Lesson 3: The Man Who Caused God To Repent (Exodus 32:7-14, 30-35; 33:1-6, 12-17)

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When you think of the word “repent,” you think of a sinner turning from sin back to God. But today I want us to look at a man whose prayer was so powerful that he caused God to repent. The King James Version translates God’s response to Moses’ prayer (Exod. 32:14), “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.” The NIV translates it, “The Lord relented”; the NASB puts it, “The Lord changed His mind.” But any way you put it, there must be something to learn about prayer from a man whose prayer had such a powerful effect on God.

There is a great difference, of course, between man’s repentance and God’s repentance. Man’s repentance involves turning from sin to God. But when the Bible speaks of God repenting, there is no thought of sin. Neither is there any hint of vacillation, as if God wavers in His purpose or changes His plans in response to man’s doings. God is unchanging or immutable. His purpose has been fixed from eternity and He will establish it (Isa. 46:10; Eph. 1:11). He does not change His mind as man does (1 Sam. 15:29).

So how do we explain the many Old Testament references to God repenting? (Most OT references to repentance refer to God, not to man.) When Scripture speaks of God repenting, it is viewing God from man’s viewpoint (called, “anthropomorphism”). From man’s viewpoint it seems as if God is changing His mind, although from God’s viewpoint, He never changes His mind and His purpose is always carried out. We refer to the sun setting, but that is only from our limited viewpoint. The actual truth is, the sun did not move; the earth revolved. But we speak from our viewpoint.

I want to answer the question, What kind of person does it take to get God, from our viewpoint, to “change His mind” in response to that person’s prayers? How can we move God through our prayers? We will examine four qualities in Moses’ life:

To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s person exalted, God’s promises enacted, God’s people established, and God’s presence experienced.

1. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s person exalted (32:7-12).

The background to this story is the infamous incident with the golden calf. Shortly after their exodus from Egypt, Moses had left the people and had gone up on the mountain to meet alone with God. When he didn’t return quickly, the people persuaded Aaron to make this golden calf and they fell into pagan revelry in worshiping this idol. God told Moses what was going on and said, “Let Me alone ... that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation” (32:10). In response, Moses prays on behalf of the people, basing his prayer, in part, on God’s reputation with the Egyptians. Moses wasn’t after a people called by his name, but he was concerned for God’s name. He wanted God’s person to be exalted.

The Lord Jesus taught this as the first requirement of prayer, when He instructed us to pray, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name” (Matt. 6:9). “Hallowed” means to be regarded as holy. Our main aim in our prayers should be that God would be exalted above all else.

Why would God offer to destroy this people and raise up a new nation out of Moses? I believe God did it as a test, to prove Moses’ character as the leader of the nation and the mediator of the covenant of the law. If Moses had a desire for personal glory, he very logically could have reasoned along with God’s proposal: “I’m a direct descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God could destroy these disobedient people and raise up a new nation under me without negating His promise to the patriarchs.” And according to Deuteronomy 9:14, God even offered to make a mightier and greater nation out of Moses. So Moses could have reasoned that it would be better to allow God to do this thing. But Moses did not say, “Okay, God, if that’s what you want to do, here I am.” Moses sought God’s glory, not his own.

Note that God said, “Your people, whom you brought up ...” (32:7). This reflects that God didn’t stand with His people in their sin. But also, it was a test for Moses. He could have said, “Yes, I did do a good job in bringing up my people, didn’t I?”

But Moses knew that these people weren’t his and he hadn’t delivered them; God had. So he prayed, “Your people whom You have brought out ...” (32:11). Moses didn’t take any of the credit, but argued with God that these were His people whom He alone brought up from Egypt by His great power and mighty hand. Then (32:12) he further reflects his concern for God’s glory. If God abandoned Israel now, the Egyptians would have a good laugh and God would be dishonored. So he boldly asks God to “repent,” to change His mind. A basic lesson in prayer is that our focus always should be, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory” (Ps. 115:1).

Think about your prayers this past week and answer this question: How much did God’s glory motivate and direct your prayers? Rather than just asking for what you wanted, were you consumed with the burden that God’s person would be exalted, that His name would be hallowed, that His glory would be revealed? James 4:3 says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” With Paul, our aim should always be that Christ would be exalted through us, whether we live or die (Phil. 1:20). When God sees a heart that genuinely seeks His glory, He is moved to answer that person’s prayers.

2. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s promises enacted (32:13).

Moses reminds God of His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (Jacob’s name of promise) and pleads with God to remember that promise. God must be true to His Word, and so we can lay hold of the things He has promised and expect Him to answer.

Of course, we need to be careful to interpret God’s promises in their context and in the full revelation of Scripture or we’ll fall into serious error. For example, those who take certain verses and argue that it is always God’s will to heal us if we have the faith, are misusing the promises of God, since many other Scriptures show that faithful Christians are not exempt from suffering and death.

Also, we need to remember that just because God has promised something does not mean that He has promised to do it the instant we ask. Moses did not live to see the fulfillment of this promise about the Israelites inheriting the land of Canaan. God’s promises will be fulfilled and so we can and should pray accordingly. But they may not be fulfilled in our lifetime. And, like Moses, we may have to expend much time and energy in working toward the fulfillment of God’s promises. Just because we pray doesn’t mean that we are free to sit back effortlessly and watch God do it. He usually involves our extended labor in the process.

In the 19th century, God raised up a man named George Muller who was concerned for God’s glory. He thought, “People don’t believe that God is the living and true God who answers prayer. I’d like my life to give evidence of the reality of God.” As he looked around Bristol, England, where he lived, he saw a number of orphaned children. He realized from Scripture that God has a special concern for orphans.

At that point, Muller could have just prayed, “God bless all the orphans in Bristol and meet their needs.” But he went much further than that. As he waited on God in prayer, he purposed that, in dependence upon God alone, he would establish an orphanage to care for these dear children. By making his own needs and the needs of the children known only to God in prayer, he would, by published reports after the fact, demonstrate to the world that God is faithful and that He answers the prayers of His children for His own glory. For over 60 years Muller saw God do just that. In reading his life you see that God will answer when His children pray that His promises would be enacted so that His person might be exalted.

3. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s people established (32:30-33).

Exodus 32:14 seems to be a summary explaining the events that are described in more detail in the rest of chapters 32 and 33. When Moses prayed in 32:11-13, he knew that the people had sinned by making this golden calf and worshiping it, since God had told him (32:8). But he didn’t yet grasp the extent of their sin. Then Moses and Joshua went down into the camp and saw the idolatry and revelry. Moses exploded in righteous anger. He smashed the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, took the calf, burned it, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it. Then he confronted Aaron and called whoever was for the Lord to come over to him. He commanded those who came over to go out and execute those who had not come over, even if it meant killing their brother, friend, or neighbor. Three thousand (perhaps the leaders of the idolatrous rebellion) died.

Then Moses said to the people (32:30), “You yourselves have committed a great sin; and now I am going up to the Lord, perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” Then he returned to the Lord and prayed: “Alas, this people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!” (Exod. 32:31-32).

Much could be said, but I limit myself to two observations. First, if we’re going to move God in prayer to establish His people for His own glory,

A. We cannot and must not gloss over sin.

Moses first heard about the condition of the people from God. But when he saw it with his own eyes, he was so appalled and enraged that he ordered this execution squad to go out and kill even their own friends and relatives! Then he mentions, both to the people and to God, their great sin (32:30, 31). He did not paper over things or shrug it off. He confronted their sin and confessed it in prayer to God. Moses probably wasn’t the most popular man in Israel after he took such a hard line against sin! Those whose loved ones were executed probably accused him of being a cruel man. But he knew that for God’s person to be exalted, God’s promises enacted, and God’s people established, they could not tolerate idolatry in their midst.

Because Moses had been in God’s presence on the mountain, the sin of the people jarred him. Aaron, however, was not in God’s presence, and so the demand of the people to make the golden calf seemed reasonable to him. He excuses his own responsibility for it by telling Moses that he just threw the gold into the fire, and out came this calf (32:24)! But the truth was, he had deliberately fashioned the calf with an engraving tool (32:4)!

The point is, if we want to see God’s perspective on our own sin and on the sins of the American church, we must spend much time alone in His presence with His Word. Otherwise, like Aaron, we will blend in with the worldliness that surrounds us. We will hear of Christians who squander their money on pleasure, but who give a pittance to the Lord’s work, and conclude that it is possible, after all, to serve both God and mammon. We will hear of Christians who watch the filth on TV and in movies and defend them by saying, “We don’t want to be legalistic by suggesting that Christians can’t watch what the world watches!” Pretty soon there isn’t much observable difference between the church and the world.

True revival often begins with God’s people recognizing and confessing their sin as a result of the preaching of God’s Word. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, “Never has there been a revival but that some of the people, especially at the beginning, have had such visions of the holiness of God, and the sinfulness of sin, that they have scarcely known what to do with themselves” (Revival [Crossway Books], p. 157; see also, pp. 41, 101, 231).

In revival, God’s Spirit convicts Christians of the coldness of their hearts toward God and they renew their first love for Him. Husbands and wives recognize how selfish and unloving they have been toward each other, and ask forgiveness. Parents confess their sinful anger toward their children. Church members go to those toward whom they have had bad attitudes and seek reconciliation. To see God’s people established, we must pray that they would own up to their appalling sinfulness and worldliness, so that true revival might come.

Second, if we’re going to move God in prayer to establish His people for His own glory,

B. We must have a tender heart for sinners.

After he saw the appalling sinfulness of these people, it would have been easy for Moses to say, “Forget it! You lousy sinners can party in the wilderness until you rot! I’m out of here!” It’s easy to get disgusted with people and their sin.

But instead, Moses was so burdened for these people that he prayed a theologically incorrect prayer, that if God wouldn’t forgive their sin, He should blot Moses out of His book! He either means he would rather die if God won’t forgive this people, or that he would rather be eternally condemned! Paul, in a similar vein, exclaimed that he could wish that he were cut off from Christ if it meant the salvation of the Jews (Rom. 9:3).

When I was in seminary, we had a chapel speaker named Matt Prince who was a nephew of Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder of Dallas Seminary. Matt was gifted as an evangelist, and he had a heart of compassion for sinners. He told us how he longed to see his neighbor come to faith in Christ. One day as he was agonizing in prayer for that neighbor, the thought struck him, “What if he is not one of the elect?” Matt said that he prayed, “Lord, if he isn’t one of Your elect, then You put him on the list!” That was not a theologically correct prayer, but I think that God looked beyond the wrong theology to the heart. Jesus had compassion on sinners and so should we.

God gently corrects Moses by saying that He will righteously judge all who have sinned, which He does (32:33, 35). But the Lord looks beyond Moses’ words to his heart, and graciously promises restoration by saying, “But go now, lead the people where I told you” (32:34). Thus while Moses stood firmly against the people’s sin, he had such deep concern for them that he was willing to sacrifice himself so that they be established. As such, he is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore our sins in His body on the cross.

While we may never achieve that degree of love, God is looking for those who would sacrifice themselves by standing in the gap in prayer so that His people would be established as a source of praise to His name. We must hate sin with a holy hatred, as Moses did. But we must also love sinners with the love of Christ, who did not spare Himself for us.

Thus, to move God in prayer, we must desire to see His person exalted, His promises enacted, and His people established.

4. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s presence experienced (33:1-6, 12-17).

God told Moses to go and lead the people (32:34), but that an angel would go with them, not the Lord Himself. God explained that if He went up in their midst, He would destroy them because of their sin (33: 3, 5). You would think that God’s promise to send His angel and to drive out the inhabitants of the land and give the land to Israel would have satisfied Moses. But he was not satisfied. So he sought the Lord until He promised that His presence would go with them (33:12-17). For Moses, the blessings of the land were nothing if God Himself were not with him.

One of the reasons our prayers often fall flat is that we are satisfied with God’s blessings apart from the ever-deepening personal experience of the very presence of God Himself. Lloyd-Jones applies it this way (ibid., p. 159):

Christian people, I am not asking you whether you are living a good life. I am not asking you whether you read your Bible, or whether you pray. I am not asking whether you are active in Church work, or some other form of Christian activity. What I am asking you is this—do you know God? Is he with you?

With Moses, do we say, “That’s not enough. Let me know Your ways that I may know You” (33:13)? He goes on to dare to ask God to show him His glory (33:18). Moses, what more could you want? You’re the man who saw God in the burning bush! You saw God do miracles in Egypt! You saw Him part the Red Sea! You went up on the quaking mountain, into the thunder and lightning and thick cloud, where you met personally with God for 40 days, so that your very face shone with the reflected glory of God! Isn’t that enough, Moses? No, Moses replies, I want to experience the glory of His presence in a deeper way.

Are you satisfied with where you’re at with the Lord? Of course, in one sense we should be satisfied with the Lord and His salvation. But we also ought to have a holy dissatisfaction that spurs us on to know Him more fully than we already do. Without that, you’ll never know God’s presence as Moses did.

The church today is so caught up with methods and techniques. On the personal level, people flock to the latest seminars or go to support groups or buy the latest self-help books to try to find relief from their problems. On the church level, successful pastors put on seminars on how to increase the size of your church. But what we need, both individually and corporately, more than anything else, is a vital, ongoing, deepening experience of the presence of the living God. To be effective in prayer, we’ve got to desire to know God Himself.

Conclusion

I have often prayed, not as fervently or faithfully as I ought, but I’ve prayed that God would do a work here that would be humanly inexplicable, so that people would know that the living God has been in our midst. I’m asking each of you to join me in praying that God’s person would be exalted, that His promises would be enacted, that His people would be established, and that His presence would be experienced in this, His church.

A moving of God’s Spirit in revival always begins first among the people of God. They recognize their lukewarmness of heart. They begin to see the awful sinfulness of sin and are moved to repentance. They begin to seek God’s glory and to experience His presence in a vital, fresh way. From the church, the wave spreads outward. People in the community hear what God is doing. They come, at first out of curiosity, to see what is happening. They come under the preaching of the gospel and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. They turn from their sin, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and are converted.

When people ask, “How did you do it? What methods did you use? Can you teach us the techniques so we can take them back and plug them into our church?” we reply, “We didn’t do it. The living God is responsible for what you see.”

Will you join me in such prayer, to see if we, like Moses, can move God to repent, that He might pour out His blessing on His church?

Discussion Questions

Agree/disagree: The church today is too heavily focused on people’s needs instead of on God’s glory.
How can we know which biblical promises apply to us?
Why does revival usually begin with God’s people becoming increasingly aware of their own sinfulness?
Is God’s presence a fact to take by faith or something to sense experientially? How do you get it if you don’t have it?

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

Related Topics: Character of God, Prayer, Worship (Personal)

Lesson 4: The Man Who Was Always Singing (Psalm 18 [2 Samuel 22])

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Do you sing? I don’t mean, “Do you sing well enough to join a choir?” I mean, “Do you find your joy in the Lord welling up so much that it spills over into singing?” When you’re alone and when you come together with God’s people, do you find yourself wanting to burst forth in heartfelt praise to God for who He is and what He’s done for you? If you don’t sing to the Lord, your prayer life is deficient. Singing praises to God is a vital part of prayer.

David, the man after God’s heart, sang many of his prayers to the Lord. David composed at least half of the psalms, which, we need to remember, were to be sung, not just read. He was always singing, even when he was in a cave, hiding to save his life (Ps. 57). He has much to teach us about prayer and, especially, about the aspect of praise in prayer.

Becoming a person of praise may not be at the top of your priority list—you’ve got practical problems to solve—but it ought to be! As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” or, as John Piper rephrases it, “to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.” One of the main ways we glorify God is through praise. The brief glimpses Scripture gives us into heaven indicate that a major part of eternity will be filled with praising God. To the extent that that activity strikes us as a bit boring, we lack understanding of the infinite perfections of God and of the tremendous joy of praising Him. We all need to become people of praise.

I’m convinced that one of the main reasons God called David a man after God’s own heart was that David was a man of praise. We could spend many messages exploring this theme, but I’m going to limit myself to one message from David’s Psalm 18. I could preach a series of messages on this psalm alone, so my treatment will be a bit sketchy. But I want to show three things from this psalm about becoming people of praise:

To be people of praise, we must come to the end of ourselves, flee to God as our refuge, and express it to Him in song.

These three elements are present in many of the psalms. The psalmist was under attack or in a difficult circumstance. In his distress he called out to the Lord who delivered him, leading to his outburst of praise in song.

There is both good news and bad news in this observation. The good news is that the psalms are intensely life-related. Every emotion and up-and-down of life is reflected in the psalms, so that we can relate easily to them. John Calvin called the Psalms, “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul;” and added, “for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror” (Calvin’s Commentaries [Baker], Preface to Psalms, p. xxxvii). The bad news is that to become people of praise, we’ve got to enroll in God’s school of hard knocks. And, we must advance in that school until we come to the end of ourselves:

1. To be people of praise, we must come to the end of ourselves.

David wrote Psalm 18 and sang it to the Lord “in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul” (superscription). This probably means that David wrote it later in life, as he reflected back on God’s faithfulness in his many troubles. It is an important enough psalm that the Holy Spirit saw fit to include it twice in Scripture (with minor variations, it is in 2 Samuel 22).

To appreciate what David had been through, you need to recall his background. David was in his late teens when he was anointed as king. But he was 30 before he actually became king over the southern part of Israel and 37 before the whole kingdom was united under his rule. During those years, God was shaping His man through adversity, putting David in situation after situation where he despaired of life itself and had to learn to trust in God alone. For over a decade, the mercurial King Saul pursued David over the Judean wilderness, so that David said, “There is hardly a step between me and death” (1 Sam. 20:3). He lived in caves and moved constantly to avoid Saul’s relentless pursuits.

If you ever watched the old TV series, “The Fugitive,” you have some idea how David felt during those years. He could never let down, never relax; he always had to be on the alert. We talk about being under stress—how would you like to know every day and every night that an enemy with a whole army at his disposal was trying to kill you!

In Psalm 18, we don’t know whether David was writing about a specific incident, or just lumping together his many narrow escapes from death. In poetic language he describes (18:4-5) a man who is in turbulent water over his head. Weeds or vines are wrapping around him so that he cannot break free. In the terror of the moment, all he can think is, “I’m going to die!” He had come to the end of himself.

You may wonder, “Why would a good, loving God put a decent, clean-living young man like David in situation after situation where he despaired of life itself?” After all, David was a good kid. He obeyed his father. He was conscientious about taking care of his dad’s sheep. He didn’t get drunk or do drugs. He had more faith in God as a teenager than anybody in Saul’s army, so that he could kill Goliath. We’re not talking about an average kid. David was a choice young man. We may hesitate to say it, but we might think that for God to treat David as He did sounds a bit cruel!

But if we think that, we don’t understand God’s loving ways. “Whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom he receives.... He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness” (Heb. 12:6, 10). The fact is, if God didn’t bring us to the end of ourselves, we would trust in ourselves, not in God. So He brings us into impossible situations where there is no human way out. The more impossible the situation, the greater will be our praise after He has delivered us.

The endemic human cancer that God is patiently, lovingly, cutting out of His people is pride. Since the fall, we all suffer from the sin of pride. Even those with so-called “low self-esteem,” who dump on themselves all the time, suffer from pride. At the root of pride is relying on ourselves rather than on God. Pride is looking within for our sufficiency rather than looking to Christ. It is thinking too highly of ourselves and too lowly of God. Pride thinks that God owes us something because of who we are or what we’ve done. In pride we think that our own righteousness commends us to God. Pride is putting ourselves above others, thinking that we’re better than they are. Everyone suffers from pride in one form or another.

