GOD'S CHALLENGE AND OURS
If we believe the biblical Story it’s about a God who
didn’t choose to be God without creation and humankind so he loved us into
existence. [See Psalm 136.] He did that with a view to completing his purpose
concerning us by bringing us into the image of Jesus—the immortal man, glorious
in righteousness and who as a human is the perfect image of God. If we believe
the Story it means that God purposed fellowship,
communion, life together and that human response is to be human response and not simply God
responding to himself. In short, he freely chose out of his infinite joy and
love of life to have a family of holy and joy-filled companions.
With the advent of sin (which came as no surprise to
God) it might have been thought that God would jettison the entire enterprise
but not him—not this God! He had committed himself and would see the enterprise
through and despite the God-denying look of much of human life that was the
gospel that was proclaimed in numerous ways down through history. As surely
as God’s overarching purpose was true companionship with creative human
response just that surely he wanted people to work with him in securing it.
So woven into the fabric of the entire biblical
witness is the picture of God walking through the earth looking not only for
the lost and the troubled but looking for people who would trust him; people
whose gallant faith would test him and provoke him to come up with the
substance of the things he led them to dream about and envision.
More often than enough the search came to nothing and
there were times when faithlessness became so marked even in his own people
that he would say things like, “Go find me one righteous man and I’ll forgive
the city!” (Jeremiah (5:1), or to Ezekiel (22:30), “Find me one man to stand in
the gap and I won’t destroy the city!” To faithless Israel he said (Isaiah
48:18); “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have
been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” See this too
in Asa in 2 Chronicles 16:7-9 and in trustless Ahaz to whom he said (Isaiah
7:10-11), “Test me and I’ll meet your request no matter what it is.” In fact,
when the prophets (OT and NT) looked over Israel’s history it might be fair to
say that their summary would have been Isaiah 65:2-3, “All day long I have held
out my hands to an obstinate people…a people who continually provoke me to my
very face.”
But Hebrews 11 makes it clear that his search wasn’t
always a failure and that he had reason to go back to “the Land of the Trinity”
smiling to himself and with a sparkle in his eye. To the prematurely old
Abraham and his barren wife (see Genesis 17:15-16 and 1 Peter 3:6.) he said, “I
will make you father and mother of countless children—can you trust me to
accomplish that?” They said yes and God walked off with a smile saying, “I’ll
be back.” (See Genesis 18:10.)
And then there’s that marvelous psalm (Psalm 23) where
some glorious believer couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer and jumped up in
church to say, “I just want to say that I trust God come what may!”
Ancient Jews weren’t scared witless by the sea but
there was enough about it that generated unease in them when they looked at it.
Whatever else Genesis 1 and Exodus 14:10-31 taught them, it taught them that
God was the Lord of the waters and everything else that existed. He spoke and
it obeyed him (see also Isaiah 17:12-14). The sea was no god to be worshiped as
it had been worshiped in Egypt, where Israel had spent so many years. Still,
its restlessness, its destructive power and the fact that they couldn’t control
it were enough to make it a symbol of threat and chaos. They often spoke of it
in those terms.
Isaiah said (17:12) “Oh, the raging of many
nations—they rage like the raging sea! Oh, the uproar of the peoples—they roar
like the roaring of great waters.” Here the pounding of huge waves as they
smash against one another with destroying force is a graphic picture of
clashing armies. In their wickedness they never ceased to cast up muck and
debris (Isaiah 57:20). It was out of the restless Mediterranean (the Great Sea)
that the four great Gentile kingdoms arose like monsters from a science fiction
movie, devouring all before them and oppressing the people of God (Daniel
7:1-8). It’s no wonder then that when John describes the condition of the new
heaven and earth in which the enemy has no place that he says of it, “And there
was no more sea.”—Revelation 21:1 with 13:1
.
.
With thoughts and images of cruel seas circulating in
a little nation that—on and off—for centuries had felt the power of oppressors,
the psalmist’s defiant words in 46:1-3 ring out all the finer and braver and
more trustful. People who had known no trouble didn’t sing the words he speaks—they’d
known more than their share! These weren’t the words of a people who thought
the world could be fixed if only people were given “enough information”. This
man speaks for his entire people who expected
the world to be wild and oppressive and who knew that either today or tomorrow
they’d feel the hurt that powerful nations bring to weaker kingdoms. Knowing
all that, fully aware of all that, certain that it will come to that, here’s what he says:
God is our refuge and strength,
An ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
And the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
Though its waters roar and foam and the mountains
Quake with their surging.
Picture this believer at some point in his life
standing on top of the cliff, watching the huge waves building out there and
then rushing toward him, picking up speed and power and they come. Imagine the
shudder he feels in the ground when they thunder against the cliff face, again
and again, unrelentingly, threatening to bring down the entire mountain and him
along with it. Think of him, then, looking landward, to his home and people
and the irresistible forces lined up against them. It’s with all those
images and realities in mind that he sings into the wind and later in church:
Listen again to what he defiantly sings out of a faith-filled heart.
God is our refuge and strength,
An ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
And the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
Though its waters roar and foam and the mountains
Quake with their surging.
Modern believers also sing that song. I know many of
them personally! They’re intelligent, wide-eyed, politically aware, as
realistic as any you could meet and when they feel the shudder under their feet
they take note of it and get on with their business of world-transformation by
“gospeling,” in all the ways that they do that; they’re some of the people, ancient
and modern, who test God by placing their faith in him.
But no one ever tested God the way Jesus did! No one
ever challenged God to the limit as Jesus did by his life of ceaseless devotion
and trust. Jesus laid it out before his Holy Father from the beginning right up
to the moment when even in the midst of his awful sense of abandonment on the
cross he committed his spirit to his Father’s keeping. His entire life and
vision is described by Peter in the words of David (Acts 2:25-28 and Psalm
16:8-11):
I saw
the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in
hope, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy
One see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me
with joy in your presence.
As the psalm shows us, David knew the reality of a
faith like that in his own life but only Jesus could fill his words to the
utmost—nobody tested God as he did! But the words as a description of Jesus’ depth
and breadth of trust in God, they give us Jesus view of God. He saw God as worthy of even a perfect trust
like his!
In life Jesus gave his stamp of approval to all the
lives and words of God’s ancient servants who told a worried nation in troubled
times: “God can be trusted!” Still, even the best of them wavered at times,
whether it was Abraham, Moses or Samuel—but Jesus never did!
Since
the dawn of time God has been calling people to
trust him and there were times when he got a grand response but one day
he called
to a child named Jesus and said, “Trust me!” and the little boy said, “I
do and will!”
And when he consummated his entire life of sinless holiness and warm
righteousness when he offered himself up in death, he laid it all out
before God and said: “Match
that!”
And he did it with the utmost confidence that his Holy
Father would do just that—he would match
it!
And
then: Sunday morning and Resurrection.
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