waiting

Psalm 70 (Part One)

Hasten, O God, to save me; come quickly, Lord, to help me (70:1 NIV).

This psalm is very similar to 40:13-17. There are just a few minor alterations. Compare the similarity between Psalms 14 and 53. Both Psalms 40 and 70 are ascribed to David, who probably took the last section of Psalm 40, modified it, and set it forth to God’s people as a brief prayer for help (cf. Mt 13:52). There is a time to repeat truth. In addition, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write to you again about this is no trouble for me and is a safeguard for you (Philippians 3:1 CSB). In fact, there are times to highlight a part of former teaching and use it for a particular purpose.

Many evangelicals are accustomed to freestyle prayer, but we must remember that it is not superior to praying a set form of words. When I was young, I was taught that to repeat prayers was wrong, that it was something done only by people that called themselves Christians but weren’t. Many arguments were used for this that aren’t worth repeating. The attitude of the heart and faith is far more important than whether or not we are original. Jesus himself prayed the same words over again, and on at least two occasions gave the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

This psalm is characterized by a sense of urgency (70:1, 5). God knows that though he is eternal, we are bound by constraints of time. Here the Holy Spirit inspires words that plead for a quick answer from the Lord. Here the children urge God the Father to hurry! However, we should balance this by some other thoughts.

We may need to wait humbly before God in order to gain understanding. Consider the experience of Daniel the prophet. In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three full weeks. I didn’t eat any rich food, no meat or wine entered my mouth, and I didn’t put any oil on my body until the three weeks were over… “Don’t be afraid, Daniel,” he said to me, “for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your prayers were heard. I have come because of your prayers. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me after I had been left there with the kings of Persia” (Daniel 10:2-3, 12-13 CSB). Sometimes the laborious wait is God’s route to blessing.
We may need to wait because God has other plans he is working out before he can bring about our desired answer. Think of Jesus delay when he heard that his friend Lazarus was sick. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was (John 11:5-6 ESV). Why did Jesus wait? He knew God’s plan to do a greater miraculous sign for the glory of God—the raising of Lazarus from the dead. God may not be doing something as dramatic in our lives, but we ought to trust his timing. I had someone complain to me a few times (yes, this happened more than once) that God always seemed to answer her prayers at “one minute to midnight”, and she didn’t like his way of doing that. We ought to rejoice whenever God answers! We are often unwise, impatient, even demanding children. Perhaps God simply sees the need to teach us patience and humility.
We may wait expectantly because God can do his work swiftly. Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you… Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. The least one shall become a clan, and the smallest one a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it (Isaiah 60:1, 20-22 ESV).

David knew that he needed God to be involved in his life, so he asked God to save and to help. His example of faith shows us to abandon self-reliance. Quit trying to be the problem-solver in your life! Believers know that we need the Lord to lift us up and do what we are unable to do. Since the saint is alive to God, he understands that God is able to act in history and to carry out a rescue operation. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:16 NIV).

Grace and peace, David

Had God Abandoned Them?

Luke 1:5-10

But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years (Luke 1:7 ESV).

Life does not usually conform to our expectations. We usually assume this is a bad happening, though occasionally we might say, “I’m glad that events went differently from what I wanted, because if they had, I’d be in bigger problems.” However, our typical pattern is to feel disappointed (or frustrated or hurt or bitter or envious or angry – you pick where you are on this spectrum). Let’s face it. We want God to give us what we want, when we want it, because we’re sure that we know what is best for us. In an affluent society, we can’t imagine anything but the full, immediate satisfaction of our desires to be God’s agenda for us.

We must beware of psychologizing our text. The Holy Spirit through Luke does not disclose the feelings of Zechariah and Elizabeth to us. He simply states the life situation they were in before God stepped into their lives with his kingdom agenda. You see, God has his plans for us, and he does not ask us to approve his plans before he puts them in motion.

Luke, as the careful student of history, tells us the historical setting of the beginning of the gospel events. They began in the time of King Herod, who ruled from 37-4 BC. Near the end of his reign, God acted in the lives of two of his people. Zechariah was a priest, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah. (A thousand years before, David had divided the priests into twenty-four divisions.) Notice what the Holy Spirit lets us know about Zechariah and Elizabeth. Both were righteous in God’s sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord (Luke 1:6 CSB). They served the Lord, yet they were denied the blessing of children up to this point in their lives. They were nearly fifty (the age when priests retired from temple ministry), and though they had prayed for a child (Luke 1:13), God had not blessed them in that way… yet. God can answer our prayers “yes”, “no”, or “wait”, and they received the third trying answer. One of the lessons of their trial of faith involved waiting until God’s time arrived. This made it seem like God had abandoned them. I suppose God could have given them other children before John, but the Lord often calls his children to wait while he waits for his time. This is a “sharing of waiting” with God. It develops our faith in him.

Then one day, Zechariah’s number came up in the lottery (1:9). He was selected to go into the temple to offer incense, as required by the law covenant. Those who have studied this subject say that this was probably the only time in his life that Zechariah had this privilege. He had to wait to do what priests do for many years. But God had not abandoned him. God has many servants that he tells to wait for years before their hour comes. God wants us to live with him in his presence, serving him faithfully, while we think we are only waiting to serve. Don’t miss the small actions of your life, in which you serve the Lord, because you or your family or your friends or others don’t think they are significant. God had a special reason to delay Zechariah’s service in the temple. God only knows the reasons for apparent delays and seeming abandonments in your life. Keep on walking by faith!

Had God abandoned his dearly loved children Zechariah and Elizabeth? No, in fact, he was about to do much more than they could ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). God had formed their lives for a significant purpose: to be the parents of the forerunner of Jesus their Messiah. Joy was about to enter their lives!

