This is the twelfth post in a series that I am doing based on the lives of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the accounts of which are found in the book of Genesis. In spite of the title of this series, the record of the experiences of the men listed above are only incidental to me. What I find far more interesting, relevant, and important is the revelation of the character and nature of God that we can see by observing these men's lives. Each post will coincide with a lesson being taught in a classroom. As such, they will not be in a traditional essay format. Rather, it will be a slightly expanded version of the notes that I hand out in class.
The Genesis Account
Gen. 17:17 – The reality of the biblical record is
that men like Abraham, although praised in scripture for their faith, were very
deficient in the “day-to-day” application of that faith. In this case, the patriarch actually has a
period of doubt and laughs at God’s promise.
It is fascinating that the Hebrew word used here to describe Abraham’s
laughter is the root of the word that would eventually become Isaac’s
name. There is a duality of implication to
be seen here in the naming of the promised child. First, it served as a continual reminder to
Abraham of the fact that he had once doubted.
Second, it represents the transformation of doubting and mocking
laughter into believing and rejoicing laughter when the birth came to pass.
Gen. 18:12-15 – Sarah laughed at the Lord’s
promises. Do you see what she is doing
here? She is taking her understanding of
reality and applying it to her assessment of the validity of the truth claims
of God. In effect, Sarah was “wise in
her own eyes”. Is there anything more
ridiculous than for a human being with severe limitations both in capacity to
comprehend truth and in ability to evaluate truth to elevate their own
deficient ideas to a higher plane than God’s?
In fact, ridiculous is too polite of a word to use in describing this
type of thinking. The Bible doesn’t call
it ridiculous, it calls it evil.
Supporting Scriptures
Pro. 3:7 –
There two emphatic logical links in this passage. On the one hand we have over estimating the
worth of one’s own wisdom being equated with evil. On the other hand we have rightly estimating
the worth of God’s wisdom being equated with good. There is no middle ground. To count ourselves as wise is the opposite of
fearing the Lord. And when we fear the
Lord that action is described as a turning away from evil. Therefore, if we do not fear the Lord, seen
here by implication as being wise in our own eyes, then we are in fact doing
nothing less than turning to evil.
2 Pet. 3:3-10 –
Human patience is defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay,
trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” This definition is insufficient to describe
the divine patience of God. It is true
that God does not become unjustly angry.
However, to say that He tolerates delay, trouble, or suffering is to
imply that He is affected by the passage of time, the presence of conflict, or
the intrusion of distress; all of which are patently false when applied to God. In fact, I think that even describing Himself
as patient, as He does here in 2 Peter, is a bit of an anthropomorphism in
which God ascribes to Himself a human characteristic for the purpose of helping
us to understand Him better.
Questions For Meditation
What does Abraham and Sarah’s
laughter imply about their belief in the promises of God
This is pretty obvious. They didn’t believe Him. They placed their own understanding in a
position of higher importance and relevance than their trust in God’s promises.
What would be a modern day
evangelical Christian equivalent to the mocking laughter that Abraham and Sarah
displayed?
With this question I am very
specifically referring to people who are already Christians. I am not talking about unbelievers who do not
place their faith and trust in Christ. I
believe the parallel today with the behavior exhibited by Abraham and Sarah is
behavior exhibited by authentic practicing Christians. They were the ancient, pre-incarnation and
pre-new covenant equivalents of modern day believers. As such, the best way to apply the timeless
truth of what they experienced then is to line it up alongside what we
Christians experience today.
With that being said, I believe the
manner in which we express the same tendency to doubt and dishonor what God has
said is through our worry. We will
define worry later. But for now let’s
just operate on the assumption that it, whatever it is, is wrong. We can rest assured of this truth when we
consider the teachings of Jesus.
Specifically, in Matthew 6:25-34 our Lord gives us a thorough debunking
of the human tendency to worry. He pointedly
asks a series of rhetorical questions designed to make us feel ashamed of our
unbelief:
i) Isn’t
life more than just food?
ii) Isn’t the body more than just
clothing?
iii) Aren’t we more important than birds?
iv) Doesn’t God care for us more than for
flowers?