This is crucial, because if we don’t grasp it, we don’t truly understand the gospel and we can’t present it clearly to those who are lost. In our day, the gospel pitch often goes, “Do you need help with your problems? Do you want a happier life? Invite Jesus into your life and He will give you what you need.” And so people who proudly think that they’re not too bad, who have no concept of the absolute holiness of God, ask Jesus to come into their lives and give them the little something extra they need. But they’ve never been humbled to see that unless God is merciful to them, they are under His just condemnation.

Note what David says (18:27): “For You save an afflicted people; but haughty eyes You abase.” God has to bring affliction into our lives to humble our pride. “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5). When God humbles us so that we no longer trust in ourselves, then we call out to Him for salvation and He gets all the praise because we know that it was all due to His grace, not at all due to our merit.

Watchman Nee tells of a time when a group of Chinese Christian men were swimming in a river when one of the men got a cramp in his leg and began to drown. Nee motioned to another man, who was an expert swimmer, to go to the man’s aid. But to his surprise, the expert made no move. With panic, Nee and the others on shore began shouting, “Don’t you see the man is drowning? Do something!” But the good swimmer stood, calm and collected, without making a move. Meanwhile, the drowning man’s voice grew fainter and his efforts grew weaker. Nee thought to himself, “I hate this man! Think of letting a brother drown before his very eyes and not going to the rescue!”

But when the victim was actually sinking, with a few swift strokes the swimmer was at his side, and both were soon safely ashore. Later, when Nee got an opportunity, he aired his anger: “I have never seen any Christian who loved his life quite as much as you do. Think of the distress you would have saved that brother if you had considered yourself a little less and him a little more.”

But the swimmer, Nee found out, knew his business better than Nee did. He replied, “Had I gone earlier, he would have clutched me so fast that both of us would have gone under. A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.” (The Normal Christian Life [Christian Literature Crusade], p. 117.)

It’s a lesson we must learn in coming to God: We cannot save ourselves. We must come to the end of ourselves and call out to God. Then, when He saves us, we will sing His praises. It’s also a lesson we must keep on learning throughout our Christian lives. We are so prone to trust in ourselves, but we cannot praise God while we trust ourselves. The lower we see ourselves, the more we exalt God. So, God lovingly keeps bringing us into situations where we are helpless, where we’re forced to trust in Him alone. That’s the first lesson of Psalm 18: That to be people of praise, we must come to the end of ourselves.

2. To be people of praise, we must flee to God as our all-sufficient refuge.

To become people of praise, we need to know, as David did, practically how to flee to God and trust Him as our refuge in the midst of intense troubles. Three things will help here:

A. We must know who God is.

We can’t trust in or flee for refuge to a God we don’t know. The many metaphors which David uses here show that he knew God in a practical and personal way: “My rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (18:2). A number of these metaphors recall particular incidents in David’s history: “Rock” (1 Sam. 23:25-28); “fortress” (1 Sam. 22:4; 24:22; 2 Sam. 5:7); “my God, my rock” (1 Sam. 24:2). In other words, “David’s praises celebrate actual deliverances which he and the men with him could authenticate” (Joyce Baldwin, 1 & 2 Samuel Tyndale O.T. Commentaries [IVP], p. 287). Note also the possessive pronoun, “my,” as applied to God (18:2 [7 x], 6, 21, 28, 29, 31 [“our”], 46). David didn’t just know about God; he knew God as his own God.

If we want to be able to flee to God as our all-sufficient refuge, we must know Him. We must know His attributes as revealed in His Word. In times of trial, Satan invariably tries to shake our confidence in the goodness of God. He comes to us and whispers, “If this God of yours is so good and so powerful, then why is He letting you go through this horrible trial?” But if we fix in our mind who our God is, we can flee to Him as our refuge.

B. We must know how God acts.

David goes on to describe God’s deliverance through a thunderstorm (18:7-15). This could be a poetic description to tell in general of God’s awesome power in rescuing His people. Or it could refer to an actual battle, not recorded in Scripture, where David was about to be defeated by a powerful enemy, but in response to his prayer, God sent a thunderstorm that sent the enemy army into confusion and gave David the victory.

But, David didn’t say, “Wow, I sure was lucky! A thunderstorm hit at just the right moment and I defeated my enemy!” No, David knew God’s way of delivering His people. Most often He uses natural means. Sometimes He violates the laws of nature and uses miracles. But David was very clear that it was God who rescued him, not his own strength or cleverness (18:16-19). In fact, this is the theme of verses 27-45 (note the frequency of “God,” “You” and “Your”), that even though David used the weapons of warfare, even though he was well-trained for battle, even though he fought the enemy, in all of this it was God who was at work. Without God’s working, David was helpless.

David could affirm that not only God, but also God’s way is perfect (18:30). God’s perfect way is to bring His people into difficult straits and humble them so that they are forced to rely on Him, so that He alone gets the praise. If we want to know God as our all-sufficient refuge so that we can flee to Him in our trials, so that we praise Him for His salvation, then we must know who He is and how He acts. Also,

C. We must know how to trust God experientially.

This wasn’t just theoretical theology for David. He knew practically how to lay hold of God in these desperate situations. There are three factors that lie behind David’s trust.

First was prayer. David prayed (18:3, 6). The repeated word, “cry,” shows the urgency and fervency of David’s prayers. Our prayers are more fervent when we sense how needy we really are.

Second was the Word. David affirms, “All His ordinances were before me, and I did not put away His statutes from me” (18:22). Through God’s Word we can know how God wants us to live. God’s Word gives us examples of others who trusted God in incredibly difficult trials so that we can imitate their faith. If we aren’t feeding on the Word when things are relatively calm, we won’t know how to trust God when calamity strikes.

Third was obedience. David not only knew God’s ordinances; he obeyed them. Some stumble over David’s assertion of his own righteousness (18:20-24). On the surface, it seems to run counter to what I said earlier about humility. It sounds as if David is boasting in himself and saying that God owed him deliverance because he was such a good guy. But that is to misinterpret these verses.

We need to understand that David isn’t comparing himself with God, in whose sight no one is righteous, but with his enemies, who do not follow God. Also, David is not denying his own sinfulness any more than God was denying Job’s sinfulness when He affirmed Job’s righteous life to Satan. David acknowledges repeatedly that any integrity or strength that he had came from God, not from himself (18:28-36). Rather, David is here affirming God’s justice in vindicating His people and judging the wicked. Also, David is saying what other Scriptures affirm, that we can have a legitimate assurance when we know that we have acted in obedience to God’s Word. Finally, we must look beyond David to David’s greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose innocence was absolute. God the Father rescued Jesus Christ from the cross because of His perfect obedience.

The point is, if we cry to God in prayer, if we know what His Word says about how we should live, and if we have a clear conscience that we have obeyed His Word, then we’ll be able to trust Him experientially in times of trial. And He will get the praise.

3. To be people of praise, we must express in song our gratitude to God for His salvation.

David expressed his gratitude to God by writing and singing this and many other psalms. But even if we can’t write songs or sing well, we can express our feelings by exuberantly making a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Don’t miss the intense emotions of this psalm (and all the psalms)! David begins with a burst of feeling: “I love You, O Lord, my strength.” He ends with another crescendo of praise: “The Lord lives, and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God of my salvation” (18:46). Praise, if it is genuine, involves our emotions. If you don’t often feel love for the Lord for what He’s done for you, something is wrong with your spiritual life, just as if you never feel love for your mate, something is wrong with your marriage.

In A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards argues that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections” (= emotions). Of David and the Psalms, he says, “Those holy songs are nothing else but the expressions and breathings of devout and holy affections; such as an humble and fervent love to God, admiration of his glorious perfections and wonderful works, earnest desires, thirstings, and pantings of soul after him, delight and joy in God, [and] a sweet and melting gratitude for his great goodness (The Works of Jonathan Edwards [Banner of Truth], 1:238, 240, italics his).

Some of you are thinking, “But, you don’t understand. I’m just not an emotional person.” Right! All I have to do is come by during the fourth quarter of close game when your team comes from behind in the closing seconds to win, and I’ll prove you wrong! Let’s be honest: our lack of emotion toward God just reflects the shallowness of our gratitude and love for Him.

Conclusion

Here are a few practical things that have helped me grow toward becoming a man of praise (I still have far to go!):

*Read the Psalms over and over. It’s no accident that it is the longest book in the Bible. God will use it to show you how to praise Him in the midst of the trials of life. Write some of the praise sections on cards and go over them frequently.

*Learn the great hymns of the faith. If you don’t know them, get a CD where they are sung and play it until you know the words and can sing along. I enjoy many of the modern praise choruses, but the hymns often have solid theology, and they link us to those who have gone before us. Luther stood against the powerful wickedness of the pope, in part, by singing hymns like “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Charles Wesley used hymns like his, “And Can It Be?” to teach theology to illiterate working people in 18th century England. Hudson Taylor was sustained through his grief after burying his beloved Maria by singing his favorite, “Jesus, I am resting, resting, in the joy of what Thou art, I am finding out the greatness, of Thy loving heart.”

*When you come to worship, block out distractions and focus on what you’re doing. Apathy in worship is sin! I find it helps to prepare my heart before the worship service. Then, I have to deliberately concentrate on the words as I sing them to the Lord. And, I sing them to Him! I don’t care what others think about me when I’m worshiping. They shouldn’t be thinking about me, anyway! I want to offer to God the heartfelt praise that He is due for being such a great and wonderful Savior!

Some of you are in the midst of difficult trials right now. If you will come to the end of yourself, flee to God as your all-sufficient refuge, and then express your gratitude to Him in song, you’re on your way to becoming a person of praise, a person after God’s own heart.

Discussion Questions

Does everyone suffer from pride? What are some ways it manifests itself?
Is there any place for self-confidence? Should we seek to develop self-confidence in our children, or is this opposed to humility?
Someone says, “Trusting God is simplistic, impractical advice for dealing with serious problems.” Your response?
Must reserved people become expressive in worship and praise? Are feelings toward God important?

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

Lesson 5: The Man Who Prayed About the Weather (1 Kings 17-19 and James 5:16b-18)

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Do you ever pray about the weather? A few times I have successfully prayed that a predicted snowstorm would be delayed until after church on Sunday. But on other occasions the Lord has not answered such prayers. Years ago, I prayed that the drought in California would end. The answer to that prayer came on March 1, 1991, when we got 15 inches of rain in 24 hours, resulting in a mudslide against my house. I should have prayed that God would relieve the drought gradually!

We should be praying that God would relieve the current drought in Arizona. But, more importantly, I want to encourage you to pray about the spiritual weather in our land. We are in a spiritual drought. The rivers of living water are dried up to a trickle and people are turning to other things to try to quench their spiritual thirst. Even many of God’s people have turned aside from Him, the only fountain of living water, to broken worldly cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). God wants His people to pray about this spiritual drought, that times of refreshing would come again from the hand of the Lord.

The great prophet Elijah prayed about the weather of his day—both literally and spiritually. James 5:16b-18 tells us, “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the sky poured rain, and the earth produced its fruit.” Elijah’s story (1 Kings 17-19) teaches that

In ungodly times, godly people should pray for God to make His glory known by turning sinners to Himself.

Elijah was a godly man who lived in times that rivaled our times for ungodliness. But he prayed and his prayers made a significant difference in the history of Israel. I want us to look at the times in which Elijah prayed, at the man who prayed, and at the subject of his prayers. I pray that God would use Elijah’s life to stimulate us to pray and see God manifest His glory by turning sinners to Himself in these ungodly times.

1. The time to pray is when ungodliness is rampant.

Elijah blasted on the scene in the midst of the most corrupt reign in Israel’s history. The weak-willed Ahab had married the Phoenician princess, Jezebel, who introduced and aggressively promoted Baal worship on a wide scale (16:31-33). She had exterminated the prophets of Yahweh, except for 100 who were hidden by Obadiah, Ahab’s chief of staff, who was a secret believer (18:3, 13). Though they survived, those 100 prophets seemed to be silenced for the time being.

Baal was regarded as the god who controlled the rain and fertility in agriculture, animals and people. Accompanying Baal was his consort or mother, Asherah (18:19). Often, the Israelites blended the worship of Yahweh with the worship of Baal, so that people were blinded as to the extent of their idolatry (Jer. 2:23). Though there were 7,000 in Israel who had not bowed their knees to Baal (19:18), they, like the 100 prophets of Yahweh, seemed to be in hiding. No one was taking a public stand for the Lord, except Elijah. It was the darkest of times spiritually.

Certainly our times rival Elijah’s times for ungodliness. The American church desperately needs revival. Although polls show that at least one-third of Americans claim to be born again, a surface glance at our culture tells you that they understand something quite different than the Bible does by that term. Most Americans believe that there is no absolute standard of morality. Through the internet, pornography floods our nation at unprecedented levels. Church people, including Christian leaders, are falling into sin at alarming rates. I recently read the tragic account of an evangelical pastor who was arrested for soliciting sex with a teenage girl over the internet. Many American Christians are entangled with greed and self-centered living. In 1989, Tom Sine wrote,

I suspect that one of the reasons we are so ineffective in evangelism is that we are so much like the people around us that we have very little to which we can call them. We hang around church buildings a little more. We abstain from a few things. But we simply aren’t that different.…

As a result of this unfortunate accommodation, Christianity is reduced to little more than a spiritual crutch to help us through the minefields of the upwardly mobile life. God is there to help us get our promotions, our house in the suburbs, and our bills paid. Somehow God has become a co-conspirator in our agendas instead of our becoming a co-conspirator in His. Something is seriously amiss (Christianity Today [3/17/89], p. 52).

I don’t mean to be unduly pessimistic. But if we aren’t realistic about the condition of the church in our day, we won’t be moved to pray for the revival we so desperately need. It is at precisely such depressing moments of darkness that God often raises up a godly remnant to begin seeking Him. Through that praying minority, He changes the history of nations. So, rather than growing discouraged at the spiritual drought around us, we ought to be motivated to pray, knowing that with our God, all things are possible. One praying person plus God is a majority.

In his nourishing book, Revival [Crossway], Martyn Lloyd-Jones emphasizes how important it is to know church history, so that we know how to pray and what we can expect God to do in our times. During the Reformation, things were as corrupt as they ever have been. Immorality and greed were rampant among the clergy. The common people could not read the Bible in their native tongue. Biblical teaching was almost non-existent. God raised up a few godly men, like Luther and Calvin, who turned the tide. The same thing has happened repeatedly. So the fact that we live in ungodly times ought to move us to pray that God would send revival.

Who are the people who pray at such times?

2. The people who pray are godly people.

Elijah was a man who knew and served the living God. But, also, he was very human, “a man with a nature like ours.” Note four characteristics of Elijah that apply to us:

A. Godly people know the living God and His power.

Elijah’s opening line with Ahab was, “As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word” (17:1). God was no figment of the imagination or an abstract theological concept for Elijah. He knew God as the living God, the all-powerful God who made the universe and thus who easily could control the rain. Elijah knew experientially how to trust in this living God.

The kind of people who pray and see God act in spiritually dark times aren’t just playing church and going through the Christian routine. They know God as the living God. They depend upon Him for practical matters each day. They realize that if God were to withdraw His Holy Spirit from their lives, they would instantly be in trouble. Dr. Howard Hendricks used to ask us as seminary students, “What is there in your life that you cannot explain on any basis other than the supernatural?” It’s a haunting question that we ought to ask ourselves often, both personally and as a church. We need to know God as the living God by depending upon Him daily in prayer. Our lives and ministries should be a demonstration of His Spirit and power, not of the latest slick methods.

B. Godly people know that they are accountable to the living God.

Elijah knew God as the God “before whom I stand.” The NIV translates the idea as, the God “whom I serve.” To stand before God meant to wait upon Him as a servant waits upon a master. Elijah realized that he was under God and would have to give an account to God for his life. So even though he was standing before a powerful, wicked king, who had killed many prophets, Elijah could speak boldly because he knew that God, not Ahab, was the ultimate judge to whom he would answer.

When I preach, there are times when I have to say some hard things. The Bible has a way of running cross-grain to the way we often live. I try always to say it in love, but I realize that no matter how kindly I say some things, there will be people who don’t like it. They may get angry with me and leave the church. But I always try to remember the words of the English martyr, Hugh Latimer, who often preached before the royal court. On such occasions, he would say to himself, “Latimer, Latimer, thou art going to speak before the high and mighty king, Henry VIII, who is able, if he think fit, to take thy life away. Be careful what thou sayest. But Latimer, Latimer, remember thou art also about to speak before the King of kings and Lord of lords. Take heed thou dost not displease Him” (source unknown).

If we are going to pray and stand against the tide of ungodliness in our day, we need to know the living God and that we are accountable to Him.

C. Godly people have a zeal for holiness.

Elijah had a zeal for holiness. When he met Ahab after the three and a half years of drought, Ahab said, “Is this you, you troubler of Israel?” (18:17). Elijah shot back, “I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and you have followed the Baals” (18:18).

Then he put forth his challenge for a show down with the prophets of Baal. Note his words to the people who gathered to watch (18:21): “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” You would think that some who were on the fence would have come over and stood with Elijah, but none did. Elijah, like many who have a zeal for the Lord and His holiness, had to stand alone.

Then (18:22) he points out the odds of the contest: One for the Lord; 450 for Baal. The 100 prophets of the Lord either didn’t know about the contest or they weren’t willing to come out of hiding and take a stand with Elijah. The Phoenicians thought that Mt. Carmel was the dwelling place of Baal. But Elijah figured that 450-1 were good odds, even if Baal had the home court advantage, because the one had the Lord on his side.

We also see Elijah’s zeal for holiness in his command to the people immediately after the contest, to slay all the prophets of Baal (18:40). Like Moses in the incident of the golden calf (Exod. 32:26-28), so Elijah here asks those who were repentant to prove it by killing these false prophets, in obedience to the Law of Moses (Deut. 13:1-5).

One of the marks of those who pray for God to bring revival in spiritually dark times is that they have a zeal for holiness, beginning with their own lives. They get a new glimpse of the holiness of God that makes them recognize their own sinfulness in a deeper way. They confess their own sin and then pray that God’s people would experience the same zeal for personal holiness.

By this point, you may be a bit threatened by what I’ve been saying. You may be thinking, “The kind of person you’re describing is so far from where I’m at that I despair of ever getting there!” But even though Elijah knew the living God and His power, even though he was so bold and had such a zeal for holiness, he was not made of anything different than you or I.

D. Godly people struggle against their own propensity to sin.

James 5:17 tells us that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. He had his emotional ups and downs. Matthew Henry points out how God often raises up rough characters like Elijah for ministry in rough times. It took a rough man like Martin Luther to break the ice in the Reformation. It took an Elijah to stand against the likes of Ahab and Jezebel.

Elijah blasts onto the biblical page unlike many of the other prophets. There is no mention of his father or mother or what tribe in Israel he was from. Scholars aren’t sure where his home village of Tishbe was, except that it was on the far side of the Jordan. In other words, Elijah was a nobody from nowhere who came thundering on the scene in obedience to God and delivered God’s message. Then God took him back into seclusion to teach him some more lessons before his next public encounter. After his victory on Mt. Carmel, you would think that Elijah would have laughed at Jezebel’s threats. But instead, he fled in fear and then, paradoxically, asked God to take his life. If he really wanted to die, Jezebel would have obliged him!

The point is, even though Elijah was a godly man whom God greatly used, he wasn’t perfect. He had his weak areas. He was a fallen sinner in process, who depended upon God and sought to follow God, but who struggled against his own sins.

