“So Jesus, knowing that they were going to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone. Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, and after getting into a boat, they began to cross the sea to Capernaum. It had already become dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. And the sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. Then, when they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened. But He said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” (John 6:15–20, LSB)
Last night, while half way across the country, I received weather alerts telling me that there was a growing threat that tornadoes were possible back home. I saw the weather map in the morning when I passed by the TV screen in the hotel lobby and the dark red spots over home made me a little concerned—but these things always seem to pass by, right?
Last night the text appeared on my phone: “We are going down [into the basement]. Please pray.” The accompanying photo of an emergency weather alert didn’t settle my heart: “National Weather Service: TORNADO WARNING in this area until 10:45 PM EDT. Take shelter now in a basement of an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building…”
After feeding 5,000 men, not counting women and children, Jesus knew that the people wanted to make him their king. I wondered, what kind of king could they have wanted? Israel was under Roman occupation and a part of the Empire, though they wouldn’t have accepted that truth. Surely they didn’t think Jesus would become the new Emperor of Rome. The Herodian Dynasty was still active, and Herod was called a “king” even though he ruled locally at the pleasure of Rome. Would Jesus simply take Herod’s place as the “king of the Jews” in Palestine? The more I think about it, not only did Jesus refuse to allow them to make him their king because he needed to be crucified for the sins of men, but add to that the fact that the type of king the people wanted was far too small of an office for Jesus. He wasn’t satisfied to simply be a king, or the king of the Jews, or even the Emperor of Rome. No, Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. The people weren’t thinking big enough.
That may have been why John shows his readers that Jesus crossed the sea in a storm by walking upon the water. Jesus was overqualified to be a simple client-king. He was too powerful to fit into the hierarchy of rulers and petty lords that dotted the earth in those days. The God-Man who can feed his people, had complete power over nature. He was not scared of the storm as the disciples in their little fishing boat were. Of course not. He made that body of water, and he commanded the wind and the waves. He wasn’t a victim of gravity and didn’t need to obey the laws of nature that say a man’s mass is heavier than water. Just like he was Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus is Lord over all, so that even the wind and the seas obey him.
After I prayed for my family—and pray I did!—I was able to rest. I didn’t have the best night of sleep, but I slept. Being half-way across the country reminds a person that they are helpless to do anything to help. But had I been huddled in the basement with my wife and daughters, what would I have done if a tornado had touched down in our neighborhood? I was powerless to help them—either away or at home.
But as I called out to the One who has all power, who is greater than any earthly king or president or prime minister, I was reminded of the final words of Jesus above as I prayed, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
“Then the heart of the king of Aram was enraged over this thing; and he called his servants and said to them, “Will you not tell me which of us is for the king of Israel?” And one of his servants said, “No, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.” So he said, “Go and see where he is, that I may send and take him.” And it was told to him, saying, “Behold, he is in Dothan.” (2 Kings 6:11–13, LSB)
Elisha was a prophet of God, and as far as prophets go, the Lord was very powerful through him. In 2 Kings 6, this is shown through several vignettes about how God did miracles through the hands of this man of God.
In the above account, Elisha spoils the plans of the Arameans by warning the King of Israel when an ambush was set for him and his army. Clearly God, who is all knowing and nothing is hidden from his sight, was sharing this military intelligence with his man Elisha so that he could warn the Israelite king.
Elisha’s field reports were so accurate that the King of Aram was certain that he had a spy in his midst. “…Which of us is for the king of Israel?” It was an obvious conclusion to come to under the circumstance. If the battle plans are made known to the enemy, clearly there is a leak. But there is a twist in the plot. No one among the Arameans is being unfaithful. There is no spy.
Somehow, the servants had found out that the source of the leak was not among them, but was the prophet Elisha. This man of God was so privy to the king’s secret plans that even if something was spoken of in the innermost chambers of the king’s bedroom, Elisha would know about it.
Okay, we understand that much. But what is dumbfounding to me is the way the Aramean king sought to fix this intelligence leak—by silencing Elisha. It shouldn’t be hard because his location wasn’t a secret. They knew exactly what town he was in, and where to find him.
