I often hear people say the words, “God told me....” Some people say this all the time, about all sorts of things. A former pastor of mine once complained about how flippantly some people use these words. He had recently interviewed three applicants for a staff position, and all three said God had told them they would get the job. A man once came to Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, and said to him: “God told me I am to preach in your church this Sunday.” Spurgeon’s response was: “It’s strange He didn’t tell me that,” (and, as you might expect, the man did not preach in Spurgeon’s church).
On the other hand, many people struggle to have any sense of God’s leading. A number of years ago I read about a woman who was living in a Christian community “seeking God’s will for her life.” This was the whole reason she was there; seeking God’s will for her life was the main thing she was engaged in. It was, at least for awhile, her vocation. For many, knowing God’s will is full of mystery; it is the sort of thing that can only be known by going to live in a Christian community, by giving all our time and energy to the pursuit of God’s plan for our lives.
It’s important that we know how to discern God’s will. We pray in the Lord’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When we pray in this way, we are expressing the concern that God’s will be done in our lives. Confessing that Jesus is Lord implies that we are willing to submit to Him. So, if the Lordship of Jesus Christ means anything at all, it is imperative that we have some knowledge of how to know God’s will. And since most of us don’t have the luxury of going to live in a Christian community, we need to know how to discern God’s will in the midst of our day-to-day lives.
The main thing I want to stress is this: God, when He leads us, deals with us as creatures who are able to understand and respond to His instructions. He doesn’t treat us like robots, sending a new signal every time He wants us to do something. He has given us the gift of understanding, and He leads us in ways that are consistent with this.
It’s important to understand that most of God’s will for our lives is revealed clearly in Scripture. Most of God’s will has to do with what He wants us to be, rather than what He wants us to do. God’s concern is that we be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. The book of Proverbs is about this kind of guidance. Eugene Peterson, in The Message, translates the beginning of Proverbs in this way: “These are the wise sayings of Solomon, David’s son, Israel’s king -- Written down so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going; A manual for living, for learning what’s right and just and fair; To teach the inexperienced the ropes and give our young people a grasp on reality. There’s something here also for seasoned men and women, still a thing or two for the experienced to learn -- Fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate, the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women” (The Message: The Wisdom Books, p. 283). The whole focus of the book of Proverbs is wisdom; but wisdom in the Old Testament is not primarily an intellectual thing (as it was with the Greeks; in Greek thinking, an interest in wisdom led to philosophy); in the Old Testament, wisdom has to do with how we order our lives in this world in obedience to God’s commands. It has to do with living in the fear of God and under His lordship. In the introduction to Proverbs, Peterson says this: “Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God” (p. 282). Wisdom is living according to God’s revealed will. So, to learn God’s will for our lives, we don’t need to go live in a monastery or a Christian community; we need to prayerfully read and study God’s word and apply it to our lives.
But, having said that, there are still those times when God’s Word doesn’t give us any clear direction. Reading the Bible is not going to tell us which vocation to choose, or which home to buy. It won’t tell us which major to choose in college, or whether we should skip college altogether. When we have to choose between two equally good things, reading the Bible won’t tell us which is the right choice. So how do we discern God’s will in these situations?
This is an area where it’s easy for us to get into trouble. In Scripture, we see God sometimes leading His people in a supernatural way. When they were wandering in the desert, He led the people of Israel with a pillar of cloud and fire; we see Him speaking to the prophets through dreams and visions or speaking in an audible voice. It’s easy to start thinking that if we are really spiritual, God will lead us in this way as well. The problem is that this sort of leading is the exception, rather than the rule. This is not only true for us; this sort of guidance was exceptional in Biblical times as well. When Israel crossed over into the Promised Land, they were no longer led by the pillar of cloud and fire. The prophets had to make most of their daily decisions without the benefit of special revelations. Even for the apostles, the more direct forms of guidance seem to have been given at important turning points in their ministries. God has created us with the ability to think, to exercise wisdom, to make rational choices, to seek advice from others, and He normally leads us in ways that are consistent with these things. He normally calls us to make decisions without the benefit of miraculous guidance.
Many have gotten into difficulties by trusting too much in inward impressions. They have assumed that guidance is “essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word,” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 212). The history of the church is littered with illustrations of what happens when we put too much confidence in these sorts of impressions. J.I. Packer tells of one woman who would begin her day by consecrating it to God, and then would not stir out of bed until prompted to do so by the Holy Spirit. As she dressed herself, she would pray over each article of clothing, asking the Lord whether she should put it on or not. As a result, often she would leave the house with only one shoe, or with stockings but no shoes, and so on (pp. 213-14). From our vantage point, this is clearly ridiculous, even comical, but it’s important to realize that she went wrong by seeking a level of guidance that God does not choose to give. How do people get caught in this sort of thing? I think it usually begins with a genuine desire to know God, but we get sidetracked. We start demanding that God act according to our expectations, and we slip into a subtle form of idolatry. If we insist on having something that God doesn’t choose to give us, we are setting ourselves up to accept a counterfeit.
Not all the examples are as ridiculous as this. George Whitefield was a friend of John Wesley, an exceptionally powerful preacher and one of the greatest evangelists of all time. He was a godly man, with a deep personal relationship with God. He was well-educated and knowledgeable in the Scriptures. He was also humble and aware of his own weaknesses. Early in his ministry, he put a lot of confidence in inward impressions, which he thought were from the direct prompting of the Holy Spirit. This emphasis was prominent in his published journals, and other ministers even warned him about it. When Whitefield’s wife gave birth to a son, he publicly announced his impression that this son would grow up “to be a preacher of the everlasting Gospel.” He wrote: “...in the company of thousands I solemnly gave him up to God.... and all went away big with hopes of the child’s being hereafter to be employed in the work of God....” A few months later, the child died, and Whitefield wrote: “...though disappointed of a living preacher by the death of my son, yet I hope what happened..., hath taught me such lessons, as, if duly improved, may render his mistaken parent more cautious, more sober-minded... and consequently more useful in his future labours to the church of God.” From this time on he was much more cautious in this area (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 2, pp. 166-69). This calls us to humility; if George Whitefield could be misled in this way, it is the height of presumption to think we are immune.
So, how does God normally lead us? If He doesn’t lead us primarily by inward impressions, how do we go about discerning God’s will. We discern God’s will primarily by applying the wisdom He teaches us in His word, this wisdom that is “written down so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going” (Proverbs 1). We discern God’s will as creatures who’ve been entrusted with the gift of understanding. Here are 6 general principles that I’ve found helpful.[1]
1) We need to be willing to think. J.I. Packer says: “It is false piety, super-supernaturalism of an unhealthy and pernicious sort, that demands inward impressions that have no rational base, and declines to heed the constant biblical summons to `consider’.” The Bible addresses us as rational beings and urges us to think. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord” (Isa. 1:18). In Romans 6 and 7, Paul repeatedly asks, “Do you not know?” In Romans 11:25, he says “I do not want you to be ignorant of this....” God doesn’t bypass our minds in His dealings with us. Look at Psalm 32:8-9: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” The thing he notes about these animals is that they have no understanding. They need to be specifically led each step of the way. They need to be controlled. God doesn’t deal with us in this way. He has created us with minds, and He calls us to use them. If we, in the name of spirituality, refuse to do so, we are headed for disaster. If we want to know God’s will, we need to be willing to think about the choice that is before us.
2) We must be willing to think ahead, and consider the long-term consequences of our choices. Deut. 32:28-29 says: “They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!” Jesus said “Do not worry about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34). He didn’t say “Don’t think about the future.” It is wise to ask how this decision will fit into our long-term plans. Is it taking us in the direction we want our lives to go? Will this choice we’re considering hinder us from following the Lord in the future? Is it consistent with His calling in our lives?
3) We must be willing to take advice. When Paul says in Galatians 1:16, “I did not consult any man,” he is not disparaging the idea of taking advice. He’s talking there about his call to be a Christian and an apostle. Look at Proverbs 12:15: “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.” Or 13:10: “Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.” Unwillingness to take advice is a mark of pride, not spirituality. Even if we, in the end, are unable to take the advice we receive, involving others is an important part of the process. The act of sifting through the suggestions you receive will often help clarify the issues. Annie and I have a number of people we go to when we are in the process of making a decision, and frequently they are able to see things that we have missed. We are part of a body, and God often uses other members of the body to help us discern His will.
One caution in this area: if we are not careful, we will tend to gravitate toward those who are likely to tell us what we want to hear. In 1Kings 12, Solomon has just died and his son, Rehoboam, has become king. The people come to him with this request: “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you” (v. 4). Rehoboam asks them to come back in three days, and goes to the elders, those with more experience, for advice. They urge him to give in to the people: “They replied, `If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants’” (v. 7). But he’s just become king, and he wants to throw his weight around a little. Who do these people think they are, anyway? He’s king, and he wants them to feel the weight of his power. So he rejects the advice of the elders and turns to his friends for counsel. They tell him what he is wanting to hear: “Tell these people who have said to you, `Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter’ -- tell them, `My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions’” (vv. 10-11). This is the beginning of the divided kingdom; the ten tribes to the north rebel against Rehoboam, and he barely escapes with his life. When we go to others for advice, we need to be careful that what we’re seeking is God’s will, and not just an affirmation of what we’ve already decided to do. Our hearts are deceitful and will lead us astray. This leads to the next point.
4) We need to be suspicious of ourselves. Merely feeling that something is God’s will is not enough. We need to ask ourselves why we feel this to be God’s will. Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Rather than being anxious to trust in feelings and impressions, we should be skeptical of them, knowing the deceitfulness of our own hearts. At times our feelings reflect nothing more than the influence of a good night’s sleep or an enjoyable meal. J.I. Packer says, and I believe he’s right: “We can never distrust ourselves too much.”
5) We need to beware of putting too much confidence in the wrong people. We should not only distrust ourselves, we should also have a healthy skepticism about following others. Those who get caught up in false cults have, at some point, begun following their leaders blindly. They refuse to recognize their responsibility to “test all things,” even in the context of religious leadership. We seek advice from others, but we don’t follow them blindly.
6) We must be willing to wait. “God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not His way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 217). Many of you are probably familiar with Oswald Chambers’ daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. In one of the readings, he says this: “Never run before God’s guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt--don’t” (January 4th reading). A large part of knowing God’s will is waiting on His time.
So, to put all this together, when we are in the process of making a decision the wisest course is to wait on God, to cry out to Him for direction, and begin actively seeking His will. Think prayerfully about the pros and cons of the alternatives, weigh the long-term consequences, and go to some mature Christians to get their perspective. Be willing to wait on the Lord’s time, for He may not lead as quickly as you think He should. But, as you wait on Him, you will begin to get a sense of where He is leading.
As you prayerfully wait on the Lord, look for two things: an increasing weight in favor of one of the alternatives; and an increasing conviction in your heart that this is the Lord’s direction. Feelings and convictions are not to be ignored; they just need to be weighed together with these other things. When Annie and I get to this point in a decision, we usually begin making tentative steps in that direction, and as we begin stepping out, we pray for the Lord to either confirm this as His will, or to make it clear that we are on the wrong track. As we have followed this course of seeking His will, He has always been faithful and has made it abundantly clear what He wants us to do. He has often made us wait much longer than we’ve wanted to wait, but He has never failed to make His will known in the end.
But there still remains the question about those times when God leads His people in more direct ways. Does He still do this today? I believe He does, but we need to realize that this is the exception rather than the norm. It was exceptional, as I said earlier, even for the apostles and prophets. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher, preached a series of sermons on Spiritual Depression, and he shared later that the Lord had led him to this series in an exceptional way. He described it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, where the Lord met with him powerfully and impressed upon him the whole series, including the order in which the sermons were to be preached. These sermons are available still in the book Spiritual Depression. There seems to be an increase in this sort of guidance during times of revival, but there is also an increase in the counterfeits at the same time. I have four suggestions in this area, but I want to stress that, even in this more direct type of guidance, God deals with us as creatures who can understand and respond (either in obedience or disobedience) to His will.
1) Because guidance by dreams, visions, an audible voice or a strong impression on the mind is not the norm, we should not expect to be guided in these ways. There are times when God, in His sovereign wisdom, grants such things to His people, but the giving of these things is under His control. We cannot produce such things by the exercise of faith, and we certainly cannot claim them. God often does such things for a specific purpose and for a limited period of time. One of the leaders of the Welsh revival, about 150 years ago, was a man named David Morgan. By all accounts he was a quite ordinary preacher; he was a good man, but his gifts were not exceptional in any way. But he began longing for revival, and something happened. He reports: “I went to bed [one] night just David Morgan as usual. I woke up the next morning feeling like a lion, feeling that I was filled with the power of the Holy Ghost.” For the next two years, he preached with exceptional power, and large numbers of people came to Christ. Everywhere he went, there were tremendous results. About two years later, he says, “I went to bed one night still feeling like a lion, filled with this strange power that I had enjoyed for the two years. I woke up the next morning and found that I had become David Morgan once more.” He lived for another 15 years and again exercised a very ordinary ministry (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, pp. 322-323). God, in His sovereign wisdom, did something exceptional for a limited period of time; but when that time was over, He withdrew the power. It’s the same with these more extraordinary types of guidance. God may work in this way for a limited period of time. He may even grant a person one experience of this type, and then never do it again. The timing and duration of these things is not within our power.
2) Being led in these ways is not a mark of spirituality. God sometimes does exceptional things in the lives of immature Christians, to assure them of His presence in their lives. When I was a new Christian, I felt strongly burdened to witness to a friend of mine. It was late in the evening, probably 10pm or so, and I was sure he would be out at one of the local bars, so I went looking for him. He wasn’t in any of the places I looked, and when I was about to give up, the Lord spoke to me very clearly and said: “Wait here, and I’ll bring him to you.” I pulled over, and within a minute or so, he drove by, and I was able to wave him over. He didn’t become a Christian, but I was able to witness to him, and I was also assured of the reality of God’s presence in my life. But it had nothing to do with my spirituality at the time. I was a brand new Christian and had hardly begun to grow spiritually. It was a gift of grace, given for my encouragement in the faith. A friend of mine, who was away from the Lord, was laying in his bed one night, and a voice came through his bedroom window: “Jack, you’d better straighten up your life.” This so arrested and convicted him that he recommitted his life to Christ. In the Muslim world, where there is such strong opposition to the Gospel, God often uses dreams to bring people to Himself. So, if the Lord speaks to you or leads you in a more direct way, don’t assume that it is because you are more spiritual than others. It may be just the opposite. It may be that He can’t get your attention in any other way, or it may be that the Lord is establishing a strong foundation so that you will be able to mature and that He will withdraw these things when He’s accomplished His purpose.
3) When God spoke directly to His people in Scripture, they knew beyond a doubt that it was Him. He is God, and He is able to make Himself known to us in ways that exclude the possibility of doubt. The apostles at Pentecost knew with a certainty beyond explanation that God was present in their midst. Ezekiel, when he saw heaven opened, knew that he was in the presence of God. God is able to speak clearly to us. So, if you have an impression on your mind, don’t bother asking whether it’s from God. If you don’t know, you can be confident that God is not speaking to you. God calls us to respond to Him in faith, and we can’t exercise faith in something that may or may not be from God. If you’re not sure, don’t act. When God speaks, He speaks clearly enough for us to know that He is speaking. To quote Oswald Chambers again: “Never run before God’s guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt--don’t”
4) These things need to be tested, in the same way that other aspects of revival need to be tested. God’s Word exhorts us to “test the spirits.” If you are being led in a miraculous way, ask yourself how this experience is affecting your relationship with God. How is it affecting your relationship with Christians who are not having similar experiences? Is Jesus Christ being exalted by this experience, and are you being humbled by it, or are you being puffed up with pride? Is your reverence toward Scripture growing through this experience? Be brutally honest with yourself. Remember that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 12:14). Those who get caught in his traps don’t get caught because they’re stupid. They get caught because he presents an attractive-looking bait. If we are concerned with spiritual things, he will deceive us with something that seems very spiritual. So many have been led astray in this area that it is unwise and presumptuous to not test the spirits.