That’s always the case with the men and women God uses. One of the great benefits of reading Christian biographies is that you see the human side of some of the greats of the faith. You discover that God has used some rough instruments to do His work. Martin Luther was often crude and lacking in tact, to say the least. He blasted his critics by calling them names and ridiculing not only their ideas, but also them personally. He used rough language at times. He talked openly about how much he enjoyed sex with his wife—things unbecoming for a minister! Yet God used Luther as He has used few men since Paul.

John Calvin wasn’t crude, as Luther was, but critics have accused him of being stern and unloving. His enemies in Geneva coined a saying, “Better to be with Beza [Calvin’s understudy and successor] in hell than with Calvin in heaven!” Psychologist Erich Fromm said that Calvin “belonged to the ranks of the greatest haters in history.” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church calls him the cruel and unopposed dictator of Geneva. But Calvin stands even above Luther in the godly influence that he has had on the church. I agree with the Scottish theologian, William Cunningham, who said, “Calvin is the man who, next to St. Paul, has done most good to mankind.” (The above quotes from Christian History [Vol. V, No. 4], pp. 2-3.) As you read Calvin, you see a man who was painfully aware of and struggling against his own sinful tendencies.

You find the same thing about any great man or woman of God—they had their weaknesses that caused some to oppose them. This doesn’t mean that we should excuse our faults or refuse to work on them. But it does mean that there is hope for us all! Being godly does not mean being perfect. If God could use a rough nobody from nowhere like Elijah, then He can use you and me!

Thus, the time to pray is when ungodliness is rampant. The people who pray are godly people. What do we pray for?

3. The subject of prayer is for God to make His glory known by turning sinners to Himself.

The reason we pray for revival during ungodly times is not so that we can have a thrilling experience or so that our nation will prosper or so that we will have successful ministries or happier lives. We should be concerned for God’s glory to be revealed so that sinners will turn to Him. We should want God’s name to be honored on earth as it is in heaven.

Note Elijah’s prayer (18:36): “O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel, ...” And, (18:37): “Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God and that You have turned their heart back again.” Elijah is praying that God would make His glory known by turning sinners back to Himself. God honored that prayer by sending fire from heaven and then by sending rain in response to Elijah’s next prayer. In the same way, we desperately need God to send His fire to cleanse our sins and His showers of blessing to refresh us, that everyone would know that He alone is God, so that many sinners would turn to Him.

Conclusion

Many years ago the Chinese evangelist, Watchman Nee, was preaching with a small team of men on an island off the coast of South China. The people politely received them, but there was little response. Finally, a young brother with the team suddenly asked the crowd, “Why will none of you believe?” Someone in the crowd explained that they had a god, Ta-Wang (“Great King”), who had never failed them. They had held a festival procession in his name for 286 years, and without fail that day had been clear and sunny. They determined the exact day by divination. It so happened that the day was only two days away. When he heard that, the young Christian impetuously blurted, “Then I promise you that it will rain that day.” The crowd cried, “If it rains that day, we will believe that your God is God!”

Nee was elsewhere in the village when the incident occurred. When he heard the news, which was spreading like wildfire, he panicked. At once they stopped preaching and gave themselves to prayer. They didn’t know whether they had made a terrible mistake or whether God would honor their prayer and send rain. As they were waiting on God in prayer, the word came to Nee, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” (2 Kings 2:14). It came with such clarity and power that he knew God had answered. He told the other men, “The Lord will send rain on that day.”

So they went out and announced everywhere that the true God would send rain on Ta-Wang’s festival day. They went out the next day and used the clear weather to preach. Three families turned to Christ and publicly burned their idols. They came back tired and rejoicing and went to bed.

The day of the festival, Nee was awakened by the direct rays of the sun through the window. He got up, knelt down, and anxiously prayed, “Lord, please send the rain.” He was rebuked, “Where is the God of Elijah?” So he went downstairs to breakfast. Everyone sat down in silence. As they bowed to thank God for the food, they again asked God to send rain. Even before their Amen, they heard a few drops on the tiles. As they ate their rice, there was a steady shower. They gave thanks and asked for heavier rain, which then began to fall in buckets-full. By the time breakfast was over, the streets were deep in water.

Meanwhile, in the village, some were shouting that there was no more Ta-Wang. But others carried the idol out on a sedan chair. Because of the rain, they stumbled and fell and the idol fractured his jaw and arm. Finally, they carried him back into the house. The village elders met and did some more divination. They determined that it was the wrong day. The correct day was three days later!

When Nee and his co-workers heard this news, they had an immediate assurance that God would send rain on the new day and they announced it. Meanwhile, the sky cleared and they enjoyed seeing over 30 people genuinely converted during the next three days of preaching. On the third day, at the hour appointed for the procession, they met again for prayer. Not a minute late, the Lord answered with more torrential rain. Satan’s power was broken. God had shown His power and many sinners turned to Him. (In Sit, Walk, Stand [Christian Literature Crusade], pp. 57-62.)

It may not happen that dramatically every time. But God wants us to join Elijah and Watchman Nee in praying about the weather—the spiritual weather—in our land. Though it is an ungodly time, through the prayers of the godly, God can make His glory known by turning many sinners to Himself.

Discussion Questions

While we cannot orchestrate true revival, we can hinder it. What human factors hinder true revival?
How can we know whether to pray for revival or to “flee Sodom”?
How can we break out of “routine Christianity” and know the living God and His power?
Where’s the balance between being holy and yet accepting our human imperfections?

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

Related Topics: Glory, Hamartiology (Sin), Prayer

Lesson 7: The Man Who Won a War Without Fighting (2 Chronicles 20:1-30)

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As many of you know, there has been some controversy in the church over the issue of “Calvinism.” Some have asked me, “Why make a big deal out of a theological controversy that can’t really be resolved and that has not much practical bearing on how we live?” That question reveals a misunderstanding of the issues at stake. The basic issue is, “How big is God, how small is man, and therefore, how much do we have to cast ourselves upon Him for grace and mercy, both in salvation and at every moment thereafter?”

Your theology on these crucial issues will affect not only your understanding of salvation, but also your understanding of how to deal with life’s trials, which are both highly practical subjects! On our recent trip to Alaska, I read John Piper’s excellent book, The Hidden Smile of God [Crossway Books], subtitled, “The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd.” In the introduction, Piper brings up the views of the Arminian theologians who argue that God is not sovereign over the decisions that we make and that He does not even know what we will decide until we decide it (called “Open Theism”). Here is where that theology leads them with regard to suffering:

“God does not have a specific divine purpose for each and every occurrence of evil…. When a two-month-old child contracts a painful, incurable bone cancer that means suffering and death, it is pointless evil. The Holocaust is pointless evil. The rape and dismemberment of a young girl is pointless evil. The accident that caused the death of my brother was a tragedy. God does not have a specific purpose in mind for these occurrences.” “When an individual inflicts pain on another individual, I do not think we can go looking for ‘the purpose of God’ in the event…. I know Christians frequently speak about ‘the purpose of God’ in the midst of a tragedy caused by someone else…. But this I regard to simply be a piously confused way of thinking.” (Piper, pp. 23-24, citing John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence; and, Gregory Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic).

As Piper goes on to show, “For John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd, the loving purpose of God in pain was one of the most precious truths in the Bible and one of the most powerful experiences of their lives” (p. 25). As Bunyan, who spent over 12 years in jail for preaching, put it, “Suffering comes not by chance or by the will of man, but by the will and appointment of God” (Seasonable Counsel, or Advice to Sufferers, in Piper, p. 30).

Whether our trials are of the crisis sort or whether they are the more steady, relentless pressures that just wear away our resistance, we’ve all got them. And, while most of us know that we should pray more and trust God more, for some reason, we don’t do it. I struggle with the question, “Why don’t I pray as I ought to pray?”

The answer, I think, is simple: I don’t pray as I ought because I’m self-reliant, which the Bible calls pride. My pride makes me think, erroneously, that I can handle things by myself, with a little help now and then from God. So, I rely mostly on myself and a little bit on God. I don’t really believe Christ’s words, “Without Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). So God graciously brings me trials to show me my great need so that I will look to my great God in prayer and trust Him to work on my behalf.

The story of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, provides us with helpful instruction on the subject of prayer and trusting God when we face severe trials. Jehoshaphat was basically a good king who sought to follow the Lord and bring God’s people back to Him (19:4-11). He ruled in the southern kingdom at the same time that the wicked Ahab ruled in the north.

But although he was a good king, Jehoshaphat had a character flaw: He made wrongful alliances with the godless Ahab. He went into battle with Ahab and almost lost his life. He arranged for his son to marry Ahab and Jezebel’s wicked daughter, Athaliah. She later slaughtered off all of the Davidic line except for the infant Joash, who was hidden from her murderous intent. Jehoshaphat also formed an ill-fated business alliance with Ahab’s son, Ahaziah. His motive in these alliances may have been good, to reunite the divided kingdom. But he was unwise and wrong.

One morning Jehoshaphat was shaken when his intelligence sources came running in with the horrifying news, “A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea, out of Aram [or, better, Edom] and behold, they are in Hazazon-tamar (that is Engedi)” (20:1, 2). This enemy coalition was about 15 miles south of Jerusalem, on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Jehoshaphat’s life and his entire kingdom were on the brink of extinction! Talk about a reason to panic!

What would you do if you heard some threatening news that affected your future and maybe your life? This godly king did the right thing: He called a national prayer meeting and encouraged the people to trust God in the face of this overwhelming crisis. They did it, and literally won the war by prayer alone, without swinging a single sword! Their story teaches us that ...

Our great need should drive us to prayer and faith in our great God.

In 20:1-4 we see their great need; in 20:5-13, Jehoshaphat’s prayer reveals their great God; and in 20:14-30 we see their faith in their great God and the victory that He brought about.

1. Our great need should drive us to prayer (20:1-4).

That’s obvious to any believer, of course. But just because it’s obvious doesn’t make it automatic.

A. Our great need does not automatically drive us to prayer.

It’s easy to read this story and miss what a great thing it was for Jehoshaphat to call the nation to prayer over this crisis. It would have been very human to panic. When he heard the news of this army within his borders, we could understand if he yelled, “Call all my top generals! Get the army mobilized immediately! We don’t have a second to waste!” As soon as the troops were mustered, if there was time, he could have stopped for a quick word of prayer. But for Jehoshaphat to turn his attention to seek the Lord and to call the nation to prayer and fasting was not automatic.

Not only could Jehoshaphat have reacted with panic, he also could have felt angry toward God. The text states, “Now it came about after this” (20:1). After what? He had just instituted a number of reforms to bring the nation back to the Lord (19:4-11). It would have been easy for Jehoshaphat to have said, “What’s the deal, God? I tried to bring the nation back to You. I taught them to put away their idols and follow You because You’re worthy to be trusted. And now we’re facing annihilation at the hands of this pagan coalition! I don’t deserve this kind of treatment!”

Many people feel that way when they’ve tried to follow God and then get hit with difficult trials. They complain, “God, this isn’t fair! I was trying to follow You, but I get hit with trouble, while my pagan neighbor enjoys the good life!” So they get angry at God and feel sorry for themselves. But Jehoshaphat didn’t do that. He did what was not automatic in a crisis: He prayed.

Another natural reaction would have been for Jehoshaphat to trust in his army. Chapter 17:12-19 tells about the organization and might of his forces. He was equipped for war. It would have been easy to think, “We’re prepared for this. Call out the army! Let’s go get them!” But Jehoshaphat, rather than trusting in his army, publicly admits his lack of strength and calls on God as his only help in this crisis.

He put prayer first. He realized that he could do some things after he had prayed, but he could not do anything worthwhile before he prayed. Prayer was his strongest weapon. So he resisted the temptation to panic, to get angry at God, or to trust his army. He recognized his great need, so he prayed.

You say, “That’s what I want to do the next time a problem hits.” Do you? Be careful before you glibly say that! To understand this story, we have to see that Jehoshaphat’s call to prayer was a humiliating thing for him to do.

B. Praying in the face of our great need requires humbling ourselves before God and others.

Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah. In the ancient Near East, kings were a proud bunch. They had an image to maintain. Leaders have to be tough and inspire confidence in their leadership. What kind of leader admits in front of his people, “I’m afraid, folks, because we’re helpless against our enemy!” That’s not good politics!

But that’s what Jehoshaphat did. He admitted his fear, called a national prayer meeting, and then prayed in front of everyone about how weak he was (20:12). Surely, it would have been better politically to pray in private, but then to get up in front of the people and say, “We’ve got a little problem, folks! But our side is strong. Our troops are going to wipe them out! Pray for us while we go out and defend our nation against these intruders.”

But Jehoshaphat wasn’t worried about politics or his public image. He knew that he was in deep trouble if God didn’t answer, and so he openly admitted his weakness and called upon the Lord.

I have been reading The Works of John Bunyan [Baker]. He has an excellent treatise titled, The Acceptable Sacrifice: The Excellency of a Broken Heart. He is expounding on verses like Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” And, Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is near to the broken-hearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” He says, “Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think…. It is wounding work, of course, this breaking of hearts, but without wounding there is no saving” (cited by Piper, p. 65).

This biblical theme, that we must humble ourselves before God, runs counter to the current wave of worldly teaching flooding the church, that you need to build your self-esteem. We should be more concerned about whether or not we have God’s esteem. The Lord says (Isa. 66:2, NIV), “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” (See also, John Calvin on prayer, Institutes [Eerdmans], 3:20:8.)

If we’re self-sufficient and don’t admit that we’re needy, we rob God of His glory. But when we recognize our great need, we will humble ourselves and pray, not just by ourselves, but with other Christians who can bear our burdens with us.

Once our need drives us to God in prayer, we need to understand how to pray. Jehoshaphat’s prayer gives us some important instruction in how to seek God in prayer.

2. Knowing our great God should direct our prayers (20:5-13).

There are two things to see here:

A. In our prayers we should not only seek answers to our problems, but we should seek God Himself.

Note verse 3: “Jehoshaphat ... turned his attention [lit., “set his face,” i.e., “determined”] to seek the Lord.” Verse 4 states that the people not only sought help from the Lord, but also that they sought the Lord. This was nothing new for Jehoshaphat. He is described as a king who “sought the God of his father” (17:4). The Hebrew word “seek” means, literally, “to trample under foot,” to beat a path to God because you frequent that way so often. It’s significant that in Jehoshaphat’s prayer, the first four verses (6-9) focus on God Himself; finally, in the last three verses (10-12) he gets around to mentioning the problem. But even in mentioning the problem, God is prominent.

I wonder, if we were facing imminent annihilation, would we be so God-centered? In a crisis, I usually pray, “God, get me out of here!” I want relief and I want it now! But in so praying we miss something crucial: In a crisis, we aren’t supposed to run and get God off the shelf, like Aladdin’s genie, rub Him the right way, get what we want, and then put Him back until the next crisis. Trials should cause us to seek God Himself, because He is what we need. God is our sufficiency, our very life. If we have God and cling to Him, then even if we aren’t delivered from our crisis, we can go through it—even through the loss of children, possessions, and health, as Job went through—because, as is said here of Abraham (20:7), the living God is our friend.

This is at the heart of the current controversy over the role of psychology in the church. Is God Himself, His indwelling Spirit, and His Word (and the many provisions given in it, including Christ’s body, the church) sufficient for a believer in the crises of life, or must we turn to the world’s therapies and techniques to enable us to cope? Incredibly, many Christian psychologists say that God and His Word are not sufficient; we need psychotherapy!

But if we turn to the world for help, the world gets the glory. If we turn to God as our only refuge and strength, He gets the glory. Our trials should force us to lay hold of God in new ways that we would not have done if we had not been driven to cast ourselves completely on Him through prayer. We should come away, not just having presented our requests to God, but also knowing God better as our refuge and strength in times of trouble (Ps. 46:1).

B. In our prayers we should seek God as revealed in His Word.

Jehoshaphat’s prayer is steeped in Scripture. He starts by (20:6) reciting God’s attributes: “You are the God of our fathers” (implying, “You took care of them.”) “You are God in the heavens, the ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations” (including those threatening to wipe us out!). “You are so powerful and mighty that no one can stand against You.” Why is he telling God all this? Certainly not for God’s information! It was to rehearse in his own mind and in the people’s minds the greatness of God, so they could trust in Him.

Next he recites God’s actions (20:7): “You drove out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel, and You gave it to the descendants of Abraham Your friend forever.” (Abraham is called God’s friend here, in Isa. 41:8, and James 2:23.) He reminds God of His covenant to hear the prayers of His people when they cry to Him in their distress (almost a direct quote from the dedication of Solomon’s temple, 2 Chron. 6:28-30).

Then Jehoshaphat mentions the problem which, he reminds God, stems from the fact that Israel had obeyed Him by not wiping out these very people who are now invading the land (20:10-11)! They are about to drive Israel out, not of their possession, but of God’s possession. Finally, he calls attention to God’s ability to deal with the problem, in contrast to Israel’s inability (20:12).

That’s a great prayer because it’s saturated with Scripture. It focuses on God as He has revealed Himself in His Word! If we fill our prayers with the greatness of our problems, our faith will shrink. But if we fill our prayers with the greatness of our God and how He has worked down through history, our faith will grow. God delights to answer believing prayers where we put our finger on the promises and truth in His Word and ask Him to make it so in our case.

Our great need should drive us to prayer; knowing our great God should direct our prayers. Finally,

3. Faith in our great God should follow our prayers (20:14-30).

As the people were gathered at the Temple in prayer, the Spirit of God came upon a prophet (20:14) who encouraged them not to fear and assured them that God would undertake for them in this battle without their fighting at all (20:15-17; not God’s usual means!). When they heard this word through the prophet, everyone fell down and worshiped and then they stood up and sang loud praises (20:18-19).

By the way, we again see Jehoshaphat’s humility here. If he had been proud, he would have said, “Wait a minute! I’m the king! I called this prayer meeting! Who does this prophet think he is to get a message from God? God has to give the message through me!” But he was humbly willing to submit to God’s word through this other man.

Then, based on the prophet’s word from God, the people got up the next morning and marched out to the battlefield, led by a choir singing praises, of all things (20:21)! That took some faith, to go into battle with your front line consisting of a choir! God caused the enemy armies to turn against each other, so that all Israel had to do was collect the spoil and celebrate the victory! Two thoughts:

A. Faith in God means being obedient to His Word.

The promise given through the prophet (20:15-17) was one thing; believing and acting on it was another. These singers were staking their very lives on the truthfulness of that word from God. They were doing a crazy thing—marching unarmed in front of the army, singing praises to God, against a powerful enemy that was armed to the teeth! As they went out on this seemingly crazy mission, Jehoshaphat encouraged the people by saying (20:20), “Put your trust in the Lord your God, and you will be established. Put your trust in His prophets [i.e., His Word] and succeed.” The evidence of their trust is seen in the fact that they kept marching!

This deliverance is a picture of our salvation. In salvation, we cannot do anything; God does it all: “Stand and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf” (20:17). Even faith is the gift of God, so that we cannot boast (Eph. 2:8-9). Yet at the same time, our faith that lays hold of God’s salvation is not just intellectual assent, where we say, “I believe” but don’t act on it. Saving faith is always obedient faith. Just as these singers’ faith was demonstrated by their marching out to battle, armed only with songs of praise, so genuine faith in Christ as Savior will be demonstrated in a life of joyful obedience to His Word. “Faith” that says, “I believe,” but does not result in obedience, is not saving faith (1 John 2:3-4).

