The Mountain

Psalm 125:1 NIV

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

How Does Your Faith Look?

Imagine a mountain of any sort.  It could be snow-capped, rising above the peaks of a dozen other mountains or a hill that stands out in flat desert wasteland.  The mountain can have a city sitting upon it or be a barren rock where few plants grow.  What does that mountain signify to you?  Does it trigger memories from your past or create an image of what you would like your life to be?  What do you think of when you look at the mountain and how does it impact your senses?  Are you drawn in a mysterious way to the mountains or are they frightening because of their immensity and the danger many mountains present to those who climb them.

Many important events happened on mountains in the Bible and mountains often symbolized theological themes in the Bible.   Abraham had one lasting memory of a mountain, Moses several.  Peter, James and John never forgot what they experienced on a mountain and someday it will be a mount upon which our Lord will return.  Perhaps what makes a mountain so captivating is its great power and steadfastness.  Mountains simply are not moved.  Another quality of the greatest of mountains is their endurance.  The Psalmist has this in mind when he compares the believer who puts His faith in God to Mount Zion. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. (Psalm 125:1 NIV)  The next verse gives a brilliant picture of how God protects us.  As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore. (Psalm 125:2 NIV)

Like Mount Zion, the person who trusts in God lasts forever but just as the mountains surround Jerusalem, God guards His people and protects them.  So we have the believer being like a specific mountain, Mt. Zion and the Lord being like the range of mountains around Jerusalem which contains Mt. Zion.  We are like a mighty mountain, the Bible tells us, if we put our trust in God.  But even more importantly, it is the Lord who is a mountain of protection for His people.  We will pause here and consider these two points carefully.

Many have lost their way because they get these two declarations confused and miss the point of them altogether.  Our faith is not in our faith.  It is in Christ who saves us from all that Sin creates.  If your faith is in your faith, you will certainly be shaken because at some point your faith will be shaken.  Your faith can be knocked down and wrecked by trials too great for you but your salvation is not dependent on your faith.  It is dependent on God whose salvation it is.  Like what happens when a great wave of the ocean strikes you, you can find yourself knocked off your feet spiritually by someone who talks you out of what you believe about God and convinces you that you are naive to think Christ can save you.  A book you read might be so persuasive in its arguments against the presence of God that you can doubt His existence.  Some person you trusted who built up your faith in Christ may commit a terrible sin and suddenly you wonder if Christianity itself is true.  If your faith is in your faith, you can become like a house built upon sandy ground that falls apart when a horrific storm beats against it.  Consider these examples of faith in faith.

When the Apostle Peter boldly proclaimed that even if all the other disciples fall away from staying with Christ, he never would, Peter was showing his faith in his faith.  Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not." (Mark 14:29 NIV)  We know of course that Peter did fall away and his boast comes across as pure bluster to us but at the time, Peter was supremely confident that he could and would if necessary die with Christ if Jesus’ dire prediction came to pass.  He had faith in his faith.  It is one thing to have faith in God, another altogether to have faith in one’s faith in God.

James and John angrily called for Christ to let them pray for fire to come down from heaven and destroy the Samaritans in a particular village that did not want Christ and them to stay there. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" (Luke 9:52-54 NIV)  Here is the terrible problem with spiritual pride.  Although it may be grounded in God-thinking, it isn’t grounded in God.  James and John had plenty of faith in their ability to pray and by praying, bring down fire from heaven.  They clearly though had not much faith in God’s ability to remake and reorder lives.  It was clearly impossible in their minds for God to do anything much with the people living in the Samaritan village.  They were too far gone to be redeemed.  Jesus however thought differently and did something about it.

Let me illustrate the difference between faith in one’s faith and faith in God from a recent experience of mine.  I was working at a school as a P.E. instructor and somewhere on the school grounds lost a bracelet I was wearing.  I had been working with the kids both on a large grassy field as well as an asphalt play yard.  I searched everywhere I had been for the bracelet to no avail. As I looked to the ground, my heart looked to the heavens and I asked God to show me where the bracelet was but I still didn’t find it.  Finally, because the children were at recess, there were staff members of the school walking about supervising the kids.  I asked one of the workers if she had seen my bracelet but she told me she hadn’t.  However she encouraged me to not give up on finding the bracelet.  She had recently lost a small, diamond studded earring and searched high and low for it but the earring was nowhere to be found.  One day she spotted it in her driveway, completely undamaged.  Somehow it had gone unscathed, despite the number of times cars were parked in the driveway.  She told me not to give up on finding the bracelet.  I must admit, that I had quit thinking God would show me where the bracelet was and just smiled and thanked the woman for her encouragement.  Less than five minutes later, a girl who had been walking with the recess duty woman came to me with my bracelet.  It was not my faith that brought that bracelet back to me but rather the God of my faith that returned it in such a miraculous way.

