Just One Story: Introduction

I occasionally ask myself, “If God spoke directly to my congregation, what would he say and how would he say it?” In other words, I am asking myself what should be different about us. I think about this rather often, and it usually results in a sermon series or a series of lessons for Wednesday night Bible study. Of course, God has already spoken directly to our church, Iglesia Betania in Denton, Texas, just as he has already spoken to all churches through the Scripture and the illumination of the Scripture by the Holy Spirit. So, what has he said that we have missed? What do we need to know more than anything else, especially in these turbulent days.

How God would convey his message is easy. He would tell a story. God did not give us a systematic theology or an academic text, but a redemptive history. That is the way God primarily reveals¹ himself to us. Nearly all of the Old Testament is historical narrative. Even the gospels are a history rather than a systematic Christology. Certainly, parts of the Scripture are instructional. The Ten Commandments and much of the epistles are more instructional in nature, but even they are within the context of the redemptive history of God. This poses a bit of a problem for us. Because so much of God’s message to the church is related through Bible stories we learned as children in Sunday School, we often fail to take them seriously and to study them as mature believers looking for the deep spiritual truths embedded in them.² Sister Maria Montemayor, a great saint who was a member of our church for many years and is now with the Lord, said that the Old Testament stories were God’s kindergarten. Of course, all we really need to know we learned in kindergarten, right? Well, maybe not everything, but those kindergarten lessons are valuable and life-long.

The story God would probably tell to my congregation,  and I am sure to many others, is the story of David and Goliath. Most of us already know that story as related in 1 Samuel 17. Briefly, it is the story of young David. He was visiting his brothers in Saul’s army when Goliath, the giant Philistine, mocked and challenged the Israelites to a one-on-one duel. David volunteered to take on Goliath and in spite of his youth killed him with a small stone launched from his sling. It is a simple story, but it is both profound and foundational to our understanding of God and his work. It is also commonly misunderstood as we shall see down the road a bit.

There are at least six important spiritual truths in this story that I wish to explore. Those six truths are:

    The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
    Uncircumcision
    The Bigger They Are . . .
    Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gunfight
    Can You Hear Me Now?
    It’s Not About David

What does this great story say to us? Well, keep and eye on this blog and we will see what he has to say. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (Revelation 2:11)”

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Notes
1. I am using the present tense ‘reveals’ rather than the past tense here because I firmly believe that God’s work of revelation to his people is active and vital. Not in the sense that he is giving us new biblical revelations, but that he actively works in us through the illumination of the Spirit to deepen our understanding of him, his character, his will, and his purpose.

2. For more information about how we perceive truth in modern society see Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. It is very insightful.

Prayer, Promise, and Patience

The foundation of our prayers is that God’s promises are sure. This is something we all know, but often do not demonstrate that knowledge through our actions. Of course, true faith is demonstrated not by what we know but by how we live. This is dramatically illustrated in the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. We all know the story, but do we understand the profound importance of its lesson?

Let’s begin with a little bit of background. God had called Abraham to leave his home and family and go to the land God would show him. Part of that calling was that God promised to give to Abraham a land and descendants. That is a bit oversimplified, but for our purposes it is sufficient.The problem was that Abraham and Sarah had no children. God called Abraham when he was 75 years old and Sarah was 65. In spite of that, they believed and trusted that God would give them a child as he had promised.

However, we are impatient creatures and continuing to believe after a time of seeing no results is not easy for us. So it was with Sarah. She knew she knew that the probability of having a child was very slim, so she offered her handmaid to Abraham as a surrogate wife. While hindsight tells us this was a mistake and that the whole concept is outside of God’s will, this was a customary solution to the problem of infertility at the time. So, Abraham fathered a child by Hagar with the idea that this would fulfill God’s promise of an heir, but it did not. Furthermore, it created a greater problem, jealousy between Sarah and Hagar that resulted in Sarah treating Hagar so harshly that Hagar left the household for a time. (See Genesis 16:6-16)

But whatever the relationship between Sarah and Hagar, this plan did not fulfill God’s promise or plan for Abraham and Sarah. God’s plan was to do for Abraham and Sarah that which was impossible for man to do for himself. Harold Lindsell, editor of the Harper Study Bible makes the following comment about the situation:

This incident reveals how two genuine believers may seek to fulfill God’s will by normally acceptable methods but spiritually carnal ones . . . It was not until Abraham was a hundred years old  that Isaac was born (21:5). From the length of time between the promise and the fulfillment we can draw the lessons that God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isa 55:8,9). Patient waiting would have produced the desired results without the additional problems created by impatience and lack of faith. God always rewards those who have faith to believe his promises.