B. Faith in God is always rewarded by God.

He never fails those who trust Him and obey His Word. That is not to say that He delivers everyone who trusts Him from suffering or even death. There are many who have trusted God and lost their heads (Heb. 11:36-40)! But this earthly life isn’t the final chapter. All who suffer loss for Jesus will be richly rewarded in heaven or God is a liar! Just as Israel was enriched literally by the spoils of victory, so we will always be enriched spiritually through our trials if we recognize our great need, pray to our great God, and trust in Him alone, not in the arm of the flesh.

Conclusion

Hudson Taylor, the great pioneer missionary to inland China in the last century, went through numerous, difficult trials. He lost his wife and at least one child in death. His own life was often in danger. He used to say, “It doesn’t really matter how great the pressure is; it only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord—then, the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast” (Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, Dr. & Mrs. Howard Taylor [Moody Press], p. 152).

Corrie Ten Boom, author of The Hiding Place and survivor of the German concentration camps, used to have people come up to her and say, “Corrie, my, what a great faith you have!” She would smile and reply, “No, it’s what a great God I have!”

We should join Jehoshaphat in rejecting all self-confidence and acknowledging, “O God, we’re powerless and we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on You!” Our great need should drive us to prayer and faith in our great God.

Discussion Questions

How can we keep from growing bitter toward God when trials hit?
Agree/disagree: Pride (self-reliance) is the main thing that keeps us from prayer.
If we only pray to get what we want rather than to seek God Himself, what does it reveal about us?
How can we trust God when we feel that He has let us down about something in the past?

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

Lesson 6: The Man Who Saw the Unseen (2 Kings 6:8-23)

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In 1991, I read J. C. Ryle’s classic, Holiness [James Clarke & Co., Ltd.]. The final chapter, “Christ is All,” is a wonderful exposition of the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. I realized that this man of God, writing over a century ago, had put his finger on a major problem facing evangelical Christianity in our day: We have failed to direct God’s people to their resources in the all-sufficient Christ. Believers with problems are not being told, “Jesus Christ is sufficient for every problem in life. Here’s how you can lay hold of Him through faith and prayer.” Rather, they are being directed into all sorts of worldly techniques, therapies, and programs where Christ is peripheral, at best.

John MacArthur, Jr., makes the same point in Our Sufficiency in Christ [Word]. He writes (p. 19),

... a widespread lack of confidence in Christ’s sufficiency is threatening the contemporary church. Too many Christians have tacitly acquiesced to the notion that our riches in Christ, including Scripture, prayer, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and all the other spiritual resources we find in Christ simply are not adequate to meet people’s real needs. Entire churches are committed to programs built on the presupposition that the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer (Acts 2:42) aren’t a full enough agenda for the church as it prepares to enter the ... twenty-first century.

We continue our study of prayer by looking at an incident in the life of Elisha, in which the great prophet faced a major crisis: He was surrounded by a foreign army that intended to take him captive. Elisha’s servant went out one morning, looked up and saw this horde of soldiers, with horses and chariots. He rightly surmised they weren’t paying a social call! So he ran back inside crying, “Alas! What are we going to do?”

Probably none of us has ever walked out the door in the morning to confront an armed barbarian horde in the front yard waiting to do us bodily harm. But we all know what it’s like to be suddenly confronted with life-threatening problems beyond our control. And we all can relate to the servant’s panic in the crisis.

What seems strange is Elisha’s cool, calm response: “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (6:16). Then he prayed that his servant’s eyes would be opened. Suddenly the servant saw the unseen spiritual world that Elisha already saw: The mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha! He strolled out to greet the soldiers, calmly asked God to strike them blind, led them to the capital city 12 miles south, where they were then surrounded by Israel’s army, and then asked God to restore their sight. Then he directed the Israelite king to feed them and send them on their way. And, for a while, the Arameans did not bother Israel.

This story has two main themes: The all-sufficiency of God to meet any crisis we face; and, that prayer is our means of access to the all-sufficient God.

Since God is our all-sufficient resource, believers should pray and not panic when trials hit.

1. God is our all-sufficient resource in times of trial.

The greatness of God’s knowledge, power, and sovereignty dominate this story. It’s interesting that of all the major characters, no one, except Elisha, is mentioned by name—not the kings or Elisha’s servant. Even Elisha is called three times “the man of God (6:9, 10, 15). One commentator says that this may suggest that readers should focus on the Lord and His prophet (Thomas Constable, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books], 1:549). When we look at God, we learn three things in relation to our trials:

A. Our God is omniscient.

He knows all things and possesses all wisdom. God knew what the Aramean king, Ben-Hadad II, was planning to do and revealed it to Elisha who, in turn, told the Israelite king, Jehoram. As Ben-Hadad’s servants told him, Elisha even “tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in you bedroom” (6:12)! It took the intelligence experts more than 2,500 years after this to be able to bug a room, but God is much more effective than the CIA! He knows every thought and motive of every human heart! Nothing is hid from Him (Heb. 4:13).

The Aramean king stupidly thought that he could send troops and take Elisha captive. Didn’t he realize that Elisha would know this in advance, too? Elisha could have hidden himself, but he knew that God wanted to solve this problem in a way that would teach the Aramean king and the king of Israel some lessons about the reality of the living God.

Our God knows everything. We are foolish to think that we can hide anything from Him. He knows all our secret thoughts, let alone words and deeds. His Word reveals to us what we need to know about how deal with life’s problems, whether major or minor. We can go to Him for the wisdom we lack. It is in the context of trials that James 1:5 says, “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

B. Our God is omnipotent.

He not only knows how to solve our problems, He has unlimited power to deal with the biggest problems we can conceive of. Is your problem as big as a hostile army that is trying to get you? David puts it (Ps. 34:7), “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.” “Therefore, though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear” (Ps. 27:3). It was no big deal for God to strike all these men blind in response to Elisha’s simple prayer. There is no man or nation so powerful but that God can easily bring him or it to nothing.

That means that God is able to deal with any problem you have, no matter how big it is to you. I always chuckle when I think of the woman who came to the well-known Bible teacher, G. Campbell Morgan and asked, “Dr. Morgan, do you think we should pray about little things, or just about big problems?” He straightened up and in his formal British manner said, “Madam, can you think of anything in your life that is big to God?” Our God is omniscient and omnipotent. He spoke the universe into existence. Nothing is too difficult for Him (Jer. 32:17, 27)!

You may be thinking, “That’s nice, but it doesn’t work for me the way it worked for Elisha. If only I could utter a short prayer and all my problems were instantly solved just like these soldiers were struck blind!” That leads to the third thing we see here concerning our all-sufficient God:

C. Our God sovereignly protects His own according to His will.

If we belong to God, we can trust Him to protect us until the moment He calls us to be with Him. As Psalm 91:11 promises, “He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.” The Lord is stronger than the most powerful enemy we can conceive of. He’s protecting us even when we aren’t aware of it. Elisha’s servant slept peacefully all night, not knowing that these hostile forces were surrounding him. When he saw them in the morning, he panicked. But God’s protection was there, even though he couldn’t see it.

But you still may be thinking, “That’s great when it all works out as neatly as it did with Elisha. But what about when God’s people go through horrible trials and even death? Some godly people suffer for years or die through disease or persecution. Where is God’s protection then?”

The Lord provides a clue in a minor detail of the text that we might easily miss. Did you notice where Elisha was when this army surrounded him? He was in Dothan (6:13). It seems like more than coincidence that this town is mentioned only one other time in the Bible. It was the town where Joseph found his brothers when his father sent him to find out how they were doing (Gen. 37:17). He hadn’t been able to locate them and he was wandering in a field when a man told him that they had gone to Dothan. When Joseph arrived there his brothers threw him in a pit and were about to kill him when a caravan passed by heading for Egypt. So instead they sold him into slavery.

You know the story, how, after many years as a slave and prisoner, God finally appointed him over all Egypt under Pharaoh. As he sat in the pit in Dothan or as he traveled in chains to Egypt or as he sat in chains in the Egyptian dungeon, Joseph never had a vision of chariots of fire surrounding him. Where were the angels and chariots when Joseph was suffering? Joseph later looked back on the years of trials and told his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Gen. 50:20). Even though he didn’t see any angels and even though he went through years of agony, Joseph knew that God was sovereignly directing all of his circumstances.

Even though you or I may never get a vision of God’s angels surrounding us, they are there! Even if you spend years in a dungeon, our sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent God has not abandoned you. Elisha’s servant was safe because he was with his master. Even so, we are safe because we are identified with our Master, Jesus Christ, who said that our Heavenly Father even has our hairs numbered! Therefore He said, “Do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28).

But, how can we not panic when trials hit?

2. Prayer is the way to have peace, not panic, when trials hit.

Prayer is our means of access to our all-sufficient Savior. As Paul wrote from prison (Phil. 4:6-7), “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Major trials can hit so suddenly! Elisha’s servant went to bed peacefully, with no thought of being surrounded by a menacing army the next morning. He woke up, saw this army, and no doubt thought, “I could die today!” Life is just that uncertain! Let’s face it, there are a lot of ways that we could be dead before today is over—a terrorist attack, a major earthquake, a fire, an accident on the highway, a blood vessel in our brain ruptures, etc. Life is fragile! That’s why it’s foolish to live for this life only, as if there were no eternity. The uncertainty of life should make us live every day in dependence upon God.

A. Prayer replaces panic with wisdom for dealing with trials.

There is an obvious contrast between the panic of Elisha’s servant and the peace of Elisha. The difference is accounted for by Elisha’s consistent communion with God in prayer. Although the text doesn’t state it directly, obviously it was through prayer that he had gained supernatural knowledge of the enemy’s planned raids.

I believe that Elisha knew how God wanted him to deal with this crisis because he had prayed. Elisha’s mentor, Elijah, had called down fire from heaven to consume some soldiers who came to take him captive (2 Kings 1:9-16)! On a previous occasion Elisha himself had cursed in the name of the Lord a bunch of young men who taunted him, resulting in some bears killing 42 of them (2 Kings 2:23-24).

But on this occasion, I think that Elisha knew through prayer that God wanted to deal differently with this foreign army. The Aramean king had already seen evidence of the reality of Israel’s God when Elisha had healed Naaman, the captain of his army (2 Kings 5:1-14). Israel’s wicked king, Jehoram, son of Ahab, also should have known that Yahweh is the only true God. Through Elisha’s gracious treatment of these soldiers, both kings and both armies had further evidence of God’s kindness and power. Though it is not stated directly, I believe that Elisha had gained the wisdom to know how to handle this trial the way he did through prayer.

God may or may not grant us miraculous insight and power, as He did here with Elisha. But if we are people of prayer and commune with God through His Word, we will have unusual wisdom for dealing with trials when they hit.

But there are two warnings we need to take to heart. First, the time to gain such wisdom is before trials hit. Proverbs 1:20-33 tells us that if we neglect to get wisdom during calm times, we will not have it when calamity strikes.

The second caution is that we must act on what we know or it won’t do us any good. Elisha warned the Israelite king of where the Arameans would attack. If the king had not followed up on that warning, it wouldn’t have helped him. God’s Word warns us of where our enemy will strike. It warns us of the consequences of sin. But those warnings only profit us if we obey them. It’s like the many warnings we hear about the dangers of smoking, of eating too much fat, or of not buckling our seat belts. These warnings only help if we follow them. If we will learn the warnings of God’s Word and obey them, communing daily with Him through prayer, then we will have His wisdom for dealing with trials, and panic will be replaced with His peace.

B. Prayer opens our eyes to spiritual reality.

Most of us determine reality by our physical senses. If we can see, hear, feel, smell, or taste it, it must be real. I’m sure that for Elisha’s servant, reality was thousands of soldiers, mounted on powerful war horses, who could wipe out the whole town of Dothan before nightfall. But for Elisha, that wasn’t reality. For him, reality was the even greater and more powerful army of angels surrounding the city. These angels were there all along. The problem was, Elisha’s servant didn’t have eyes to see them. But his not seeing them didn’t make them unreal or non-existent. Elisha’s prayer opened his eyes to see spiritual reality. And spiritual reality is the ultimate reality, superceding the reality of what we perceive with our physical senses.

The Apostle Paul knew how to see the unseen. He was suffering terrible persecution on behalf of the gospel, but he said that this momentary, light affliction wasn’t the real thing. The real thing was the eternal glory that awaited him in heaven (1 Cor. 4:16-18)! He also said that our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Remember, he was chained to a very real Roman guard as he wrote that! But, he said, that isn’t where our struggle takes place. Our real struggle is against these unseen forces of darkness in the heavenly places. And the way we combat these forces is through prayer (Eph. 6:10-20). Prayer opens our eyes to spiritual reality and links us with God’s winning majority.

The “Global Prayer Digest” (9/91) told about a medical missionary to Africa who was speaking at his home church in Michigan. He told about how he often had to travel by bicycle through the jungle to a nearby city for supplies. It was a two-day trip that required camping overnight at the halfway point. When he got to the city, he would go to the bank, get money, and buy medicine and supplies to take back. On one of these trips, he saw two men fighting. One had been badly injured, so the missionary treated his wounds and witnessed to him about Christ.

He returned home without incident. On his next trip to town, the man he had treated came up to him and said that he knew the missionary was carrying money and supplies. This man and some friends had followed him into the jungle, planning to kill him and take his money and drugs. But just as they were ready to move into his campsite, they saw that he was surrounded by 26 armed guards.

When the missionary heard this, he laughed and said that he was all alone out at that jungle campsite. But the man insisted, “No, not only I, but also my five friends saw and counted the 26 guards. Because of them we were afraid and left you alone.”

At this point in the church in Michigan where the missionary was telling the story, a man jumped to his feet and asked, “Can you tell me the exact day this took place?” The missionary thought for a moment and was able to give the exact date. The man in the church continued, “When it is night in Africa, it is morning here. That morning I was preparing to go play golf. As I was putting my golf bag in my car, I felt the Lord leading me to pray for you. This urging was so strong that I called the men in this church to meet here and pray for you. Would all of those men who met with me on that day, please stand up?” All together, 26 men were standing!

C. Prayer makes possible what is humanly impossible.

Opening the servant’s eyes to see the angels, closing and later reopening the soldiers’ eyes, were humanly impossible feats. Elisha’s prayer was not for his servant to do what he already could do or to use some ability he already possessed. His prayer was for God to do something humanly impossible, to open his eyes, which saw the soldiers perfectly well, so that he could see the angelic forces that protected him.

So often when we pray, we forget that we are asking God to do the humanly impossible. When we pray for the salvation of another person, we are not asking God to help them out just a bit. We’re asking God to do what is humanly impossible. Every lost person is spiritually blind. Only God can open blind eyes! We may realize this when the one we’re praying for has big problems. We say, “He’s an alcoholic. It would take a miracle to save him!” But it also takes a miracle to save the good, moral person who goes to church every week. God must open blind eyes to bring sinners to Himself (2 Cor. 4:4; 2 Tim. 2:24-26).

These Aramean soldiers had an easy job that they were confident they could do: “Take a single, unarmed man captive? No problem! We can do it!” But through Elisha’s one-sentence prayer, these proud men were humbled into groping after the prophet, completely at his mercy. Then their eyes were opened in response to Elisha’s next one-sentence prayer, and they realized that they were in big trouble!

In the same way, God must humble the self-confident sinner so that he realizes that he is spiritually impotent. Then God must open their eyes to see their desperate condition, that they are doomed unless God is gracious to them. Then God graciously sets before them the banquet table of the riches of Jesus Christ, freely given. Though they had deserved His condemnation, He shows them His mercy.

Conclusion

In his wonderful section on prayer in The Institutes (ed. by John McNeill, translated by Ford Lewis Battles [Westminster], 3:20:1), John Calvin writes,

For in Christ [God] offers all happiness in place of our misery, all wealth in place of our neediness; in him he opens to us the heavenly treasures that our whole faith may contemplate his beloved Son ….

But after we have been instructed by faith to recognize that whatever we need and whatever we lack is in God, and in our Lord Jesus Christ … so that we may draw from it as from an overflowing spring, it remains for us to seek in him, and in prayers to ask of him, what we have learned to be in him. Otherwise, to know God as the master and bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of him, and still not go to him and not ask of him—this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him.

In Christ we have access to God as our all-sufficient treasure. If we will learn to know God as Elisha did and to pray as he prayed, we will not panic when trials hit.

Discussion Questions

Why doesn’t God answer our prayers instantly and dramatically, as He did Elisha’s prayers?

Is the fact that God knows everything (including your thoughts) comforting or discomforting to you?

Does “Christian psychology” undermine the all-sufficiency of Christ? Why/why not?

How can we determine the proper balance between prayer and using means and methods?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Related Topics: Character of God, Prayer, Spiritual Life, Suffering, Trials, Persecution

Steven J. Cole
Steve served as the pastor of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship from May, 1992 through his retirement in December, 2018. From 1977-1992 he was the pastor of Lake Gregory Community Church in Crestline, California. He graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1976 in Bible exposition) and Califo... More
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September 12th 2013

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From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 8: The Man Who Cried For God to Come Down (Isaiah 63:15-64:12)
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In the early years of my ministry, I attended a lot of pastor’s conferences and seminars because I felt overwhelmed with the demands of the ministry and I was looking for any help that I could get. But I soon began to realize that such conferences typically offered some method or strategy for ministry, but they left me feeling empty and not helped. While I still feel overwhelmed by the demands of the ministry, and I feel especially inadequate to preach on a text like this, I believe that the main method that Christ uses to build His church is godly men who devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word (Acts 6:4).

I agree with Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Revival [Crossway Books], p. 310; I am indebted to his final two chapters, pp. 291-316, for this sermon), who observed that never before has the church had so many methods available to us, but at the same time, so little experience of the power of God. Christians need to know the living God in a deeper way. And, we need to entreat God to pour out His Spirit through a revived church, so that His power in salvation would turn millions in repentance and faith to Him.

Through God’s Spirit, the prophet Isaiah saw a desperate future time in Israel’s history. Because Isaiah predicted conditions that would take place about 100 years after he wrote (after the Babylonians conquered Judah), liberal critics have said that Isaiah couldn’t have written this. But I believe that God revealed the future to the prophet and led him to pray this prayer as a gracious way of teaching us how to lay hold of Him and His power in times of great spiritual need.

Isaiah pictures God as shut up in heaven, removed from His people who are suffering because of their sin. In an emotional outburst, the prophet calls upon God to rend the heavens and come down in great power, even as He did at Sinai, to restore His people and to make His name known among the nations. We learn that …

Those who feel the lack of God’s working should cry out to Him to come down in power to make His name known.

We might call Isaiah’s prayer, “revival praying.” Our text reveals five characteristics of “revival praying”:

1. Revival praying begins when some of God’s people feel the lack of His working in our day.

The mood of this prayer is Isaiah’s overwhelming sense of the desperate situation of God’s people. He feels as if God is up in heaven and not even noticing what is happening (63:15). God’s former power is not being experienced: “Where are Your zeal and Your mighty deeds?” His former mercies are not known. Isaiah boldly complains that God is emotionally cold toward him (63:15)!

Furthermore, God’s cities have become a wilderness. His temple is burned to the ground and trodden under foot (64:10-11; 63:18). None of God’s people are calling on His name; they’re all under the power of their sin (64:6-7). It’s as if they had never been under God’s rule or called by His name (63:19). Isaiah deeply feels the desperate need of God’s people, and so he prays with urgency and strong emotion.