When Jonah was sent by God to tell the people of Assyria in Nineveh that judgment was coming, he did not want to go because he thought the Lord would be easy on them.  If they asked God for forgiveness, Jonah believed God would let them off without any punishment for all the wicked things the people of that country had done.  Jonah’s faith was in his religion of right and wrong and punishments and rewards but not in God who is really God.  He did not think God could really fix all those Assyrians in Nineveh and make them a blessing to the world.  His faith in the religion of making people pay for what they do wrong was strong but His faith in the God who is really God was weak and broken.

Our Lord’s declaration to two blind men that Jesus healed is widely misunderstood.  As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!"   When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?"   "Yes, Lord," they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, "According to your faith will it be done to you"; and their sight was restored. (Matthew 9:27-30 NIV)  Jesus was not telling the men that they were healed because they had enough faith to get a healing.  They were healed because their faith was in Christ to heal them and He did it.

God does not want you to work up our faith and try to blow it up like a balloon so that you can get the things you want.  He simply tells you to trust Him in every matter.  There is so much you try to fix and so many problems you stress over because you don’t know how to solve them and the Lord tells you to settle down and trust Him with it.  Rather than fuss over something that bothers you, first go to Christ and the Holy Spirit may put a solution in your heart that will take care of your problem.  Perhaps He will begin working in someone else who will lift the problem off your shoulders.  God could simply give you peace while you wait for a solution.  God does not care one bit how great or small your faith is.  He simply wants what faith you have to be in Him.  Here is something you can say to remind you of how great God’s love is for you and how willing He is to help you.  Make this simple statement as you face the trials before you.  “Jesus is my Savior.  I put my faith in Him.”

The Worthiness of Jesus Sight

Isaiah 6: 9 NIV

He said, "Go and tell this people: 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'”

Have You Missed Something?

When I first went to New Orleans to attend graduate school, I was invited to the First Baptist Church by a friend.  The church had a large singles group and I joined it immediately.  After a couple months, the singles had their annual meeting to elect officers.  I sat far in the back of the room as a casual observer, curious about who would be chosen for the various offices but not having any real opinion about who should be elected.  The president was elected, vice president elected and several other positions filled when all of a sudden my name was presented for one of the offices.  You must realize that there were more than a hundred in the singles group and I had only been attending for a few months so I was not prepared for being nominated for any of the positions on the board.  In stunned disbelief, I did not say anything.  My mouth may have been agape for all I know.  But in the silence of the moment when my name still hung in the air, a young college student turned around and looked straight at me, mouthing the words, “accept the nomination.”  I could not remember meeting her; did not know why she thought I should run for the office and was not sure what to make of her encouragement to accept the nomination.  She had bright blue eyes, an effervescent smile and was beautiful.  She clearly had noticed me before and seemed to know me; I on the other had felt like this was the first time I ever laid eyes on her.

Seeing is an interesting matter to consider.  Everyone knows how three witnesses to the same accident can come away with three completely different accounts of what they saw.  Perhaps you have had a disagreement with someone over what the two of you each saw.  It is often said that “seeing is believing” but that is not always the case, especially if it is someone else doing the seeing.  You have not seen what others claim they saw and wondered if their report is true.  Perhaps someone has asked what you saw in a certain person as if you were missing critical details.  It is almost an accusation as if there is something wrong with you.  “What do you see in her?”  You probably must admit that there have been times when you saw but didn’t really see.  Seeing is one of the most important parts of our existence; critical to how we live our lives.  Today we are going to take a look at seeing and how you can make the most of your opportunity to see.

The Bible has much to say about seeing; it is in fact an important theme in Scripture.  In the very beginning of the Bible, we are told that after each day of creation, “…God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1: 10 NIV)  The most common understanding of this comment is that as God looked at what He created, He noticed that it was all well done.  There is another way we often use the expression “saw that” which may be pertinent.  If I say that she “saw that the job was done right”, it can mean that this person “made sure” that the job was done right.  She saw to it that everything was well done.  Now is that the sense of what Genesis is indicating about God as each day of creation came to a close?  He made sure it was done well!  That could be there too.  It was after all the Lord who did all the creating and after He finished it, the work was perfectly accomplished.  God saw that it was good.

