingredients together and then add the yogurt, then roll it out on a well-floured surface once it’s all gelled and not sticking to everything in heaven and earth. Then you can divide it into about 8 pieces and roll it out. It’s flatbread, not tortillas, so it doesn’t matter if they’re round. Then you fry them in a little bit of olive oil on a cast iron griddle and it’s very tasty.

That inspires me to recommend a recipe of my own. I may have done this before. We really need to make a list, or maybe I need to make a list of things I’ve recommended, but nonetheless it’s really good and I just made it for my family not long ago, like this weekend. It’s called chicken fried steak.

Now, everybody knows how to make chicken fried steak, I assume.

I don’t.

Okay. First you go to the store and you buy something that’s probably labeled cube steak, and it looks like it’s been kind of mashed, and it probably will say, “Good for chicken fried steak” on it, so it’s not that hard to find. You try to find the pieces that have the least fat and gristle running through it, because I really don’t like that in my steak. I don’t like to bite into a piece of steak and pull on it and half of the steak comes with it because it’s tied to one long strand of fat or gristle or something. It’s just really gross and should not be happening.

When you’re ready to cook it, you get it out and, depending on what order you want to do things, you pound it nice and flat, and now that you can see what’s going on you trim off all of the fat, anything that looks gristly, anything that looks like you would not want to chew on it, so around the edges and even down the middle. If you have nice big pieces you may end up cutting them in half or in thirds, because it doesn’t matter what size you’re dealing with here. Some people like little pieces of steak and some people like big pieces of steak. Having done that, the rest is easy.

You now put a goodly amount of flour on a plate and take your steak that you’ve smushed. If you want to, you can cut it in smaller pieces or you can just do really big pieces, and you push in the flour on both sides, so you flour your steak.

Then having done that, you take about three eggs, depending on how much steak you’re working with, and crack them into a bowl and pour in just a splash of milk or half and half or cream. It doesn’t matter a whole lot. Whip it up with a fork and add some salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, a little bit of paprika, or whatever spices you think might be good here. Whip it all up, then take your floured steak and dip it in this egg mixture.

Then you take it back to the flour, which you have now replenished so there’s a lot more flour, and dip your floured/egged steak into the next round of flour.

Meanwhile you’ve poured some oil into – probably an iron skillet would be best, but other skillets will work, because you want to get the oil really really hot. You want it on high, and you want enough oil to more than cover the bottom of the skillet. I use Canola oil, but you can use other kinds of oil. Get it really really hot. You don’t want it to just sit there and soak in lukewarm oil. That’s no good. When you think it’s ready, you put a little water on your fingers and splash it into the oil from a distance, so it doesn’t splatter you, and when it hits and sizzles, you’re ready. It’s hot.

Then you take tongs, because if you use your fingers there’s a good chance you’ll burn something, like yourself, and lay it down gently, so as not to splash yourself with the hot burning oil, and you let it cook really, really fast. You do that to all of the pieces that will fit in. After a little bit, you re-salt, re-pepper, re-garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, or whatever, and you continue to let it cook quickly.

This is the temptation. You think, “It’s been in there too long.” You can check, lift it a little and see, but if you turn it too soon it’s no good, and if you leave it too long it burns. So peek a little and get a sense for it, but it’s going to take longer than you think to actually thoroughly brown on one side.

Once it’s thoroughly brown on one side, flip it over and do the other side. Again, just a little check now and then. You don’t want to burn it, but it will take a little while, even though really hot. Then you pull it out when you think it’s done and you serve it with Worcestershire sauce. Lea & Perrins is good, but store brands will probably work just as well.

It is absolutely wonderful and your children will beg you to make it over and over again, and if there should be any leftover, the next day you put it on sourdough bread that you’ve buttered greatly, then you butter the steak and heat it up a little and put it all together and you have the most wonderful steak sandwich, which will not be gristly because you got rid of all the gristle up front.

It’s a wonderful kind of thing that you make whenever you want all of your girls to come home on the same night, because they think they can cook everything else but they don’t know how to do this, or I don’t think they do, for some reason. Maybe they just don’t want to pay for all the steak, I don’t know.

That’s chicken fried steak, my recommendation for tonight.

When you said, “So you flour your steak,” it reminded me of, “So the Israelites plundered the Egyptians.”

Thank you so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure. I look forward to next week, or whenever it happens. I look forward to it.

And we’re still trying to do a recommendations episode, so we need to hear from people who are listening. They need to recommend things to us. We’ve gotten one I think so far.

Yes, and we did get a lovely email from our beloved Gwen. I will just read this because it’s lovely.

Greetings! I was listening to the podcast First Things First, and when you got to the part about wishing God would write out his intentions for the world and us as individuals, I couldn’t help thinking about what a very wise woman told me. It stuck with me and, if I could, I would have interrupted you to say it.

I really wish you had that ability, but I’m glad you emailed us anyway.

Not trying to be a namedropper, but credit to whom credit is due. In the presence of Mrs. Rushdoony one day I said, “I wish God would write across the sky, ‘Gwen, do this.’” Without missing a beat, she looked me straight in the face, pointed her finger at me and said, “Don’t you ever let anyone tell you that living by faith is easy.”

As I said, I’ve never forgotten what she said and the intensity with which she said it. It has helped me a lot over the years. Blessings, Gwen.

Thank you, Gwen. That was beautiful.

We always appreciate hearing from you. If you would like to get in touch with us, you can send us an email at [email protected]. We want your recommendations, as well as questions, comments, insults, snide remarks, and anything else you’d like to say.

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On that note, thank you to our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband, David Maxson, who keeps everything happening. Good night. We’ll see you next time.