Jesus then follows with an absolutely
blistering epithet: “You of little faith!”
It is as if we are children who, due to their overpowering terror of the
dark refuse to trust the word of their parents that there is nothing to
fear. This was, quite frankly, a
manipulative statement designed to do nothing less than to cause shame and
embarrassment in the hearts and minds of His audience. It ought to do the same to us.
The astonishing fact that God did not
execute discipline upon Abraham and Sarah for their unbelief should drive us to
consider how patient and longsuffering He is with His children. In light of that, how does this attribute of
God give us a detailed road map for exactly how to live worry free lives?
There are a few preliminary steps we
need to take in attempting to answer this question. We need to define, from a human perspective,
what it is to wait and to worry. This
will give us an understanding of what it means to have patience, again from a
human perspective. Then will follow the
all-important step of considering how the patience of God contrasts with this.
The human concept of waiting is like
this. We have a desire for a thing to
occur immediately. However, we have no
power to make that longed for thing happen.
Therefore we are required to “wait” for a force outside of ourselves (e.g.
time, another person, circumstances, even God) to act in such a way as to cause
the effect we are desiring. Seen in this
light, to wait is to live with unsatisfied yearning.
On the flip side, human worry is
exactly the opposite. We have a desire
for something not to occur immediately.
In fact, we would usually like it, whatever it is, to never occur. And similarly to waiting, due to our
inability to shape reality as we wish we are forced to live in perpetual dread
of the undesired situation coming to pass.
So then, to be patient, from a human
point of view, is to be content in our uncertainty. It is to relax in the face of the
unknown. It is to laugh at the future,
not mockingly or dismissively, but confidently and joyfully. And over-arching all of this is the reality
that human patience is born out of delay, trouble, and/or suffering as
indicated in the definition given above.
But this is inadequate and inaccurate
when considering the patience of God. He
is timeless, having existed before the presence of time itself. James 1:17 describes God as having “no
variation or shifting shadow” in a nod to the passage of the sun across the sky
and the resultant movement of a creature’s shadow upon the ground. God is omnipotent, tolerating no opposition
to His will. Proverbs 21:30 is quite
plain: “there is no wisdom and no understanding and no counsel against the
Lord.” And God is holy, experiencing no
imperfection or blemish that would lead to suffering. In fact, as Habakkuk 1:13 points out, God is
too pure (holy) to even approve evil and He cannot look on wickedness with
favor.
2 Peter 3:3-10 expresses the idea of
God’s patience quite well. By the word
of God the heavens were created in ancient times. By the word of God the world was destroyed by
water. By the word of God the present
creation is destined for fiery destruction.
And all of this has happened or will happen at the precise timing and
placement of God’s own choosing. Again
turning to Habakkuk 2:3 God tells the prophet that “The vision is yet for the
appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will
certainly come, it will not delay.”
There is no hint of pent up desire with God. There is no trace of opposition to His
sovereign will. And there is no presence
of anguish over the outcome of events past, present, or future. Every event in the history of the world has occurred
at exactly the time God intended for it to happen. Thus the underpinning of human patience is
completely stripped away when it comes to the Lord.
This is the key to living a worry
free life. We must become so consumed
with God that every circumstance, every encounter, every desire, every
experience of our lives is viewed through the lens of His revealed
character. As John Piper puts it, we
must cultivate a “God entranced worldview”.
Our goal must be to emulate the timeless, smooth, and painless patience
of God by clinging to Him exclusively and tenaciously. Whether we can attain to that goal in this
life or not is completely irrelevant. As
Paul makes quite clear in 1 Corinthians 9:24 our mandate is to prepare as
runners before a race with the full intention and expectation of winning that
race. This is what Jesus meant in His
sermon on the mount that we looked at earlier when, in Matthew 6:33 He said to
“seek first His kingdom and His righteousness”.
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