Lloyd-Jones emphasizes Isaiah’s emotion in this prayer by pointing out the word “Oh” in 64:1:

Is there an ‘Oh’ in your praying? That is ... a very good test of prayer, that this ‘Oh’ comes in. ‘Oh, Lord.’ Or are you such good people, and doing such excellent work, as evangelicals, busy with this organisation [sic] and the other, that all you need do is to ask God to bless you and to keep on ...? Do you know what it is to say, ‘Oh, Lord’? ... Somebody once said that a sign, the best sign, of a coming revival is that the word, ‘Oh’ begins to enter into the prayers of the people (ibid., p. 301).

His point is that complacency with the existing low spiritual condition among God’s people is the enemy of revival. Remember the lukewarm church at Laodicea? They were content: “We’re rich and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.” But God’s evaluation was that they were “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17).

I know of two ways to keep yourself from lapsing into lukewarmness and thinking that it is normal. First, steep yourself in the Bible so much that when you hear of the worldliness of the modern church, you are appalled. If you spend your time watching TV and movies, those worldly sources will flavor your view of what is normal. You will hear of worldliness in the church and shrug it off as no big deal. God’s Word must shape your worldview.

Second, read church history and read some of the great men of God from the past. You will learn how God has worked in history, and you will read men who were not tainted by our modern worldview. Of course, they were somewhat tainted by the view of their day, as we all are. But the fact that they wrote in a different time and culture will often jar you to see how far we have drifted. That is the start of revival praying—when some of God’s people begin to feel the lack of His working in our day.

2. Revival praying lays hold of God as He has revealed Himself.

Isaiah knew God as revealed in His Word and he laid hold of God and appealed to Him based on His holy and gracious nature. Matthew Henry (Matthew Henry’s Commentary [Revell], 4:373) observes, “The most prevailing arguments in prayer are those that are taken from God himself.” That’s what Isaiah does here. His prayer is a lesson in applied theology, as he teaches us a number of things about the character of God. To pray as Isaiah prayed, we need a correct understanding of who God is. Note four things:

A. God is the holy and glorious God who dwells in heaven.

“Look down from heaven, and see from Your holy and glorious habitation” (63:15). Immediately, Isaiah recognizes that there is a great gulf between himself and God. Isaiah is on earth below; God is in heaven above. He must look down to behold things here. So Isaiah begins his prayer as Jesus instructed us: “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” Years earlier Isaiah had had a vision of the Lord in heaven:

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke (Isa. 6:1-4).

It was a devastating, yet transforming, experience for Isaiah. Now, when he comes before God, he recognizes the great separation between himself as a sinful creature and God in His glorious holiness. So he approaches Him with the proper humility. Leonard Griffith (This is Living [Abingdon Press], p. 134) wrote,

Too often we start to pray at the wrong place. Prayer should begin not with ourselves but with God—a conscious awareness that we stand before him as creatures before the Creator, subjects before the King, servants before the Master, children before the Heavenly Father. A university student, burdened by a personal problem, spent an hour with Phillips Brooks, the great Boston preacher. When he returned to the college, a friend asked him, “What did Dr. Brooks say about your problem?” The student looked surprised. “I forgot to mention it,” he said. “It didn’t seem to matter anyway when I talked with Phillips Brooks.” That should be the effect of prayer and it will be the effect if we come consciously into the presence of God. Before ever becoming a recital of our own problems prayer is a devotional exercise whereby we lose ourselves in God and rise from our mortality to his eternity, our smallness to his greatness, our weakness to his power.

B. God is the mighty God who acts with awesome power.

“Where are Your zeal and Your mighty deeds?” (63:15). “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at Your presence—as the fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil—to make Your name known to Your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Your presence!” (64:1-2). Isaiah knew God as the mighty God. When He comes down in His power, everyone trembles before Him.

Isaiah is referring here to God’s power as revealed in the exodus. God had performed signs and wonders in Egypt, He parted the Red Sea and led His people safely across. He closed the sea on top of Pharaoh and his pursuing army. He led His people to Mount Sinai, where He called Moses up the mountain to Himself, to give him the Ten Commandments. On that awesome occasion, God warned that neither man nor beast should come near the mountain, lest they die. There were thunder and lightning, the mountain was covered in a thick cloud and smoke, there was the sound of a loud trumpet, and the whole mountain shook violently (Exod. 19:16-19).

The exodus in the Old Testament is a type of God’s power in redeeming His people. That type is fulfilled at the cross of Christ. It takes the same mighty power of God to save a lost soul from Satan’s domain as it did to deliver Israel from Pharaoh’s domain.

I believe that we put too much emphasis on the human decisional aspect of salvation and not enough emphasis on the fact that salvation requires God’s mighty power to change hearts that are captive to sin. The crucial question is not, “Did you make a decision to invite Jesus into your heart?” The crucial question is, “Has God changed your heart through His mighty power?”

If God has saved you from your sins, you are a different person than you were before (2 Cor. 5:17). It is not that you never sin after salvation. But now you hate sin and fight against it, whereas before you went along with it. Now you love God and the things of God, whereas before you were indifferent or hostile toward God. If there is no change in your heart, there is good reason to question whether God has saved you. Revival praying calls upon the mighty God to come down with power to transform the hearts of hardened sinners.

C. God is the sovereign God who judges sin.

Isaiah asks a bold question (63:17): “Why, O Lord, do You cause us to stray from Your ways, and harden our heart from fearing You?” Some want to tone this down, to mean that God has permitted, not caused, Israel to stray and grow hardened. But the Hebrew verb is causative. H. C. Leupold, a conservative commentator, says that this is an example of how a man under distress can get entangled in his illogical thoughts (Exposition of Isaiah [Baker] 2: 347)! But many other Scriptures affirm that God hardens the hearts of sinners (Isa. 6:9-10; Exod. 4:21; Deut. 2:30; Josh. 11:20; John 12:40; Rom. 1:18-32; 9:18; 2 Thess. 2:11-12). Geoffrey Grogan is more on track when he writes, “[Verse 17] recognizes that God has established that moral law in which sin hardens the heart and does so by divine design …” (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. by Frank Gaebelein [Zondervan], 6:343). Isaiah is not blaming God for Israel’s sin nor making God the author of sin. Rather, he is affirming that God righteously has judged His sinning people by giving them the fruit of their ways.

What does this mean for us? Martyn Lloyd-Jones (p. 300) expresses the warning like this:

… it is a terrible and a dangerous thing for God’s people to be disobedient. For sometimes God punishes our disobedience not only by turning his face from us, by leaving us to ourselves, but he even seems to drive us into sin, and into error, and to harden our hearts....

Be careful how you treat God, my friends. You may say to yourself, “I can sin against God, and then, of course, I can repent and go back and find God whenever I want him.” You try it. And you will sometimes find that not only can you not find God but that you do not even want to. You will be aware of a terrible hardness, a callosity in your heart. And then you suddenly realize that it is God punishing you in order to reveal your sinfulness, and your vileness to you.

So, when we come to God in prayer for revival, we must see that God is the holy and glorious God who dwells in heaven. He is the mighty God who acts with awesome power. He is the sovereign God who judges sin, sometimes by allowing sin to take its hardening course in our lives. But, also,

D. God is the gracious, compassionate Father who will restore us.

“For You are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not recognize us. You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is Your name” (63:16). “But now, O Lord, You are our Father, we are the clay, and You our potter; and all of us are the work of Your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord, nor remember iniquity forever; behold, look now, all of us are Your people” (64:8-9).

Isaiah is laying hold of God as the gracious, compassionate Father of His people who will restore them, no matter how much they have sinned, if they will turn back to Him and cry out for mercy. As Isaiah 55:6-7 puts it,

Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

Revival praying knows God as the holy, glorious, mighty, sovereign God who judges sin, but also as the gracious Father who will forgive and restore when we turn back to Him.

Thus, revival praying begins when some of God’s people feel the lack of His working in our day. It lays hold of God as He has revealed Himself.

3. Revival praying openly confesses sin and vindicates God’s righteous judgments.

“For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment [the Hebrew means, “a menstrual cloth”]; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. And there is no one who calls on Your name, who arouses himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us, and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities” (64:6-7). Isaiah doesn’t blame God, but rather confesses the people’s sin and acknowledges sin’s devastating effects because of God’s righteous judgment. One mark of revival is that God’s people stop blaming God or others for their sin, and own up to it for what it is.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones points out (p. 40) that people hate the doctrine of sin and the doctrine of God’s wrath. He also emphasizes (pp. 41, 101, 157, 231) that a sure sign of revival is that people begin to groan and agonize under the conviction of sin. They become so conscious of their unworthiness and wretchedness that they feel that they cannot live. Some who have been Christians for years begin to doubt whether they ever have been Christians. Why? Because a fallen sinner cannot draw near to a holy God without becoming even more conscious of his own sinfulness.

I’ve had Christians tell me, “Steve, I grew up in an abusive home. I was always put down. I don’t need to see how sinful I am. I need to focus on how much God loves me so that I can build my self-esteem.” There is a mixture of truth and error in those words. The truth is, we are new creatures in Christ, and we should not dwell on what we were in Adam, but rather on what we now are in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 4:22-24). But the errors are that we are to build our self-esteem and ignore our sinfulness. Rather than focusing on ourselves, we are now to see ourselves in Christ so that we esteem Him and extol His grace and love.

And the fact is, the closer you draw to God, who is light, the more you see the darkness of your own sinful heart (Job 42:6, Isa. 6:5; Luke 5:8; 1 Tim. 1:15). If you truly know Christ, this will not drive you to despair, but it will cause you to be on guard against your own propensity toward sin and to glory all the more in the cross of Christ, where His grace freely flows. Show me a man close to God and I’ll show you a man who is painfully aware of his own sins and quick to confess and forsake them.

4. Revival praying is motivated by God’s glory.

Notice the devastation which sin brings the people of God (64:10-11). Cities where people had enjoyed life, where children had laughed and played in the streets, were destroyed. The people were slaughtered or carried off into slavery in a foreign land. God’s temple, where His people had formerly sung His praises, was burned and in ruins. But in spite of all this pain, Isaiah didn’t pray, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down to make us all happy once again!”

No, Isaiah, like all who pray effectively, was motivated by something higher than man’s happiness. He was moved to pray because he wanted God to be glorified. He wanted God’s name to be known. He wanted the nations to tremble in God’s presence (64:2). Even so, those today who pray for revival must be moved above all by the fact that God’s honor is tarnished because of the sin of His people. We must pray for His glory to be revealed that the nations may tremble in His presence!

5. Revival praying understands and lays hold of God’s grace.

There is a strange irony in Isaiah’s prayer. He openly confesses the great sin of God’s people, yet at the same time he boldly appeals to God to act on their behalf. He prays some rather gutsy things here! “God, You’ve closed up Your heart toward me!” (63:15). “You’ve caused us to stray from Your ways!” (63:17). “Will You restrain Yourself at these things, O Lord? Will You keep silent and afflict us beyond measure?” (64:12). How can he say these things? Isaiah understood that we don’t come to God based on our merit, but based on His unmerited favor.

God’s grace never gives us warrant to sin so that grace might abound (Rom. 6:2). Isaiah here points out that God acts on behalf of the one who waits for Him. He meets with the one who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers God in His ways (64:4-5). God’s abundant grace should motivate us not to sin. But His grace also means that if we do sin, if we will turn from our sin back to God, He, like the father of the prodigal son, will come running to meet us with open arms. He’s that kind of gracious God!

Conclusion

Del Fehsenfeld Jr., the founder of Life Action Ministries, used to ask this searching question: “If revival in this land depended on your prayers, your faith, your obedience, would we ever experience revival?” (Cited in “Spirit of Revival” [2/99], p. 11.)

Today, we see many of God’s people who are hurting. Many are in captivity to sin. Many churches are offering worldly programs, techniques, and counsel that heal the wound of God’s people superficially (Jer. 8:11). True healing can only come when the living God moves powerfully in hearts to convert sinners and to bring repentance and revival to His people. We need to join Isaiah in praying, “Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down!”

Discussion Questions

Where is the proper balance between focusing on God’s love and grace and focusing on His holiness and wrath against sin?

Can people make a decision for Christ and yet not be saved? How can a person know that God has truly saved him?

What are the marks of genuine revival?

How can we set forth God’s grace without promoting license?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Related Topics: Character of God, Discipleship, Engage, Evangelism, Glory, Grace, Prayer, Spiritual Life

Steven J. Cole
Steve served as the pastor of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship from May, 1992 through his retirement in December, 2018. From 1977-1992 he was the pastor of Lake Gregory Community Church in Crestline, California. He graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1976 in Bible exposition) and Califo... More
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September 12th 2013

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From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 9: The Man Who Bought Property In A War Zone (Jeremiah 32:1-25)
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Suppose a real estate agent called you and said, “I’ve got a choice property in the mountains with a luxury hotel on it. The building is worth $20 million, easily. I’ll let you have it for $20,000. What do you think? Oh, by the way, it’s located in Afghanistan.”

Buying property in a war zone is a high-risk investment, at best. But to buy a piece of property that is already under enemy control, when it’s obvious that the enemy is on the verge of overthrowing the entire country, would be crazy. Yet that’s exactly what God asked His prophet Jeremiah to do. Jerusalem was under siege, on the brink of falling to the Chaldeans. Jeremiah was in prison because he had been preaching that the nation was going to fall and that God wanted them to surrender.

While he was in prison, with the sound of the enemy army just outside the city walls, Jeremiah’s cousin came and offered him the family right of redemption to purchase a piece of property in Anathoth, which was already in Chaldean control. We can only guess at the man’s motives, but clearly he wanted to cash out of a hopeless situation. God told Jeremiah to purchase the land and go through the proper legal proceedings as a prophetic drama to emphasize to Israel that God would keep His gracious promise of restoring them to the land.

Jeremiah obeyed, but then he got a bit confused. Had he done something dumb? If God was going to overthrow Israel by the Chaldeans, as Jeremiah had been preaching and as seemed imminent, then why did God tell him to buy this land? So after the transaction was completed, Jeremiah prayed, and God granted him the answer he needed to endure. His prayer teaches us some lessons on how to pray by faith in a bleak, confusing situation.

Most of us can relate to being in confusing, seemingly hopeless situations. If we’re not there at the moment, we have been there and we will be there again! Perhaps you’re facing a financial crisis and you’re wondering where the money is going to come from. Maybe it’s an impossible family problem, where you see no hope and you don’t know what to do. Maybe it’s an overwhelming health problem. Or, you may be facing a pressing decision where it seems that none of the options are any good. You’re confused and wondering what to do. Jeremiah’s prayer shows that…

By faith we must pray for God graciously to fulfill His promises, no matter how bleak the situation.

That’s easier said than done! So let’s look at Jeremiah’s situation and prayer so that we can learn to pray better.

1. To pray by faith for God to fulfill His promises, we must be obedient to God’s difficult commands.

Jeremiah’s prayer occurs in a context and we would be remiss to consider the prayer apart from that context, which is, Jeremiah’s obedience to some very difficult commands from God.

First, God told Jeremiah to preach against Jerusalem, telling the people that the Chaldeans would overthrow the city and nation. If they fought against them, they would not succeed. To give that message in that situation would be like getting up after President Bush called our nation to war after 9/11 and saying, “We won’t win; you might as well submit to the Taliban now!” It was not a popular or patriotic message, to say the least! Obviously, the king wasn’t thrilled. And, the people weren’t very happy with it either, since it meant that they were going to suffer the consequences of their own and their fathers’ sins. It wasn’t an uplifting, encouraging message. But, Jeremiah obeyed God and preached it anyway.

May I remind you that God has not called pastors to give upbeat messages each Sunday so that you leave feeling warm and cozy! The modern evangelical church, sad to say, has often deliberately the marketing strategy of the secular business world. If you want to attract and keep your customers, you’ve got to give them what they want. Otherwise, they’ll take their business to your competitor who does a better job of meeting their needs. So churches have fallen into giving people what they want to hear, rather than lovingly, faithfully telling them what they need to hear, which is the straight truth of God’s Word (see 2 Tim. 4:1-5).

Jeremiah’s message was the truth, even though it wasn’t popular. The question you need to ask when you listen to preaching is not, “Do I like it?” or “Does it make me feel good?” but rather, “Is it the truth?” I cannot pray by faith that God would build His church here if I’m not obedient to His sometimes difficult command of preaching His truth, especially when it runs counter to what people want to hear.

The second difficult command that God gave Jeremiah was to spend his money to buy this field that was already under enemy territory. It seemed like an insane thing to do! It was like buying property at the base of Mt. St. Helens after geologists said, “It’s unsafe to be within 30 miles of that place.” At any moment, the country was going under. The Chaldeans had surrounded the city. Their siege mounds had almost reached the top of the wall, so that they could sweep into the city. And here’s Jeremiah, still in prison, going through an escrow to buy this piece of land. A lot of people no doubt thought that the man had lost it!

But he wasn’t crazy; he was being obedient to God’s difficult command. The point was to illustrate, by faith, that houses and fields and vineyards would again be bought in Israel (32:15). In Jeremiah 31, God had promised and Jeremiah had proclaimed that the days were coming when God would form a new covenant with His disobedient people, where He would write His laws on their hearts and forgive their sin, where they would be His people and He would be their God. By purchasing this field, God was asking Jeremiah to put his money where his mouth was. To pray by faith that God would fulfill His promises of restoring His people, Jeremiah had to be obedient to this difficult command.

The principle is just as valid today as it was then. You cannot pray by faith for God to fulfill His promises to you or to His church if you’re not obeying Him at whatever points obedience is difficult. Maybe you’re single, and you want a godly mate. You can’t pray by faith for a godly mate unless you’re growing in godliness yourself. If you’re married, you cannot pray by faith for God to bless your marriage unless, in obedience to His Word, if you’re a husband, you’re loving your wife sacrificially. Or, if you’re a wife, you’re submitting to your husband as unto Christ. You cannot pray by faith for God to bless your children if you aren’t modeling a godly life before them and seeking to train them in His ways.

Or maybe you’re praying that God would bless the missionaries or His work through this local church. That’s wonderful, but you can’t pray that by faith unless you’re obeying God by giving both time and money to His work. And, as I said, I cannot pray by faith that God would build this church unless I am obeying Him by faithfully preaching His Word, even when it’s not a popular message. To pray by faith, we must be obedient to God’s difficult commands.

2. To pray by faith for God to fulfill His promises, we must appeal to God’s character.

Like Isaiah’s prayer which we studied last week, Jeremiah’s prayer shows that he knew God as He has revealed Himself in His Word. If we pray to God as we would like Him to be, contrary to how He has revealed Himself to be, we have no assurance that our prayers will be answered, because we are praying to a figment of our imagination. But if we pray to the living God as He has revealed Himself in His Word, we know that He hears us and will answer according to His will.

A. God is all-powerful.

“Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You” (32:17). God reaffirms the same truth to Jeremiah in verse 26. No matter how bleak the situation, God knows that we’re in it (in fact, He brought us into it, 32:23) and He has the power to accomplish His sovereign will. Jeremiah appeals to God’s power as the Creator of the universe.

In our day of supposed scientific knowledge, we Christians have wrongly let evolutionists undermine the awe that we ought to feel as we consider God’s power as seen in His creation. Marla and I love to pack a picnic lunch, hike to a beautiful spot and drink in God’s handiwork. Often, as we take in the sweeping view of the wilderness and see hawks or eagles soaring on the thermal currents, I have said, “We’re supposed to believe that all this happened just by accident. Those hawks evolved from some lower life form and somehow they survived for millions of years before the rodents that they eat evolved, and then the whole thing balanced itself out so that there are plenty of rodents for the hawks and hawks for the rodents!” And the scientists say that they don’t have enough faith to believe in a creator God!