We find that in the Old Testament God sees but also in the New Testament God sees.  Of Jesus we find that, When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick…When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. (Matthew 8:16, 18 NIV)  In this case, God saw and what He saw resulted in Him acting.  Later, Jesus returned to His hometown and came across another man needing help.  Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven." (Matthew 9:2 NIV)  What Jesus saw here was more than just a simple act of a collection of men carrying a paralytic to Him for healing!  He saw the faith in the men doing this.  More than just noticing the externals of the action, Jesus saw what was going on within these men when they brought their friend to Him.  Faith in God was working within them.  A third example of Jesus seeing is found in John 1.

Early in Jesus’ ministry as Savior, He began to gather disciples about Him and one of them was Nathanael.  When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false."  "How do you know me?" Nathanael asked.  Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you."  Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel." (John 1:47-49 NIV)  We have no idea what Nathanael meant by, “How do you know me?”  Any attempts to get at it are speculative.  What did Jesus “know”?  We can’t say.  Clearly however, when Jesus saw Nathanael, He knew something about the soon-to-be disciple that Nathanael was stunned Jesus knew.  There was in God’s seeing that extended to knowing, a knowing that was stunning to those who came across it.

The Scriptures indicate that there are times when God deliberately makes it impossible for us to see and we want to explore this.  No matter how hard someone might stare at something, he or she cannot see what is there.  Color blind people would readily accept this premise but we are talking about something much more profound than that.  In Isaiah 6: 9 we find this statement by God.  "Go and tell this people: 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'” (NIV)  God shut down the ability of the people to see and comprehend the critical work God was doing in their midst.  Our Lord is quoted repeating it and the Apostle Paul also echoed it.  He (Jesus) said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that 'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'” (Luke 8:10 NIV)   Some were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe.  They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement: "The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet: "'Go to this people and say, "You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving." (Acts 28:24-26 NIV)  What is troubling about this work of God is that those who don’t see what is there, don’t realize they don’t see it but in their pride they assume we know all there is about the matter.

There are two very ordinary examples in the Old Testament that illustrate this perfectly.  Both are found in 1 Samuel 17.  A Philistine giant named Goliath famously challenged anyone among the soldiers of Israel to fight him.  Whoever’s champion won the battle would then without a fight enslave the loser’s people.  There is an almost comical description of what happened when Goliath issued his dare to the fighting men of Israel.  When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran from him in great fear. (1 Samuel 17:24 NIV)  What all these soldiers saw was the death of them.  They saw defeat, suffering and horror.  With their eyes they saw something that was quite different than what David saw when he looked at Goliath.  He saw a defeated foe, a broken warrior, and opportunity for God to be glorified.  Later when David came out to fight Goliath with just his normal clothes and a sling and some stones, Goliath looked at David and saw only a boy.  His reaction was recorded in the Bible.  He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him.  He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. (1 Samuel 17:42-43 NIV)  What Goliath saw was a victim, but who David actually was he did not see.  David was a victor.  It is human to think we see someone and not see that person at all.  Consider the interesting case of Samuel and his mission to anoint the next king of Israel.

Before this, the prophet Samuel was sent to a particular family living in the small village of Bethlehem to anoint the new king of Israel.  The problem was that Samuel didn’t know who God had chosen of a family of eight boys.  He saw one that looked perfect for the job but he wasn’t God’s choice.  Samuel went through seven of the sons and none of them were who God chose but the eighth, David was who the Lord wanted as the next king of Israel.   The problem Samuel the prophet had in this selection process was that Samuel did not possess a crucial skill set that was needed.  God explained it to him.  …the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7 NIV) 

How many of us can do that?  We think we can see things clearly; that we get it and yet who is able to look at the heart?  Who can go beyond what is visible on the outside and see within a person?  It is of course impossible for us; just like it is impossible for someone colorblind to see blue.  It is not just that we aren’t trained to look into the heart; we are unable to do it.  It has been said that there is always, when we begin to judge someone’s character or motives, one more part of that person we don’t know.  There is one piece to the puzzle we don’t have that would if we had it explain a great deal.  We are incapable of judging a single soul, whether good or bad.  Our Savior does not ask us to figure out people, to get “a handle on them.”  We cannot really see them; see in the heart which is why that is not what He wants us to do.  The Lord has given us this one responsibility when it comes to others.  We are to love them.   We say we can’t do that either.  Yes we can if Christ has become a part of us.  His love, flowing out of the power of the Cross becomes the love we have at our disposal at any time.  You may not be able to figure out what is in the heart of that person next to you but you can love the person next to you.  What God wants you to see whenever you look at someone is that person must have my love and I will give it to her…just like Christ loves me.