The Difficulty of Faith (Part Two)

1 Kings 17:8-16

In our last article, we considered that faith is difficult because it requires us to put our hope in God instead of our wisdom or apparently favorable circumstances. We continue with two more ideas about the difficulty of faith.

Faith is difficult because it must confront the realities of life (17:7-10). Let us remember that Elijah exercised obedient faith in God as he made his way to the widow’s house in Zarephath in Sidon. Every step on his lonely journey tested the faith in God he had. Faith does not eliminate our thoughts about how God will act or the way that his provision will appear. Faith thinks through the situation and trusts God when the way seems unlikely or impossible to us. Otherwise, we walk by sight and human reasoning, instead of by faith. Here is what believing Elijah had to face.

He saw the desperate condition the widow was in. She lived in poverty; she was out gathering sticks. He could easily have wondered, “Lord, why didn’t you send me to a rich widow?” She had a home, but not much else. She lacked sufficient food. She had enough for one more meal. I don’t know what Elijah did, but I think I would have been checking my email about God’s directions or my GPS on my phone about this time. “Lord, am I in the right place? This seems like another drying brook?”

Elijah saw the despair of heart which controlled that widow. She was prepared to eat her last meal and then die. She was not living by faith but by fear. “Don’t be afraid” (7:13).

The widow was an unlikely person to help God’s prophet. But the hearts of all are in God’s hands. A person’s heart plans his way, but the Lord determines his steps (Proverbs 16:9 CSB). God decreed to provide for the needs of Elijah through the means of the widow’s generosity, and so it would be. But how would that happen? God uses means, which brings us to the next point.

Believing Elijah had to act in a way that was consistent with the faith in God that they would need to live by. For this reason, he had to test the woman. At first glance, Elijah seems selfish and uncaring. But he had to know if she would put God first. Was she unselfish? Could she trust God sufficiently to follow God’s words through him to her. Do not be mistaken; it was difficult for a man of God ask her to do such things in the bitter hardship he saw she was in. All this was to teach the woman. She had to know who was providing food for her, so that she could provide for God’s prophet. He told her God’s promise. “For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says…” (17:14 NIV).

Faith is difficult even when God provides (17:15-16). Living by faith is difficult because it requires daily trust. All that they had to live on was the contents of the jar and the jug, refilled each day with just enough for one day. But God gave them food daily! “It may be that we shall never have much in hand, but this is no evil, for then our provision will never grow stale, but come to us fresh from our heavenly Father’s hand” (Spurgeon). That is an expression of joyful faith!

Again, living by faith is difficult because it requires contentment. Both Elijah and the widow and her son could only eat of what was made from the flour and the oil. There was nothing else. But we see that God was true to his word! He promised Elijah food, and food he had! But it was even less than he had received previously. Before he had meat and bread, now it was only bread. Remember Israel’s experience in the wilderness. They had manna every day for nearly forty years. The lesson of daily bread is to humble ourselves, in order that we trust God.

Here are two lessons as we conclude.

  • Do you think that the life of faith is easy? Do not be misled! But the Lord is sufficient to supply all that we need. He will provide what he knows we need.
  • Only those who come to God through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have any basis for confidence that God will supply their needs. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 NIV). Trust in god for salvation, and then you can trust him for other matters. It’s the way of God’s kingdom.

Grace and peace, David

The Difficulty of Faith (Part One)

1 Kings 17:8-16

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Get up, go to Zarephath that belongs to Sidon and stay there. Look, I have commanded a woman who is a widow to provide for you there” (17:8-9 CSB).

In our last article about Elijah, we left him by a brook which had dried up. That dried up brook was no mistake in Elijah’s life, but a definite part of a sequence in God’s purpose to reveal his glory. When we read the Biblical storyline, it is very easy to get wrapped up in the characters, miraculous events, and moral issues. We must remember that the Bible reveals the story of God’s glory in Jesus Christ through salvation by judgment. We must ask, “What does this tell us about the surpassing value and shining brilliance of our God?” However, it is also true that the Lord continued to prepare his servant. Elijah’s alone time with God was about to move to a slightly larger circle.

Certainly, most of us would rather do without the tests that come in the school of faith. We would rather receive the blessings which faith receives without the actual exercise of faith. We can be like children who want to go to amusement parks, but who dislike the long lines when they get there.

