Flying back to people lessons…
Well, storytelling aside, let us fly ourselves back toward the spiritual meal you and I can take from these two verses. God takes care of the birds, but prophecy is for people.
Think of the verses that preceded this section. We saw heaven opened and a description of Jesus Christ, the warrior, coming to purify his creation. Following him were the armies of heaven who we saw a bit further back in this chapter. Where did we last see them? We saw them at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. That the armies of heaven were dressed in fine, white linen tells us that this is at least in part a human army. The human portion of this army is of the forgiven, cleansed and forever followers of Jesus.
At this point in Revelation 19 the relationship between Jesus and the church, God and man was not the point. It is the backstory for the coming battle.
The scavengers are summoned
Jesus has shown up for the battle and a herald (the angel) is sent out, but the herald does not address the enemy. The herald calls to the birds. The birds! Don’t miss the confidence that exudes from this. The outcome is so certain that the angel does not even address the forces arrayed against God. He merely addresses the scavengers calling them to the feast.
In Noah’s day God sent the animals to the ark. In Jesus’ day the animals will be sent to a feast. “Gather,” they are told, “for the great supper of God.” God has purified his people, set his armies in motion and is about to purify the world. The beast and false prophet are about to be dispatched followed by the great erasure of the wicked armies. Their carcasses will need cleaned up so he will meet the needs of the scavenging birds having them go about their duties cleaning up the dead bodies.
The things God makes he remembers
The things God makes he remembers, loves and cares for. The world as he made it was not supposed to be groaning under the sin that mankind dumped into it. He will come again to purify it all. In this passage his arrival is being presaged by an angel. That angel is calling to other living creatures and telling them of another meal being set. We may be a little repulsed by the meals of the turkey vultures, but they are not. They are part of the food chain that God built. How that fits into a life-sin-death circle I don’t know, but the world as we know it has turkey vultures eating the flesh of dead animals for their own good and for the good of the world.
My needs and God’s purposes coincide
King David has a Psalm1 where he says that God formed him in his mother’s womb. We can say the same thing. The point is that we are designed by God. Our traits and tendencies, our needs, hungers and confidences are known to God and can be used by God for his own good purposes. I will go further and say that our spiritual gifts and our life skills are infused into us by God. They are not random. The things God is doing around us and with us are all good things, and we will thrive when we set these God-gifts before God and allow him to direct us in them.
Vultures eat dead things. It’s what they do. What is your skill set? How does your personality react? Be assured that your own evil desires try to flex these to your own ends. Be also assured that submission of these to God allowing them to flex according to his own ends will result in great goodness.
Different pastors and teachers will emphasize different facets of this. Some will say get out of your comfort zone with an assumption that your comfort zone is sinful. Others will say your comfort zone is related to your spiritual gifting. We need to be sure that we do not connect imbalance with godliness. The vultures were not supposed to eat fruit, and the Carolina Wren is not supposed to eat dead possum. There is a chance that you need to get out of your comfort zone, but before you start fiddling with that start praying about that. There are men and women around us that will influence us one way or the next. Sometimes they will be good men and women. The devil and your own tendencies interpret what you hear, but you know what? The Holy Spirit, too, is in this business. You absolutely must get alone with God on a regular basis. Then you will learn to hear his voice; you will learn to set aside improper cajoling from well-meaning and not-so-well meaning people.
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