There are two important points here. First, normally acceptable but carnal methods never accomplish God’s eternal promises or purposes. God’s purpose here was to do what man could not do. It is always so in God’s redemptive work. God did not give Abraham and Sarah a child until Sarah was 90 years old and “it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” (Genesis 19:11) God did not give them a child until Sarah was biologically no longer able to have children. Again, God did what was impossible for man. This is exceedingly important. At every step of God’s redemptive plan, he is doing what man cannot do. When Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be born again, he was saying that what is impossible for man—to enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born—is possible for God—through the regeneration of the human heart. (John 3) We see this so often in the Scripture. When the Israelites needed water, God did not lead them to an oasis in the desert, he gave them water from a rock. They could have stumbled across an oasis with or without the work of God, but only God can give water from a rock. When God needed to be glorified in the day of Elijah, he instructed the prophet to soak the altar in water and then sent fire from heaven to consume “the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.” (1 Kings 18:38) There are lots of other examples. Get out your Bible and read. You will find them everywhere. God does the impossible for us and we need to have faith in him rather than settle for the normally acceptable but carnal solutions as we so often do.

The second point from Lindsell’s comment is that patience would have produced the same result without the additional problems caused by Abraham and Sarah’s human solution. God waited to give them a child until Sarah was no longer able to have children naturally. He had to wait so that he could do what man could not do. So it is for us. We are often impatient and do not see the glory of God. What a shame.

It is important that we not judge Abraham and Sarah too harshly. They had the same difficulties we have. They were impatient as we are. We too look to carnal solutions to spiritual problems and accept them as normal simply because those around us are doing the same. (The pragmatism that dominates the church today is just one example.) In Abraham and Sarah’s case, God did indeed keep his promise to give them a child. He is faithful and all things do work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28) May we always have the patience to allow him to do what only he can do rather than trying to find human solutions to spiritual problems

Pet Peeves

We all have our pet peeves. You know what I mean. It is that little something that really irritates us. Everyone has at least one. Most of us have several. They range from the serious to the ridiculous, from the important to the trivial. There is no end of pet peeves in this world. A couple of years ago I asked some Christian brothers on an internet forum to list their top three pet peeves. Here are a few examples:

    Squeezing the toothpaste from the middle.
    Wearing a cowboy hat and tennis shoes or cowboy boots and short pants.
    Trite sayings on bumper stickers, such as “No Intolerance Allowed”.
    People who move to a new community and immediately compare everything to their former place of residence.
    Drivers who pay no attention to the road because they are talking on their cell phones.
    Toilet paper hung “upside down” in the bathroom.
    There were many more, but you get the idea.

In spite of the proliferation of pet peeves, I have one that falls into the important category. It drives me crazy when I ask someone for prayer and they respond with advice. Yes, they pray as well, but before they have a chance to pray, they are offering their solution to the problem. I don’t need their solution to the problem. I need God’s solution to the problem. I know they mean well, but their actions speak volumes about their view of God and prayer.

This is even common among mature believers who understand the power of God and his sovereignty. I even find myself doing it at times.In spite of all our experience that says God answers prayers and that he desires to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, we still instinctively seek human answers to spiritual problems. How shortsighted we are! Only God can change a man’s heart. Only God can effectively defeat the enemy in our lives. Only God can truly heal our illness and lift our spirits. True, there is a time for the counsel of godly men, but it does not replace the fervent prayers of those same godly men. God doesn’t need any suggestions from us. He already has the answer. We need only ask him for it.