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October 18, 2014 |
| God Is In Control | ||
When asked, every Christian will agree "yes, God is in control" but when times are tough we often forget that. When we or the ones we love are in danger, we tend to act impulsively. This applies to physical danger, financial danger, or whatever. It seems that we are prepared to trust the little decisions to God but not the big important ones.
In this lesson we will look at examples from the Bible and learn that God wants us to know that he is in control and to trust that he is in control.
The first person we will look at is the prophet Elijah. Leading up to 1 Kings 19 Elijah had challenged the prophets of Baal and the prophets of Asherah to show the power of their gods. The challenge is to prepare a sacrifice but not light it and leave it to their god to light it. After a long time neither Baal nor Asherah intervene to light the fires of the sacrifices. Elijah prays a short prayer and God sends down fire to consume the sacrifice, the wood, and the alter stones, leaving the ground scorched. At this Elijah commands all Israel drag the prophets of Baal and Asherah (about 850) down to the river where they are slaughtered.
These prophets are friends of Jezebel, the queen, and Baal and Asherah are her gods. She is livid when she hears what has happened. From 1 Kings 19:2
2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."
Now that we are caught up on the story, we see that Elijah is in a life and death predicament. Elijah has just seen God show his power but Elijah is a man like we are. He is truly shaken by this threat from Jezebel - he knows from things she has done before that she can and will make good on the threat.
3 Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, Lord," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." 5 Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.
Many translations leave out part of the Hebrew text at the start of verse 3. It should really begin "When he saw" or "When he discerned" which means when he understood the situation he was in, he became afraid and ran for his life.
Notice that God hasn't told him to run away. This is Elijah's own doing, driven by his fear for his life. There were other times when God acted to preserve people by telling them to go to some safe place. One of many examples was Jesus' own father Joseph. God told him to take the family to Egypt so Herod would not be able to kill the child.
But in this case Elijah is acting on his own. Although Elijah has seen the power of God so recently he is unable to trust God with his life.
Elijah runs from northern Israel all the way to the desert of southern Israel. There I believe he realizes that he is running for fear of his life and not in obedience to God. He is very badly scared - this has really affected him. He prays and says that he has shown that he is no better than his ancestors and asks that his life be ended.
Even though it seems that he knows he is running for his life he continues to run. Eventually he gets to Mount Horeb, also called Mount Sinai, where God made his covenant with Israel and gave them the Ten Commandments and the rest of the law.
9 There he went into a cave and spent the night. And the word of the Lord came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
The first thing God asks of him is "what are you doing here?" God is saying I didn't tell you to come here, so why are you here. God will instruct Elijah and send him back with more work to do.
We are all very much like Elijah. When we are threatened or feel that we are in danger we start to act on our own; we try to save our skin. If God sends us into a dangerous place we think we should take steps to defend ourselves or we should prepare to fight our way out, or we run away and don't do what we are supposed to do.
In these difficult times we have forgotten that God is in control. God is not in control of just the big things or just the little things. God is in control of everything. God knows what is around the next corner. He knew it before he placed you in that situation. He knew it before he created the universe. Satan can only do his evil because God allows it. Nothing can happen to you unless God allows it. God is in complete control.
When you really grasp this you can say with the psalmist in Psalm 23:4
4 Even though I walk through the [valley of the shadow of death], I will fear no evil, for you are with me; …
When you know that God is fully in control you should not let fear control you. Of course thoughts of fear will come upon you, but these should be rejected. Comfort yourself in the knowledge that God is in control.
Some Christians confuse this though. Just because God is in control does not mean that nothing bad will ever happen to us. Some Christians think that God should be like a body guard, making sure that nothing bad ever happens to them. Even the quickest glance into Christian history proves this false. It is believed that all but one of Jesus' apostles died horrible deaths. History is clear that for three centuries Christians were slaughtered, fed to wild animals, tortured, and so on.
We need to understand that it is necessary for sinners to sin in order that God may show his mercy and grace toward them. Sometimes God decides that those sinful acts should fall on us.
These three from Daniel found their lives threatened also. They didn't have the same option to run like Elijah did. But they had the option to worship Nebuchadnezzar's golden image and thereby avoid the death they were threatened with. But fear for their lives had no effect on them. Their response is found in Daniel 3:15-18
15 Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?" 16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, "King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty's hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."
Under threat of death they do not compromise or find a way to wiggle out of God's law.
Paul provides a different example than Elijah. He was the poster child for receiving the sinful acts of sinners. Like Elijah he had the option to run to avoid the persecution. But his response was different and is the model we should follow. From 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 we read:
8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, …
The NIV's lamely worded prose lets us down here again. Another translation does a better job.
9 We passed a sentence of death upon ourselves, that we would not trust upon ourselves, but upon God who raises the dead,
In this translation it is much more clear. Paul, Timothy and whoever else might have been with them, determined that they would rather die than trust in themselves and act to save themselves. Instead they were determined to trust in God. Essentially they made an agreement between themselves that they would serve as God had sent them to do and not act to preserve their lives.
At first this topic may seem unrelated. "There are at least two instances in the Bible where lying produced a favorable result. For example, the lie the Hebrew midwives tell Pharaoh seems to result in the Lord's blessing on them (Exodus 1:15-21), and it probably saved the lives of many Hebrew babies. Another example is Rahab's lie to protect the Israelite spies in Joshua 2:5. […]"
"The most common illustration of this dilemma comes from the life of Corrie ten Boom in Nazi-occupied Holland. Essentially, the story is this: Corrie ten Boom is hiding Jews in her home to protect them from the Nazis. Nazi soldiers come to her home and ask her if she knows where any Jews are hiding. What is she to do? Should she tell the truth and allow the Nazis to capture the Jews she was trying to protect? Or, should she lie and deny that she knows anything about them?"1
In the Bible God does not condone lying in any circumstance including the two above, nor does he praise the people who told these lies.
Lying to protect someone is a human perception. For a Christian it is a failure to trust in God and an attempt to trust in our own means. If you trust in God for your protection is God not able to protect someone else.
We need to fully understand that God knows everything before it happens and what that means for our lives. For the situations that he will allow to come upon us he already knows who will be there, what they will do and say, and what the outcome will be. If you have determined in your heart that you will not lie - he knows that.
Remember that our role model is Jesus, in whom there was no fault. God is truth and there is no lie in him. We know the acronym WWJD (What Would Jesus Do). Well, in those situations where you feel a lie might be acceptable, WWJD?
All of this can be summarized into one bullet point
But out of that come more understandings
1 http://www.gotquestions.org/right-to-lie.html#ixzz2qqvJH7Vv