One Step Further

Genesis 22:1-2 NIV

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"  "Here I am," he replied.  Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Are You Up For The Journey?

We did this in our youth group and it generated thoughtful discussions.  One of the students was blindfolded and assigned a guide for the activity.  The guide’s task was to get the blindfolded student from one end of a large room to the other end by weaving about through a series of obstacles and barriers.  The challenge was three fold.  The guide could not touch the blindfolded student in any way nor use any device to take him or her around the room.  Secondly, the guide was only allowed to use voice commands or directions to direct the student to the goal.  Third, everyone else in the room also yelled instructions and tried to confuse the blindfolded student during the exercise.  It took great concentration and trust in the true guide for the blindfolded student to make it all the way to the other side.  Of course the blindfolded student had to make a crucial decision before starting.  Once that guide’s voice was recognized, would the student decide to obey it?

There are a number of reasons why we don’t follow the directions of others.  You might not believe that other person has your best interest at heart.  You might think you know more than the person instructing you.  It could be you have been hurt in the past by those you have trusted.  You are not a robot.  You do not blindly obey just anyone because you weigh all the options and then decide on your own.  That is how normal people are.  They are careful about whom they follow and perhaps that is the way you should be.  Yet, should you have that same approach when it comes to God?

What should you make of ancient Abraham’s response to God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac on Mt. Moriah?  Was it rational?   Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"  "Here I am," he replied.  Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."  Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.  (Genesis 22:1-3 NIV)  Perhaps you have read this account a hundred times or maybe this is a first for you but if you were in this same situation, would you have acted as Abraham did?  You may already know how this turned.  At the last moment, just as Abraham was about to kill his son Isaac on the altar, God stopped him.  When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.  Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.  But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"  "Here I am," he replied.  "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." (Genesis 22:9-12 NIV)

Regardless of what you may think of the Lord’s demand, it is obvious that God never intended for Abraham to follow through with the sacrifice.  Clearly Abraham did not know this in advance and yet still believed that God should be followed.  The Bible text says that God “tested Abraham”.  “Tested” is the translation of a Hebrew term that can better be rendered here “proved”.  God was not checking to see if Abraham would faithfully obey Him but rather uncovering what He already knew was in Abraham, faith.  Sometimes we don’t know who we are and what our capability is until we are tested.  It is testing for us but for God it is “proving”.  This was not the first time Abraham “passed the test”.  When God told him as an old man who was childless that he would eventually be the father of nations, Abraham took the Lord at His word and believed Him.  The Bible says this of Abraham, who was earlier known as Abram, Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6 NIV)   This faith Abraham had in God is referenced several times in the New Testament because it was the benchmark for us all.

Can you imagine a more excruciatingly painful step than that first one leading away from his camp?  The decision was made.  “I will obey God.”  Once he decided that he would do what God commanded, Abraham became faith, faith incarnate.  Sometimes the Lord has you do something and it seems unreasonable.  Perhaps your obedience does not even go well for you.  You lose a friend.  You don’t turn a profit.  You miss out on a promotion.  I read a while back that the famous Christian athlete Tim Tebow lost the affection of Miss Universe because he refused to have premarital sex with her.   Faith cannot be separated from obedience…they are as linked as flesh and blood.  There is no faith without obedience and at some point God will have you leave the camp and go up the mountain.  The first step is when you decide if you will trust God with your life.  Is He good even now?

It is interesting how little attention we pay the poor young widow Ruth.  An entire book of the Bible is named for her but we almost completely ignore her obedience.  Although she was a Moabite, Ruth married a Jewish expatriate who had moved with his family to Moab.  Soon after their marriage, Ruth’s husband Mahlon died.  Her father-in-law had also died and her mother-in-law Naomi, a widow too, decided to return to her home town of Bethlehem.  Shockingly, Ruth wanted to leave with her.  Why?  Naomi did not understand it either.  "Look," said Naomi, "your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her."  (Ruth 1:15 NIV)  Naomi had nothing to offer Ruth and it did not make sense to Naomi for Ruth to leave her family and friends and move with her to Israel.  Yet that was what Ruth was determined to do!  Ruth responded to her mother-in-law’s protestation with a firm resolve to follow through witth what she knew she had to do.  But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-18 NIV)

We cannot say with any certainty, based on the account, that Ruth was commanded by God to go with Naomi to Bethlehem.  But there is a subtle hint that something had transpired between Ruth and God.  Naomi told Ruth that she should go back to her gods.  Naomi it seems did not have any of the “evangelist” in her.  There was no urgency in her heart to bring people to God.  Ruth ignored the lack of fervency in Naomi though and pressed forward.  She insisted that Naomi’s God would be her God.  How profound!  She was making a complete break from all the demons of her previous religion and joining her life to God’s.  Notice something else.  In the Hebrew text, Ruth uses the personal name of the Lord to express her loyalty to Him and God’s right to treat her badly if she breaks away from Naomi.  She calls Him YHWH.  It is like your husband calling your father “daddy” or your co-worker because of her affection calling your mother “nana”.  Ruth was a part of not just Naomi’s family but the Lord’s family too!