So, the king who couldn’t keep a secret from God was now demanding that his soldier go and arrest this prophet…Do you see the hole in his logic? Would they sneak up on him? Perhaps wear camouflage? Ninja-style?
In the next section of the account, we find out that Elisha wasn’t surprised. Why not? Because God isn’t blind and he’s not deaf either. Of course, the Lord could have allowed Elisha to be completely ignorant of the plans. But he didn’t let that happen.
Back to the king. He knew God saw and heard everything. He knew God was telling Elisha his plans. And yet he thought he could somehow swoop in and surprise Elisha and arrest or maybe kill him?
The Bible is filled with examples of how sin makes us stupid. Life is filled with even more examples. I’ll probably prove this truth myself, today. I hope I don’t. But I am not sinless, and neither are you, dear reader. We will mess up, and we will need the blood of Jesus to forgive us again.
But that’s not the point of this little article. The point is that we can’t hide our sins from God. We might be able to hide them from others, maybe for a long time. But God knows and sees. All of it. Doing dumb stuff is a result of our fallen nature. But acting like God doesn’t see it all? That’s truly stupid.
“And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh will be restored to you and you will be clean. But Naaman was furious and went away and said, “Behold, I said to myself, ‘He will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of Yahweh his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abanah and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in wrath. Then his servants approached and spoke to him and said, “My father, had the prophet spoken with you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy and he was clean. (2 Kings 5:10–14, LSB)
O how we love our religious rituals. The more complex and complicated, the better.
The scene was simple. Naaman wanted to be healed of his leprosy and he had heard that there was a man of God in Israel who could do what no one else could do. So, piling up all the things you think you need, a letter of introduction, lavish gifts to help grease the wheels of the prophet and to motivate a positive response, and a long, arduous trek through arid lands to show that he was serious about being healed. When Namaan finally arrived, he must have been filled with expectation and hope.
But when the man of God didn’t even come out of his house, instead sending his servant with a message, the sick man was disappointed. Then there was the instructions—go and bathe in the Jordan river, washing seven times. In case you don’t know it, the Jordan is brown, not crystal clear. Now, Namaan grew angry. After all, he was an important man back home. Couldn’t the prophet at least come out and speak to him? And bathe in a dirty river? What about the rituals, the odd dances, potions, sparks, incantations, beads, smoke, chants…but nothing? Just take a bath in this muddy river?
Namaan almost left in disgust. We do love our rituals.
But rituals don’t heal. Neither do clear or muddy rivers. And for that matter, neither do prophets or servants of prophets. Only God has the power to heal. And God works on faith.
When his servants saw his anger and frustration, they knew they would soon be heading back home, and Namaan would still be leprous. So, they tried to reason with their master. “If the prophet had come out and made you swing a chicken over your head and then drink water upside down while you sang “Ave Maria,” would you have done it?” “Well, yes of course,” reasoned the soldier. Now that would be a proper ritual!
“Then, since we have come all this way, why wouldn’t you do the simple thing, trust the man of God, and simply wash as he asked in the Jordan river.”
You know, for some people, faith is too simple. Just trusting that Jesus died in your place for the forgiveness of sins is too easy. We need to do something. Self-flagellation or penance of some sort must be necessary. One hundred “Hail Mary’s” or skip chocolate for a month. I mean, I’ve been bad, but not as bad as that guy, we reason. But just believe? Just trust? It’s too easy! Just place my faith in the finished death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus? There’s got to be more. After all, there’s no such thing as a free lunch!
It’s true. The forgiveness of all our sins, which is more complicated than cleansing from leprosy, did cost more. It cost the life of the Son of God, who willingly gave it because of love, by dying on the cross. There’s nothing more you can do other than receiving this free gift.
When Namaan went into the muddy waters of the Jordan, he came out with skin as soft as a baby’s bottom. And when we come to Christ by faith alone in what he has done, trusting in Him, not our own works, our heart will emerge white as snow. It’s that simple.