Part of our problem is that we must trust in the true God, whom we cannot fully understand and whom we cannot control. Even Elijah, who had such great faith as to stop the rain and the dew for three years, had to humbly depend upon God. Remember at this point in his life, Elijah was living in the realm of his prayer of faith; that is, there was no rain because he prayed that God wouldn’t send rain. His faith produced a situation that required more faith in God, which in turn provided the Lord with another opportunity to make known his greatness and love. Let us look at three lessons about the difficulty of faith. We will begin with the first in this article.

Faith is difficult because of the obedience that it requires. It requires us to do exactly what the Lord says. We must operate a computer program as it was written to receive the benefits of that program. If we attempt to do things that the application was not designed to do, we frustrate ourselves. “This stupid app!” No, it isn’t stupid; perhaps we’re demonstrating our own ignorance of what it can do or visualizing dreams that it can do what it isn’t designed to do. For Elijah, it put two limits on his actions.

  • Elijah could not leave the brook until God gave him orders. He had to sit and watch the brook dry up. This had been a daily process.
  • Elijah had to leave the brook when God ordered. He had to walk away from the place where God had provided for him to go to another. Abraham had to leave Ur to go to the Promised Land. Israel had to leave Egypt for the same reason. The way forward required obedient faith in God’s promises. The Lord is not as interested in our resourcefulness and ingenuity as our obedient faith.

Faith is difficult because it requires us to put our hope in God instead of our wisdom or apparently favorable circumstances. Elijah could not argue with God about where God sent him. Don’t join “The Jonah Debating Society.” Yet it seemed counter to God’s wisdom.

God sent him to the home territory of his enemy, Jezebel. Among other things, this would demonstrate the weakness of her malice. Elijah will learn the meaning of Psalm 23:5: You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies (NIV). Once I received twenty dollars while on a trip from an unlikely person, whom I later found out was causing problems for my parents. They could hardly believe what had happened, but God knew my need.

The Lord sent Elijah to a Gentile land. This could have provided Elijah with reasons to question what God was doing.

  • Hadn’t Naomi and David both gotten themselves into difficulties by leaving Israel?
  • Weren’t there Jewish people who could provide for him? cf. Luke 4:25-26.
  • Could he expect anyone there to care for God’s prophet?

He could not dispute about the apparent contradiction in God’s plan. The whole plan would seem unnatural at his time: a woman taking care of a man; a widow supplying the needs of a preacher. One greater than Elijah was provided for in a similar way (Luke 8:2-3). The prophet would have to swallow his pride. Some people are too arrogant to receive God’s gifts. The whole plan would have seemed unworkable. A widow would usually be among the poor of the land.

Meditate on the following:

  • When you have confidence in the sovereignty of God, you obey his commands. You find that his grace is sufficient for you. 2 Corinthians 12:9.
  • It is usually God’s way to use the weak, the lowly, and the despised to do his work. 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. This is for his glory!

Grace and peace, David

The Glorious Acts of the Lord

dscn31252 Chronicles 20:22-25

As we think about the walk of faith, we want to see continual improvement in a person like Jehoshaphat. We expect people to have some struggles of faith early on in their spiritual life or during a time of crisis. We also expect them to finish well. When I think of finishing well, I seem to hear the voice of my high school cross-country coach yelling to us, “Kick it in! Kick it in!” However, like cross-country races, we do not always kick it in. We want to rest before the race is over. We want to think that because we have climbed one mountain, the journey is complete. The story of Jehoshaphat urges us to persevere in obedient faith to the end of our journey. When the cross-country race was occurring, the only thing our coach could do was to encourage us to run faster. In this section, we see that the Lord did much more than offer encouragement. He acted to provide clear evidence of his protection and provision for his people.

The Lord defeated the enemy (20:22-24). God used an unexplained method. Whatever to “set ambushes” means, it was some action by God to turn the invaders against themselves. The Lord has many weapons in his arsenal to use against his enemies. At times, he might use angels, and at other times, victory might come through environmental means. In this case, the Lord somehow threw them into a panic, and they began to kill each other until everyone was dead.

God doesn’t need our wisdom or strength for victory. He simply calls us to depend on him to bring the victory as he wills.

The Lord achieved total victory. He delivered the remnant of the southern kingdom of Judah when all seemed hopeless. This was part of his plan of salvation, leading up to the time that Jesus the Messiah would come. So, it was important in the history of salvation, just like the exodus from Egypt, the conquest of the Promised Land, and similar victories through Gideon, Samson, Samuel and David. God achieved our salvation in real history. Without acts like this, Jesus would not have come, because the line of the Messiah would have perished.