The most important thing, the really essential thing, in this area of guidance is that we desire to do God’s will above our own, that we desire with all our hearts to please Him, that we are willing to lay aside our own desires in order to please Him. Listen to Psalm 73:23-26. The psalmist has been in difficulty, but the Lord has brought him to a place of renewed faith, and he concludes: “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” He looked back and saw that God had been with him during a time of darkness and rebellion; God had faithfully led him out of his own doubts. Our hope is in God, our confidence is in Him, and if you can say with the Psalmist, “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever,” you can also be confident that He will guide you with His counsel and afterward take you into glory. There will be times when you will flounder, and wonder where God is and why He’s taking so long to reveal His will. But when He receives you into His eternal kingdom, you will be able to look back and see that He led you faithfully all the way. In the words of the hymn “All the Way my Savior Leads Me”: “When my spirit, clothed immortal, wings its flight to realms of day, this my song through endless ages, Jesus led my all the way.”
[1]These guidelines have been adapted from “Thou Our Guide,” by J.I. Packer, in his book Knowing God.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Praying for Revival, Exodus 33
In the spring of 1974, when I was still an unbeliever, some friends took me to an Assembly of God Church called the Christian Life Center. At that point in my life I knew nothing of the Gospel message, and I can’t say I even had any confidence in God’s existence. But when I walked into that church I knew with a certainty I couldn’t explain that God was there. The worship service hadn’t started; no one was doing anything to manipulate my emotions, but I walked in as an unbeliever and immediately knew that God existed and that He was present in that place. This is the thing Moses is concerned about in verse 16: “How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This is the thing that sets God’s people apart from all others: that God is among us.
We see this in the New Testament. For example, Ephesians 3:16: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” When we become Christians, it’s not just that we change our minds about the truth or that we change our behavior. We are brought into fellowship with God; God dwells among us. “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves...” (Col. 1:13). Jesus promised to be present when two or three are gathered in His name. John says, in his first letter, that we have fellowship with both the Father and the Son.
And yet, when we look at the Church, this is not always clear. There are times when the Church seems overwhelmed by the spirit of the world. The Church is never perfect, and yet there are times when the Church is so far from the New Testament standard that we would be embarrassed to claim that God is among us. At such times, people are likely to say “you can’t be serious,” and we’d have nothing to say in reply. There are times when the light of the Spirit in the Church seems almost to have gone out. But then something happens. God pours out His Spirit; He begins to demonstrate, in unmistakable ways, that His people belong to Him and that He is among them. People may continue to mock, but their mockery is of a different sort, and many of those who come to mock have the experience I had of being arrested by the certainty of God’s presence. Something like this happened in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1735, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. It began in the church, but then began to impact the whole town. He says, reporting on it later: “This work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following, anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in his sanctuary, God’s day was a delight, and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in God’s service, every one earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the word was preached; some weeping with sorrow; and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbours” (Works, vol. 1, p. 348). A town full of the presence of God; remarkable tokens of grace in each house.
This is the sort of thing we are praying for when we pray for revival in the Church. Revival is more than a series of evangelistic meetings. Revival is what happens when God, through the sovereign power of His Spirit, breathes new life into the Church. It’s something that lies outside of our own control; we can’t plan for revival. But we can humble ourselves and cry out to God for a fresh visitation from His Spirit. We can’t make it happen. But we can recognize our need and cry out to God, asking Him to breathe new life into the Church.
This is what Moses and the Israelites are doing in Exodus 33. First of all, notice the spiritual condition of the people at this point. Things had seemed to be going well. The nation had been miraculously delivered from Egypt, and Pharaoh and his army had been destroyed. There had been problems: the Israelites had repeatedly grumbled against Moses’ leadership, but they had recently defeated the Amalekites and were on their way to the land of promise. There had been setbacks and disobedience, but now things seemed to be on the right track. But then Moses had gone up into the mountain to receive the law and had been gone for over a month. As the days passed and Moses still didn’t appear, the people asked Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them an idol. They said “Come, make us gods who will go before us” (32:1). Aaron asked for their gold earrings, and when they gave them to him he made them into a calf, and the Israelites cried out: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (32:4). Aaron then built an altar in front of the calf, and the people proceeded to worship it. At that point, Moses returned. (It’s interesting to notice how often we give in just before a trial or temptation is over.) The people had come under God’s judgment and several thousand of them had died. But that wasn’t the end of it. God now says: “Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way” (33:3). God is still sending them into the promised land, and He is sending an angel with them, but He is not going to manifest His presence among them. He is going to give them outward success, but He is not going to be with them.
We need to remind ourselves here that outward success is not necessarily an indication that God is pleased with us. God is telling them to go in and possess the land, and that He will send an angel to help them do it. Outwardly, everything is going to look the same. To an outside observer, it will look like they are functioning as God intended. But something is lacking. One of the subtle dangers churches face is that of assuming that God is blessing because the programs are running well. If you raise a concern about the spiritual health of the church, they’ll respond: “But look at how we’re growing! People are being blessed by our programs. What more do you expect?” These words in Exodus make it clear that it is possible to be successfully doing the things a church is supposed to do, and yet to be in a state of serious spiritual decline. We can be accomplishing great things, but there’s a sense that something is lacking. People walking in may be impressed with our facility or our programs, but they’re not arrested by the reality of God’s presence.
It’s not just that we can produce counterfeits, and so end up with something less than the real thing. We can market the church in ways that make numerical growth more likely, and we can order our programs so that people will feel good about being here. But what is being offered to Israel here is not a counterfeit. What they are being offered here is the real thing, without the full blessing of God’s presence among them. God is sending an angel to miraculously intervene for them, to fulfill His promises. They are going to experience God’s blessing in an outward sense, even though God has withdrawn from them.
But look how the people respond in vv. 4-11. “When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments” (v. 4). They are described as a stiff-necked people, and yet when they hear that God is withdrawing His presence from them, they mourn. When God is going to do a work in reviving His people, He invariably leads them into a deeper conviction of sin, which leads them to mourn, to feel grieved over their sins. We see this pattern in the beatitudes. Jesus begins with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and this is immediately followed by “blessed are those who mourn.” When we see our spiritual poverty, when we see that we are weak, poor, blind and naked before God, and that we can only come to Him with empty hands and cry out to Him for mercy, we naturally are grieved. God’s first work in leading us to revival is not to make us feel good, but to convict us of how far we’ve fallen. God’s first concern is not to make us happy, but to make us holy, and He begins by showing us how unholy we are. And this is a painful experience.
A deep mourning over sin has characterized revivals both in Scripture and in the history of the Church. This is why I had such strong reservations about the revival movement associated several years ago with the Toronto Vineyard. During the first anniversary celebration of the “Toronto Blessing,” a pastor asked Randy Clark, one of the leaders in this movement, why this revival hadn’t placed a strong emphasis on the holiness of God and human sinfulness. Clark’s response was that, in this revival “God decided to throw a party for his people because they ‘already feel so icky about themselves’” (Christian Research Journal, Sept.-Oct. 97, p. 45). Another leader in the movement shares this incident: “‘One night I was preaching on hell’... when suddenly laughter ‘just hit the whole place. The more I told people what hell was like, the more they laughed’” (Ibid., p. 16). It’s not just that I am doubtful about the doctrine of hell being an occasion for hilarity. It’s that this movement seemed to be bypassing something that is necessary to true revival. God is holy, and when He makes Himself known among us, one of the first things we will feel is a renewed sense of our own unholiness.
Look at what happened to Isaiah, for example. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted....” God is surrounded by seraphs, crying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” And when Isaiah sees all this, he cries out: “Woe to me! ... ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (6:1-5). In our longing for revival, let’s not get sidetracked. God’s desire is to make us holy, and the path to holiness begins with a deep recognition of our own sinfulness.
The Israelites mourned, but they didn’t stop there. Verses 7-11 describe the tent where Moses would meet with God. This isn’t the tabernacle, for that hadn’t yet been built. The NIV translates verse 7: “Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting.’ Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.” This word translated “inquire” is most often translated “seek.” Most of the other translations I consulted, including the NASB, the AV and the RSV handle it in this way. The NASB, for example, says this: “And it came about, that everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.” It’s true that many who went out to the tent of meeting were seeking advice, were inquiring about God’s direction in some particular area--I think that’s why the NIV translates it in this way. But I think the other translations make better sense in this context. The people were not only inquiring of the Lord, they were seeking Him. They were mourning over their sins, and they began going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord.
They’ve sinned presumptuously, and now the Lord has withdrawn His presence from them. They’re mourning over this, but they’re not just wallowing in sorrow. It’s possible to mourn in a way that does no good at all, to say, in effect, “I really wish things had gone better in my spiritual life, but now I’ve really missed the boat. It’s a shame that things didn’t go differently.” The Israelites are distressed with their spiritual condition, and they respond by going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord, and by standing beside their own tents and worshiping the Lord as He reveals Himself to Moses. This, by the way, is a good way to tell the difference between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the condemnation of the accuser. When Satan is accusing us, it always tends to cripple us spiritually and makes us feel that we simply cannot enter God’s presence. When the Holy Spirit is convicting us of sin, we feel unworthy, yes, but He also makes us aware of the reality of God’s grace. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, He leads us into God’s presence; His conviction always carries an invitation with it. When Satan is condemning us for our sins, he tries to drive us away from God. The Israelites were guilty and they knew it, but this didn’t drive them away from God; it drove them to seek Him all the more.
Notice also, in verses 12-23, what Moses is praying for. He’s dissatisfied with anything less than the presence of God among them. Throughout this passage we see him hungering and reaching for more of God, both for himself and for the people. In verse 13, he says: “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” Verse 15: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” And verse 18: “Now show me your glory.” No matter how much of God he has, Moses wants more.
Paul was like this. He had learned to be content with his outward situation, as he says in Philippians 4:12: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” But he is just the opposite in his spiritual life. Listen to what he says earlier in the same letter, in Philippians 3:12-14: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
In my early Christian life I floundered for the first couple of years because I didn’t know what to do to grow spiritually. A real turning point for me was the discovery that I could be mentored by reading Christian books. One of the first mentors I found in this way was A.W. Tozer. Tozer was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor for many years, and his life was marked by an exceptional hunger for God. I’ve been told that a person walking into his office unannounced was likely to find him prostrate on the floor in worship. I was dissatisfied with my spiritual life, and I wanted to catch something of the spirit that I could sense in Tozer’s books. Here’s one of the things he said: “Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency.... For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts.... Their longing after God all but consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less ardent Christians look with languid eye and entertain no hope of reaching” (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Moses hungered after God in this way. Like Paul, he had an all-consuming desire to know God. If we want to see revival in our midst, we need to cry out to God for a hunger that will be satisfied with nothing less than God Himself. Moses could have settled for something less. I suspect the thing that most often keeps us from experiencing revival is that we are willing to settle for less. God offered Moses success, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted God.
Notice how God responds to all this. He promises repeatedly to go with them, He gives Moses a greater experience of Himself than he had ever had, and He renews His covenant with the people, which prepares the way for the building of the tabernacle. It’s true that we can’t produce revival. We can’t manipulate God or twist His arm, but we can do those things which God has shown himself willing to bless, those things which have repeatedly led to revival. God was pleased when Moses prayed “show me your glory.” He didn’t give him exactly what he asked for. Moses couldn’t have handled that. But when we humble ourselves before God and cry out to Him, when we long for Him to make Himself known among us, He will respond, although He will do so in His own way and time. It’s a good sign when God’s people begin to stir themselves up to pray in earnest for revival. The commentator Matthew Henry, commenting on this passage, said “When God designs mercy, he stirs up prayer” (Vol. 1, p. 419).
So we see here something of how to pray for revival. The most important thing is a sense of longing for God Himself. The thing that sets us apart from all other groups, the real distinguishing mark of the Church, is that God is among us. If He is stirring you with a renewed hunger to know Him, this can be a prelude to a greater outpouring of His Spirit both in your own life and in the life of the church. If He’s drawing you to Himself, it’s because He wants to make Himself known to you.
We have a spiritual enemy, who is not content with the trouble he’s caused among us in the past. His real goal is to destroy the witness of the Church completely. The church I mentioned earlier, the Christian Life Center, doesn’t exist anymore. They got in over their heads in a building program and things just started unraveling. The beautiful facility they built is now an office complex. I was already gone when this happened, so I don’t know all of the details. But I do know this: God was doing a work there, but that didn’t make them immune to the attacks of Satan. Let’s not be presumptuous. God is at work among us, but we are still very much in need of a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit. We see the early Church, a very short time after Pentecost, in Acts chapter 4, crying out to God for help and receiving a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God had already done a great work among them, but they still cried out to Him in need.
We need also to remember that we are part of a larger body, and that things are not going well in many parts of the Church throughout the world. There are glimmerings of hope here and there; there are encouraging signs that God may be leading the Church toward revival, but it is not accomplished yet and there is much out there that is discouraging. I mentioned finding A.W. Tozer as a spiritual mentor early in my Christian life. Another mentor I found a few years later was the great Welsh preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. A half century ago, he preached a series of sermons on revival, and he said this about the spiritual condition of the Church at that time: “When you contrast the condition of the Church today with what she has been, you cannot but come to the conclusion that for various reasons God is not looking upon us and smiling upon us. There is a sense in which we are desolate. Speaking generally the Church today, throughout the whole world, is an abandoned Church. She is in a desolate condition, and I maintain that that is the thing that we must realize” (Revival, p. 256). I believe this is still true for much of the Church in America today.
The test is not whether or not we are experiencing outward success. Our programs may be running very well. We live in a society that is obsessed with technique. Much good has come out of this desire to find efficient ways of doing things, but there has also been a tendency to become so efficient that we think we can do things on our own. Os Guinness said: “No civilization in history has offered more gifts and therefore has amplified the temptation of living ‘by bread alone’ with such power and variety and to such effect. In today’s convenient, climate-controlled spiritual world created by the managerial and therapeutic revolutions, nothing is easier than living apart from God. Idols are simply the ultimate techniques of human causation and control--without God. God’s sovereign freedom has met its match in ours. We have invented the technology to put God’s Word on hold” (Dining With The Devil, pp. 37-38).
The test is not whether we’re successful, or whether people are impressed with our programs. The test is whether God is among us. When people walk into our churches, are they immediately arrested by the reality of God’s presence? If we find ourselves wanting to stay where we are, feeling satisfied that things are going well enough, that is a very bad sign. Moses had experienced so much of God, and yet he still cried out for more. God is present among us, but we need more of Him. Let’s cry out to Him for a fresh outpouring of His Spirit in our midst. Let’s cry out for “remarkable tokens of His presence,” and continue crying out, knowing that He is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.
We see this in the New Testament. For example, Ephesians 3:16: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” When we become Christians, it’s not just that we change our minds about the truth or that we change our behavior. We are brought into fellowship with God; God dwells among us. “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves...” (Col. 1:13). Jesus promised to be present when two or three are gathered in His name. John says, in his first letter, that we have fellowship with both the Father and the Son.