Grace and peace, David

In the Days of Herod

Luke 1:5-10

In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord (Luke 1:5-6 ESV).

Luke opened his account of Jesus, God’s Anointed One, and the good news with these words. They also begin his telling of the Christmas story, which is part of God’s great story. I do not think that most people consider this part of the Christmas story, but it provides the setting in which the story occurs. In fact, if we listen to and learn this part of the story, we gain important information to understand the whole story.

Consider the historical setting. In the days of Herod… He was a ruler noted for his cunning, cruelty, and constructions. He was called Herod the Great for the last of these, for he built many fine buildings, including the rebuilding of the Temple. He died in early 4 B.C., which means that Jesus was born sometime in 5 B.C. (Yes, the calendar is off by five years. People, not God, make calendars.) Jesus was born in the full light of human history. Luke tells us of two people, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who, although not in the line of the Messiah, had an important role in the early part of the story. Notice the details. Zechariah was in the eighth division of the priesthood that had been established by King David over a thousand years before that time. Zechariah and Elizabeth were godly people; they were fully committed followers of the Lord. However, there was an emptiness in their lives. Elizabeth was barren, and since they were advanced in years (probably their later forties), there was little human hope of having a child. One of life’s mysteries is the experience that many people who would love to have children have none, while others who do not seem to care for children easily have them. Both situations produce many tears. This is history in agony. People need a Savior for many reasons.

Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense (Luke 1:8-10 ESV).

The Christmas story is connected with the old covenant and its worship. Priests and the temple are found throughout Luke 1-2. Worship of God fills both chapters. It was the time of the law covenant that pointed to the coming Messiah in all its types and shadows (cf. Hebrews 10:1). The curtain started to fall on that era when Zechariah went into it to offer incense as prescribed by the law. However, on that day no one anticipated the supernatural event about to happen. Zechariah was merely one of a long and large company of priests that had offered incense over a course of nearly fifteen hundred years. A crowd of faithful people had gathered for the event. During a time of Gentile rule over God’s covenant people, they remembered the God who had called them to be his people and who had promised the Messiah, the one who would set them free. But on that day, no one expected God to speak. He had not spoken in four hundred years, but they still had gathered to pray to wait on the Lord. Faith.

Christmas is a season of waiting, not for parties, programs, and presents. It is the time to wait on the Lord in worship. Many waited for Messiah’s first coming; we wait for his second coming. They waited in the rituals and regulations of the first covenant; we wait and watch in the Holy Spirit in the second covenant. They gathered in worship; we should also gather together to worship in love, joy, and peace. The days of Herod are long past. We live in the last days. Does an attitude of hopeful worship fill our souls this Christmas season?

Grace and peace, David

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Life is filled with waiting. We wait for babies to develop in the womb and be born. We wait for many months as they grow from crawling to toddling to walking. We wait for them to talk. When we were little children, we waited for the nights we could stay up later and for days we could go more places outside our homes. (How sad to be a child in this time and never know the joy of exploring the woods with your young friends!) When we were children, we waited to become teenagers. When we were teens, we waited to get our driver’s licenses and to go out with our friends. We had to wait to graduate, so that we could go to college, or start a career, or go into the military. We had to wait to buy our first car, to get married, to have children, or to buy a house. Then we had to wait for our own children to grow, to grow on a dream vacation, or to accomplish many goals. We wait for half marathon runners to finish their race. Life is filled with waiting.

David, the shepherd and psalmist, had to wait. When he was a teen, God had Samuel the old prophet anoint David as the next king of Israel. But David did not immediately become king. Instead, David had to wait. He had to serve under the man he was to replace as king. This might have been beneficial for David in many ways but it was not pleasant. Though he married Saul’s daughter Michal, he quickly became an outcast, and his father-in-law chased him for years around Israel and finally out of it. This involved much suffering for David and set the stage for a tense, dysfunctional relationship with Michal. When he was thirty, David finally became king – but only over one tribe, not the whole nation. He had to endure seven and a half bitter years of civil unrest while he waited to become king over the whole nation. David had to wait, and it wasn’t pleasant.

The Bible is filled with many stories of people who had to wait, and many of these were strong believers in the true and living God. Abraham and Sarah waited until he was one hundred and she was ninety until Isaac was born. Isaac and Rebekah had no sons until he was sixty. Jacob had to wait seven years to marry Rachel, and many more to escape the domination of his father-in-law. Moses had to wait and tend sheep for forty years until it was God’s time for him to rescue his people, and the rest of his life was filled with waiting forty more years to go into the Promised Land. But he never made it because he lost his patience. Joshua and Caleb had to wait forty years to enter the Promised Land, because of the unbelief of their contemporaries, who perished in the wilderness. Then they had to wait to get their inheritance until the conquest was complete. Many of the people of God had to wait long years to do what the Lord had called them to do. And some of them suffered in many ways in their years of waiting. Life is filled with waiting.

The Holy Spirit counsels us in the word about waiting:

He advises us to wait. Wait for the Lord; be strong and courageous. Wait for the Lord (Psalm 27:14 HCSB).
He tells us that we will find new strength as we wait on the Lord. But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:31 ESV).
He informs us that we must all wait for the coming of complete redemption. The waiting is not pleasant. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23 ESV). See also (Galatians 5:5; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 9:28; 2 Peter 3:12).
The Spirit works patience in us that we might wait. The fruit of the Spirit is… patience (Galatians 5:22 NASV; etc.)

We are not told that waiting is easy or fun or a walk in the park. It is difficult for time-focused beings like ourselves to wait. We want everything fast. Our “instant everything” culture breeds impatience. Let us not be impatient with people… or with God. Love is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4).

Grace, peace, and joy, David and Sharon