The victory serves a signpost, pointing from that time to other victories by the Lord. We can think of the victory at the cross (Colossians 2:13-15). We should also think of another future victory when King Jesus comes again (Revelation 19:11-21).

The Lord provided great riches. So Jehoshaphat and his men went to carry off their plunder, and they found among them a great amount of equipment and clothing and also articles of value—more than they could take away. There was so much plunder that it took three days to collect it (20:25 NIV)

The plunder left by the defeated army was of three kinds: equipment, clothing, and valuables (gold, silver, copper and jewelry). Besides the loss of the enemy army, which crushed those other nations, Judah was strengthened by gaining the weapons of war, which are only produced at great cost. Think of the billions we spend yearly on our military. It would take years for those nations to overcome such economic loss. The clothing and the valuables would create a tremendous economic upturn for Judah. The Lord lifted them up above their neighbors. Used wisely, it would have made Judah dominant economically for a long time. They also should have remembered the underlying covenant relationship with the utterly wealthy God, who gives people wealth (Deuteronomy 18:11-20).

Has the Lord Jesus provided for us in his victory at the cross? Yes, he has (Ephesians 4:7-16). Then we should make wise investments of the gifts he has given to the church for its growth. The question is not, “Are you attending church?” Simply attending church and going your own merry way squanders the wealth of the cross. Are you involved with a group of believers, of gospel partners, to see others become worshipers of the Lord God? Please read the passage from Ephesians just referenced and think about the contributions you are supposed to make to the cause of God and truth. More on that Ephesians passage another time.

Grace and peace, David

Kindness and Protection

DSCN3649Ruth 3:13-18

We live in dangerous times. A quick look at today’s news provides unwanted confirmation of that somber fact. To watch the evening news in a metropolitan area is to see a recount of a number of murders, armed robberies, or other acts of violence. Boaz and Ruth also lived in a dangerous time, the time of the judges.  In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit (Judges 21:25).

Boaz protected Ruth’s person. He told her to stay with him the rest of the night. There was good reason for this, since this was a time of celebration, and men could be wandering around drunk late at night, and Ruth might be harmed. There are situations that a woman should avoid, especially a young woman. A mature man knows these situations and protects the woman.

Boaz acted in a sexually moral manner. This is indicated by the Hebrew word translated “stay here” (or “lodge”) used in this context. It has no sexual connotations. Being a Christian is not an excuse to act in a foolish manner.  A man knows how men are and acts wisely. Young women take far too much pride in their freedom and go to places and at late hours that are dangerous. You can be godly and street smart at the same time.

Boaz protected their reputation. He wanted to avoid any hint of sexual immorality. If people found out that they were at the threshing floor together, no amount of explanation would clear their reputation. It is better to avoid giving material to gossips. He also would avoid complicating problems about redeeming Ruth. If anyone found out about their midnight rendezvous, it could make the process difficult. Please don’t complicate problems! If something is bad, don’t make it worse!

His kindness added provision (3:15-18). Boaz gave fullness for the present. Boaz had already done a lot for Ruth and Naomi. He had even done more than the old covenant law required! Yet he decided to do more. Boaz was a very generous man. He did not think about the least he might do, but what the two widows needed. This is the way of love. Be assured that when you give generously for Christ’s sake that he notices everything you do (Matthew 25:34-40). This is God’s way of love (John 15:12-13), and Christ is the supreme example of it.

He did something immediately (for the “now”) to help her and Naomi. He gave her six measures of grain. Six might simply be a fact, but it could be symbolic. He did not give seven, since seven was the number of completeness, so he stopped at six. There was the promise of more to come. Though we cannot be exact, it seems that he gave her about 60-95 pounds of grain to carry home. Yes, Ruth was a strong young woman! This was for Naomi, since he had promised to marry Ruth if possible. Guys, if you’re really interested in a girl, be very nice to her mother. For example, if you take a young woman out to the Cheesecake Factory, buy an extra piece of cheesecake for her to take home to her mom.

Boaz provided confident anticipation for the future. He returned to town to do what he promised. Boaz was on a mission. The next place we see Boaz is at the city gate, where such actions occurred. This illustrates Christ going to Jerusalem to accomplish our redemption. Naomi saw that his action gave hope for the “not yet”. Things were going to change, because Boaz went to town! She reassured Ruth that Boaz will do what he promised.