And yet, when we look at the Church, this is not always clear. There are times when the Church seems overwhelmed by the spirit of the world. The Church is never perfect, and yet there are times when the Church is so far from the New Testament standard that we would be embarrassed to claim that God is among us. At such times, people are likely to say “you can’t be serious,” and we’d have nothing to say in reply. There are times when the light of the Spirit in the Church seems almost to have gone out. But then something happens. God pours out His Spirit; He begins to demonstrate, in unmistakable ways, that His people belong to Him and that He is among them. People may continue to mock, but their mockery is of a different sort, and many of those who come to mock have the experience I had of being arrested by the certainty of God’s presence. Something like this happened in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1735, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. It began in the church, but then began to impact the whole town. He says, reporting on it later: “This work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following, anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in his sanctuary, God’s day was a delight, and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in God’s service, every one earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the word was preached; some weeping with sorrow; and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbours” (Works, vol. 1, p. 348). A town full of the presence of God; remarkable tokens of grace in each house.
This is the sort of thing we are praying for when we pray for revival in the Church. Revival is more than a series of evangelistic meetings. Revival is what happens when God, through the sovereign power of His Spirit, breathes new life into the Church. It’s something that lies outside of our own control; we can’t plan for revival. But we can humble ourselves and cry out to God for a fresh visitation from His Spirit. We can’t make it happen. But we can recognize our need and cry out to God, asking Him to breathe new life into the Church.
This is what Moses and the Israelites are doing in Exodus 33. First of all, notice the spiritual condition of the people at this point. Things had seemed to be going well. The nation had been miraculously delivered from Egypt, and Pharaoh and his army had been destroyed. There had been problems: the Israelites had repeatedly grumbled against Moses’ leadership, but they had recently defeated the Amalekites and were on their way to the land of promise. There had been setbacks and disobedience, but now things seemed to be on the right track. But then Moses had gone up into the mountain to receive the law and had been gone for over a month. As the days passed and Moses still didn’t appear, the people asked Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them an idol. They said “Come, make us gods who will go before us” (32:1). Aaron asked for their gold earrings, and when they gave them to him he made them into a calf, and the Israelites cried out: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (32:4). Aaron then built an altar in front of the calf, and the people proceeded to worship it. At that point, Moses returned. (It’s interesting to notice how often we give in just before a trial or temptation is over.) The people had come under God’s judgment and several thousand of them had died. But that wasn’t the end of it. God now says: “Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way” (33:3). God is still sending them into the promised land, and He is sending an angel with them, but He is not going to manifest His presence among them. He is going to give them outward success, but He is not going to be with them.
We need to remind ourselves here that outward success is not necessarily an indication that God is pleased with us. God is telling them to go in and possess the land, and that He will send an angel to help them do it. Outwardly, everything is going to look the same. To an outside observer, it will look like they are functioning as God intended. But something is lacking. One of the subtle dangers churches face is that of assuming that God is blessing because the programs are running well. If you raise a concern about the spiritual health of the church, they’ll respond: “But look at how we’re growing! People are being blessed by our programs. What more do you expect?” These words in Exodus make it clear that it is possible to be successfully doing the things a church is supposed to do, and yet to be in a state of serious spiritual decline. We can be accomplishing great things, but there’s a sense that something is lacking. People walking in may be impressed with our facility or our programs, but they’re not arrested by the reality of God’s presence.
It’s not just that we can produce counterfeits, and so end up with something less than the real thing. We can market the church in ways that make numerical growth more likely, and we can order our programs so that people will feel good about being here. But what is being offered to Israel here is not a counterfeit. What they are being offered here is the real thing, without the full blessing of God’s presence among them. God is sending an angel to miraculously intervene for them, to fulfill His promises. They are going to experience God’s blessing in an outward sense, even though God has withdrawn from them.
But look how the people respond in vv. 4-11. “When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments” (v. 4). They are described as a stiff-necked people, and yet when they hear that God is withdrawing His presence from them, they mourn. When God is going to do a work in reviving His people, He invariably leads them into a deeper conviction of sin, which leads them to mourn, to feel grieved over their sins. We see this pattern in the beatitudes. Jesus begins with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and this is immediately followed by “blessed are those who mourn.” When we see our spiritual poverty, when we see that we are weak, poor, blind and naked before God, and that we can only come to Him with empty hands and cry out to Him for mercy, we naturally are grieved. God’s first work in leading us to revival is not to make us feel good, but to convict us of how far we’ve fallen. God’s first concern is not to make us happy, but to make us holy, and He begins by showing us how unholy we are. And this is a painful experience.
A deep mourning over sin has characterized revivals both in Scripture and in the history of the Church. This is why I had such strong reservations about the revival movement associated several years ago with the Toronto Vineyard. During the first anniversary celebration of the “Toronto Blessing,” a pastor asked Randy Clark, one of the leaders in this movement, why this revival hadn’t placed a strong emphasis on the holiness of God and human sinfulness. Clark’s response was that, in this revival “God decided to throw a party for his people because they ‘already feel so icky about themselves’” (Christian Research Journal, Sept.-Oct. 97, p. 45). Another leader in the movement shares this incident: “‘One night I was preaching on hell’... when suddenly laughter ‘just hit the whole place. The more I told people what hell was like, the more they laughed’” (Ibid., p. 16). It’s not just that I am doubtful about the doctrine of hell being an occasion for hilarity. It’s that this movement seemed to be bypassing something that is necessary to true revival. God is holy, and when He makes Himself known among us, one of the first things we will feel is a renewed sense of our own unholiness.
Look at what happened to Isaiah, for example. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted....” God is surrounded by seraphs, crying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” And when Isaiah sees all this, he cries out: “Woe to me! ... ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (6:1-5). In our longing for revival, let’s not get sidetracked. God’s desire is to make us holy, and the path to holiness begins with a deep recognition of our own sinfulness.
The Israelites mourned, but they didn’t stop there. Verses 7-11 describe the tent where Moses would meet with God. This isn’t the tabernacle, for that hadn’t yet been built. The NIV translates verse 7: “Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting.’ Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.” This word translated “inquire” is most often translated “seek.” Most of the other translations I consulted, including the NASB, the AV and the RSV handle it in this way. The NASB, for example, says this: “And it came about, that everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.” It’s true that many who went out to the tent of meeting were seeking advice, were inquiring about God’s direction in some particular area--I think that’s why the NIV translates it in this way. But I think the other translations make better sense in this context. The people were not only inquiring of the Lord, they were seeking Him. They were mourning over their sins, and they began going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord.
They’ve sinned presumptuously, and now the Lord has withdrawn His presence from them. They’re mourning over this, but they’re not just wallowing in sorrow. It’s possible to mourn in a way that does no good at all, to say, in effect, “I really wish things had gone better in my spiritual life, but now I’ve really missed the boat. It’s a shame that things didn’t go differently.” The Israelites are distressed with their spiritual condition, and they respond by going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord, and by standing beside their own tents and worshiping the Lord as He reveals Himself to Moses. This, by the way, is a good way to tell the difference between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the condemnation of the accuser. When Satan is accusing us, it always tends to cripple us spiritually and makes us feel that we simply cannot enter God’s presence. When the Holy Spirit is convicting us of sin, we feel unworthy, yes, but He also makes us aware of the reality of God’s grace. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, He leads us into God’s presence; His conviction always carries an invitation with it. When Satan is condemning us for our sins, he tries to drive us away from God. The Israelites were guilty and they knew it, but this didn’t drive them away from God; it drove them to seek Him all the more.
Notice also, in verses 12-23, what Moses is praying for. He’s dissatisfied with anything less than the presence of God among them. Throughout this passage we see him hungering and reaching for more of God, both for himself and for the people. In verse 13, he says: “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” Verse 15: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” And verse 18: “Now show me your glory.” No matter how much of God he has, Moses wants more.
Paul was like this. He had learned to be content with his outward situation, as he says in Philippians 4:12: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” But he is just the opposite in his spiritual life. Listen to what he says earlier in the same letter, in Philippians 3:12-14: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
In my early Christian life I floundered for the first couple of years because I didn’t know what to do to grow spiritually. A real turning point for me was the discovery that I could be mentored by reading Christian books. One of the first mentors I found in this way was A.W. Tozer. Tozer was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor for many years, and his life was marked by an exceptional hunger for God. I’ve been told that a person walking into his office unannounced was likely to find him prostrate on the floor in worship. I was dissatisfied with my spiritual life, and I wanted to catch something of the spirit that I could sense in Tozer’s books. Here’s one of the things he said: “Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency.... For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts.... Their longing after God all but consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less ardent Christians look with languid eye and entertain no hope of reaching” (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Moses hungered after God in this way. Like Paul, he had an all-consuming desire to know God. If we want to see revival in our midst, we need to cry out to God for a hunger that will be satisfied with nothing less than God Himself. Moses could have settled for something less. I suspect the thing that most often keeps us from experiencing revival is that we are willing to settle for less. God offered Moses success, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted God.
Notice how God responds to all this. He promises repeatedly to go with them, He gives Moses a greater experience of Himself than he had ever had, and He renews His covenant with the people, which prepares the way for the building of the tabernacle. It’s true that we can’t produce revival. We can’t manipulate God or twist His arm, but we can do those things which God has shown himself willing to bless, those things which have repeatedly led to revival. God was pleased when Moses prayed “show me your glory.” He didn’t give him exactly what he asked for. Moses couldn’t have handled that. But when we humble ourselves before God and cry out to Him, when we long for Him to make Himself known among us, He will respond, although He will do so in His own way and time. It’s a good sign when God’s people begin to stir themselves up to pray in earnest for revival. The commentator Matthew Henry, commenting on this passage, said “When God designs mercy, he stirs up prayer” (Vol. 1, p. 419).
So we see here something of how to pray for revival. The most important thing is a sense of longing for God Himself. The thing that sets us apart from all other groups, the real distinguishing mark of the Church, is that God is among us. If He is stirring you with a renewed hunger to know Him, this can be a prelude to a greater outpouring of His Spirit both in your own life and in the life of the church. If He’s drawing you to Himself, it’s because He wants to make Himself known to you.
We have a spiritual enemy, who is not content with the trouble he’s caused among us in the past. His real goal is to destroy the witness of the Church completely. The church I mentioned earlier, the Christian Life Center, doesn’t exist anymore. They got in over their heads in a building program and things just started unraveling. The beautiful facility they built is now an office complex. I was already gone when this happened, so I don’t know all of the details. But I do know this: God was doing a work there, but that didn’t make them immune to the attacks of Satan. Let’s not be presumptuous. God is at work among us, but we are still very much in need of a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit. We see the early Church, a very short time after Pentecost, in Acts chapter 4, crying out to God for help and receiving a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God had already done a great work among them, but they still cried out to Him in need.
We need also to remember that we are part of a larger body, and that things are not going well in many parts of the Church throughout the world. There are glimmerings of hope here and there; there are encouraging signs that God may be leading the Church toward revival, but it is not accomplished yet and there is much out there that is discouraging. I mentioned finding A.W. Tozer as a spiritual mentor early in my Christian life. Another mentor I found a few years later was the great Welsh preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. A half century ago, he preached a series of sermons on revival, and he said this about the spiritual condition of the Church at that time: “When you contrast the condition of the Church today with what she has been, you cannot but come to the conclusion that for various reasons God is not looking upon us and smiling upon us. There is a sense in which we are desolate. Speaking generally the Church today, throughout the whole world, is an abandoned Church. She is in a desolate condition, and I maintain that that is the thing that we must realize” (Revival, p. 256). I believe this is still true for much of the Church in America today.
The test is not whether or not we are experiencing outward success. Our programs may be running very well. We live in a society that is obsessed with technique. Much good has come out of this desire to find efficient ways of doing things, but there has also been a tendency to become so efficient that we think we can do things on our own. Os Guinness said: “No civilization in history has offered more gifts and therefore has amplified the temptation of living ‘by bread alone’ with such power and variety and to such effect. In today’s convenient, climate-controlled spiritual world created by the managerial and therapeutic revolutions, nothing is easier than living apart from God. Idols are simply the ultimate techniques of human causation and control--without God. God’s sovereign freedom has met its match in ours. We have invented the technology to put God’s Word on hold” (Dining With The Devil, pp. 37-38).
The test is not whether we’re successful, or whether people are impressed with our programs. The test is whether God is among us. When people walk into our churches, are they immediately arrested by the reality of God’s presence? If we find ourselves wanting to stay where we are, feeling satisfied that things are going well enough, that is a very bad sign. Moses had experienced so much of God, and yet he still cried out for more. God is present among us, but we need more of Him. Let’s cry out to Him for a fresh outpouring of His Spirit in our midst. Let’s cry out for “remarkable tokens of His presence,” and continue crying out, knowing that He is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Ash Wednesday Meditation, Matthew 5:1-10
Many people who grow up in liturgical churches have bad memories of Lent. One book I consulted said this: “Thinking about Lent is not my favorite thing to do. In fact, I rather hate it. Every year, when the subject comes up, I see myself resist” (Gertrud Mueller Nelson, To Dance With God, p. 129). I didn’t grow up in the church, so I don’t have childhood memories to react against. But for many Christians, observing Lent seems like a bad idea, a step away from the freedom we have in Christ.
I’ve especially noticed two attitudes toward Lent that are counterproductive. On the one hand, for many Christians Lent is a time to engage in morbid introspection. It’s a time when we know we should feel bad about our sins, even though we don’t. Or maybe we do feel bad about our sins, and we spend this season thinking about what wretched, miserable people we are. More often than not, this sort of thing only makes us more self-absorbed, and it does nothing to move us in the direction of godliness. It does nothing to free us from sin.
For others, Lent seems to be little more than a time when we dutifully deprive ourselves of things we really enjoy. The idea of Marti Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is based on this mentality. In this view, the last Tuesday before Lent is a time to indulge ourselves, in preparation for a period of legalistic restraint. Of course, many of those who celebrate Fat Tuesday with great abandon do not deny themselves during Lent, and Fat Tuesday has become for them nothing more than an excuse to party.
It might be helpful to begin with the background of Lent. Many Christians in the early church prepared themselves for baptism by a time of prayer and fasting. And often they wanted to be baptized on Easter, to identify in a special way with Jesus’ burial and resurrection. From this a custom developed of fasting in preparation for Easter (even for those who were not being baptized). The length of time for this fasting varied, but eventually the church settled on 40 days, in imitation of Jesus’ fast in the wilderness, just before He began His public ministry. Two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, also fasted for 40 days, and these two met with Jesus at the Transfiguration. So Christians often meditate on the biblical accounts of the Transfiguration either before or during Lent. For most Christians this has not been a total fast, but a time of self denial, of giving up something that would normally be a part of their diet, or something that would normally be part of their daily routine.
Today is called Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Originally the fast began on a Monday, and continued without interruption until Easter. Eastern Orthodox churches still celebrate in this way. But in the Western church, it was later decided that Sunday was too festive a day for fasting, so the Sundays of Lent were set apart as special days. Eliminating Sundays from the fast brought the total number of days to 36, so the season now begins on a Wednesday, to make up for the lost 4 days. It’s called Ash Wednesday because in liturgical churches the pastor puts ashes, in the form of a cross, on the foreheads of worshipers. In the Old Testament, ashes are a symbol of mourning and repentance. Here’s an example from the book of Jeremiah: “O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth, and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation; for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us” (6:26). So, the symbolism of Ash Wednesday is that we are mourning for our sins in preparation for a fresh realization of the price Jesus paid to redeem us. And not only mourning for our sins, but turning away from them in renewed obedience and devotion to God.
Is it necessary to observe Lent? No, it’s not necessary at all. This is an area where we have freedom. We’re not bound by God’s Law to observe this season. Paul said, in Romans 14: “Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with--even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department.... Or, say one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience. What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake.... none of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to--all the way from life to death and everything in between--not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other” (Romans 14:1-9, The Message). It’s important to know that we are not bound in this area. Many Christians react against the celebration of Lent because, at one time or another, they have been tyrannized by those who don’t see this as an area of freedom.
It’s not necessary to observe Lent, but it can be very helpful. Moses said this to the Israelites: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Deut. 6:4-9). He wants them to be aware of God’s word all the time, to be meditating on it constantly. And he wants them to fill their lives with things that will remind them of God’s word.