“Moreover, Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “Please inquire first for the word of Yahweh.” Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them, “Shall I go against Ramoth-gilead to battle or shall I refrain?” And they said, “Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not yet a prophet of Yahweh here that we may inquire of him?”” (1 Kings 22:5–7 LSB)
As I was reading the passage above, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before in my previous readings in 1 Kings.
King Jehoshaphat requested that King Ahab first inquire about the will of God before agreeing to go to war with him. Ahab obliged by calling 400 so-called prophets who told him that the Lord approved of the war.
But Jehoshaphat was not fooled. Something didn’t sit right with the message these prophets gave. The text doesn’t tell us why, but Jehoshaphat didn’t accept these 400 prophets as speaking from the Lord. As a matter of fact, this is what caught my eye.
Again, it says in verse 7, “But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not yet a prophet of Yahweh here that we may inquire of him?”” It is almost as if the king told Ahab, “Yes, yes, I have heard the popular opinion of all these men, but…don’t you have any actual prophets of Yahweh, or only these fakers? I’d actually like to hear what Yahweh has to say.”
Ahab doesn’t seem to be confused because he knows that his sleight of hand trick hasn’t worked. He knows that he has been keeping the good stuff in the back and hasn’t brought out the real prophet of Yahweh. Ahab wasn’t looking for truth, only for a confirmation of his preconceived plans.
You know, some people claim to want the truth, but they want their truth, as the current foolishness of our day would say. But the truth is a stubborn thing. Something is either true or it is not. And the number of people you get to back a lie doesn’t increase its truthfulness. A lie is always a lie no matter how many false prophets can lip-sync in unison the siren song of the culture or popular opinion.
We need to ask ourselves this as well. Do I really want to know the truth, or am I wanting to fit in, to follow with the cool crowd (whoever the “cool kids” might currently be)?
Appeals to “science” or straw man arguments, or the number of books written or Instagram followers may sway those who want to affirm their own preconceived notions, but popularity and doctrine don’t equal truth. Whether it is the cultural doctrines of gender politics, abortion, or feminism, or the theological doctrines of eschatology, pneumatology, or ecclesiology. Memes don’t prove the truth. Mic drop blog posts and Facebook rants bring more heat than light.
What we need is to hear a true prophet of Yahweh speak. God has spoken, and He has done so perfectly in His Word. So, instead of gathering polemics and talking points from Fox News, CNN, Twitter, or YouTube, for those of us called out by Christ, let’s open our Bibles and listen to God speak.
Although the tradition of Thanksgiving is being attacked like every other tradition in our land, it is still generally recognized that the holiday points back to the celebration of the pilgrims in the New World in 1621. The official holiday didn’t come about until a proclamation was made by President George Washington in 1789, although it was later discontinued. It wasn’t until 1828 that a campaign was begun to restore Thanksgiving as a national holiday, and formalized when it was proclaimed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln to be the official National Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday of November. What a roller coaster!
But even this wasn’t the first thanksgiving. We could go all the way back to the time of King David, found in 1Chronicles 16 to see another Day of Thanks that came far before Lincoln made his proclamation.
Israel’s King David had finally found peace from the homicidal Saul and his foreign enemies. He moved into Jerusalem and had built a house for himself. Life was good for the king! He had finally brought the Ark of the Covenant into the city and placed it into a special tent made especially for the worship of the Lord.
In a spirit of great thankfulness and gratitude, David offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings to His God. He distributed gifts of food to everyone in the nation of Israel, and along with these national festivities, David brought in musicians and singers to offer songs of praise to the Lord. This song, written by David is also found in Psalm 105.
As we begin to prepare our hearts for this season of thanks, I wanted to take the first five verses of this song of praise (vv. 8-12), and direct your heart, dear reader, to worship the Lord, as David sought to direct the hearts of his people.
As Christians, we are to have a thankful heart on a daily basis, and David would have agreed. But Thanksgiving in the U.S. is a special day set aside so that we might dedicate our hearts heavenward, because of all the people on earth, we as sinners saved by unmerited grace should be the most thankful for his electing grace and mercy.