The Lord Jesus Christ has already accomplished redemption by shedding his blood on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. He rose from the dead that we might be right with God. He ascended to heaven to pour out the promised Holy Spirit, and now he lives to intercede for us, waiting for the time set by the Father to return in power and great glory. Is Christ your Redeemer? He will set you free from sin and death and condemnation, if you turn from your sins and trust in him. Right now is the time for that to happen. Right where you sit, you may call on the Lord Jesus and be saved.

Grace and peace, David

Unnormal Provision

IMG_4249Ezra 1:1-11

We anticipate that people will act according to their character and their worldview. Moms are supposed to be tender and affirming; judges are supposed to uphold justice; servers in restaurants are supposed to be happy and considerate (at least if they want a generous tip). When we meet people, we tend to classify them immediately. We may or may not approve of their actions and personality, but we assume that they act consistently. Then we make adjustments when they are in our immediate world. Think of the grouchy boss or the snoopy person on Facebook. We learn how to adapt our interactions with such people.

Israel had been in exile from the Promised Land for seventy years. During that times they suffered at times and thrived at others. This happens. Some live in misery and bitterness, while others profit from the situations. One reality that all the exiles in Babylon and then Persia endured was that they were not free. They had been taken out of the land by the will of the Lord, and they had lost the old covenant way to worship and to draw near to God (at the temple offering sacrifices through the priests). Oppression and separation had become the “normal” for them after seventy years. There wasn’t any reason to look for change, as long as they were under the heel of the world’s superpower of their time. Or was there?

The Lord teaches us in his word that he is able to change the normal situation and to provide unnormal provision for his people. Yet we are so accustomed to the normal that we feel that the normal we are in now will always be normal. The post-exilic books (Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi) are unfamiliar territory to most readers, with the exception of Daniel. We ought to read them, since the Lord God has much material in them which will build hope (Romans 15:4). Since the new covenant people are “scattered exiles” in this world (study 1 Peter), there are many lessons in these writings for our profit.

  • God acted in conformity with the purpose of his will: “in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah” (1:1; cf. Ephesians 1:11). God acts according to his plans, which he sometimes makes known to his people. We saw previously that God acted in the exodus according to the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here, God did what he told Jeremiah he was going to do (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10-14). God will always do what he has promised, but we should never expect him to do what people speculating about “Bible prophecy” have taught. For this reason, we need to know the word, and we learn it by carefully reading it.
  • God acted directly on the heart of Cyrus, the emperor of Persia, in order that he might make a proclamation (1:1). He was going to speak in a manner very unnormal for an emperor, most of whom have been very oppressive in the history of the world. The Lord can act directly on the hearts of the rulers of nations to turn them to do what he chooses (Proverbs 21:1). He is sovereign over the affairs of kingdoms. For a man in his high position who led an empire that followed other gods, this was very unnormal.
  • God revealed to Cyrus a mission for him to accomplish (1:2). The Lord taught him that he and not Cyrus was the true ruler of the world and its nations and so Cyrus received his position from the Lord. With this idea of his purpose in God’s world, Cyrus was faithful to the mission that God gave him. We must remember our mission (Matthew 28:19-20). Let us ask ourselves who is more faithful: a pagan emperor or us? Cyrus knew that this was a specific mission. He was to build a temple for the Lord in Jerusalem. We are to help build a temple for the Lord from all nations.
  • God instilled a spirit for the mission in Cyrus (1:3-4). He became a coach to help God’s people participate in the fulfillment of the mission. He encouraged them to return to Jerusalem and to build his temple. He told people to contribute to the task. This is very unnormal, especially when you read today’s news and see how opposed human governments are to God’s people today.
  • God changed the hearts of his people to become involved in the mission (1:5-6). God stirred up some to return to Jerusalem. He moved others to give to help them on their way. From the unnormal of captivity (which they had got used to as normal), the Lord led them to return to the normal for the old covenant people: life in the Promised Land.
  • God induced Cyrus to return the articles of worship that had been taken from the temple (1:7-11). Everything in old covenant worship had to be done according to the pattern that the Lord gave Moses (Exodus 40:16-33). The people needed those articles to reestablish worship of the living God. Therefore, the Lord made sure that they received them. These articles were worth a large amount of money, and for Cyrus to part with them was truly unnormal provision.

The Lord God who acted in Cyrus’ life is the same Almighty God today. The Lord Jesus, who rules over everything for the good of his church, knows what we need for the mission he gave us. He can change human governments, in order that we might be able to reach people. Or he can give us Holy Spirit boldness to act during opposition and adversity. May we be encouraged that the Lord is able to give whatever “unnormal provision” we need.

Grace and peace, David