There were many things like this in ancient Israel. Places where God had done something special were set apart for worship, and there was usually some sort of monument, as a visual reminder. Many of the Jews of Jesus’ time wore phylacteries, which were strips of parchment with Bible verses on them enclosed in a leather case and strapped to the forehead, just between the eyes. Or some were worn on the left arm, near the elbow. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for making a show out of this by making them large and conspicuous to others, but He didn’t condemn the practice itself. At its best, it was simply a visual reminder. And the nation of Israel went through a yearly cycle of special days, which were set aside to remind them, year after year, of the great things God had done for them. These outward observances weren’t an end in themselves. Moses’ desire was that they “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But these outward reminders could help them to do that.
Part of the difficulty with Lent is that it has too often taken on a morbid focus. It’s easy for this whole season to become a preparation for Good Friday, rather than a preparation for Easter. We can especially get into trouble if we focus too exclusively on the physical sufferings of Jesus. The Moravians got into trouble for awhile in this area. They were one of the greatest missionary-sending churches in history, and they were exemplary in heartfelt, fearless devotion to the Lord. Some of their missionaries discovered, while preaching to Eskimos, that their hearers were very interested in graphic descriptions of the scourging and crucifixion of Christ. This spread quickly throughout the movement, and soon became “the principle element of Moravian preaching, and some of the preachers learned to depict the Saviour’s sufferings in vivid detail and with tear-compelling effect. They spoke of the lash, the thorns, the nails and the sword-thrust with ecstatic emphasis and unhallowed familiarity” (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 1, p. 173). Count Zinzindorf, the leader of the movement, described himself as “a poor sinner washed in the blood of the slaughtered Lamb in which I live, and to swim and bathe in Jesus’ blood is my element.” And some of the people “spoke of themselves as ‘little doves flying about in the atmosphere of the cross’, and ‘little fish swimming in the bed of blood’, or ‘little bees who suck on the wounds of Christ’, ‘who feel at home in the side hole, and crawl in deep’” (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 326). The celebration of Lent has often been marred by this kind of morbidity, by an exclusive focus on the physical sufferings of Christ apart from the triumph of the Resurrection. (I need to mention, in passing, that the Moravians only stayed on this tangent for a short period in their history).
Part of the emphasis of Lent is repentance and self-denial. One of the things we want to get from this season is a renewed appreciation for the price Jesus paid for our salvation. But that’s not all. Lent is a time to renew our focus, a time to turn to God in a new way. It’s a time to concentrate in a more intensive way on the things of God. During the Advent season we were reminded anew of Jesus’ coming, and we cultivated a sense of anticipation that He is coming again. But for the past 9 weeks or so we’ve been in what is called Ordinary Time. Maybe we’ve been busy. Maybe the affairs of this world have been weighing us down and drawing our minds away from the things of God. The beginning of Lent presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to renew our focus. The beatitudes can help give us a more complete picture of what this means.
The heart of the beatitudes is verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” This beatitude is framed by three which describe the kind of people who hunger and thirst for righteousness (verses 3-5), and three which describe how these people interact with others (verses 7-9). Verse 10 describes how the world responds to people who hunger and thirst after righteousness (and verses 11-12 develop this in more detail).
The beatitudes describe people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They hunger and thirst for righteousness because they don’t have any righteousness of their own; they’re “poor in spirit.” They say, with the hymn Rock of Ages, “nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace; foul I to the fountain fly; wash me Savior or I die.” They accept God’s verdict that “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law...” (Romans 3:20), and they come before God with empty hands, acknowledging their spiritual poverty and hungering and thirsting for that righteousness which only comes as a gift of grace.
People who see clearly who they are before God, who acknowledge their sinfulness, mourn, as Isaiah did when he saw the Lord. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.... ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (Isaiah 6:1-5). Isaiah didn’t talk himself into feeling bad about his sins. He saw himself truly in the light of God’s holiness. This is a genuine godly sorrow that leads us to cry for mercy, like the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
Those who have been grieved over their sins in this way will be gentle, or meek. This has to do primarily with our attitude toward ourselves. If we’re meek, we’re not constantly watching out for ourselves; we don’t demand the best all the time. We don’t grasp after our rights, as so many in our society are doing. Abraham demonstrated meekness toward his nephew, Lot. They were both wealthy men, and there was increasing conflict between their hired workers, so they decided to separate. Abraham had every right, in that culture, to choose which part of the land he wanted. But instead he gave Lot the first choice. David showed meekness when he twice refused to kill Saul and grasp the kingship for himself (even though he had God’s assurance that he was called to be king).
These all describe a person who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And as we hunger for more of God, as we spend time in His presence, these qualities will increasingly be evident in our lives. These first three qualities primarily describe the condition of our hearts. The three beatitudes following verse 6 have more of an outward focus. Those who recognize their spiritual poverty will be merciful toward others. They recognize the wonder of God’s mercy to them, and this overflows in mercy toward others. Those who mourn over their sinfulness find their hearts purified. This was Isaiah’s experience. After he cried out, an angel flew to him with a live coal which he had taken from the altar. “With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for’” (vv. 6-7). And those who are meek, who aren’t grasping the best for themselves and are seeking to live at peace with others, become peacemakers. The last beatitude, verse 10, reminds us that the kind of spirit described here is completely at odds with the world, and those who exemplify this kind of Christlike spirit have repeatedly found that the world hates them, just as it hated Jesus.
These beatitudes describe people who follow Jesus, who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Lent is a season that’s set aside for renewing our focus, for reorienting ourselves to the things of God. We tend to become lax. We become lethargic spiritually and find that we have little interest in spending time with God. We’re not hungering and thirsting after righteousness. “To hunger” means “to crave ardently, to seek with eager desire.” And to thirst, in this context, means to painfully feel our need of, and to eagerly long for, those things which will refresh, support, and strengthen us spiritually. This all points to an intense desire that results in actions. “People who really desire something with the whole of their being do not sit down, passively waiting for it to come” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones). We often find ourselves, at the beginning of Lent, not hungering and thirsting in this way. And this season presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to seek God with renewed focus.
How can we make use of this season? I suggest that you both eliminate something from and add something to your daily life over the next several weeks. Try fasting, or denying yourself, in some area during Lent. It can be something very simple. Some people give up TV, or a particular show that they enjoy. Others give up a particular kind of food or a hobby that occupies lots of their time. The point of this fast is not to practice rigorous self-denial. The point is that each time you have a desire for this thing, you will be reminded to think about the sacrifice Jesus made for us. This is not a vigorous fast, but it should be something you’ll desire often enough over the next several weeks to serve as a reminder that Jesus sacrificed all to pay the price for our sins. What happens if you forget? Sometimes we forget, and sometimes we suffer from a failure of will. But this is not sin. We’re not under the Law in this; we’re using this season as an opportunity for spiritual renewal. So don’t get too worked up about failure. Make use of the failure by pausing briefly and meditating on Jesus’ perfect life of obedience and His sacrificial death.
I also suggest that you add something to your usual devotional practices. Do something different from what you normally do, to set the season apart. Maybe make use of a different daily devotional book for the days of Lent, or read a book (or part of a book) that will stir your desire to seek God. Or sing hymns and worship songs that lead up to the themes of Holy Week and Easter. Or read prayerfully one of the gospels. If you have time, you may find it helpful to read it out loud, praying over it and asking God to impress these things on your heart and make them real to you. As you come to the sections on Jesus’ suffering and humiliation, remind yourself that it was because of our sins that He did this. He did it because we are spiritually poor and owed a debt that we could never, in all eternity, pay ourselves.
In celebrating Lent, we are not trying to earn God’s favor. We’re remembering what God has done to grant us His favor. We already know about the events of the gospel. We’re familiar with it all, but we need to keep coming back to these things, meditating on them and allowing them to sink more deeply into our hearts and transform our lives. We live by hours, days, and weeks, so we need to find some practical way of doing this, “whether that means we put our minds to these topics whenever the whim takes us or when our routine Bible reading brings us across them, or according to some system which brings us around to them regularly.... Hence, the liturgical year is nothing more (and nothing less) than the Church’s “walking through” the gospel with the Lord. Since it is a plain fact of our humanness that we are rhythmic creatures who must keep coming back to things that are always true, it is especially good for us to do this in the Church” (Thomas Howard, Evangelical is Not Enough, pp. 132-33).
And do all this in the light of God’s grace. Our purpose is to “walk through the gospel” with the Lord, to prayerfully meditate on what it meant for Jesus to do the things He did, and to prepare ourselves to receive anew the angel’s words: “He is risen!” By setting aside each Sunday, breaking your fast in anticipation, you are looking forward to the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. And year after year, as we worship our risen Lord, we are looking forward to that day when we will see Him face to face. May He stir us all with a fresh realization of all He has done for us, and all the riches that are ours in Him. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).
I’ve especially noticed two attitudes toward Lent that are counterproductive. On the one hand, for many Christians Lent is a time to engage in morbid introspection. It’s a time when we know we should feel bad about our sins, even though we don’t. Or maybe we do feel bad about our sins, and we spend this season thinking about what wretched, miserable people we are. More often than not, this sort of thing only makes us more self-absorbed, and it does nothing to move us in the direction of godliness. It does nothing to free us from sin.
For others, Lent seems to be little more than a time when we dutifully deprive ourselves of things we really enjoy. The idea of Marti Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is based on this mentality. In this view, the last Tuesday before Lent is a time to indulge ourselves, in preparation for a period of legalistic restraint. Of course, many of those who celebrate Fat Tuesday with great abandon do not deny themselves during Lent, and Fat Tuesday has become for them nothing more than an excuse to party.
It might be helpful to begin with the background of Lent. Many Christians in the early church prepared themselves for baptism by a time of prayer and fasting. And often they wanted to be baptized on Easter, to identify in a special way with Jesus’ burial and resurrection. From this a custom developed of fasting in preparation for Easter (even for those who were not being baptized). The length of time for this fasting varied, but eventually the church settled on 40 days, in imitation of Jesus’ fast in the wilderness, just before He began His public ministry. Two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, also fasted for 40 days, and these two met with Jesus at the Transfiguration. So Christians often meditate on the biblical accounts of the Transfiguration either before or during Lent. For most Christians this has not been a total fast, but a time of self denial, of giving up something that would normally be a part of their diet, or something that would normally be part of their daily routine.
Today is called Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Originally the fast began on a Monday, and continued without interruption until Easter. Eastern Orthodox churches still celebrate in this way. But in the Western church, it was later decided that Sunday was too festive a day for fasting, so the Sundays of Lent were set apart as special days. Eliminating Sundays from the fast brought the total number of days to 36, so the season now begins on a Wednesday, to make up for the lost 4 days. It’s called Ash Wednesday because in liturgical churches the pastor puts ashes, in the form of a cross, on the foreheads of worshipers. In the Old Testament, ashes are a symbol of mourning and repentance. Here’s an example from the book of Jeremiah: “O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth, and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation; for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us” (6:26). So, the symbolism of Ash Wednesday is that we are mourning for our sins in preparation for a fresh realization of the price Jesus paid to redeem us. And not only mourning for our sins, but turning away from them in renewed obedience and devotion to God.
Is it necessary to observe Lent? No, it’s not necessary at all. This is an area where we have freedom. We’re not bound by God’s Law to observe this season. Paul said, in Romans 14: “Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with--even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department.... Or, say one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience. What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake.... none of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to--all the way from life to death and everything in between--not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other” (Romans 14:1-9, The Message). It’s important to know that we are not bound in this area. Many Christians react against the celebration of Lent because, at one time or another, they have been tyrannized by those who don’t see this as an area of freedom.
It’s not necessary to observe Lent, but it can be very helpful. Moses said this to the Israelites: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Deut. 6:4-9). He wants them to be aware of God’s word all the time, to be meditating on it constantly. And he wants them to fill their lives with things that will remind them of God’s word.
There were many things like this in ancient Israel. Places where God had done something special were set apart for worship, and there was usually some sort of monument, as a visual reminder. Many of the Jews of Jesus’ time wore phylacteries, which were strips of parchment with Bible verses on them enclosed in a leather case and strapped to the forehead, just between the eyes. Or some were worn on the left arm, near the elbow. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for making a show out of this by making them large and conspicuous to others, but He didn’t condemn the practice itself. At its best, it was simply a visual reminder. And the nation of Israel went through a yearly cycle of special days, which were set aside to remind them, year after year, of the great things God had done for them. These outward observances weren’t an end in themselves. Moses’ desire was that they “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But these outward reminders could help them to do that.
Part of the difficulty with Lent is that it has too often taken on a morbid focus. It’s easy for this whole season to become a preparation for Good Friday, rather than a preparation for Easter. We can especially get into trouble if we focus too exclusively on the physical sufferings of Jesus. The Moravians got into trouble for awhile in this area. They were one of the greatest missionary-sending churches in history, and they were exemplary in heartfelt, fearless devotion to the Lord. Some of their missionaries discovered, while preaching to Eskimos, that their hearers were very interested in graphic descriptions of the scourging and crucifixion of Christ. This spread quickly throughout the movement, and soon became “the principle element of Moravian preaching, and some of the preachers learned to depict the Saviour’s sufferings in vivid detail and with tear-compelling effect. They spoke of the lash, the thorns, the nails and the sword-thrust with ecstatic emphasis and unhallowed familiarity” (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 1, p. 173). Count Zinzindorf, the leader of the movement, described himself as “a poor sinner washed in the blood of the slaughtered Lamb in which I live, and to swim and bathe in Jesus’ blood is my element.” And some of the people “spoke of themselves as ‘little doves flying about in the atmosphere of the cross’, and ‘little fish swimming in the bed of blood’, or ‘little bees who suck on the wounds of Christ’, ‘who feel at home in the side hole, and crawl in deep’” (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 326). The celebration of Lent has often been marred by this kind of morbidity, by an exclusive focus on the physical sufferings of Christ apart from the triumph of the Resurrection. (I need to mention, in passing, that the Moravians only stayed on this tangent for a short period in their history).
Part of the emphasis of Lent is repentance and self-denial. One of the things we want to get from this season is a renewed appreciation for the price Jesus paid for our salvation. But that’s not all. Lent is a time to renew our focus, a time to turn to God in a new way. It’s a time to concentrate in a more intensive way on the things of God. During the Advent season we were reminded anew of Jesus’ coming, and we cultivated a sense of anticipation that He is coming again. But for the past 9 weeks or so we’ve been in what is called Ordinary Time. Maybe we’ve been busy. Maybe the affairs of this world have been weighing us down and drawing our minds away from the things of God. The beginning of Lent presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to renew our focus. The beatitudes can help give us a more complete picture of what this means.
The heart of the beatitudes is verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” This beatitude is framed by three which describe the kind of people who hunger and thirst for righteousness (verses 3-5), and three which describe how these people interact with others (verses 7-9). Verse 10 describes how the world responds to people who hunger and thirst after righteousness (and verses 11-12 develop this in more detail).
The beatitudes describe people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They hunger and thirst for righteousness because they don’t have any righteousness of their own; they’re “poor in spirit.” They say, with the hymn Rock of Ages, “nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace; foul I to the fountain fly; wash me Savior or I die.” They accept God’s verdict that “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law...” (Romans 3:20), and they come before God with empty hands, acknowledging their spiritual poverty and hungering and thirsting for that righteousness which only comes as a gift of grace.