Did it take courage for Ruth to take that first step toward Bethlehem?  Of course!  Is it possible that she questioned herself when she started walking?  Perhaps!  Is it clear to us that Ruth was certain the Lord wanted her to leave Moab and go with Naomi to Bethlehem?  It seems pretty clear.  She was going so that she could make her life with Him.  What if she had not obeyed that quiet and subtle voice of God leading her out of Moab and into Israel?  There would have been that natural ripple effect that is in every situation.  She would not have been an encouragement to Naomi who clearly was battling depression.  Boaz would have missed out on marrying her.  Friends she made in Bethlehem would not have had her as an example of faith to emulate.  And of course she would not have been the mother of Obed who was the grandfather of David, the great king of Israel.  There was also a supernatural ripple effect.

When we obey God in any matter, whether it seems big or small, the Kingdom of God is impacted in some way or another.  In Ruth’s case it is crystal clear what following God did for the entire universe.  The line through which the Savior of the World came was the one established by Ruth and Boaz and their son Obed.  The battle over the souls of all humanity was being fought in the heart of Ruth as she pondered whether or not to take that first step out of Moab.  No matter of obedience is trivial.  Obedience to God sends shockwaves through the demonic realm and wrecks the plans of Satan.  Disobedience discourages God’s servants and brings elation to Satan’s allies.  There is always someone watching to see what you will do.  It could be a son or daughter, a coworker, a friend or even an enemy.  Always there is an audience in the spiritual realm.  Remember what we see in the book of Hebrews.  Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (Hebrews 12:1 NIV) How you respond to what God says will make an impact on others without you wanting or caring to do so.  It is impossible to avoid the encouragement or discouragement you cause by your actions.

There are eight universal axioms of obedience.  1.  God loves you and Christ died to save you.  2.  God knows all the outcomes of every act considered.  3.  There is a real right and a real wrong when you make decisions.  4.  Satan confuses the issues and corrupts your thinking when your mind is not on Christ.  5.  God is always close enough to lead you onto the right path.  6.  Actions flow out of a spiritual source of guidance.  7.  Every decision you make leads to an outcome that either pleases God or pleases Satan.  8.  Nothing you do happens in a vacuum.  Someone is always impacted by your actions.

When Paul made the decision to go to Jerusalem despite the knowledge he had that he would be arrested after he arrived, Paul continued there because he knew Christ wanted him to go.  His friends and fellow Christians urged him not to do so because they were afraid of what would happen.  You are like a rope in a tug of war battle.  Some will pull you one way, some the other but there is one voice that must take over all you do and that is the call of the Lord.  Does it matter what you do?  It matters to someone!   You cannot know all the ways your actions impact others.  As David considered how he would spend his evening, he could either go up on the roof and look around or stay downstairs and play with his kids.  What would he do?  Such a small matter to consider it would seem!  Did he hear the voice of God as he pondered his options?  Was Satan twisting his thoughts as he mulled over what to do next?  Eventually, he climbed the steps and looked out over the housetops without a care.  But then he came upon Bathsheba…and it made all the difference in the world what he decided previously.  Are you ready to be used by God for the benefit of humanity and the glory of God or do you want to be bent by Satan into his tool for harm?  You have in your heart all you need to be good and right and the hand of Christ in a world in need of God.  Make your decisions wisely.  Never assume it doesn’t matter what you do or where you go.

Refuge

2 Samuel 22:31 NIV

"As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless.  He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.

Do You Have A Hiding Place?

 

More than a decade ago when our oldest son was only nine or ten, we went camping in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Somehow we stumbled upon a beautiful swimming hole on the Kings River at the western end of the park.  The river cascaded down giant granite boulders into a large pool that was formed in a giant basin of granite.  The pool was quite deep in places, more than twenty feet or so.  The river had carved a natural water slide that dropped into the pool and I held Noah, who was pretty young and together we slid down the rocks and splashed into the pool a number of times.  Jacob though was intrigued by a father and son who stood high above the pool looking down.  The son was not much older than Jacob and it seemed like they both were going to jump down into the water.  The spot where they were going to jump was more than twenty feet above the pool.  The cliff jutted out over the water and was directly above the deepest part of the pool.  When both father and son jumped, screaming as they fell into the water, Jacob thought he would like to do the same thing.  After the father and son climbed out of the water, Jacob asked me if I thought it was dangerous to jump there.  The father and son insisted it was perfectly safe so Jacob and I went over to the spot where he would land and studied it carefully.  The water was crystal clear; we could see the bottom perfectly and it looked plenty deep to land.  The only problem was that you had to jump out from the rock to land in the deepest part of the pool.  Jacob pondered the risks, stared up at the cliff, looked down into the water and after much encouragement from the father and son that had jumped before, began to make his climb up to the ledge where the others had leaped into the pool below.

