Can God?

 

They spoke against God saying, “Can God spread a table in the desert?” When he struck the rock, water gushed out, and streams flowed abundantly. “But can he also give us food?”

—Psalm 78:19-20

When we look at the grumbling, faithless Israelites in the wilderness, we scratch our heads. They doubted whether God could supply what they needed. This group of 600, 000 men and all their families, totaling in the neighborhood of two million people, had already seen God bring them through the Red Sea. They had seen God destroy the Egyptians pursuing them. But, when it came to feeding them, they doubted.

Upon further examination, we find that even Moses, who personally witnessed God’s sovereign plan over Pharaoh, couldn’t quite believe. In Numbers 11:21, we read Moses’ response to God’s promise to provide meat:

But Moses said, “Here I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!’ Would they have enough if flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?’”

That kind of ridiculous unbelief catches us off guard until we look at ourselves! Haven’t we acted in the same way? Let’s say that God has delivered us from a deadly automobile accident in a way we could not have engineered ourselves. Yet the next day, when we have no funds to take care of a large mortgage payment, we fall into anxiety and worry.

We rejoice in God’s ability to heal someone else’s broken marriage. But, when it comes to healing us from a dangerous infection, we react with a “Can God heal?” response.

In spite of our faithless reaction, our powerful God treats our doubts with patience and love. And, He graciously reveals Himself to us. As He said to Moses, in Numbers 11:23, He often says to us:

The Lord answered Moses, “Is the Lord’s arm too short? You will now see whether or not what I say will come true for you.”

In this situation, God revealed Himself to His people, so that their faith might be strengthened. Recorded in Numbers 11:31-32:

Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea. It brought them down all around the camp to about three feet above the ground, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they spread them out all around the camp.

We waste so much time, and spend so much energy, worrying about how God can possibly take care of our needs. If we would just remember all the answers to prayer we’ve already seen and then remind ourselves that we serve the same God who lived with Moses and the people in the wilderness. We need to say, “Can God spread a table in the desert? Yes. His arm is not too short to take care of our needs.” Praise be to God.

 

 

I'll Be Back!

 

	“Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
	—Acts 1:11

I must have had an undo fear of abandonment as a child. Certainly, I should have felt as secure as any little girl could possibly feel. Yet, I often had a difficult time with separation anxiety.

I can remember riding the school bus to my piano teacher’s house after school on Tuesdays for my lesson. My mom always picked me up at the teacher’s house after I finished. But, I can remember times when she got delayed, for one reason or another, and I had to stand in my teacher’s dining room and watch the road for her. Sometimes I thought she’d never come for me.

I also remember crying to my first grade teacher when she lined us up for the bus at the end of the day. “Would my mother remember to walk to the bus stop for me?” I blubbered. But, my mom always came.

Jesus assured His disciples of His eventual return. He never told them when, but we know from His promise that He will return in the clouds to get His faithful servants.

In John 14:1-2, Jesus promised:

“‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me.’”

Do you watch for Jesus as eagerly as a child waits for a parent? Maybe your parent never returned to you like my mom always did, and you have a very good reason to feel separation anxiety! Not so with your Heavenly Parent. What He says He will do.

We can be confident that Jesus will come back for us and that He has a beautiful place designed for us where we will dwell with Him for all eternity. He expects us not only to eagerly watch for Him, but to be ready.

As He told us in Luke 12:40:

“You must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

In the busyness of our lives, we need to remember to keep our eyes open for all that God wants to do in us and through us, while we watch for His final appearing. This we know for certain: He’ll be back!

 

 

Constant Laundry

 

But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate!

—Luke 15:22-24

Each young mother knows a thing or two about constant laundry. No sooner has she taken the last load from the dryer, when her baby makes a mess of the peas on a nice clean onesie.

God must feel that way about us. No sooner does He get us cleaned up from our most recent sin, than here we come with another misdeed to confess. The process seems endless.

Hopefully, like a baby, the older we grow in our relationship with God, the less messes we make. Of course, as long as we live on this earth, we will always continue to sin because of the sin nature we inherited from Adam. So, that rule doesn’t always apply with our sinful selves—though we can listen to, and learn from, the leading of the Holy Spirit, in order to put away as many of our sins as possible.

The Prodigal Son in the parable from Luke 15 had eventually ended up living in filth in a foreign land. In fact, the Bible says the unwise decision he made to leave home and follow his own rebellious will saw him ending up feeding pigs, wallowing with them, and wishing for their slop to fill his own stomach.

Yet each day, the father of the Prodigal looked longingly in the distance, hoping to see his son. He waited for his son’s return and his son’s repentance.

When his son finally came to his senses and came home, his father took off his son’s rags and brought out the best robe. I like the way a Puritan writer expressed this: ¹

I am always going into the far country,

and always returning home as a prodigal,

always saying, Father, forgive me,

and thou art always bringing forth the best robe.

Every morning let me wear it,

every evening return in it,

go out to the day’s work in it,

be married in it,

be wound in death in it,

stand before the great white throne in it,

enter heaven in it shining as the sun.

During this Season of Lent, when our minds are brought back to our all-too-natural propensity to sin, let us run to the Father and confess our rebellious misdeeds, knowing the experience the Prodigal had of being welcomed and celebrated with the best robe—the robe of Christ’s righteousness!

______________________

1 Bennett, Arthur, Ed. The Valley of Vision. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1975. p. 76.

 

 

Ashes

 

The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor … to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair … for the display of his splendor.

—Isaiah 61:1-3

I doubt that modern day Americans think much about ashes. I remember reading that my poor Dutch ancestors, while they cleared the land in the mid-nineteenth century, traded ashes used in making lye for essential goods. In the mid-twentieth century, I remember that my grandmother and mother, both with wood stoves in their kitchens, would have to “take the ashes out” to clean the stove bed. If you have an old-fashioned wood fireplace, you know that process. Now, in nearly the mid-twenty-first century, we rarely think about the uses of ashes at all.

In Scripture, we read about those who would “repent in sackcloth and ashes.” This sign of humility and sorrow that led to repentance, as well as an indication of religious fervor, had godly people actually sitting in a pile of ashes and dumping the ashes over their heads. After God allowed Satan to take Job’s family, his livelihood, and his health from him—afflicting Job with horrible boils all over his body—these words from the Job 2:8 tell us:

Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.

From the word pictures of repentance like this one, the Christian church has taken the custom of receiving ashes on the forehead of believers on Ash Wednesday. We learn that, like our sin, ashes produce a mark not easily removed. Our Savior wants us to remember the deep stain of our sin and the extreme effort it took for Him to remove that stain.

Not only does Jesus want to remove the filth of sin from us and “take out the ashes,” He wants to replace that filth with beauty—His beauty. What kind of black marks mar our beauty?

We must stop and consider that Christ wants to cleanse us and trade the ashes of our sin for the “essential goodness” of His beauty. According to our opening passage of Scripture, God intends “the display of his splendor” to come from our attention to this cleansing process.

May our soon-to-be-worn glorious Easter garments show forth radiant praise to God, with which He has replaced our Lenten ashes!