People who see clearly who they are before God, who acknowledge their sinfulness, mourn, as Isaiah did when he saw the Lord. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.... ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (Isaiah 6:1-5). Isaiah didn’t talk himself into feeling bad about his sins. He saw himself truly in the light of God’s holiness. This is a genuine godly sorrow that leads us to cry for mercy, like the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
Those who have been grieved over their sins in this way will be gentle, or meek. This has to do primarily with our attitude toward ourselves. If we’re meek, we’re not constantly watching out for ourselves; we don’t demand the best all the time. We don’t grasp after our rights, as so many in our society are doing. Abraham demonstrated meekness toward his nephew, Lot. They were both wealthy men, and there was increasing conflict between their hired workers, so they decided to separate. Abraham had every right, in that culture, to choose which part of the land he wanted. But instead he gave Lot the first choice. David showed meekness when he twice refused to kill Saul and grasp the kingship for himself (even though he had God’s assurance that he was called to be king).
These all describe a person who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And as we hunger for more of God, as we spend time in His presence, these qualities will increasingly be evident in our lives. These first three qualities primarily describe the condition of our hearts. The three beatitudes following verse 6 have more of an outward focus. Those who recognize their spiritual poverty will be merciful toward others. They recognize the wonder of God’s mercy to them, and this overflows in mercy toward others. Those who mourn over their sinfulness find their hearts purified. This was Isaiah’s experience. After he cried out, an angel flew to him with a live coal which he had taken from the altar. “With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for’” (vv. 6-7). And those who are meek, who aren’t grasping the best for themselves and are seeking to live at peace with others, become peacemakers. The last beatitude, verse 10, reminds us that the kind of spirit described here is completely at odds with the world, and those who exemplify this kind of Christlike spirit have repeatedly found that the world hates them, just as it hated Jesus.
These beatitudes describe people who follow Jesus, who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Lent is a season that’s set aside for renewing our focus, for reorienting ourselves to the things of God. We tend to become lax. We become lethargic spiritually and find that we have little interest in spending time with God. We’re not hungering and thirsting after righteousness. “To hunger” means “to crave ardently, to seek with eager desire.” And to thirst, in this context, means to painfully feel our need of, and to eagerly long for, those things which will refresh, support, and strengthen us spiritually. This all points to an intense desire that results in actions. “People who really desire something with the whole of their being do not sit down, passively waiting for it to come” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones). We often find ourselves, at the beginning of Lent, not hungering and thirsting in this way. And this season presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to seek God with renewed focus.
How can we make use of this season? I suggest that you both eliminate something from and add something to your daily life over the next several weeks. Try fasting, or denying yourself, in some area during Lent. It can be something very simple. Some people give up TV, or a particular show that they enjoy. Others give up a particular kind of food or a hobby that occupies lots of their time. The point of this fast is not to practice rigorous self-denial. The point is that each time you have a desire for this thing, you will be reminded to think about the sacrifice Jesus made for us. This is not a vigorous fast, but it should be something you’ll desire often enough over the next several weeks to serve as a reminder that Jesus sacrificed all to pay the price for our sins. What happens if you forget? Sometimes we forget, and sometimes we suffer from a failure of will. But this is not sin. We’re not under the Law in this; we’re using this season as an opportunity for spiritual renewal. So don’t get too worked up about failure. Make use of the failure by pausing briefly and meditating on Jesus’ perfect life of obedience and His sacrificial death.
I also suggest that you add something to your usual devotional practices. Do something different from what you normally do, to set the season apart. Maybe make use of a different daily devotional book for the days of Lent, or read a book (or part of a book) that will stir your desire to seek God. Or sing hymns and worship songs that lead up to the themes of Holy Week and Easter. Or read prayerfully one of the gospels. If you have time, you may find it helpful to read it out loud, praying over it and asking God to impress these things on your heart and make them real to you. As you come to the sections on Jesus’ suffering and humiliation, remind yourself that it was because of our sins that He did this. He did it because we are spiritually poor and owed a debt that we could never, in all eternity, pay ourselves.
In celebrating Lent, we are not trying to earn God’s favor. We’re remembering what God has done to grant us His favor. We already know about the events of the gospel. We’re familiar with it all, but we need to keep coming back to these things, meditating on them and allowing them to sink more deeply into our hearts and transform our lives. We live by hours, days, and weeks, so we need to find some practical way of doing this, “whether that means we put our minds to these topics whenever the whim takes us or when our routine Bible reading brings us across them, or according to some system which brings us around to them regularly.... Hence, the liturgical year is nothing more (and nothing less) than the Church’s “walking through” the gospel with the Lord. Since it is a plain fact of our humanness that we are rhythmic creatures who must keep coming back to things that are always true, it is especially good for us to do this in the Church” (Thomas Howard, Evangelical is Not Enough, pp. 132-33).
And do all this in the light of God’s grace. Our purpose is to “walk through the gospel” with the Lord, to prayerfully meditate on what it meant for Jesus to do the things He did, and to prepare ourselves to receive anew the angel’s words: “He is risen!” By setting aside each Sunday, breaking your fast in anticipation, you are looking forward to the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. And year after year, as we worship our risen Lord, we are looking forward to that day when we will see Him face to face. May He stir us all with a fresh realization of all He has done for us, and all the riches that are ours in Him. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Caught Up in God's Plan, Ruth 4
On Memorial Day Weekend in 1973, a country rock group called Mason Proffit performed at the Ozark Mountain Folk Fair in Eureka Springs Arkansas. When they arrived in Eureka Springs, the band members were so taken with the beauty of the area that each of them bought a piece of land nearby. Then, shortly after the festival, the group disbanded. One of the band members, John Michael Talbot, became a Christian a year or so later. He joined a Franciscan community in Indiana after he’d been a Christian for a few years, and, in seeking to live out his vow of poverty, tried to sell the land he’d bought in Arkansas. But no one wanted to buy it. He was stuck, it seemed, with this land he’d bought on a whim several years before, when it looked like he was at the beginning of a successful career in music.
But God had plans for that land. In the early 80's, Talbot and several others moved to Arkansas to establish Little Portion Hermitage; today about 40 people live at the hermitage, and there are also Little Portion cell groups all over the country. They have a mission in Latin America, and hundreds of people travel to Eureka Springs for spiritual retreats. God has used that piece of land that John Michael Talbot bought on a whim in 1973. But Talbot himself had no idea of that when he bought it, and for some time afterwards it was a burden to him. When we’re in the middle of things, we often have no idea what God is doing or what He has in mind.
The book of Ruth revolves around three major characters: Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. When we first encounter Naomi, she is full of bitterness and believes God is her enemy. Her life is a mess; she’s lost her husband and two sons, is living in a foreign country, and has been reduced to poverty. Ruth, the Moabite, is determined to stay with Naomi, her mother-in-law, and travels with her to Bethlehem. She’s committed to Naomi, as she says when Naomi urges her to go back home: “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god” (The Message). Ruth is committed to Naomi, but she is also a widow, living in a society where widows are in a very precarious position. Boaz is a respected member of his society and is financially successful, but unlike many other men of his time, he’s also compassionate and committed to following God’s Word. And, over the course of the book, God brings these three people together, apart from any planning on their part, and does things that none of them could have envisioned even in their wildest dreams.
God meets their immediate needs, of course. That’s the thing they’ve been praying and hoping for. At the end of chapter three, Naomi and Ruth have decided to leave the situation in God’s hands. They’ve done all they can do, and now they need to rest in Him. And, in chapter four we see the end result. Boaz very promptly follows up, just as he promised. The Old Testament law made provision for people in Naomi’s situation. The land that belonged to her husband Elimelech needs to be redeemed by a close relative, to prevent it from being sold to another tribe; and the person who redeems the land also inherits Ruth. Children born to her will be considered descendants of Elimelech, to keep his line from dying out, and they will inherit the property that is being redeemed. The redeemer only gets temporary possession of the land. He’s preserving the community, not enriching himself. That’s why the other close relative declines. Marrying Ruth will complicate things for his own descendants. So Boaz agrees to buy the property and to marry Ruth.
In the course of one day, Naomi and Ruth are delivered from poverty. For a long time, everything in Naomi’s life had been going wrong. Things went on like this for so long that she lost hope that things would ever be different. Life was like that for Joseph. His brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt, then he had been falsely accused and thrown into prison. At one point it looked like he might get out. He had interpreted dreams for two other prisoners and knew that one of them was getting out of prison soon. Joseph said to him: “But remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon” (Genesis 40:14-15). But the man got out of prison and forgot about Joseph. Everything went wrong in Joseph’s life. But then, one day he woke up in prison, just like any other day during the years he’d spent there, and by the end of the day he was out of prison and was the prime minister of Egypt. On the day that Boaz buys Elimelech’s property, Naomi and Ruth’s life is changed. God has come to their rescue; He’s provided a home for Ruth, and a new family for Naomi. So, the first thing that happens is that God comes to their rescue and provides for their immediate needs.
But that’s not the only thing that’s happening here. God also uses them, apart from their knowledge, to bring about a change in their society. This story takes place during the period of the Judges, a time when the spiritual life of the nation is in chaos. Here’s the reason that’s given repeatedly in the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). There was a general lack of consistent leadership during this period. That’s the importance of the genealogy at the end of Ruth. Boaz and Ruth become the great-grandparents of King David, the king who over and over again is described as a man after God’s own heart. Through them, God is going to raise up a leader for His people. God is at work, not only rescuing Naomi and Ruth, but providing for the needs of His people.
But even that isn’t the full story. I usually skip over the genealogies when I’m doing my regular Bible reading, because there’s not much in a list of names that I can apply to my life. But these genealogies are significant. God doesn’t carry on His work of redemption in the world through general principles. He uses people. The names on these lists are the names of people who went about their daily lives seeking to be faithful and found themselves caught up in something they could never have imagined for themselves. These long lists of names that we find in various parts of Scripture remind us that God uses real people to fulfill His purposes in the world. Listen to these words from the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” (Matthew 1:1-2). You can read the stories of these people in the book of Genesis. But then, a little later in the list, “and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David” (vv. 5-6). And it keeps going all the way to Jesus.
Boaz and Ruth and Naomi become part of the great work God is doing in bringing a redeemer into the world. They become part of the central story of Scripture. We understand that great leaders like Moses and Joseph and King David are part of this story. They stand out because of their great abilities as leaders of God’s people (as well as because of their faithfulness in following Him). But Ruth and Naomi and Boaz seem to be fairly ordinary people. They’re not leaders in the nation. None of them are prophets. They’re just ordinary people, going about their daily lives, seeking to be faithful. And they end up being part of the story of God’s redemption.
Two things stand out especially about these people. First, they’re seeking to be faithful to God. Even though Naomi is bitter at the beginning of the story and believes God is her enemy, at the first evidence of God’s sovereign care she bursts out “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message). Boaz greets his workers with the words “The Lord be with you” (2:4). He’s blessing his workers. No doubt there were people who used this greeting just as a formality, but everything we see about Boaz suggests more than this. He cares about the spiritual welfare of his employees. He also blesses Ruth: “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge” (2:12). These aren’t just people who are going about their duty because it’s the right thing to do. They’re not grim moralists or legalists. They’re people who are seeking to be faithful to God’s Word in the context of a growing relationship with Him. These are people who are seeking to walk with God.
The second thing that stands out about these people is that they live out their faithfulness to God in the context of community. Their relationship with God involves more than just having a strong devotional life. He’s called them to be part His people. That’s why Boaz follows so carefully the correct procedures for redeeming Elimelech’s property. In marrying Ruth, he’s seeking to bring children into Elimelech’s family, rather than his own. He’s not enriching himself. He’s acting for the good of the community (which the other kinsman-redeemer, for one reason or another, wasn’t willing to do). And the greatest things that are happening have to do, not with them individually, but with what God is doing for His people through them.
One of the devotional books I've enjoyed is a book of daily readings from the writings of Frederick Buechner. Buechner is a Presbyterian minister, but he’s mainly known for his writing. Here’s part of the reading for January 1: “I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living... opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day’s work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him.... If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace” (Listening to Your Life, p. 2). Ruth, Naomi and Boaz are three people who find their ordinary lives opening up “onto extraordinary vistas.”
Communion is one of those mysteries that involve us in far more than we understand. Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6:54-56). As we come to the Table of the Lord in faith, we’re entering into this great work of redemption that God has been carrying on since the Fall (the work that Boaz and Ruth and Naomi were part of). We’re taking part in something that opens up “onto extraordinary vistas.” In doing this, we experience God’s presence and blessing in our lives. Here’s what one author says about communion: “When the elements of bread and wine are taken in faith, the transforming and nourishing power of Christ for the salvation and the healing of the person is made available” (Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, p. 111).
But this isn’t the end. Having been refocused in God’s presence by taking part in corporate worship, we go out into the world again, as people who belong to Jesus Christ, as people who have been made part of something much bigger than anything we can imagine. But most of the time it doesn’t feel that way. What God calls us to do is cultivate a life of faithful obedience to His Word in the daily reality of our lives, knowing that He is continuing His work in ways we’re not aware of. We’re usually in too much of a hurry to see outward results. We don’t have to make grandiose plans about all the things we’re going to accomplish. Most of us are not in a position to change the world (and most people who are in that position don’t change it for the better anyway). But the thing we can see clearly in the book of Ruth is this: a life of faithfulness in what God calls us to do has consequences far beyond anything we’re able to see. May God enable us to cultivate lives of attentive obedience to His will, trusting in His sovereign power to accomplish His purposes.
But God had plans for that land. In the early 80's, Talbot and several others moved to Arkansas to establish Little Portion Hermitage; today about 40 people live at the hermitage, and there are also Little Portion cell groups all over the country. They have a mission in Latin America, and hundreds of people travel to Eureka Springs for spiritual retreats. God has used that piece of land that John Michael Talbot bought on a whim in 1973. But Talbot himself had no idea of that when he bought it, and for some time afterwards it was a burden to him. When we’re in the middle of things, we often have no idea what God is doing or what He has in mind.
The book of Ruth revolves around three major characters: Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. When we first encounter Naomi, she is full of bitterness and believes God is her enemy. Her life is a mess; she’s lost her husband and two sons, is living in a foreign country, and has been reduced to poverty. Ruth, the Moabite, is determined to stay with Naomi, her mother-in-law, and travels with her to Bethlehem. She’s committed to Naomi, as she says when Naomi urges her to go back home: “Don’t force me to leave you; don’t make me go home. Where you go, I go; and where you live, I’ll live. Your people are my people, your God is my god” (The Message). Ruth is committed to Naomi, but she is also a widow, living in a society where widows are in a very precarious position. Boaz is a respected member of his society and is financially successful, but unlike many other men of his time, he’s also compassionate and committed to following God’s Word. And, over the course of the book, God brings these three people together, apart from any planning on their part, and does things that none of them could have envisioned even in their wildest dreams.
God meets their immediate needs, of course. That’s the thing they’ve been praying and hoping for. At the end of chapter three, Naomi and Ruth have decided to leave the situation in God’s hands. They’ve done all they can do, and now they need to rest in Him. And, in chapter four we see the end result. Boaz very promptly follows up, just as he promised. The Old Testament law made provision for people in Naomi’s situation. The land that belonged to her husband Elimelech needs to be redeemed by a close relative, to prevent it from being sold to another tribe; and the person who redeems the land also inherits Ruth. Children born to her will be considered descendants of Elimelech, to keep his line from dying out, and they will inherit the property that is being redeemed. The redeemer only gets temporary possession of the land. He’s preserving the community, not enriching himself. That’s why the other close relative declines. Marrying Ruth will complicate things for his own descendants. So Boaz agrees to buy the property and to marry Ruth.
In the course of one day, Naomi and Ruth are delivered from poverty. For a long time, everything in Naomi’s life had been going wrong. Things went on like this for so long that she lost hope that things would ever be different. Life was like that for Joseph. His brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt, then he had been falsely accused and thrown into prison. At one point it looked like he might get out. He had interpreted dreams for two other prisoners and knew that one of them was getting out of prison soon. Joseph said to him: “But remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon” (Genesis 40:14-15). But the man got out of prison and forgot about Joseph. Everything went wrong in Joseph’s life. But then, one day he woke up in prison, just like any other day during the years he’d spent there, and by the end of the day he was out of prison and was the prime minister of Egypt. On the day that Boaz buys Elimelech’s property, Naomi and Ruth’s life is changed. God has come to their rescue; He’s provided a home for Ruth, and a new family for Naomi. So, the first thing that happens is that God comes to their rescue and provides for their immediate needs.