Take another example, the great horned owl. This intricately designed bird flies silently because of soft, downy feathers on the front of its wings, enabling it to swoop down on its food source undetected. Its eyes are 100 times more sensitive to light than human eyes, which enables it to see by starlight. The owl’s left ear is about an inch lower than the right ear, which allows sound waves from the left ear to get to the brain a split second faster than from the right ear. Its brain instantly computes the exact source of the sound. Also, the saucer-shaped disks of feathers around the owl’s eyes serve as receivers (like a dish antenna) to collect sound and transmit it through sound tunnels that go from the eyes to the ears.

The owl swallows its prey whole. Its stomach has powerful acids that digest the flesh, but not the fur, teeth, and bones. These useless parts stay in a top section of the stomach where a special muscle squeezes them into a small pellet. A special gland in the owl’s throat coats this pellet with mucus and the muscle pushes this slippery pellet up the owl’s throat so it can spit it out. Without the gland, the bones would get caught and tear up the owl’s throat. Even in 10 billion years, how could all of that have happened by chance adaptation to its environment, apart from a Creator? We could multiply millions of examples of God’s design.

Can any problem you or I have be too difficult for such a powerful Creator to handle? When we come to God in prayer, we are coming to the all-powerful Creator who made the heavens and the earth!

B. God is gracious.

He shows lovingkindness to thousands (32:18). Jeremiah goes on to chronicle God’s past gracious and powerful redemption of His people from Egypt (32:20-22). The Hebrew word translated “lovingkindness” comes from their word for stork. The Hebrews observed that the stork took extraordinary care of its young. There’s nothing quite as homely as a baby stork—all mouth and no feathers. But in spite of this, the parent storks protected their young by making their nests in the top of fir trees. They spent their whole day collecting food for their young and stuffing it down their gaping mouths. The Hebrews saw that and said, “That’s like God’s loyal love toward His homely, squawking people!” Even today, we associate storks and babies!

When you come to God in prayer, you come to a gracious God. That means that you do not approach Him based on your own merit or worth, but on the merit and worth of the Lord Jesus Christ. He receives you into His presence based on the work of His Son on the cross. Paul says, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:26). You can come to Him as a child comes to a loving parent.

My children have always had access to me at the church office or by telephone. Others may have to make an appointment or wait until I can call them back, but my kids have access to me at any time and know that I will welcome them because of their relationship to me. Even more so, God’s children through faith in Christ can come into His presence because He is a gracious God.

Many Christians misunderstand God’s grace. On the one hand, they think that they somehow must measure up to be worthy or to earn it. But if we must earn it, it’s not grace. Grace is extended to those who do not deserve it. God didn’t save any of us because He saw something in us worth saving. He saved us in spite of our sin, not because of our goodness (which none of us have in His sight, anyway).

The other misunderstanding is that somehow God’s grace means that He either overlooks our sin or stops the consequences of it. This leads to the third aspect of God’s character that Jeremiah mentions here:

C. God is settled in His wrath against all sin.

In the next breath after mentioning God’s lovingkindness, Jeremiah says that He repays the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after them (32:18). In the next verse he affirms that God sees everything we do and renders to each person according to the fruit of his deeds. In 32:23 he recognizes the direct connection between Israel’s sin and the present calamity. And, in 32:30-35, God affirms Jeremiah’s words by stating that the reason for His anger was Israel’s repeated sin. He lets Jeremiah know that He isn’t going to do any miracles to deliver Israel from the consequences of her sin.

We live in a day of tolerance toward sin. The only person we don’t tolerate is the one who is not tolerant of others’ sins. I am amazed at how many Christians think that we’re supposed to be tolerant toward those who claim to be Christians but who are living in disobedience toward God. They think that grace means that we just love and accept everybody. Often, they erroneously think that in the Old Testament, God was an angry, judgmental God, but by the time the New Testament was written, He had mellowed out into a nice old guy who doesn’t get all that upset about sin.

But God’s grace and His wrath against sin are revealed in both the Old and New Testaments. His grace doesn’t mean that He shrugs off the sins of His people. He sometimes deals severely with our sins because He is holy and He loves us too much to let us continue in sin. We need to see, as Paul put it, “the kindness and severity of God” (Rom. 11:22). We need not only to love God, but also to grow in holiness because we fear Him (2 Cor. 7:1). We cannot pray in faith unless we are obedient to God’s difficult commands and unless we appeal to the character of God as He really is: All-powerful, gracious, and yet settled in His wrath against all sin.

3. To pray by faith for God to fulfill His promises, we must understand God’s sovereign purpose.

God’s sovereign purpose is to be glorified both through the salvation of His elect and the just condemnation of the wicked (2 Thess. 1:6-10; Rom. 9:21-24). In spite of how much it may seem that the wicked prosper without any adverse consequences, while they trample God’s people under foot, God will save those whom Jesus purchased from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Rev. 5:9), and He will judge all the wicked.

This theme runs throughout Jeremiah 31-33. In chapter 31, God promises to make a new covenant with His people and to reestablish them in the land. In chapter 32, He tests Jeremiah’s faith by telling him to buy this field in the face of the Chaldean victory, which clearly is a judgment on Israel’s sin. In the face of both this terrible enemy and Israel’s great sin, Jeremiah gets confused and wonders how God can put it all together—the hard facts of the present (32:24) and His promises for the future (32:25). Yet even though he’s confused, he affirms that what God has spoken has in fact come to pass (32:24b). Knowing that God’s sovereign purpose will be fulfilled, Jeremiah can trust God to bring the nation through this terrible time.

Sometimes I get discouraged because I see the sad condition of God’s people and how the enemy is running over the church. The American church is shot through with worldly attitudes and values. It is doctrinally shallow and often in error. God’s people are often indistinguishable from people who do not know God.

And yet Christ promised, “I will build My church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” (Matt. 16:18). He said, “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:39). When we understand God’s sovereign purpose and His power, instead of despairing, we can pray by faith that He would fulfill His promises, because we know that what God has purposed He will do, in spite of the present overwhelming difficulties.

Conclusion

Jeremiah had a difficult life and ministry. He had faithfully preached for years, but no one listened. Instead, he suffered persecution and imprisonment. He was on the brink of witnessing inexpressible horror, as the Chaldeans would take Jerusalem, burn it and its temple to the ground, slaughter many of its inhabitants, and take most of the others into captivity. Even the few that were left in the land would not listen to Jeremiah, but stubbornly went to Egypt against God’s command (42:1-43:7).

But the God who delivered Israel into the hands of the Babylonians also promised Jeremiah that He would gather them out of the lands where He had driven them and bring them back to Jerusalem and make them dwell in safety. He would be their God and they would be His people, and He would never turn away from His covenant to do them good (see 32:37-41).

Remember, Jeremiah never lived to see those promises fulfilled. But because he believed in a sovereign God who would fulfill all of His promises to His people, Jeremiah could obey God’s difficult commands and trust that God would do the humanly impossible. Through Jeremiah’s prayer in this difficult and confusing situation, God granted him the understanding he needed to endure.

B. B. Warfield was a world-renowned theologian who taught at Princeton Seminary for 34 years until his death in 1921. Most of his insightful books are still in print today. But what many do not know is that in 1876, at age 25, Warfield got married and took his bride, Annie, on a honeymoon to Germany. While there, Annie was struck by lightning and permanently paralyzed. Warfield cared for her every day for the next 39 years, until he laid her to rest in 1915. Because of her extraordinary needs, Warfield seldom left the house for more than two hours at a time.

How did he endure this trial with patience and joy without growing bitter at God? His thoughts on Romans 8:28 may reveal the reason:

The fundamental thought is the universal government of God. All that comes to you is under His controlling hand. The secondary thought is the favor of God to those that love Him. If He governs all, then nothing but good can befall those to whom He would do good… Though we are too weak to help ourselves and too blind to ask for what we need, and can only groan in unformed longings, He is the author in us of these very longings… and He will so govern all things that we shall reap only good from all that befalls us. (This story and quote are from John Piper, Future Grace [Multnomah], p. 176.)

You may be in what seems to be a hopeless situation. But no matter how bleak and discouraging your circumstances, remember Jeremiah, who bought property in a war zone. By faith you can join him in laying hold of our all-powerful, gracious, holy God who will fulfill His promises on our behalf.

Discussion Questions

If God answers prayers by grace, why must we obey and have faith?

How can God be both kind and severe (Rom. 11:22)? How can we both fear God and love Him (1 John 4:18)?

Does God get angry with believers who sin? Support with Scripture.

How can we pray by faith when we don’t know God’s specific will in our situation?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

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Related Topics: Character of God, Faith, Prayer, Spiritual Life, Suffering, Trials, Persecution

Steven J. Cole
Steve served as the pastor of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship from May, 1992 through his retirement in December, 2018. From 1977-1992 he was the pastor of Lake Gregory Community Church in Crestline, California. He graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1976 in Bible exposition) and Califo... More
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September 12th 2013

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From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 10: The Man Who Rejoiced in Spite of an Invasion (Habakkuk 1-3)
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Every Christian wrestles with two problems: Why doesn’t God answer my prayers sometimes? And, why does God allow the evil to prosper while the righteous suffer? We especially wrestle with these two questions when they converge on us personally. When an evil person is harming us or someone we love and we pray, but God does not answer, it is especially tough.

Just recently Martin Burnham, a missionary to the Philippines, was killed in an attempt to free him and his wife from terrorists who had taken them hostage over a year before. His wife escaped with a bullet wound in the leg. Those close to him are left wondering, “Why didn’t God get him out of there alive?” God’s people were praying for his release. The men who kidnapped him are evil to the core, bent on killing others to obtain their objectives. God could have protected him, but He did not.

The prophet Habakkuk wrestled with these sorts of questions. He is unique among the prophets in that he did not, in his written message, speak for God to the people, but rather spoke to God about his struggles over these basic human questions. Why does God allow evil to go unchecked, especially when the righteous cry out to Him for justice?

We cannot be certain about the exact time of Habakkuk’s ministry, but the most likely scenario is that he wrote just after the godly King Josiah was killed in battle and the wicked King Jehoiakim had succeeded him. It was hard to understand why God would allow Josiah to be killed by the Egyptian army in that he had instituted many much-needed spiritual reforms in Judah (2 Chronicles 34-35). He was only 39 at the time of his death, and easily could have served for another 25-30 years.

But now his son, Jehoiakim was on the throne. Jeremiah confronted this king: “But your eyes and your heart are intent only upon your own dishonest gain, and on shedding innocent blood and on practicing oppression and extortion” (Jer. 22:17). No doubt Habakkuk and other godly people in Judah struggled with the question, “Why does God allow the increasing evil in Judah to go unpunished?” And, “Why isn’t God answering our prayers?” (Hab. 1:2-4).

Then God answered Habakkuk’s prayer and he now had a bigger problem! The Lord said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I’m going to send the Chaldeans to punish Judah’s sins” (1:5-6). Habakkuk thought, “No way! Those guys are far more evil than the evildoers in Judah that they’re coming to punish! How can a holy God do such a thing?”

To put this in perspective, suppose that you were burdened about the sinful, worldly condition of the American church and you prayed and prayed, but got no answers. Then the Lord answered and said that He was going to use Muslim terrorists to take over our country and destroy all of our Christian places of worship! Many Christians would be slaughtered. Others would be taken captive to Islamic countries where they would serve as slaves. You would think, “Wait a minute, Lord! The cure is far worse than the illness!” That’s similar to what the Lord told Habakkuk in answer to his prayers about ungodliness in Judah. The Chaldeans were going to wipe out the country!

So Habakkuk honestly shares his struggles as he works through this difficult issue, until he comes out at the glorious closing affirmations of 3:17-19, that no matter how bad things got, he would exult in the Lord and rejoice in the God of his salvation. From his experience we learn that…

When we wrestle with the problem of evil, we should go deeper in understanding, faith, and prayer, finding joy in our sovereign God.

Note four things:

1. All thinking Christians must wrestle with the problem of evil.

Many of the Psalms, but especially Psalm 73, wrestle with this problem. If there is a righteous and powerful God in heaven, why do evil men seem to prosper, but the godly suffer? In the New Testament, the problem cries out from the graves of the godly martyrs, John the Baptist and Stephen.

In philosophy courses in college the problem is often put as a syllogism: If God is all-powerful and loving, He would put a stop to evil. Evil has not been stopped. Therefore, either God is not all-powerful or He is not loving. In his best-seller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner argued that God is loving; He just isn’t able to stop evil. While that is obviously not a satisfactory solution, many Christians fall into essentially the same error. They try to escape the problem by saying that God permitted evil by giving man free will, but He did not ordain or cause evil.

Obviously God gave Adam free will and Adam chose to sin. But as John Calvin pointed out, this does not resolve the problem. He asked whether God permitted sin willingly or unwillingly (The Institutes of the Christian Religion [Westminster Press], 1:18:3). If God willingly gave Adam free will, knowing full well that Adam would plunge the human race into sin, then sin had to be under God’s sovereign decree. Thus there is really no difference whether you say that God permitted it or He willed it, since He permitted it willingly. Calvin rightly insisted, “[God’s] will is, and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are” (3:23:2, 8).

If you deny this, you fall into dualism, the view that there is an evil power equal to or greater than God. But, while insisting that “man falls according as God’s providence ordains,” Calvin also insisted, “but he falls by his own fault.” He exhorted, “Let us not be ashamed to submit our understanding to God’s boundless wisdom so far as to yield before its many secrets” (3:23:8). In other words, there is a limit to human understanding, and we err to press farther than Scripture allows.

2. Use your struggles with the problem of evil to go deeper with God, not to withdraw from Him.

Habakkuk took his questions and complaints to the Lord and worked through them in prayer, waiting on God for answers. When you wrestle with doubts on difficult issues like the problem of evil, you must proceed with caution. Some wrongly withdraw from God and His people into their own world of depression and pouting. Others angrily pull the plug on God entirely and go their own way into the world, convincing themselves that God must not exist or He wouldn’t allow the terrible things that go on every day in this evil world. Still others hang on to their faith, but it becomes a mindless, anti-intellectual, subjective experience where they just don’t think about disturbing questions.

But as James Boice puts it (The Minor Prophets [Baker], 2:401), we must proceed as we do after a snowstorm, when the walks have been cleared but are still icy. You walk carefully, putting your feet on safe ground. Remind yourself of the things that you know to be true. Think and live carefully in line with the solid truths of God’s Word, working through the difficulties by prayer and waiting on the Lord.

That’s what Habakkuk did. He kept crying out to God for an answer, and when God’s even more difficult answer came, he stationed himself at his guard post to keep watch until the Lord would speak and reprove him (2:1). God’s second answer included the great verse, “The righteous will live by his faith” (2:4b). Thus when Habakkuk comes to his final prayer (3:1-19), he doesn’t have all the answers, simply because we cannot fully understand the ways of the sovereign God. But he had grown in understanding and he could by faith pray with joy, knowing that God was his salvation and strength. What understanding did Habakkuk’s struggle gain?

3. God is sovereign over all evil and He uses evil people to accomplish His purposes, while holding them accountable for their sins.

Let me highlight five things:

(1) God’s purpose is bigger than any of us and our problems.

Sometimes we get so self-focused that we forget that God is painting on the canvas of world history, directing the nations according to His kingdom purposes and glory. God tells Habakkuk, “For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous people who march throughout the earth to seize dwelling places which are not theirs” (1:6). I’m sure that the Chaldeans would have had a different analysis of their military exploits! They would have attributed their might to their strong warriors or their disciplined troops or their superior weaponry. Some in Israel may have argued that it was Satan, not God, who was behind this fearsome enemy. But God clearly says that He raised them up to bring His judgment on His sinning people! He is the Lord of history, who raises up kings and peoples and takes them down again according to His sovereign purpose.

But it’s easy to lose sight of this when you face personal trials! For Habakkuk personally, it meant that life as he had always known it would come to a frightening, permanent change. The Chaldeans destroyed the nation of Judah, leveled the city of Jerusalem, including the Temple, and slaughtered countless Jewish people. They forcefully deported many more as slaves and left a weak remnant in the land as caretakers. Never again in Habakkuk’s lifetime would he or his family know life as they had known it. But he and the rest of the godly remnant had to submit their individual lives to God’s greater purpose in kingdom history. Likewise, we need to view our lives within the greater picture of God’s purpose in history.

(2) God is aware of all evil and no evil person or nation will escape His judgment.

In answer to Habakkuk’s second question, of how God could use an evil people like the Chaldeans to punish His people Israel, God shows the prophet that the victims of the Chaldeans can take up a taunt song against them (2:6). Five woes (three verses each) against the wicked follow, showing that God knows about their evil and He will judge them for it. He pronounces woes against illegal gain (2:6-8); trusting in illegal gain for security (2:9-11); violence (2:12-14); seduction of people and raping the environment (2:15-17); and, idolatry (2:18-20). The final verse (2:20) shows that none of these wicked things disturb the Lord or cause Him to panic: “The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.” As Habakkuk’s final prayer shows, in His time God will trample the nations and save His people (3:12-13). We don’t need to fear that evildoers will escape justice. They will not!

(3) No evil person or nation can thwart God’s plans; rather, God uses them to fulfill His plans in His timing.

God didn’t have to scramble at the last minute, saying, “Oh, no! The Chaldeans are marching toward Jerusalem! What am I going to do?” As Habakkuk states, “You, O lord, have appointed them to judge; and You, O Rock, have established them to correct” (1:12). Also, the vision of what God would do through the Chaldeans was “for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail” (2:3). God ordained the exact minute that they would breach the wall of Jerusalem, and they were not a minute late! As Martyn Lloyd-Jones observes, “All history is being directed by God in order to bring his own purpose with respect to the kingdom to pass” (Faith Tried and Triumphant [Baker], p. 38).

This means that God was not surprised by the 9/11 terrorist attack or by the corporate scandals that have caused the stock market to nosedive in the past few weeks. And it means that as His people, we can trust Him in these and other troubling current events, even if these events have adverse effects on our loved ones or on us.

(4) Although God uses evil people and nations in His plans, He is totally apart from evil and not responsible for it.

As Habakkuk puts it, “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You cannot look on wickedness with favor” (1:13). “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Thus we must affirm, with The Baptist Confession of 1689 (modern version, “A Faith to Confess” [Carey Publications], 3:1), “From all eternity God decreed all that should happen in time, and this He did freely and unalterably, consulting only His own wise and holy will. Yet in so doing He does not become in any sense the author of sin, nor does He share responsibility for sin with sinners.” In ways that we cannot understand, God can remain apart from evil and yet use evil nations and people for His purposes, while holding them accountable for their sin (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28).

(5) God will finally triumph over and judge all evil.

As Habakkuk 2:14 puts it, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” In Habakkuk’s prayer (3:4-15), he shows in poetic language how God will “strike the head of the house of the evil to lay him open from thigh to neck” (3:13). “Selah” (pause and think about that)! The Book of Revelation is clear that God will permit Antichrist to deceive the nations for a season, and then God will throw him into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone forever and ever.

The point is, as we wrestle with the problem of evil we should go deeper in our understanding of God and His ways, as revealed in Scripture. We should not push things farther than Scripture allows. Calvin frequently warns about being impudent in going too far in challenging God. He states (Institutes, 3:23:2), “But we deny that [God] is liable to render an account; we also deny that we are competent judges to pronounce judgment in this cause according to our own understanding. Accordingly, if we attempt more than is permitted, let that threat of the psalm strike us with fear: God will be the victor whenever he is judged by mortal man [Ps. 51:4…].”