There is for each of us, a time when you need to know if there is a safe place to land.  You will, and maybe already have, find yourself falling without a net to catch you.  It is easy to pretend like Job’s friends that only really bad people face tragic and traumatic circumstances but you know that is not the case.  Because you live in a sin corrupted universe, real troubles spring up without warning and you must face them.  Hardship and pain are here with you and sometimes it is a calamitous illness, other times a sudden loss of income, a relationship that falls apart, depression that can’t be shaken, failure crushes your sense of worth, a habit that you know you should break but you just can’t or an accident that brings irreparable damage.  When you look down from the cliff where you stand, what do you see?

Perhaps like me, you have been intrigued by the story of Ruth found in the Bible.  Newly married to a young man she clearly chose to love, Ruth was suddenly a widow.  The more we read of her story, we find ourselves captivated by her kindness, generosity and loyalty.  Why a tragedy like this would happen to someone with such a warm and loving heart is difficult to comprehend.  We can of course just wave off this calamity as a slight roadblock in her life because she later remarried and gave birth to the great-grandfather of a mighty king but that would do a tremendous disservice to the actuality of her heartbreak.  Tragedy by definition is tragic and just because some good is awaiting us down the road from it does not mean we can shake it off as inconsequential unless we have been damaged psychologically and do not respond to disasters in a healthy way.  Ruth did not “just shake off” the calamity of her husband’s death and nor should she have.  She was without the love of her life and that pain was significant.

Ruth made a dramatic decision that clearly changed the course of her life.  She decided to make the God of her mother-in-law, the God of Israel her God.  This was a conscious choice on her part based upon what she had seen in her husband, her father-in-law and her mother-in-law Naomi and how belief in God had shaped their lives.  When Naomi decided to leave Moab and go back to her hometown in Israel after the tragic loss of her own husband and two sons, Ruth was determined to leave with her.   Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16b NIV)

Ruth was not merely changing her religion; she was completely rearranging her life with God.  Life is tragic and there is a tremendous amount of heartbreak in our world.  We cannot explain it all and like we discover about Job, there are supernatural forces working that are unseen to us bringing tremendous amounts of pain and sorrow to good people.  Ruth realized though like the Psalmists and her own great-great-grandson would later proclaim, God is a refuge for those who turn to Him.  Ruth’s future husband Boaz could see clearly that Ruth had turned to the Lord in her sorrow and found Him a great comfort.  He tenderly prayed for God to be her strength and help, “May the Lord repay you for what you have done.  May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."  (Ruth 2:12 NIV)

Ruth may have been the inspiration of David who also found God to be a refuge where we can go in our troubles and hardship.  O Lord my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, (Psalm 7:1 NIV)  The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. (Psalm 9:9 NIV)  Keep me safe, O God for in you I take refuge. (Psalm 16:1 NIV)  There is a supernatural work that God does for us and within us when we turn to Him in our times of trouble.  This work cannot be explained by logic or by psychological theories.  Those who have experienced this work of God have a terrible time trying to explain exactly what happens when they turn to God for refuge but that doesn’t alter the facts of His help and comfort.  You cannot explain what happens when you turn to God for refuge but like the Psalmist, you simply know what you have experienced.  God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1 NIV) 

Before he became physically king of Israel, David as a young man became the actual enemy of Israel’s king.  David hadn’t done anything wrong but Saul had become paranoid and saw David as a threat to his throne.  Saul led an army into the desert regions of Judea to hunt down David and kill him.  But David and his small band of men avoided capture.  With Saul’s soldiers camped just below where David was hiding, Saul entered the cave where David was to go to the bathroom.  There in the dark of the cave, with Saul oblivious to David and his men hidden from view, David’s men urged David to kill the king.  David crept up to Saul and cut off a part of Saul’s robe without Saul knowing.  David was conscience stricken though by how close he came to killing Saul the Lord’s anointed.  He said to his men, "The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, or lift my hand against him; for he is the anointed of the Lord." (1 Samuel 24:6 NIV)

This is a perfect example of what it means to dive into God and make Him your refuge.  Rather than take matters into his own hands and kill Saul, he gave Saul back to God to do with as the Lord wished.  He could have violently grabbed the kingdom of Israel by assassinating Saul in the cave but he trusted God to take care of him and make him king in God’s time.  Many were dependent on David to save them from Saul and his own soldiers were pushing for him to kill Saul then and there but David refused.  David took his stand in the cave that regardless of how bad it all seemed, he would make God his refuge.  This determination to dive into God and let Him protect and comfort you is found in the Psalms.  Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. (Psalm 62:8 NIV)

I heard recently of a Muslim girl who decided to become Christian despite the opposition of her family.  She risked the hatred of her parents and perhaps even physical harm to take refuge in Jesus.  This high school student did what Ruth did and what David did and what we can do too.  She has hidden her life in Christ and is trusting Him to take care of her.  What about you?  Will you trust God with your finances?  Will you tithe?  Will you trust God with your friendships?  Will you talk openly about your faith in Christ?  Will you trust God with your family?  Will you pray for them and encourage them?   Will you trust God with your work and school?  Will you let Christ guide you and direct your steps rather than just do whatever methods the world uses to get ahead?  How serious are you about being Christian?  What great things might God do through us if we put our trust in Christ and dove into Him…made Him our refuge, our source of safety and peace?