But that’s not the only thing that’s happening here. God also uses them, apart from their knowledge, to bring about a change in their society. This story takes place during the period of the Judges, a time when the spiritual life of the nation is in chaos. Here’s the reason that’s given repeatedly in the book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). There was a general lack of consistent leadership during this period. That’s the importance of the genealogy at the end of Ruth. Boaz and Ruth become the great-grandparents of King David, the king who over and over again is described as a man after God’s own heart. Through them, God is going to raise up a leader for His people. God is at work, not only rescuing Naomi and Ruth, but providing for the needs of His people.
But even that isn’t the full story. I usually skip over the genealogies when I’m doing my regular Bible reading, because there’s not much in a list of names that I can apply to my life. But these genealogies are significant. God doesn’t carry on His work of redemption in the world through general principles. He uses people. The names on these lists are the names of people who went about their daily lives seeking to be faithful and found themselves caught up in something they could never have imagined for themselves. These long lists of names that we find in various parts of Scripture remind us that God uses real people to fulfill His purposes in the world. Listen to these words from the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” (Matthew 1:1-2). You can read the stories of these people in the book of Genesis. But then, a little later in the list, “and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David” (vv. 5-6). And it keeps going all the way to Jesus.
Boaz and Ruth and Naomi become part of the great work God is doing in bringing a redeemer into the world. They become part of the central story of Scripture. We understand that great leaders like Moses and Joseph and King David are part of this story. They stand out because of their great abilities as leaders of God’s people (as well as because of their faithfulness in following Him). But Ruth and Naomi and Boaz seem to be fairly ordinary people. They’re not leaders in the nation. None of them are prophets. They’re just ordinary people, going about their daily lives, seeking to be faithful. And they end up being part of the story of God’s redemption.
How does all this come about? How do these ordinary people, going about the business of their lives, come to be included in such great things? They’re not aspiring to greatness. They don’t have grandiose plans. They’re not great visionaries, out to change the world. They’re like the Psalmist in Psalm 131: “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me” (v. 1). They’re not seeking to make a name for themselves. They’re simply people who are seeking to be faithful in a growing relationship with the living God. The end of the psalm directs attention away from ourselves and onto God: “O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore” (v. 3). The psalmist doesn’t have grandiose plans for himself; his trust and his focus are on God. Ruth and Boaz and Naomi are like that, and they find God doing things beyond their wildest imaginations. A life of faithfulness in what God calls us to do has consequences far beyond anything we’re able to see.
Two things stand out especially about these people. First, they’re seeking to be faithful to God. Even though Naomi is bitter at the beginning of the story and believes God is her enemy, at the first evidence of God’s sovereign care she bursts out “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message). Boaz greets his workers with the words “The Lord be with you” (2:4). He’s blessing his workers. No doubt there were people who used this greeting just as a formality, but everything we see about Boaz suggests more than this. He cares about the spiritual welfare of his employees. He also blesses Ruth: “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge” (2:12). These aren’t just people who are going about their duty because it’s the right thing to do. They’re not grim moralists or legalists. They’re people who are seeking to be faithful to God’s Word in the context of a growing relationship with Him. These are people who are seeking to walk with God.
The second thing that stands out about these people is that they live out their faithfulness to God in the context of community. Their relationship with God involves more than just having a strong devotional life. He’s called them to be part His people. That’s why Boaz follows so carefully the correct procedures for redeeming Elimelech’s property. In marrying Ruth, he’s seeking to bring children into Elimelech’s family, rather than his own. He’s not enriching himself. He’s acting for the good of the community (which the other kinsman-redeemer, for one reason or another, wasn’t willing to do). And the greatest things that are happening have to do, not with them individually, but with what God is doing for His people through them.
One of the devotional books I've enjoyed is a book of daily readings from the writings of Frederick Buechner. Buechner is a Presbyterian minister, but he’s mainly known for his writing. Here’s part of the reading for January 1: “I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living... opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day’s work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him.... If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace” (Listening to Your Life, p. 2). Ruth, Naomi and Boaz are three people who find their ordinary lives opening up “onto extraordinary vistas.”
Communion is one of those mysteries that involve us in far more than we understand. Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6:54-56). As we come to the Table of the Lord in faith, we’re entering into this great work of redemption that God has been carrying on since the Fall (the work that Boaz and Ruth and Naomi were part of). We’re taking part in something that opens up “onto extraordinary vistas.” In doing this, we experience God’s presence and blessing in our lives. Here’s what one author says about communion: “When the elements of bread and wine are taken in faith, the transforming and nourishing power of Christ for the salvation and the healing of the person is made available” (Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, p. 111).
But this isn’t the end. Having been refocused in God’s presence by taking part in corporate worship, we go out into the world again, as people who belong to Jesus Christ, as people who have been made part of something much bigger than anything we can imagine. But most of the time it doesn’t feel that way. What God calls us to do is cultivate a life of faithful obedience to His Word in the daily reality of our lives, knowing that He is continuing His work in ways we’re not aware of. We’re usually in too much of a hurry to see outward results. We don’t have to make grandiose plans about all the things we’re going to accomplish. Most of us are not in a position to change the world (and most people who are in that position don’t change it for the better anyway). But the thing we can see clearly in the book of Ruth is this: a life of faithfulness in what God calls us to do has consequences far beyond anything we’re able to see. May God enable us to cultivate lives of attentive obedience to His will, trusting in His sovereign power to accomplish His purposes.
Cooperating with God's Purposes, Ruth 3
Awhile back I read about a man who bought a new Winnebago. He took it out on the highway, and after he got it up to cruising speed, turned on the cruise control and then went into the back to make himself a cup of coffee. He thought cruise control was something like auto-pilot, I guess, so he didn’t see any need to remain at the wheel. So he was indignant and sued the company. Obviously there was something wrong. The cruise control wasn’t working.
We saw in chapter two that Naomi has come to a new realization of God’s sovereign care. He hasn’t forsaken her after all (as she had thought); He has her life in His hand and is caring for her and for her daughter-in-law, Ruth. When she sees what is happening, she cries out, “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message). He has plans for them, greater things than they ever could have imagined for themselves. But that realization doesn’t lead Naomi to sit back and do nothing, waiting for God to work out His sovereign will. She doesn’t turn on the cruise control and sit back with a cup of coffee, as if her responsibilities were now over. She understands that God’s sovereign care in our lives is not like cruise control (or auto-pilot). God doesn’t work in that way. He calls us to work in cooperation with His purposes.
What do we mean when we say that God is sovereign? We mean that He is the King of all creation. He is the ruler of the universe. This means, 1) that all things belong to Him, that He is the owner of everything in creation. Everything that exists was made by Him and belongs to Him. The Bible only allows for a limited idea of private property. We are stewards of the things He’s entrusted to our care, and none of it belongs to us absolutely. Someday we’ll have to give an account for how we’ve used the things He’s entrusted to our care. 2) Saying that God is sovereign also means that He has the authority to impose His will on His creation. This follows from saying that He is King. He has the right to command, and it’s our duty to obey Him. And 3) it implies that He is in control of all things, that nothing happens unless He allows it (see New Dictionary of Theology, pp. 654-55). Jesus is assuming God’s sovereignty when He says: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-30). Naomi has rediscovered the truth of God’s sovereign care. She always assumed His sovereignty, but for awhile she was convinced that He was exercising His sovereign power to destroy her and bring her to ruin. Now she’s rediscovered the truth that He, the Almighty, is watching over and caring for her.
Notice, first of all, that this new realization of God’s sovereign care doesn’t lead Naomi and Ruth to sit back and wait passively for Him to act. They don’t say, “well, we know now that God has this situation under control; all we need to do now is wait. If we get involved we’ll just make a mess of things.” I’ve known some people who believed so strongly in God’s sovereignty that it crippled them. They were sure that God has all things under control, that He is ordering all things according to His own will. And it crippled them. It led them to fatalism: “God has already decided everything that’s going to happen; what difference do my choices make.” It often led them to irresponsible choices, because they were assured that God is taking care of everything, and even if something bad happens as a result of my irresponsibility, all of it comes under the umbrella of His sovereign rule anyway. Notice that the assurance of God’s sovereign care doesn’t affect Naomi and Ruth in this way. It doesn’t give them a license to sit back and do nothing.
Naomi was passive before, when she was depressed and believed that God had become her enemy. When life was filled with nothing but bitterness and pain, and when she believed God was trying to destroy her, what was the use of trying to better her situation? But now, everything has changed. The assurance that God is with them, that He is working out His purposes in their lives, gives her the courage to act.
We need to be careful how we apply biblical doctrine. The truth is that we really don’t understand God’s sovereignty very clearly. We’re not capable, at this point, of grasping the relationship between God’s control over all things and our very real responsibility to act in obedience to His will. God’s Word tells us that we can rest in the assurance that He is sovereign, that He has all things under His control, that nothing happens unless He allows it, and that He is even able to take evil and turn it for good. But when we become fatalistic in response to this, we’ve misapplied the doctrine. Or when we say, “God already knows everything I need, and He’s promised to take care of me, so there’s really no need to pray,” we’ve twisted things. We’ve applied the truth in ways that are not true.
Daniel says, in chapter 9 of his book, that he’s been studying the prophesy of Jeremiah: “I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years” (9:2). It sound pretty clear-cut. Once the seventy years are over, they’ll be able to return. All they need to do is wait it out. But that’s not how Daniel responds: “Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession....” (9:3-4). He understands something of God’s plan from meditating on Scripture, but that leads him to an intensive time of prayer and fasting. He wants to understand more, and he also wants to confess the sins of his people and cry out for the fulfilment of God’s promises. He doesn’t assume that God’s purposes for His people will be fulfilled apart from any action on their part.
Naomi has come to see the truth that Paul expounds in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left for her to do. She sees it as her responsibility to seek a husband for Ruth: “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.” Knowing that God has their lives under His sovereign care frees her to act. When she didn’t know this, she was paralyzed. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying any more. Now that she knows God is working on their behalf, she’s free to take some initiative. An assurance of God’s sovereignty over all things sets us free to act in obedience, trusting Him to use our feeble efforts to carry out His purposes. An understanding of God’s sovereignty should stir us to action, not paralyze us.
The next thing to notice is this: the assurance of God’s sovereign care doesn’t take away the element of risk in their lives. Ruth takes some real risks following Naomi’s instructions. She goes to the threshing floor alone at night, in a society where the vulnerable are often taken advantage of (we see some examples of this in the book of Judges). There’s a very real possibility that she’ll be harmed, which is why Boaz, once he discovers that she’s there, tells her to stay till morning. It simply wouldn’t be safe for her to return home alone at night. But she’s also risking her reputation. Prostitutes often carried out their trade at the threshing floors. Here’s an example from the book of Hosea, where God is comparing Israel to a prostitute: “Do not rejoice, O Israel! Do not exult as other nations do; for you have played the whore, departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute's pay on all threshing floors” (9:1). There’s every possibility that if Ruth is seen there her intentions will be misunderstood. That’s why Boaz sends her away before it is light, saying “It must not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.”
And there’s also the possibility that Boaz himself will reject her. He’s shown her kindness while she’s been gleaning in his fields, but now she’s going to ask him to marry her. She’s a foreigner, after all, and he’s an important person in the community. Ruth takes some real risks in following Naomi’s instructions. An assurance of God’s sovereign care is no guarantee that things are going to work out well in the short term. We know the end of the story, but Ruth doesn’t when she sets out to visit the threshing floor. Scripture has plenty of examples of people for whom things haven’t worked out well, even though they’ve been people who are under God’s sovereign care, people who love Him and want to serve Him. Living in obedience to our sovereign God often involves taking risks and making ourselves vulnerable, and there’s no guarantee that things, in the short term, will work out the way we want.
But then, having stepped out, having taken the risk of going to the threshing floor at night, trusting in God’s sovereign care does mean that the end result is not up to them. It’s not their responsibility to make things turn out well. Boaz tells Ruth something she didn’t know: there’s another kinsman who is actually first in line. He needs to follow the Law and make the need known to this other person. So things aren’t yet resolved at the end of chapter 3. They’ve done what they can, and now it’s out of their hands. But trusting in God’s sovereign care means that they can stop and wait. They don’t have to keep pushing, trying to pull strings to make sure things turn out the way they want. They’re assured that God has their lives in His hands, so, having done what they could, they leave it with Him.
Here’s what sometimes happens to us. On the one hand, we respond to the realization of God’s sovereignty by becoming passive. It all depends on Him, so we don’t have to do anything. We just sit back and wait for Him to do it all. Whatever happens is God’s will. But then, on the other hand, we respond to the realization of our own responsibility by taking the whole burden upon ourselves. Now it all depends on us. We saw, in the first chapter, this attitude in Carlo Carretto before he went to live in the desert: “With this mentality I was no longer capable of taking a holiday; even during the night I felt I was ‘in action.’ There was never enough time to get everything done. One raced continually from one project to another, from one city to another. Prayer was hurried, conversations frenzied, and one's heart in a turmoil” (Letters from the Desert, trans. by Rose Mary Hancock, pp. 14-15).
But neither of these extremes is true. God does call us to act in obedience, and our obedience makes a difference. There is something for us to do, and God expects us to step out in obedience, even when it means risking everything for His sake. But then, having done that, we can rest in the assurance that the burden of success doesn’t rest on us. Once Ruth gives Naomi a report, Naomi responds: “Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today.” She knows that Boaz is responsible and that he will do what he promised. But this other relative could decide to marry Ruth, and they don’t know him; maybe he’s not as honorable as Boaz. They don’t know what the outcome is going to be. But Naomi’s able to step back and wait because she’s already been assured that “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!”
God doesn’t call us to make sure things turn out well. Our part, in reality, is very small, and the burden rests on Him. That’s why Jesus could say: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
Here’s the truth: God is the sovereign ruler of the universe. He is the one who “accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” (Ephesians 1:11). He is the one who is able to make all things work together for good. And He, as sovereign of the universe, calls us to cooperate with Him in the fulfillment of His purposes. He doesn’t call us to bear the burden of it all; He simply calls us to walk with Him in obedience. Paul gives the balance in Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” The foundation is “God is at work in you.” He’s the one who enables us to act in obedience. But we’re not just to wait passively. We’re to work out our salvation, cultivating a life of loving obedience to our King and Master, taking risks in obedience to Him, knowing that the ultimate outcome is His responsibility.
Martin Luther lived much of his adult life at the center of controversy and conflict. When he first began to confront some of the corruptions that had crept into the life of the Church, it looked like he might not survive. Just 100 years earlier, Jan Huss, had been burned at the stake under almost identical circumstances. But God preserved Luther’s life, and the Reformation transformed the Western world. Listen to what Luther said later in his ministry: “I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slept... or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no priest or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.... I did nothing; I let the Word do its work” (quoted by Fred W. Meuser, Luther the Preacher, p. 66). God had done great things through Luther’s preaching, but Luther recognized that the outcome wasn’t his doing at all. He had simply carried out his calling; he had preached and taught and written God’s Word, resting in God’s sovereign power for the outcome. He acted in obedience, and he took great risks. But in the end he admitted, “I did nothing.”
In our hyper-vigilant, hyperactive age, we need this assurance: God is in control. The sovereign ruler of the universe has our lives in His hand. He is all-powerful, and “He... loves us, in bad times as well as good!” All power in heaven and on earth is His. Being assured of this truth, we can have confidence to lay our lives at His feet, to take risks for Him, to risk losing everything for His sake. The immediate results are His burden, and He’s already assured us that the final outcome will be beyond our wildest expectations.