There will be times, especially when evil strikes us personally, that we simply do not understand God’s purpose or ways. What do we do then?

4. When we do not understand an evil situation, our responsibility in the face of that situation is by faith to pray and find our joy in God.

Habakkuk did not totally understand why God was going to do what He said regarding the Chaldeans, but he submitted to God by faith (2:4, 20), and his faith expressed itself in the joyful prayer that ends the book (3:1-19). Three lessons:

(1) Faith is essential to a relationship with God.

“Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him; but the righteous will live by his faith” (2:4). In the context, the proud one refers to the Chaldeans. Their pride will lead to their downfall and judgment. But the one who is righteous will live by trusting in God. The Talmud declares that this verse summarizes all 613 precepts that God gave to Moses (Charles Feinberg, The Minor Prophets [Moody Press], p. 212).

This significant verse is quoted three times in the New Testament (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38). Paul uses it to argue that God justifies sinners through faith alone, not through our works. To be justified is to be declared righteous by God. No one can be righteous before God, because we all have sinned and fall short of His glory. Jesus Christ lived the perfectly righteous life that God demands. His blood shed on the cross pays the penalty that we, as sinners, deserve. If a sinner will put his faith in Jesus, God imputes the righteousness of Jesus Christ to that sinner’s account. It was Martin Luther’s breakthrough in understanding this truth that freed him from the futile system of works-righteousness that he struggled under. “Faith alone in Christ alone” was the foundation of the Reformation.

We begin the Christian life by taking God at His Word concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, that He died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and that we can do nothing in ourselves to earn His salvation. Then we continue living by faith, basing our lives upon God’s Word of truth. Either you are trusting in yourself and your righteousness to get into heaven, which is pride; or, you are trusting solely in what God has done in Jesus Christ. Faith also trusts God when we do not understand His ways. When evil things happen to us we must trust that God is in charge and that He will reward us and punish the wicked, if not in this life, in eternity.

(2) Faith and prayer do not necessarily eliminate intense emotions.

Habakkuk heard what God said and submitted to it by faith. But this does not mean that he calmly prayed, “I see, Lord. You’re going to use these wicked terrorists to destroy our nation. So be it!” His prayer is “according to Shigionoth” (3:1), which the margin says is “a highly emotional poetic form.” Habakkuk admits that when he heard what God was going to do, his inward parts trembled, his lips quivered, decay entered his bones, and he trembled (3:16). He prays (3:2), “Lord, I have heard the report about You and I fear.”

So the prophet has terror and trust all mixed together, and he honestly pours out his feelings to the Lord. His trust makes him submissive; he is not railing angrily against God. He recognizes that God is just in pouring out His wrath on His sinning people, but at the same time he pleads with God to revive His work and in wrath, to remember mercy (3:2). But even though he’s trusting God, the thought of what is about to happen makes Habakkuk tremble with fear. The application is that when we go through difficult trials, we can be honest before God with our intense feelings, and yet at the same time be submissive and trust in His sovereign ways.

(3) Joy in the Lord in prayer in spite of current circumstances reflects the reality of our faith.

The ending of Habakkuk’s prayer is (as Feinberg puts it, p. 220), “one of the most forceful manifestations of faith’s power recorded in the Bible.” Even if the worst happens and he and the whole nation end up destitute, Habakkuk resolves (3:18-19), “Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds’ feet, and makes me walk on my high places.” This reminds me of Paul’s triumphant close to Romans 8, where he affirms that absolutely nothing, including evil powers or death itself, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Habakkuk has just rehearsed how God has acted in history, especially in the exodus, to deliver His people and defeat their enemies. Sometimes, when doubts crowd into our minds because of trials that we’re going through, we need to go back to the facts of how God has worked in history, especially in the life, death, and resurrection of our Savior. When we stand there, we stand firm, because the God of our salvation is our rock and hiding place. Thus from prison, with Christians criticizing him and non-Christians after his life, Paul could say, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4).

Conclusion

Last Sunday evening, I was moved by Dr. Lacy’s story of visiting an African prison on his recent trip to Zambia. The men were in filthy rags, the only clothing they owned. Many are there unjustly, due to the faulty criminal justice system. They get one sparse, plain meal per day. Most of them were covered with open, itchy sores. They have none of the creature comforts that we have. And yet many of them responded to the gospel message. When they sang, Dr. Lacy said, they really sang with obvious joy in the Lord.

Yet here we are with far more worldly goods, with the world’s best health care, with freedom, with plenty of food and other good things, and we have an epidemic of depression in our land. Why the difference? Could it be that because those men have nothing but the Lord, their focus is on Him? But our focus is often on all of our stuff, stuff that can never make us truly joyful.

When you wrestle with the problem of evil, go deeper in your understanding of God and His ways. Then, even if our land is invaded and we lose everything, we can join Habakkuk in living by faith and prayer, finding joy in our sovereign God!

Discussion Questions

Does a distinction between God’s will and God’s permission resolve the problem of evil? Why/why not?

Do you agree (with Calvin and Augustine) that “the will of God is the necessity of things and that what he has willed will of necessity come to pass”? Why/why not?

If God has willed all things, then how can He not be the author of evil?

Practically, how can we find true joy in God alone? How can we be freed from our love of stuff?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

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Related Topics: Apologetics, Character of God, Cultural Issues, Ethics, Faith, Issues in Church Leadership/Ministry, Prayer, Spiritual Life, Suffering, Trials, Persecution, Worldview

Steven J. Cole
Steve served as the pastor of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship from May, 1992 through his retirement in December, 2018. From 1977-1992 he was the pastor of Lake Gregory Community Church in Crestline, California. He graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1976 in Bible exposition) and Califo... More
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September 12th 2013

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From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE

Lesson 11: The Men Who Had Connections With God (Ezekiel 14:12-20)
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Have you ever had connections that got you special treatment? Everyone else was waiting in a long line, when your connection took you to the front of the line. No one else could get tickets to the sold-out event, but your connection got you the best seats in the house. There were 50 applicants for the job, but your connection made sure your resume got special consideration.

When my uncle was an enlisted man in the Air Force, he knew a colonel who went to his church. One day at the base, the colonel saw my uncle in the enlisted men’s mess line and came over and invited him to join him at the officer’s mess. He even carried my uncle’s tray through the line! The other enlisted men thought, “Wow! That guy must have something on the ‘old man’!” He had connections! As they say, “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know, that counts!”

If you need connections, the best connection of all is to have connections with God. If you can get through to God so that you get special consideration from Him—that’s going straight to the top! He’s what you might call, The Ultimate Connection.

But maybe you’re thinking, “Does God have favorites? I thought that He received everyone equally. Can we really have connections with God?” The answer is, God may not have favorites, but He does have intimates. Some people have connections with God in a way that others do not. When they pray, God listens. I’d like us to see how we can join them.

In at least two Scriptures, God acknowledges that certain men had special influence with Him. In Jeremiah 15:1, God tells the prophet that even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before Him, His heart would not be with this people, so great is their sin. The implication is that these two men normally had special influence, although in this case, even they would not prevail. But since we’ve already studied Moses, I want us to look at another text, Ezekiel 14:14, where God tells Ezekiel that even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were to pray for this people, He would not grant deliverance, except to these men alone. Clearly, Noah, Daniel, and Job had connections with God.

Chronologically, these events occurred about five or six years before Jeremiah’s prayer (32:16-25, which we studied earlier) during the siege of Jerusalem. A number of Judeans, including Ezekiel, had been taken captive to Babylon, but Jerusalem had not yet been destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar had set Zedekiah over Judah. He chafed under Babylonian rule for a while, but then he foolishly disregarded Jeremiah’s prophetic warnings and rebelled, leading to Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the city and the temple.

But five or six years before that final destruction, some Israelite elders living in Babylon came to Ezekiel to inquire as to whether the Lord would spare their homeland. The Lord revealed to Ezekiel that these men, who were outwardly pious, inwardly had set up idols in their hearts (14:3). So after exhorting them to put away their inward idols, Ezekiel gave them this word from the Lord, that Israel’s sin was too great for deliverance. Even if these three godly men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were to pray, it would be in vain.

Some scholars doubt whether this Daniel is the contemporary of Ezekiel because the spelling of his name varies slightly from that in the Book of Daniel. They postulate that this is a Daniel not mentioned in the Bible, but rather one (whose name also is spelled slightly differently) mentioned in an ancient Canaanite epic who was mainly known as a dispenser of fertility, but also as an upright man (John Taylor, Ezekiel, Tyndale OT Commentaries IVP], p. 129). I find this incredible! The Jews in exile would not have held up such a pagan mythic figure as a man having influence with God. Even though he was a young man, Daniel already had distinguished himself as a man of prayer by interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Clearly, the biblical Daniel is intended, even though the spelling varies slightly (see Ralph Alexander, Expositor’s Bible Commentary [Zondervan], 6:808).

As to why he is listed in the middle of two men who lived over 1,500 years before, we can’t be sure. All three men were noted for their righteousness, which is why God picked them for special mention. Some suggest that the order reflects an increasingly stringent application of the principle: Noah delivered his own family from God’s judgment; Daniel delivered his three friends; but Job lost even his children during his trial (Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel [Sovereign Grace Publishers], p. 75). But at any rate, God mentions four times that in the present situation, these three could only deliver themselves (14:14, 16, 18, 20). Twice God says that the cause of their deliverance would be their righteousness (14:14, 20). Clearly, it was their righteousness that gave these men connections with God.

To pray effectively, we must be righteous people.

“Righteous” is a rare word in American Christianity in our day. It may sound a bit strange in your ears. There are dozens of best-selling Christian books about how to find fulfillment in your personal life or marriage, but there are very few that tell you how to be righteous. If you were invited to have lunch with a man known for his righteousness, would you even want to go? Do you want to be known as a righteous man or woman? But it’s the righteous person who has connections with God. James 5:16 tells us that “the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” Let’s see what it means to be righteous so that we can pray effectively.

1. Righteous people have appropriated the righteousness that comes by faith.

The Bible uses word “righteous” in two ways. It is used of the righteousness of faith, which is called imputed righteousness (Rom. 3:21-4:25). This kind of righteousness stands in contrast to our good works. Paul states, “By the works of the Law [‘good works’] no flesh will be justified [‘declared righteous’] in His sight” (Rom. 3:20). A few verses later he repeats, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Rom. 3:28). Our works cannot justify us because God is perfectly holy. One sin is enough to separate us eternally from God in His holiness. All the good works in the world cannot cover our sin.

Jesus Christ, who is God in human flesh, is the only one who ever lived a sinless life. His death on the cross satisfied God’s justice as payment for our sins. When a person believes God concerning the work of Christ in dying for his sins, God credits the righteousness of Jesus Christ to that person. He views that person judicially just as righteous as Christ is. That is imputed righteousness. We know that Noah had been justified by faith because Hebrews 11:7 states that his obedience in building the ark shows that he was “an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” In other words, by Noah’s faith, God counted him as righteous. That faith manifested itself in his obedience in building the ark.

It is essential that you understand and appropriate this truth personally or you will be hopelessly frustrated in your attempts to be a righteous person. There is one prayer that any unrighteous person, no matter how great his sin, can pray and know that God will answer: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” (see Luke 18:9-14). The instant a person by faith lays hold of God in that way, on the basis of grace, apart from good works, God imputes Christ’s righteousness to that person. Until we have appropriated this righteousness which is by faith, we have no basis for approaching God and expecting to be heard. Everything else I’m going to say assumes that you have this righteousness by faith in Christ.

2. Righteous people walk with God.

This is the second way the word righteousness is used in the Bible, to refer to right conduct which stems from being justified (“declared righteous”) by faith. It means “conformity to a standard” and points to the behavior of those who live by God’s revealed standards of right and wrong. When Genesis 6:9 says that “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time,” it’s referring to his conduct. Because Noah had found grace in the eyes of the Lord (Gen. 6:8) through faith (Heb. 11:7), he had a right standing with God which now revealed itself in his right conduct. Genesis 6:9 adds that Noah walked with God. That’s true of all who have been declared righteous through faith: They walk with God. That means at least five things, as seen in the lives of these three men:

(1) Walking with God means faith in God.

Here I mean not just saving faith, but also a life of constant trust in God. Faith means believing God concerning the unseen, even when the things we see seem to contradict what God has said (see Heb. 11:7). God warned Noah about the coming judgment of the flood. It probably had never rained on the earth to that point, since the earth was watered by a mist that came up from the ground (Gen. 2:6). Certainly there had never been anything close to a flood that destroyed everything. Noah had to take God’s word by faith and act on it, in opposition to what he saw with his eyes. He built his whole life around this word of God apart from any tangible evidence that it would happen.

Daniel demonstrated that same practical faith in God throughout his long life. When Nebuchadnezzar was going to kill him and his friends because no one could interpret his untold dream, Daniel waited upon God for that information. Later, when he was thrown into the lions’ den because he would not stop praying, he trusted God to protect him.

The same was true of Job. When his children had been killed, his riches were gone, his body was racked with pain, and his friends accused him of secret sin, Job affirmed, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job. 19:25-26).

That’s what the Christian life is all about—counting upon God’s Word concerning the future reward of heaven and the judgment of hell. We’ve gotten away from this. We emphasize the present benefits of being a Christian. Christianity is being marketed as a product that can do everything from help you lose weight to make you a successful salesman. But righteous people live daily by turning away from the glitzy visible things of this world and trusting in the unseen promises of God.

(2) Walking with God means obedience to God.

Noah obeyed God and built the ark in the face of intense ridicule, no doubt. He obeyed by getting on board the ark before there was any evidence of a flood. Twice we are told that Noah did according to all that the Lord had commanded him (Gen. 6:22; 7:5). Daniel obeyed God and asked to be excused from eating the king’s defiled food. Later, he obeyed God by continuing his daily prayers in disobedience to the king’s edict. Job submitted to God even though he didn’t understand why he had to suffer as he did.

And, each of these men obeyed God over the long haul, in the face of opposition and adversity. They had what Eugene Peterson calls, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.” It probably took Noah 120 years to build the ark (Gen. 6:3). For 120 years he was the laughingstock of the area. It must have been a favorite pastime to go over and watch old Noah working on his ark. There it was, a 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high ship sitting high and dry in Noah’s back yard! Can you imagine the kind of jokes Noah and his family endured? “He says that God’s going to flood the whole earth because of our sin! Ha! What a nut!”

Daniel and Job also obeyed God over the long haul, in spite of opposition and adversity. Daniel was in his eighties when he got thrown in the lions’ den. Some might have thought, “What a reward for a life of faithfulness to God!” But Daniel submitted to God’s sovereign control over the situation. Job didn’t understand why God was treating him as He was, and he admitted his intense frustration, but he never defied God or said, “If that’s how You’re going to treat me, see if I follow You any more!”

I fear that many obey God as long as it gets them what they want out of life, but if they have to go through extended trials, forget it. When you peel it all away, it’s really self, not God, whom they are serving. But righteous people walk with God, which means obedience over the long haul, in spite of opposition or trials.

(3) Walking with God means integrity with God.

Both Noah and Job were said to be “blameless” (Gen. 6:9; Job 1:1, 8; 2:3), which means “to be complete or whole, to have integrity.” Although the word is not used, the description of Daniel by his enemies describes this quality: they could find no ground of accusation against him (Dan. 6:4-5). When used of speech (Amos 5:10), it refers to what is entirely in accord with truth and fact (Brown, Driver, & Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament [Oxford], p. 1071). That these men were blameless does not mean that they were sinlessly perfect. Rather, it means that they were not hypocritical; they didn’t put on a good front before others, but live in sin secretly. In contrast to the elders who came to Ezekiel, they didn’t openly profess to follow God, but hide idolatry in their hearts.

How do you get this kind of integrity? In a word, by being honest with God and with others. You’ve got to walk openly before God on the heart level, not hiding sin or thinking that He doesn’t see some part of your life. He sees even our thoughts and motives (Heb. 4:12-13). So you live each day with the awareness that God sees your life and you will give account to Him someday (1 Thess. 2:5, 10). You judge every wrong thought and confess it immediately to Him.

Also, you’ve got to put a premium on honesty in your relationships with others. If you fudge on the truth (a nice way of saying that you lie), you’ve got to make it right by confessing it to the Lord and to the one you lied to. God is the God of truth; His people must work at being truthful with Him and toward others.

(4) Walking with God means standing alone with God.

All three of these men lived in especially ungodly times. In Noah’s day, the ungodliness was so rampant that God was sorry that He had made man and decided to judge the entire earth by the flood. In Job’s day (probably about 2000 B.C.), there was no unified people of God, so far as we know. God may have called Abraham about the same time, but there were few who called upon His name. Daniel and his three friends seem to be the only ones who took a stand for the Lord at Nebuchadnezzar’s court in Babylon. There were strong pressures on all these men to compromise, but they stood apart from the world and alone with God.

Walking with God means that you will face situations where you must stand alone against the crowd. Of course, you’re never alone, since God stands with you. But you may be the only student in a classroom, the only one at a social gathering, or the only one at work, who says, “No, I will not do that because I’m a Christian!”

(5) Walking with God means fellowship with God.

It is stated that Noah walked with God. Though not stated, it is certain that Job and Daniel both walked with God as well. The word “walk.” implies fellowship. As I said, you’re not alone when you have to stand alone, because you enjoy fellowship with God.

Marla and I like to hike together. That time walking and talking, enjoying the scenery, the trees, the birds, and the animals, builds closeness in a relationship. You share together, which is the essence of fellowship. The Christian life is not just obedience to God’s commands; it’s also fellowship with Him in all of life.

Thus, righteous people have appropriated the righteousness that is by faith. As a result, they walk with God, which means trusting Him, obeying Him, being honest with Him, standing alone with Him, and having fellowship with Him.

3. Righteous people intercede on behalf of others.

It’s interesting that while the Bible often says that God spoke to Noah, there is no record of Noah praying to God. Yet we can be sure that he did! Job no doubt interceded for his children and he prayed for his three “friends” (Job 1:5; 42:8-10). There are many instances of Daniel praying for himself and others (Dan. 2:18; 6:10-11; 9:3; 10:2-3, 12). You can see it with many other godly people in Scripture—they interceded with God on behalf of others.

Who knows what the world owes to righteous people who pray? We won’t know until we’re in heaven. God will play back the video of our lives and we’ll be surprised as we see it: “Look at that, when I was kept from sin that time, my godly mother was praying for me! That time I was protected from an accident, a godly friend was lifting me before the throne of grace! That time when I was so discouraged, I was kept from quitting because a godly church member was praying!” Most of us owe our conversion, humanly speaking, to some righteous person who prayed us into God’s kingdom. Righteous people pray for others. But,

4. There are times when even the prayers of the righteous will not prevail.

That’s the context of Ezekiel 14. The city of Jerusalem had not yet been destroyed, but it now was inevitable because God had determined that it must be judged as a testimony of His separation from His people’s sin. God had graciously warned them over and over for centuries. But finally they had crossed the line. Now, not even the prayers of righteous Noah, Daniel, or Job could prevail.

We make a serious mistake if we think that God’s patience has no limit. His grace is great. His patience goes much farther than human patience ever could go. But there is a limit. There’s a limit nationally, when God sovereignly says, “That’s enough!” He told Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in another land for 400 years and then they would return to the land of Canaan. Then God added, “for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). God was patient with the immoral Canaanites for over 400 years, but then He said, “That’s enough!” and commanded Israel to destroy them in judgment. Nations, like ours, that turn from the knowledge of God are presuming on His grace.

