Category Archives: Faith and Practice

Open Your Eyes

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“… they beheld God, and ate and drank.”
(Exodus 24:11)

It is no secret that I love the Scriptures, and that I encourage everyone I can to read the Scriptures as often as possible.  If you want to know God, if you want to be reminded of his love for you, of you want to know how to live a life that is pleasing to God, if you want to know why everything else in this world is so messed up: look to the Word of God.  As 2 Timothy 3:16–17 teaches us, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,  that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”  There is nothing you need to know in this life or for the life to come that cannot be found in God’s Word.

I encourage my friends to use Bible reading plans as 1) a means of discipline, daily coming to the Word, and 2) a plan to take in the whole counsel of Scripture.  I am reading through M’Cheyne’s reading plan right now, but there are countless other quality reading plans out there, take your pick.

The problem with reading plans, however, is that sometimes you read the passage just to get it read, and then move on, without letting it really sink in.  We come to Scripture sometimes acting like the Cat in Dr. Seuss’ I Can Read With My Eyes Shut; but, as the Cat says, “if you read with your eyes shut, you’re likely to find that the place where you’re going is far, far behind.”

Take for example my reading this morning.  In M’Cheyne’s plan, I was scheduled to read from Exodus 24.  Now in that chapter God tells Moses to come up the mountain and to bring Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and the 70 elders of Israel to meet with God.  Obeying the Lord, these elders ascend the mountain and we are told that when they went up, “they saw the God of Israel.  There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.  And he did not lay his and on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank” (Ex. 24:9-11).

What!?!  Wait a minute, did I just read that?  I must have read this passage a hundred times before, but I’ve never seen that before.  They saw God, they beheld him, and ate and drank!!!

Now, there’s a lot more to the chapter, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I don’t know if I will today.  My reading plan isn’t important enough that I should just gloss over something so monumental.  They beheld God and ate and drank.  It’s very hard to express in writing just how verklempt I am over this.  They beheld God and ate and drank.

See, normally, that doesn’t happen.  Later in Exodus, Moses asks to see the face of God, to which God replies, no man may see the face of God and live (Ex 33:20).  Manoah and his wife, after their encounter with the angel of the Lord, are pretty sure they are going to die because they have seen the face of God (Judg. 13:22).  Isaiah, when he sees the Lord seated upon the throne in glory, cries out, “I’m a goner,” knowing his sinfulness cannot stand in the presence of God (Isa 6:1-5).

But what we read here in Exodus is that God called these men up the mountain, they saw God, and they were not killed, but were instead, fed a meal… they ate and drank.  Does anybody else hear the 23rd Psalm here, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, my cup overflows.”  Immediately my mind jumped to the story of the Emmaus Road, the two disciples, leaving Jerusalem depressed and discouraged because of the crucifixion, encountering the resurrected Jesus along the way, who taught them from Scripture everything concerning himself (Luke 24:27), and how after he blessed the meal their eyes were open.  Even now I think about our worship services, how in the reading and proclamation of the Word of God we see God and hear his voice, and still he gathers us around the table to feed us in his presence.

This one little line from one verse in Exodus has completely wasted me for the day.  I don’t know that I will recover.  I don’t know that I want to.

So what should I do next, check my email?  Really?

Honestly, some people get more out of reading the New York Times than they do from reading the Bible.  They may read an article in the paper and that’s all they talk about the whole day, while they are hard pressed to remember what they read that morning, or even 5 minutes ago, from Scripture.

Friends, when you are reading God’s Word you need to allow it time to penetrate and permeate your life.  Don’t just “buzz the tower;” read it, hear it, meditate upon it.  Pray that God’s Spirit will give you ears to hear the Word of God, to see the grace of Christ.  Let us not be like the Pharisees of old who searched the Scriptures thinking that in them they would find eternal life, but never realizing that all of Scriptures were, in fact, pointing to Christ (John 5:39).

We need to read with our eyes open, and our hearts prepared for impact.

SDG

Your Strength Isn’t Strong Enough

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“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts.”
(Zechariah 4:6)

 Do you remember the Daily Affirmations by Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live?  Poor Stuart suffered from “stinkin thinkin”, negative thoughts that just brought him down.  He’d try to encourage himself, and those who came on his show, helping them to think positive.  And always, his mantra was, say it with me…

“I am good enough.  I am smart enough.  And doggone it, people like me.”

Now, not to be one who contradicts such sound philosophy, but there are times in our lives when, unfortunately we are not good enough, we are not smart enough, and doggone it, nobody likes us.  There are times when it seems the rug has been pulled out from underneath us, when conventional wisdom fails us, and our strength isn’t strong enough.  We face trials and persecution from the things we thought would bring us security; our jobs, our friends, our family; our world seems upside down.  The things we counted on for strength fail us, the people we trust let us down.  We find we are weak, we are tired, and we want to give up.  No amount of daily affirmation, no power of positive thinking, can get us out of this mess.

This is why we walk in faith.  We see from the very beginning of the story of Scripture that man was created to be dependent upon God.  We were designed to be in relationship with God, depending on Him, trusting in Him, walking with Him.  The Lord’s Prayer is so basic, yet so revolutionary, because it reminds us, restores us to this absolute dependency upon God.  We are taught to come to God for our daily bread, to turn to God for deliverance from evil, to seek God for forgiveness as we forgive others, and ultimately, to seek God’s glory and His kingdom and His will rather than our own.

Too often, though, we forget our dependency.  We buy the delusion of our success, get drunk in our own power, and we rest in our own accomplishments.  This was what God warned the Israelites about in Deuteronomy, knowing that when the people had success, they would take all the credit, saying, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17).  No, the Lord reminded them, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,  but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deut. 7:7–8).

Friends, the truth of the matter is, so often we begin to rely on our own strength, to believe our own press (which we’ve probably printed), and have forgotten that our strength is in the Lord alone that truly the cross we carry becomes too heavy and begins to crush us.  It seems defeating, overwhelming, and humiliating; but even then the cross has purpose.

John Calvin wrote of the purpose of our cross saying,

When we are humbled, we are taught to rely on God alone, and we shall not stumble or sink down in despair.  For it is not small profit to be robbed of our blind self-love so that we become fully award of our weakness; to have such an understanding of our weakness that we distrust ourselves; to distrust ourselves to such an extent that we put all our trust in God; to depend with such boundless confidence on God that we rely entirely on his help, so that we may victoriously persevere to then end; to continue in his grace that we may know he is true and faithful in his promises; and to experience the certainty of his promises so that our hope may become firmer.

When your cross is too much to carry, find your strength in the one who carried the cross for you.  Learn to trust less in yourself, and to trust more in His grace and mercy.  Let his strength be made perfect in your weakness.  And remember it is “not by might, nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

SDG