We saw in chapter two that Naomi has come to a new realization of God’s sovereign care. He hasn’t forsaken her after all (as she had thought); He has her life in His hand and is caring for her and for her daughter-in-law, Ruth. When she sees what is happening, she cries out, “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message). He has plans for them, greater things than they ever could have imagined for themselves. But that realization doesn’t lead Naomi to sit back and do nothing, waiting for God to work out His sovereign will. She doesn’t turn on the cruise control and sit back with a cup of coffee, as if her responsibilities were now over. She understands that God’s sovereign care in our lives is not like cruise control (or auto-pilot). God doesn’t work in that way. He calls us to work in cooperation with His purposes.
What do we mean when we say that God is sovereign? We mean that He is the King of all creation. He is the ruler of the universe. This means, 1) that all things belong to Him, that He is the owner of everything in creation. Everything that exists was made by Him and belongs to Him. The Bible only allows for a limited idea of private property. We are stewards of the things He’s entrusted to our care, and none of it belongs to us absolutely. Someday we’ll have to give an account for how we’ve used the things He’s entrusted to our care. 2) Saying that God is sovereign also means that He has the authority to impose His will on His creation. This follows from saying that He is King. He has the right to command, and it’s our duty to obey Him. And 3) it implies that He is in control of all things, that nothing happens unless He allows it (see New Dictionary of Theology, pp. 654-55). Jesus is assuming God’s sovereignty when He says: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-30). Naomi has rediscovered the truth of God’s sovereign care. She always assumed His sovereignty, but for awhile she was convinced that He was exercising His sovereign power to destroy her and bring her to ruin. Now she’s rediscovered the truth that He, the Almighty, is watching over and caring for her.
Notice, first of all, that this new realization of God’s sovereign care doesn’t lead Naomi and Ruth to sit back and wait passively for Him to act. They don’t say, “well, we know now that God has this situation under control; all we need to do now is wait. If we get involved we’ll just make a mess of things.” I’ve known some people who believed so strongly in God’s sovereignty that it crippled them. They were sure that God has all things under control, that He is ordering all things according to His own will. And it crippled them. It led them to fatalism: “God has already decided everything that’s going to happen; what difference do my choices make.” It often led them to irresponsible choices, because they were assured that God is taking care of everything, and even if something bad happens as a result of my irresponsibility, all of it comes under the umbrella of His sovereign rule anyway. Notice that the assurance of God’s sovereign care doesn’t affect Naomi and Ruth in this way. It doesn’t give them a license to sit back and do nothing.
Naomi was passive before, when she was depressed and believed that God had become her enemy. When life was filled with nothing but bitterness and pain, and when she believed God was trying to destroy her, what was the use of trying to better her situation? But now, everything has changed. The assurance that God is with them, that He is working out His purposes in their lives, gives her the courage to act.
We need to be careful how we apply biblical doctrine. The truth is that we really don’t understand God’s sovereignty very clearly. We’re not capable, at this point, of grasping the relationship between God’s control over all things and our very real responsibility to act in obedience to His will. God’s Word tells us that we can rest in the assurance that He is sovereign, that He has all things under His control, that nothing happens unless He allows it, and that He is even able to take evil and turn it for good. But when we become fatalistic in response to this, we’ve misapplied the doctrine. Or when we say, “God already knows everything I need, and He’s promised to take care of me, so there’s really no need to pray,” we’ve twisted things. We’ve applied the truth in ways that are not true.
Daniel says, in chapter 9 of his book, that he’s been studying the prophesy of Jeremiah: “I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, must be fulfilled for the devastation of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years” (9:2). It sound pretty clear-cut. Once the seventy years are over, they’ll be able to return. All they need to do is wait it out. But that’s not how Daniel responds: “Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession....” (9:3-4). He understands something of God’s plan from meditating on Scripture, but that leads him to an intensive time of prayer and fasting. He wants to understand more, and he also wants to confess the sins of his people and cry out for the fulfilment of God’s promises. He doesn’t assume that God’s purposes for His people will be fulfilled apart from any action on their part.
Naomi has come to see the truth that Paul expounds in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left for her to do. She sees it as her responsibility to seek a husband for Ruth: “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.” Knowing that God has their lives under His sovereign care frees her to act. When she didn’t know this, she was paralyzed. There didn’t seem to be any point in trying any more. Now that she knows God is working on their behalf, she’s free to take some initiative. An assurance of God’s sovereignty over all things sets us free to act in obedience, trusting Him to use our feeble efforts to carry out His purposes. An understanding of God’s sovereignty should stir us to action, not paralyze us.
The next thing to notice is this: the assurance of God’s sovereign care doesn’t take away the element of risk in their lives. Ruth takes some real risks following Naomi’s instructions. She goes to the threshing floor alone at night, in a society where the vulnerable are often taken advantage of (we see some examples of this in the book of Judges). There’s a very real possibility that she’ll be harmed, which is why Boaz, once he discovers that she’s there, tells her to stay till morning. It simply wouldn’t be safe for her to return home alone at night. But she’s also risking her reputation. Prostitutes often carried out their trade at the threshing floors. Here’s an example from the book of Hosea, where God is comparing Israel to a prostitute: “Do not rejoice, O Israel! Do not exult as other nations do; for you have played the whore, departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute's pay on all threshing floors” (9:1). There’s every possibility that if Ruth is seen there her intentions will be misunderstood. That’s why Boaz sends her away before it is light, saying “It must not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.”
And there’s also the possibility that Boaz himself will reject her. He’s shown her kindness while she’s been gleaning in his fields, but now she’s going to ask him to marry her. She’s a foreigner, after all, and he’s an important person in the community. Ruth takes some real risks in following Naomi’s instructions. An assurance of God’s sovereign care is no guarantee that things are going to work out well in the short term. We know the end of the story, but Ruth doesn’t when she sets out to visit the threshing floor. Scripture has plenty of examples of people for whom things haven’t worked out well, even though they’ve been people who are under God’s sovereign care, people who love Him and want to serve Him. Living in obedience to our sovereign God often involves taking risks and making ourselves vulnerable, and there’s no guarantee that things, in the short term, will work out the way we want.
But then, having stepped out, having taken the risk of going to the threshing floor at night, trusting in God’s sovereign care does mean that the end result is not up to them. It’s not their responsibility to make things turn out well. Boaz tells Ruth something she didn’t know: there’s another kinsman who is actually first in line. He needs to follow the Law and make the need known to this other person. So things aren’t yet resolved at the end of chapter 3. They’ve done what they can, and now it’s out of their hands. But trusting in God’s sovereign care means that they can stop and wait. They don’t have to keep pushing, trying to pull strings to make sure things turn out the way they want. They’re assured that God has their lives in His hands, so, having done what they could, they leave it with Him.
Here’s what sometimes happens to us. On the one hand, we respond to the realization of God’s sovereignty by becoming passive. It all depends on Him, so we don’t have to do anything. We just sit back and wait for Him to do it all. Whatever happens is God’s will. But then, on the other hand, we respond to the realization of our own responsibility by taking the whole burden upon ourselves. Now it all depends on us. We saw, in the first chapter, this attitude in Carlo Carretto before he went to live in the desert: “With this mentality I was no longer capable of taking a holiday; even during the night I felt I was ‘in action.’ There was never enough time to get everything done. One raced continually from one project to another, from one city to another. Prayer was hurried, conversations frenzied, and one's heart in a turmoil” (Letters from the Desert, trans. by Rose Mary Hancock, pp. 14-15).
But neither of these extremes is true. God does call us to act in obedience, and our obedience makes a difference. There is something for us to do, and God expects us to step out in obedience, even when it means risking everything for His sake. But then, having done that, we can rest in the assurance that the burden of success doesn’t rest on us. Once Ruth gives Naomi a report, Naomi responds: “Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today.” She knows that Boaz is responsible and that he will do what he promised. But this other relative could decide to marry Ruth, and they don’t know him; maybe he’s not as honorable as Boaz. They don’t know what the outcome is going to be. But Naomi’s able to step back and wait because she’s already been assured that “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!”
God doesn’t call us to make sure things turn out well. Our part, in reality, is very small, and the burden rests on Him. That’s why Jesus could say: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
Here’s the truth: God is the sovereign ruler of the universe. He is the one who “accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will” (Ephesians 1:11). He is the one who is able to make all things work together for good. And He, as sovereign of the universe, calls us to cooperate with Him in the fulfillment of His purposes. He doesn’t call us to bear the burden of it all; He simply calls us to walk with Him in obedience. Paul gives the balance in Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” The foundation is “God is at work in you.” He’s the one who enables us to act in obedience. But we’re not just to wait passively. We’re to work out our salvation, cultivating a life of loving obedience to our King and Master, taking risks in obedience to Him, knowing that the ultimate outcome is His responsibility.
Martin Luther lived much of his adult life at the center of controversy and conflict. When he first began to confront some of the corruptions that had crept into the life of the Church, it looked like he might not survive. Just 100 years earlier, Jan Huss, had been burned at the stake under almost identical circumstances. But God preserved Luther’s life, and the Reformation transformed the Western world. Listen to what Luther said later in his ministry: “I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slept... or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no priest or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.... I did nothing; I let the Word do its work” (quoted by Fred W. Meuser, Luther the Preacher, p. 66). God had done great things through Luther’s preaching, but Luther recognized that the outcome wasn’t his doing at all. He had simply carried out his calling; he had preached and taught and written God’s Word, resting in God’s sovereign power for the outcome. He acted in obedience, and he took great risks. But in the end he admitted, “I did nothing.”
In our hyper-vigilant, hyperactive age, we need this assurance: God is in control. The sovereign ruler of the universe has our lives in His hand. He is all-powerful, and “He... loves us, in bad times as well as good!” All power in heaven and on earth is His. Being assured of this truth, we can have confidence to lay our lives at His feet, to take risks for Him, to risk losing everything for His sake. The immediate results are His burden, and He’s already assured us that the final outcome will be beyond our wildest expectations.
God Still Cares, Ruth 2
In 1978, I was traveling from north Bihar to Uttar Pradesh, in north India. I and another OM’er (Operation Mobilization worker) had been in Bihar for about a week, and we were anxious to get back to our home base. For one thing, we weren’t all that crazy about Bihar, and also our mail was waiting for us in U.P. So we set out in the morning, having been told that it was about a 4 hour trip. We didn’t have a map, and there weren’t any signs pointing the way, so we were dependent on asking directions from people. But we were expecting it to be a fairly easy trip. We were used to finding our way around in India, and we didn’t expect any real problems (other than breaking down, which was always a possibility with OM vehicles).
When we left the town of Motihari in the morning, we asked directions from a couple of people to make sure we were going the right way. We turned onto the road that they had told us would lead to Gorakhpur, and after two hours we were feeling good about the progress we’d made. We’d been able to travel at a reasonable speed, and by now should have been about halfway there. Then, about half an hour later, the road ended at a river. There was no bridge and nothing to do but turn around and drive 2 ½ hours back to Motihari and start over again. At the moment when I saw that river, I felt like the bottom had dropped out emotionally. It was out of proportion. After all, we were going to get back eventually. But all the feelings of alienness, of being someplace where I don’t belong, descended on me. I thought, “what on earth am I doing here?” People had laughed at us when we stopped in Motihari to ask for directions, and I felt sure they had intentionally sent us the wrong direction. I had been really anxious to get back to Gorakhpur, which was the closest thing to home at that point, and now we were further away than when we’d started.
As we saw in chapter one, both Naomi and Ruth have had a series of overwhelmingly difficult experiences. Both are widows in a society where the position of widows is very precarious. Naomi has spent ten years in a place where she’s known as a foreigner, and during that time has lost her husband and two sons. Ruth has lost a husband and has now left her home to settle in Israel with her mother-in-law. So now she is known, everywhere she goes, as a foreigner, someone who doesn’t belong. But their experiences of grief have also alienated them from this world. They’ve had the kinds of experiences which make people ask, “what on earth am I doing here?” That’s why Naomi, at the end of chapter one, says “Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” Remember that Naomi means “pleasant,” and Mara is the Hebrew word for “bitter.” She’s saying, “the name Naomi, the name you called me when I lived here, doesn’t describe me anymore. It doesn’t fit with the things God has brought into my life. My life has been bitter and painful; the Lord Almighty has afflicted me. Call me Mara, because my life is full of bitterness.” Life, for both Naomi and Ruth, has not turned out the way they had hoped.
That’s the background to chapter two. Naomi is clearly depressed and has lost hope. She no longer believes God is good. He has become her enemy, and what hope does she have, since He is Almighty? There’s no way she can resist His will. She doesn’t expect, any longer, to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Ruth has bound herself to Naomi and is determined to stay with her at all costs. But that doesn’t mean she has an easy time of it. She has her own grief to bear, and now she’s away from home, in a place where everyone sees her as a foreigner.
In a situation like this, it’s very easy to become paralyzed, to give up hope, to feel like it’s just not worth the effort to do anything. Paul draws tremendous hope from the assurance that God is on our side: “if God is for us, who can be against us?” But if God is against us, as Naomi has come to believe, what’s the use of trying? Who can help us if the Almighty has become our enemy? But in the midst of all these depressing thoughts, Ruth decides to do something. She says to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” The last verse in chapter 1 tells us that they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, so Ruth decides to take advantage of the situation.
Gleaning was a special provision made in the Law for poor people in the land. Listen to these verses from Deuteronomy: “When you harvest your grain and forget a sheaf back in the field, don’t go back and get it; leave it for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow so that God, your God, will bless you in all your work. When you shake the olives off your trees, don’t go back over the branches and strip them bare – what’s left is for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. And when you cut the grapes in your vineyard, don’t take every last grape – leave a few for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. Don’t ever forget that you were a slave in Egypt. I command you: Do what I’m telling you” (24:19-22, The Message). This is what Ruth is referring to when she says to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” The Law made special provision for people in their situation.
So Ruth steps out and is guided to a field belonging to Boaz, one of Naomi’s relatives by marriage. We’re told about Boaz at the beginning of chapter two, but it’s clear that Ruth doesn’t yet know who he is. She’s looking for somewhere to glean, but there’s no assurance that she’ll be treated well as a foreigner. The nation has fallen into a lawless condition, as the author of Judges says: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (21:25). She’s taking a risk going out like this. Verse 3 says, “As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.” As it happened. She’s not scheming about how she might put herself into contact with this rich relative. She doesn’t even know about him. But God guides her to the right place at the right time. God has plans for Ruth and Naomi, and for Boaz, that none of them are yet aware of. He is bringing them together for a purpose, although they don’t know it. This secret leading of God is called providence. It’s the sort of thing Paul is talking about in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” God is going to take all the things that have happened to them, all the difficult things, and is going to bring good out of them. He is going to redeem these things.
So Ruth steps out and is providentially led to the field of Boaz. That’s the first thing that’s here. The second thing is that Boaz takes notice of Ruth and goes out of his way to show her kindness. We need to realize that Boaz is not typical of the Israelite men we read about during this time period. One commentator makes this observation: “Boaz stands out against an uninspiring crowd. He is the only male character in Judges 17-Ruth 4 who consistently demonstrates compassion, integrity, and moral courage in the face of challenge. Others pretend to such traits but uniformly fail to incarnate them.... Boaz stands head and shoulders above all the men in the... context” (Michael S. Moore, New International Bible Commentary: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, p. 333). Notice, for example, how the subject of Ruth’s safety keeps coming up. Boaz urges her to only come to his fields, and warns his own workers to keep their hands off, to leave her alone. And, near the end of the chapter, Naomi says to her: “You’ll be safe in the company of his young women; no danger now of being raped in some stranger’s field” (The Message). Ruth steps out and God providentially leads her to just the right place at the right time.
