“Who told you that you were naked?” So God asks Adam and Eve after He finds them hiding in the trees of the garden. And the phrasing of that is important. He doesn’t ask “how did you find out that you were naked” or “how did you realize this” but “who told you?” In other words, “you’re not wrong that you’re naked, but the one who opened your eyes to see that did so in a corrupt and deceitful way. He led you into sin and made it so that your nakedness is no longer a sign of your innocence, but a sign of your shame. He turned your nakedness into a reason to fear me, the God who loves you.”
We hear echoes of this in our parable from Luke 19 today. The citizens are the ones who hate the king. The servants are those who are supposed to love him and see who he is clearly. And so when the one servant tells him, “I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man. You take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow,” the King responds by essentially saying, “who told you that I’m harsh and severe? Where did you get that information? You got it from the citizens, from those who hate me because they knew I was going to take away their glory. But to whom was I going to give it? I was going to give it to you, you fool. You believed the lies of the world and now you’ll lose everything.”
Don’t believe the lies the devil and the world tell you about your King. Yes, Jesus has come to take something that someone else had in its grasp, but that someone was Satan and that something in the devil’s hands was you.
So see your Lord properly. His wrath and severity are not aimed at those who believe in Him. They’re aimed at those who oppress His faithful. So flee from your sins. Don’t hide your nakedness in the trees of the garden. Run to your Lord and beg Him to do what He came to do, to cover you in His righteousness. When your sins have left you homeless and friendless, run to your King, who will aim His severity at the devil, rip the kingdoms of this world out of his hands, and give you a palace of peace as you wait for His return on the Last Day.
Comments