Also, there is a limit to God’s patience personally. If we have not responded to His grace, we face that limit at death, which can strike at any moment. But, also, it can come when a person repeatedly hardens his heart against God. He crosses a line where he is so confirmed in sin that even the prayers of the righteous for his salvation will not prevail. We never know for sure when that line is crossed. We know that God is both just and merciful. But the fact that the line exists ought to make us tremble at the thought of continuing in our sinful ways. “Seek the Lord while He may be found” (Isa. 55:6)!

Conclusion

The president of a large city bank was seen standing in front of the automatic teller one day while it performed a transaction rather slowly. After a brief wait, he was heard to say, “Come on—it’s me!” Being the president of a bank doesn’t give you special connections with the ATM! But being a righteous person does give you connections with God. If we’re righteous people—declared righteous by faith in Christ, and living righteously by walking with Him—then we can intercede on behalf of a lost and hurting world and know that our prayers will accomplish much.

Discussion Questions

If God answers the prayers of the righteous, how can it be according to grace?

Is God’s refusal to answer prayer on account of a person’s (or nation’s) sin a rare thing or is it common?

Is asking God once enough, or must we keep praying until He grants the prayer?

How can we know whether we should commit to pray for someone? Should we ever quit praying for a person’s salvation?

Copyright, Steven J. Cole, 2002, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Updated Edition © The Lockman Foundation

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE

Related Topics: Christian Life, Discipleship, Prayer, Spiritual Life

Steven J. Cole
Steve served as the pastor of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship from May, 1992 through his retirement in December, 2018. From 1977-1992 he was the pastor of Lake Gregory Community Church in Crestline, California. He graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1976 in Bible exposition) and Califo... More
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September 12th 2013

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From the series: Christian Family Living PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 1: God’s Wisdom For Families (Ephesians 5:15-16)
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About one year ago (Jan. 10, 1994), Newsweek published a cover story, “Kids Growing Up Scared.” It reported on the wave of fear engulfing parents and children in our society, on the surface in response to the frightening abduction and murder of Polly Klaas, but more deeply related to the breakdown of the family and the proliferation of violence in our society. The article reported many frightening stories and statistics, such as:

--The average child has watched 8,000 televised murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school.

--One in six youths between the ages of 10 and 17 has seen or knows someone who has been shot.

--Children under 18 are 244% more likely to be killed by guns than they were in 1986.

--An estimated 70% of juvenile offenders come from single-parent families.

--There has been a 200% growth in single-parent households since 1970, from 4 million to 8 million homes.

--The estimated number of child abuse victims increased 40% between 1985 and 1991.

When you throw in the statistics on divorce, sexual promiscuity, the AIDS epidemic, and general breakdown of morality and family values in our culture, we who are Christian parents have a formidable task in seeking to rear Christian families.

Because we live in evil times, we need God’s wisdom for our families.

In Ephesians 5:15-16, just prior to giving instructions to families, the Apostle Paul writes (my translation), “Therefore look carefully how you walk, not as foolish people, but as wise, buying back every opportunity, because the days are evil.” God’s Word, of course, is the only source of wisdom concerning how we live. Today I’d like to apply Paul’s words to offer some ways we can experience God’s wisdom in our family lives in 1995. First, we must recognize,

1. We live in evil times.

That’s not news, but unless we recognize the specific ways evil is manifested in our times, we cannot combat and resist it. I fear that the American church is blissfully drifting downstream with many evil currents in our day. As God chided Israel through the prophet Hosea, “Strangers devour his strength, yet he does not know it; gray hairs also are sprinkled on him, yet he does not know it” (Hos. 7:9). There are a number of powerful cultural factors that affect us who live at the end of the twentieth century, and these factors spawn a number of worldly concepts that we must stand against if we want godly families.

Cultural Factors That Affect the Family:

Industrialization, urbanization, and modern technology have vastly changed the world we live in. Marla had a grandmother who was born in 1887, just a few years after the invention of the electric light and the telephone, and a few years before the automobile and airplane. By the time she died at 102 in 1990, life on this planet had changed substantially, to say the least. When she was born it took weeks or months to travel to the other side of the world; when she died, you could be there within a day. Global communication took weeks or months, whereas now it is instantaneous. When she was born, it was common for families to live and die for generations in the same small community; when she died, that was seldom the case. Without attempting to be exhaustive, here are a few specific cultural factors that impact the family:

(1) Mobility and anonymity--The 1970 census showed that 50 percent of the population had lived at a different address only five years earlier. It is common for children to go to a different community to attend college, then to move to whatever part of the country they can find work or desire to live in. Geographic proximity to the extended family is seldom a factor. The career and quality of life are the important factors. Often to get the promising jobs requires a move to an urban area, which results in a loss of community and an increase of anonymity. With the increase in anonymity comes a corresponding loss of accountability. In the big city, no one, not even the people at church, need to know how you live in private.

(2) Women in the labor force--In 1948, 18 percent of the nation’s mothers worked outside the home. In 1971, it was 43 percent. Today it is well over 50 percent. For mothers of preschoolers, in 1950, about 12 percent worked; by 1985, over 50 percent did so. Work is an economic necessity for only a small fraction of these mothers. The majority work either because they seek fulfillment through a career or because the couple wants a better lifestyle than they can afford on one income. As of 1977, 62 percent of children whose mothers worked were shipped off to day-care centers or babysitters outside their families (sources: Newsweek, 8/9/92; and, Christianity Today, 5/25/79). It doesn’t take a college degree to see the profound impact this cultural trend has on the family!

(3) Television--It is impossible to over-emphasize the negative impact that TV has had on our families. In the average home, it is on for seven hours a day. Studies show that there is virtually no difference between evangelicals and the population at large, in either the amount of time or the selection of programs watched. The average 18 year-old has chalked up between 15,000 and 22,000 hours in front of the tube and 12,000 hours in school. If he attends Sunday School every week for 15 of his 18 years, he will spend only 780 hours being instructed in the Bible!

Need I say that TV is not helping to instill Christian values or to model Christian relationships! Besides the negative moral impact, TV stifles such wholesome activities as family conversation, Bible study, reading good books, and enjoying art and good music. It fosters a way of life that is worldly and self-centered to the core, promoting the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life (1 John 2:16).

(4) No-fault divorce--Divorce used to be viewed negatively by our culture. Now, while it’s not desirable, it’s no big deal. The statistics on divorce do not differ significantly between those who claim to be evangelicals and the culture at large. In fact, ministers rank third in divorce occupationally, behind doctors and police. Since the cultural value of personal fulfillment is also the common goal among Christians, if your marriage isn’t bringing you fulfillment, then trade it in for a new model! Fifty percent of the “Baby Busters” or “Generation X,” those born between 1963 and 1977, come from broken homes.

(5) Absent parents--This factor is the cumulative result of all of the above. Studies have confirmed that American children spend less time with their parents than kids in almost every other culture in the world. A study done back in the 1970’s revealed that the average American father spent 37 seconds a day with his young son. Because of illegitimacy and divorce, about a third of U.S. children under 18 (27% of white, 63% of black children) do not live with both of their natural parents. Of the kids with absent fathers, 31 percent never have contact with them. Of course, it’s impossible for an absent parent to communicate Christian values to his or her children.

(6) Feeling-oriented living, or lack of impulse control--“If it feels good, do it” is the mentality promoted by TV, movies, and music, which operate in the realm of emotional impact, not intellectual content, truthfulness, or moral virtue. A popular Christian singer a few years ago crooned, “How can it be wrong when it feels so right?” Psychology has taught us to get in touch with and analyze our feelings. We’re told, even in Christian circles, that “feelings aren’t right or wrong; feelings just are.” In evangelical churches, an emotional experience with God is far more important than evaluating its theological truthfulness. We tend to disparage any emphasis on doctrine; instead, we emphasize unity and love based on an experience with Jesus or the Holy Spirit, although often devoid of any biblical content.

In our culture, when someone commits a horrible crime, we don’t usually hear it condemned as evil; we analyze the reasons why a person would do such a thing. Since we watch people on TV express their angry feelings through abusive speech and violence, we adopt that form of dealing with our frustrations. Some form of violence occurs in 25 percent of all marriages, and reported cases of child abuse almost tripled between 1976 and 1986. At least 40 percent of all abuse cases involve drugs or alcohol (statistics from Newsweek, 12/12/88). Drug and alcohol abuse fit in with our feeling-oriented way of life.

(7) No absolute truth--Our society does not view truth as rational, objective, or universal. If it works for you, then its true. This is coupled with our feeling-oriented approach so that if something seems intuitively to be true or if it makes you feel good, then it must be true. Personal experience becomes the ultimate test of truth. Among the Baby Busters, 81 percent do not believe in absolute truth (Christianity Today, 9/12/94, p. 21). In the culture at large, the figure is 70 percent. A corollary to the lack of belief in absolute truth is the belief in tolerance as the chief virtue. “You can believe whatever you want; if it works for you, that’s fine. Just don’t force it on me!” The only thing we can’t tolerate is someone who says authoritatively, “You’re wrong!”--even if that someone is God. So the only authority for our culture, and even for many Christians, is personal experience or preference.

All of the above factors have a profound impact on us as Christians and on our homes. They filter down into a number of worldly concepts concerning the family that are affecting us:

Worldly Concepts Concerning Family Life:

(1) A worldly concept about love and marriage--Through every form of mass media, our culture promotes the idea that romantic love and sex are the basis for happiness in marriage. In this view, love is a mysterious visitation that comes out of no where and sweeps you off your feet. Based primarily on sexual attraction, such love is an effortless ecstasy that feels wonderful as long as it lasts. But, alas, sometimes it goes away or is transferred to another person who makes the earth move under your feet. At the root of this concept, of course, is the love of self and the notion that the other person is there to make me feel good. Though it sounds silly, it permeates even Christian marriages.

(2) A worldly concept about human nature--Our culture, and even many American Christians, believe in the basic goodness of human nature. As a result, we underestimate the extent of depravity and self-centeredness, and thereby we don’t take radical enough measures to deal the death blow to self and sin. The way this faulty concept of human nature works itself out in marriage is that it absolves us of responsibility. When a couple is having difficulty in their marriage, we say things like, “Their marriage has broken down”; or, “They’re trying to save their marriage, but I don’t think it’s going to work.” As Harry Blamires points out (Recovering the Christian Mind [IVP], pp. 136-137), we view marriage as some sort of thing, like a broken down car that is beyond our ability to deal with. But, as he says,

The effect of pretending that there is this rather unmanageable thing, a ‘marriage’, is to allow us to picture two innocent people feverishly trying to do something to protect and preserve a common possession that is getting out of hand--something perhaps like a pet dog which has turned unruly and started to bite visitors. In this way we mentally shift responsibility from the shoulders of free human beings. Both parties are allowed to wring their hands over a misfortune which has descended upon them through no fault of their own.

David Wells (No Place for Truth [Eerdmans], pp. 178-179) argues that the basic goodness of human nature is the common assumption beneath the self movement and the therapeutic models of salvation being foisted on us by the psychologizing of Christianity. After pointing out that it is no accident that the men behind the self movement are all humanists, he states,

The biblical gospel asserts the very reverse--namely, that the self is twisted, that it is maladjusted in its relationship to both God and others, that it is full of deceit and rationalizations, that it is lawless, that it is in rebellion, and indeed that one must die to self in order to live. It is this that is at the heart of the biblical gospel, this that is at the center of Christian character. There is abundant evidence that people become strong by suppressing what is unworthy within them, not by expressing it (ibid., p. 179).

(3) A worldly concept about relationships--namely, that the purpose for relationships is to bring me happiness and fulfillment. My marriage partner should fulfill my needs. If he or she isn’t doing this, then I need to find someone else who can do the job. This idea is behind the whole co-dependence movement (which has infiltrated the church), that self-love is central; if a marriage partner isn’t helping me reach my full potential, then it’s time to move on.

(4) A worldly concept about roles in marriage--There are two wrong extremes in which the American church has been tainted by the world. One is that of male superiority or dominance--the Archie Bunker syndrome. The man is seen as the king or drill sergeant in the home. He barks the orders and the wife and kids are supposed to obey. He ignores the biblical commands to love his family sacrificially, and wrongly uses the biblical teaching about the headship of the man for his own advantage.

The other extreme, in reaction to the first, is that there should be no distinctions at all on the basis of gender. The clear biblical commands for the wife to submit to her husband are explained away. Supposedly, there is to be “mutual submission.” I contend that the “evangelical feminist” movement is simply bringing the world into the church and will wreak havoc on Christian families.

(5) A worldly concept about success--This view permeates our culture, that success means being rich, powerful, or famous. When was the last time you saw People magazine do a story extolling the success of a common person who has been happily married for 35 years and whose children have grown up and started solid marriages of their own? Instead, you see stories on the rich and famous, pictured in their revealing $500 gowns attending a $1,000-a-plate dinner with all the other famous. So what if they’re on their fourth marriage and their kids are strung out on dope? They’re “successful”! Even though as Christians we reject that view of success, it spills over. Christian magazines feature famous Christians, and we read their stories as if somehow they’re the models we should follow.

I don’t mean to depress you by spending so much time dealing with the evils of our world, but unless we identify these things, we become tainted by them. By emphasizing the magnitude of the problem, I hope to motivate you to come for the rest of the series. But briefly I want to focus on how to counter the evil days in which we live.

2. We need God’s wisdom for our families.

There are two parts to Paul’s command as to how to live wisely in such evil times:

A. Look carefully how you walk.

The word translated “be careful” means to consider with exactness or precision. It was an accounting term. If an accountant says, “Is that a 10 or a 100? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter!” you wouldn’t want him keeping your books! He needs to be exact. The idea here is that we are walking in a hostile world intended by Satan to destroy us. Land mines, broken glass, barbed wire, and hidden traps are everywhere. You must walk carefully, with precision, if you want to escape harm.

How? Paul amplifies, “not as unwise men, but as wise.” Where do we find wisdom? The Bible is clear that we must deliberately reject the so-called wisdom of this world, which exalts man, and embrace God’s wisdom which opposes the world’s wisdom and centers in the cross of Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor. 1:18-31; Col. 2:8-15). One of my main objections to the psychological approach to the Christian life is that it invariably diminishes the centrality of the cross of Christ and at the same time exalts the self--just the opposite of God’s wisdom which humbles human pride and glories in Christ Jesus and Him crucified. So we must look to Scripture, and to Scripture alone, if we want God’s wisdom for family living. Walk carefully!

B. Buy back the opportunities.

The idea here is that pagans are in bondage to their aimless, sensual, feeling-oriented, greedy way of life (4:17-19). But Christians can buy back time that otherwise would be wasted in such selfish living and use it for eternity. The word for “time” focuses on opportune time. As we live daily by growing in God’s wisdom through His Word and rejecting the world’s wisdom that bombards us, there will be those choice moments that we can redeem from futility and capture for God’s eternal purpose. At each phase of family life, those moments differ. A wise couple will seek to grab every opportunity to communicate God’s truth to their children, both by example and by word.

Conclusion

I preached on these verses on December 30, 1979, in a message titled, “Making the Most of the ’80s.” After mentioning the erosion of a number of Christian values during the seventies, I said, “There is a very real danger ... for Christians in the ’80’s to throw out the biblical absolutes regarding morality and other values and to adopt the relativistic values system of our humanistic culture. Frederick Moore Vinson, former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, said, ‘Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes.’ Christians are in danger of buying the view that the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. To make the most of the ’80’s, we must take a vigorous and stand against this erosion of biblical values.” Those words apply just as much as we face 1995. Our times are evil; but God has given us His wisdom for the family. We’ll be looking at it in more detail in the weeks to come. I encourage you, Walk in it!

Discussion Questions

What are some additional cultural factors and worldly concepts affecting family life that have infiltrated the church?

Not everything cultural is worldly in a negative sense. How can we discern the harmful aspects of culture from the harmless?

Which of the above listed cultural factors is the strongest in our society in your opinion? Why?

How protective should parents be in guarding their children from these worldly influences? Give biblical support.

Copyright 1995, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, © The Lockman Foundation

From the series: Christian Family Living PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Related Topics: Christian Home, Wisdom

Steven J. Cole
Steve served as the pastor of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship from May, 1992 through his retirement in December, 2018. From 1977-1992 he was the pastor of Lake Gregory Community Church in Crestline, California. He graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary (Th.M., 1976 in Bible exposition) and Califo... More
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September 12th 2013

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From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 3: The Man Who Caused God To Repent (Exodus 32:7-14, 30-35; 33:1-6, 12-17)

1. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s person exalted (32:7-12).

2. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s promises enacted (32:13).

3. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s people established (32:30-33).

A. We cannot and must not gloss over sin.

B. We must have a tender heart for sinners.

4. To move God in prayer, we must desire to see God’s presence experienced (33:1-6, 12-17).

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 4: The Man Who Was Always Singing (Psalm 18 [2 Samuel 22])

1. To be people of praise, we must come to the end of ourselves.

2. To be people of praise, we must flee to God as our all-sufficient refuge.

A. We must know who God is.

B. We must know how God acts.

C. We must know how to trust God experientially.

3. To be people of praise, we must express in song our gratitude to God for His salvation.

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 5: The Man Who Prayed About the Weather (1 Kings 17-19 and James 5:16b-18)

1. The time to pray is when ungodliness is rampant.

2. The people who pray are godly people.

A. Godly people know the living God and His power.

B. Godly people know that they are accountable to the living God.

C. Godly people have a zeal for holiness.

D. Godly people struggle against their own propensity to sin.

3. The subject of prayer is for God to make His glory known by turning sinners to Himself.

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 7: The Man Who Won a War Without Fighting (2 Chronicles 20:1-30)

1. Our great need should drive us to prayer (20:1-4).

A. Our great need does not automatically drive us to prayer.

B. Praying in the face of our great need requires humbling ourselves before God and others.

2. Knowing our great God should direct our prayers (20:5-13).

A. In our prayers we should not only seek answers to our problems, but we should seek God Himself.

B. In our prayers we should seek God as revealed in His Word.

3. Faith in our great God should follow our prayers (20:14-30).

A. Faith in God means being obedient to His Word.

B. Faith in God is always rewarded by God.

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 6: The Man Who Saw the Unseen (2 Kings 6:8-23)

1. God is our all-sufficient resource in times of trial.

A. Our God is omniscient.

B. Our God is omnipotent.

C. Our God sovereignly protects His own according to His will.

2. Prayer is the way to have peace, not panic, when trials hit.

A. Prayer replaces panic with wisdom for dealing with trials.

B. Prayer opens our eyes to spiritual reality.

C. Prayer makes possible what is humanly impossible.

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 8: The Man Who Cried For God to Come Down (Isaiah 63:15-64:12)

1. Revival praying begins when some of God’s people feel the lack of His working in our day.

2. Revival praying lays hold of God as He has revealed Himself.

A. God is the holy and glorious God who dwells in heaven.

B. God is the mighty God who acts with awesome power.

C. God is the sovereign God who judges sin.

D. God is the gracious, compassionate Father who will restore us.

3. Revival praying openly confesses sin and vindicates God’s righteous judgments.

4. Revival praying is motivated by God’s glory.

5. Revival praying understands and lays hold of God’s grace.

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

From the series: Old Testament Lessons on Prayer PREVIOUS PAGE | NEXT PAGE

Lesson 9: The Man Who Bought Property In A War Zone (Jeremiah 32:1-25)

1. To pray by faith for God to fulfill His promises, we must be obedient to God’s difficult commands.

2. To pray by faith for God to fulfill His promises, we must appeal to God’s character.