Boaz has already heard about Ruth; he’s heard about the kindness she’s shown her mother-in-law. When he takes notice of her and speaks kindly to her, Ruth is startled: “Why have I found favor in your sight, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?” And Boaz answers her: “I’ve heard all about you – heard about the way you treated your mother-in-law after the death of her husband, and how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth and have come to live among a bunch of total strangers” (The Message). He’s heard reports about her and he wants to reward her for her kindness; so he provides for her and ensures her protection in his fields: “Listen, my daughter. From now on don’t go to any other field to glean – stay right here in this one. And stay close to my young women. Watch where they are harvesting and follow them. And don’t worry about a thing. I’ve given orders to my servants not to harass you” (The Message).
But he goes one step further. He’s also concerned about her spiritual welfare, so he says this: “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you’ve come for refuge!” We don’t know, at this point in her experience, how much Ruth knows about the God of Israel. Her understanding may be fairly vague. But in identifying with Naomi and coming to Bethlehem, she’s taken refuge under God’s wings. Often our first steps toward God are unclear and uncertain; we don’t know quite where we’re going or what we’re getting ourselves into. But God has our lives in His hand, and He is providentially leading us. When we first take refuge in God, we don’t have a clear idea of what we’re doing; but He is faithful and honors our tentative, uncertain steps toward Him.
So Ruth spends the day gleaning in Boaz’s field, and when she returns home and gives Naomi a report, Naomi immediately recognizes that God has been with her: “Blessed be the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.” She then tells Ruth that Boaz is a close relative, something that will become important in the next chapter. Notice the contrast between Naomi’s attitude in chapter one and her attitude when she hears about Ruth’s day. In chapter one, she’s filled with a sense of bitterness. Things in her life have been so overwhelming that she’s lost a sense of hope in God’s kindness. She doesn’t expect Him to bring good things into her life any more. She doesn’t believe in God’s goodness and kindness. But as soon as she hears Ruth’s report, she’s filled with gratitude.
There’s a big difference between someone who turns away from God because of suffering and someone who temporarily loses sight of God’s kindness because of grief. Jesus described the first kind of person in the Parable of the Sower. These people are represented by the seed that falls on rocky ground. “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away” (Matthew 13:20-21). They take offense at God and His ways and they turn away from Him. They want nothing more to do with such a God. Naomi isn’t like that. She’s bewildered and confused; she’s lost sight of God’s goodness, because of the things that have happened to her. But at the first evidence of God’s sovereign care, she turns to Him in gratitude. She recognizes that He cares about her, that He hasn’t forsaken her after all.
Naomi has doubted God’s goodness, but she hasn’t turned away from Him. Doubt isn’t the same thing as unbelief. We’re often too hard on people who struggle with doubt. Maybe their doubts are threatening to us. Those who turn away from God are guilty of unbelief, but doubt isn’t the same thing at all. Doubt is a struggle of faith. Os Guinness describes it as “faith in two minds.” On the one side is faith, and the opposite of faith is unbelief; doubt is wavering between the two. The things that happened in Naomi’s life were so overwhelming that she doubted God’s goodness; she didn’t know how to reconcile her experience with what she believed about God.
Doubts need to be faced honestly, or they can eventually lead us to unbelief; but we don’t need to fear our doubts. Doubt is a normal experience for God’s people living in this fallen world. J.C. Ryle, an Anglican Bishop near the end of the 19th century, had some wise words in this area: “Some doubts there will always be. He that never doubts has nothing to lose. He that never fears possesses nothing truly valuable. He that is never jealous knows little of deep love. Be not discouraged; you shall be more than conqueror through Him that loved you.” Doubt is a normal part of Christian experience. Rather than denying our doubts, pretending that they aren’t there, we need to face them. And we can face them knowing that God is bigger than our doubts about Him. Here’s a good prayer to use when you’re struggling with doubt. It’s by Martin Luther: “Dear Lord, Although I am sure of my position, I am unable to sustain it without Thee. Help me, or I am lost” (quoted by Os Guinness, Doubt, p. 236). God is bigger than our doubts about Him. That’s what Naomi is experiencing at the end of chapter two. Her soul was filled with darkness and doubt, but now, at the first evidence of God’s gracious care, her soul is flooded with light.
The truth is that God cares about us and is at work redeeming every part of our lives, ordering things to work out for our ultimate good. We can see that clearly happening with Ruth and Naomi. And Paul says it is true of us: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” He’s already proven His love for us by giving His only Son. How can it be that He’ll not take care of us? “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” (Romans 8:32). God is committed to taking care of us, bringing us safely to His eternal kingdom, where we will live in His presence forever.
But we still live in this fallen world, and sometimes things happen which fill us with doubt. Things happen that don’t make sense. How can a good, loving, all-powerful God permit such things? Naomi was a genuine believer who, for a period in her life, became overwhelmed with doubts about God’s character. She lost her bearings for awhile, like my friend and I did in North Bihar. But God didn’t forsake her; and He won’t forsake us either. He is bigger than our doubts about Him. C.S. Lewis said “No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence” (The Business of Heaven, p. 17). Our doubts grow out of our human weakness, living in a fallen, disordered, broken world. The bigger reality is that God cares about what is happening to us, and He is committed to bringing us safely to His eternal kingdom. He will give us the light we need, and will enable us to say, with Naomi, “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message).
When we left the town of Motihari in the morning, we asked directions from a couple of people to make sure we were going the right way. We turned onto the road that they had told us would lead to Gorakhpur, and after two hours we were feeling good about the progress we’d made. We’d been able to travel at a reasonable speed, and by now should have been about halfway there. Then, about half an hour later, the road ended at a river. There was no bridge and nothing to do but turn around and drive 2 ½ hours back to Motihari and start over again. At the moment when I saw that river, I felt like the bottom had dropped out emotionally. It was out of proportion. After all, we were going to get back eventually. But all the feelings of alienness, of being someplace where I don’t belong, descended on me. I thought, “what on earth am I doing here?” People had laughed at us when we stopped in Motihari to ask for directions, and I felt sure they had intentionally sent us the wrong direction. I had been really anxious to get back to Gorakhpur, which was the closest thing to home at that point, and now we were further away than when we’d started.
As we saw in chapter one, both Naomi and Ruth have had a series of overwhelmingly difficult experiences. Both are widows in a society where the position of widows is very precarious. Naomi has spent ten years in a place where she’s known as a foreigner, and during that time has lost her husband and two sons. Ruth has lost a husband and has now left her home to settle in Israel with her mother-in-law. So now she is known, everywhere she goes, as a foreigner, someone who doesn’t belong. But their experiences of grief have also alienated them from this world. They’ve had the kinds of experiences which make people ask, “what on earth am I doing here?” That’s why Naomi, at the end of chapter one, says “Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” Remember that Naomi means “pleasant,” and Mara is the Hebrew word for “bitter.” She’s saying, “the name Naomi, the name you called me when I lived here, doesn’t describe me anymore. It doesn’t fit with the things God has brought into my life. My life has been bitter and painful; the Lord Almighty has afflicted me. Call me Mara, because my life is full of bitterness.” Life, for both Naomi and Ruth, has not turned out the way they had hoped.
That’s the background to chapter two. Naomi is clearly depressed and has lost hope. She no longer believes God is good. He has become her enemy, and what hope does she have, since He is Almighty? There’s no way she can resist His will. She doesn’t expect, any longer, to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Ruth has bound herself to Naomi and is determined to stay with her at all costs. But that doesn’t mean she has an easy time of it. She has her own grief to bear, and now she’s away from home, in a place where everyone sees her as a foreigner.
In a situation like this, it’s very easy to become paralyzed, to give up hope, to feel like it’s just not worth the effort to do anything. Paul draws tremendous hope from the assurance that God is on our side: “if God is for us, who can be against us?” But if God is against us, as Naomi has come to believe, what’s the use of trying? Who can help us if the Almighty has become our enemy? But in the midst of all these depressing thoughts, Ruth decides to do something. She says to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” The last verse in chapter 1 tells us that they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest, so Ruth decides to take advantage of the situation.
Gleaning was a special provision made in the Law for poor people in the land. Listen to these verses from Deuteronomy: “When you harvest your grain and forget a sheaf back in the field, don’t go back and get it; leave it for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow so that God, your God, will bless you in all your work. When you shake the olives off your trees, don’t go back over the branches and strip them bare – what’s left is for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. And when you cut the grapes in your vineyard, don’t take every last grape – leave a few for the foreigner, the orphan, and the widow. Don’t ever forget that you were a slave in Egypt. I command you: Do what I’m telling you” (24:19-22, The Message). This is what Ruth is referring to when she says to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” The Law made special provision for people in their situation.
So Ruth steps out and is guided to a field belonging to Boaz, one of Naomi’s relatives by marriage. We’re told about Boaz at the beginning of chapter two, but it’s clear that Ruth doesn’t yet know who he is. She’s looking for somewhere to glean, but there’s no assurance that she’ll be treated well as a foreigner. The nation has fallen into a lawless condition, as the author of Judges says: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes” (21:25). She’s taking a risk going out like this. Verse 3 says, “As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.” As it happened. She’s not scheming about how she might put herself into contact with this rich relative. She doesn’t even know about him. But God guides her to the right place at the right time. God has plans for Ruth and Naomi, and for Boaz, that none of them are yet aware of. He is bringing them together for a purpose, although they don’t know it. This secret leading of God is called providence. It’s the sort of thing Paul is talking about in Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” God is going to take all the things that have happened to them, all the difficult things, and is going to bring good out of them. He is going to redeem these things.
So Ruth steps out and is providentially led to the field of Boaz. That’s the first thing that’s here. The second thing is that Boaz takes notice of Ruth and goes out of his way to show her kindness. We need to realize that Boaz is not typical of the Israelite men we read about during this time period. One commentator makes this observation: “Boaz stands out against an uninspiring crowd. He is the only male character in Judges 17-Ruth 4 who consistently demonstrates compassion, integrity, and moral courage in the face of challenge. Others pretend to such traits but uniformly fail to incarnate them.... Boaz stands head and shoulders above all the men in the... context” (Michael S. Moore, New International Bible Commentary: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, p. 333). Notice, for example, how the subject of Ruth’s safety keeps coming up. Boaz urges her to only come to his fields, and warns his own workers to keep their hands off, to leave her alone. And, near the end of the chapter, Naomi says to her: “You’ll be safe in the company of his young women; no danger now of being raped in some stranger’s field” (The Message). Ruth steps out and God providentially leads her to just the right place at the right time.
Boaz has already heard about Ruth; he’s heard about the kindness she’s shown her mother-in-law. When he takes notice of her and speaks kindly to her, Ruth is startled: “Why have I found favor in your sight, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?” And Boaz answers her: “I’ve heard all about you – heard about the way you treated your mother-in-law after the death of her husband, and how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth and have come to live among a bunch of total strangers” (The Message). He’s heard reports about her and he wants to reward her for her kindness; so he provides for her and ensures her protection in his fields: “Listen, my daughter. From now on don’t go to any other field to glean – stay right here in this one. And stay close to my young women. Watch where they are harvesting and follow them. And don’t worry about a thing. I’ve given orders to my servants not to harass you” (The Message).
But he goes one step further. He’s also concerned about her spiritual welfare, so he says this: “May the Lord reward you for your deeds, and may you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you’ve come for refuge!” We don’t know, at this point in her experience, how much Ruth knows about the God of Israel. Her understanding may be fairly vague. But in identifying with Naomi and coming to Bethlehem, she’s taken refuge under God’s wings. Often our first steps toward God are unclear and uncertain; we don’t know quite where we’re going or what we’re getting ourselves into. But God has our lives in His hand, and He is providentially leading us. When we first take refuge in God, we don’t have a clear idea of what we’re doing; but He is faithful and honors our tentative, uncertain steps toward Him.
So Ruth spends the day gleaning in Boaz’s field, and when she returns home and gives Naomi a report, Naomi immediately recognizes that God has been with her: “Blessed be the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.” She then tells Ruth that Boaz is a close relative, something that will become important in the next chapter. Notice the contrast between Naomi’s attitude in chapter one and her attitude when she hears about Ruth’s day. In chapter one, she’s filled with a sense of bitterness. Things in her life have been so overwhelming that she’s lost a sense of hope in God’s kindness. She doesn’t expect Him to bring good things into her life any more. She doesn’t believe in God’s goodness and kindness. But as soon as she hears Ruth’s report, she’s filled with gratitude.
There’s a big difference between someone who turns away from God because of suffering and someone who temporarily loses sight of God’s kindness because of grief. Jesus described the first kind of person in the Parable of the Sower. These people are represented by the seed that falls on rocky ground. “As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away” (Matthew 13:20-21). They take offense at God and His ways and they turn away from Him. They want nothing more to do with such a God. Naomi isn’t like that. She’s bewildered and confused; she’s lost sight of God’s goodness, because of the things that have happened to her. But at the first evidence of God’s sovereign care, she turns to Him in gratitude. She recognizes that He cares about her, that He hasn’t forsaken her after all.
Naomi has doubted God’s goodness, but she hasn’t turned away from Him. Doubt isn’t the same thing as unbelief. We’re often too hard on people who struggle with doubt. Maybe their doubts are threatening to us. Those who turn away from God are guilty of unbelief, but doubt isn’t the same thing at all. Doubt is a struggle of faith. Os Guinness describes it as “faith in two minds.” On the one side is faith, and the opposite of faith is unbelief; doubt is wavering between the two. The things that happened in Naomi’s life were so overwhelming that she doubted God’s goodness; she didn’t know how to reconcile her experience with what she believed about God.
Doubts need to be faced honestly, or they can eventually lead us to unbelief; but we don’t need to fear our doubts. Doubt is a normal experience for God’s people living in this fallen world. J.C. Ryle, an Anglican Bishop near the end of the 19th century, had some wise words in this area: “Some doubts there will always be. He that never doubts has nothing to lose. He that never fears possesses nothing truly valuable. He that is never jealous knows little of deep love. Be not discouraged; you shall be more than conqueror through Him that loved you.” Doubt is a normal part of Christian experience. Rather than denying our doubts, pretending that they aren’t there, we need to face them. And we can face them knowing that God is bigger than our doubts about Him. Here’s a good prayer to use when you’re struggling with doubt. It’s by Martin Luther: “Dear Lord, Although I am sure of my position, I am unable to sustain it without Thee. Help me, or I am lost” (quoted by Os Guinness, Doubt, p. 236). God is bigger than our doubts about Him. That’s what Naomi is experiencing at the end of chapter two. Her soul was filled with darkness and doubt, but now, at the first evidence of God’s gracious care, her soul is flooded with light.
The truth is that God cares about us and is at work redeeming every part of our lives, ordering things to work out for our ultimate good. We can see that clearly happening with Ruth and Naomi. And Paul says it is true of us: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” He’s already proven His love for us by giving His only Son. How can it be that He’ll not take care of us? “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” (Romans 8:32). God is committed to taking care of us, bringing us safely to His eternal kingdom, where we will live in His presence forever.
But we still live in this fallen world, and sometimes things happen which fill us with doubt. Things happen that don’t make sense. How can a good, loving, all-powerful God permit such things? Naomi was a genuine believer who, for a period in her life, became overwhelmed with doubts about God’s character. She lost her bearings for awhile, like my friend and I did in North Bihar. But God didn’t forsake her; and He won’t forsake us either. He is bigger than our doubts about Him. C.S. Lewis said “No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence” (The Business of Heaven, p. 17). Our doubts grow out of our human weakness, living in a fallen, disordered, broken world. The bigger reality is that God cares about what is happening to us, and He is committed to bringing us safely to His eternal kingdom. He will give us the light we need, and will enable us to say, with Naomi, “God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!” (The Message).
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