In today’s post, I’d like to share with you Five Ways Which We as Believers Can Show Thankfulness in Our Lives
1. Depend Upon His Strength For Your Needs (v. 8a)
“Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name;”
Part of giving thanks is recognizing that the Lord’s past gifts are a reminder of His future provision. It is interesting how quickly we forget the Lord’s past provision as we grow anxious about our future. Israel struggled with this as well. Look at Exodus 15:11 in what is called the Song of Moses. It says, “Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” Later, in verse 22 it says, “Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water.”
Did you see how long has passed? Three days! Verses 23-24 continue, “When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” What happened to the great God they sang about only a few days earlier?
And we are the same sometimes, aren’t we? We gather on a Sunday and sing “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing, our helper, he amidst the flood of mortal ills prevailing.” And then we go home, and a few days later crumble in despair over our situations, trials, and circumstances.
We need to understand that our thanks and praise must not only look backward, but forward. We must thank the Lord and praise him for what he will do in our unforeseen future. Give him thanks for future grace–those blessings and the strength that you have not yet received, but like manna, we will receive in due time according to his perfect will.
2. Declare How He Has Answered Your Prayers (v. 8b)
“make known his deeds among the peoples!”
We ought to start thanksgiving in how we talk with one another, shouldn’t we? Part of stirring one another up in the community of saints is to share not only our needs but also the glorious ways in which the Lord answered our prayers. We have seen the miraculous deeds of God over and over again. Our living Savior has heard our prayers and satisfied our needs repeatedly. We should have words of praise and thanksgiving constantly on our lips.
But in this song, David was speaking primarily about our testimony to the unbelieving world. “The peoples” is a reference to the nations outside of Israel, the pagan world. Spurgeon wrote, “Let the heathen hear of our God, that they may forsake their idols and learn to worship him.”
Do you remember the name Dr. Kent Brantly? He was the Samaritan’s Purse doctor who recovered from the deadly Ebola virus that he had contracted while working with Ebola patients in Liberia, Africa. In 2015, Dr. Brantly and his wife published a book of their account, and Time Magazine wrote a short story about it. Listen as Dr. Brantly declares how God answered his and many others’ prayers:
“I know that some consider it controversial for me to claim that God saved my life when I had received an experimental drug and some of the greatest medical care available in the world. I can see how these two realities appear to contradict each other. I also feel the dissonance with claiming God saved my life while thousands of others died. These issues are not clear-cut for me. I wrestle with these tensions… Some may call it a grand coincidence, and I couldn’t argue against them. But when I see the unlikely and highly improbable events that occurred—not only during my illness, but also for decades preceding the Ebola epidemic in West Africa—I see the hand of God at work, and I give him the credit.” [http://time.com/3965989/ebola-survivor-brantly-book/]
Most of us won’t ever get that sort of stage to declare the glory of God to the world. But we have a small stage of unbelieving family, friends, and co-workers who are watching and listening. We need to declare to them how God has been working in our lives, so that as Spurgeon said, “that they may forsake their idols and learn to worship him.”
3. Direct Your Praises to Him Alone (v. 9)
“Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works!”
Now, this might mean that we need to make sure that we don’t do what Israel did in Exodus 32, in redirecting our worship from God to something else, like a golden calf. This can happen the way it did for the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 3:3-5, where there were different factions in the same church, who weren’t really worshipping Christ, but their favorite teachers. That is a real danger for some.
But there is another pitfall that we need to avoid. We can see it in Jesus’ parable in Luke 18:9-12, where Jesus speaks about the Pharisee and the tax collector. Although this is called a parable by Luke, this scenario probably was enacted many times right before the people who frequented the temple. The godly-looking Pharisee prays with arms extended, speaking in pious tones, while the tax collector stood off in a corner looking as guilty as he was before God. To the casual observer or even the so-called worshipper, this looks like thanksgiving and praise. But it isn’t, is it? It’s self-worship and congratulations.
We need to be aware that when we sing or pray or speak about the Lord that we aren’t twisting worship to God into worship of self. We see this when a musician is all about himself, absorbing all the attention and praise–as he supposedly sings to “the Lord.”
Instead, we need to focus all our attention and praise on the Lord alone. Listen to Spurgeon again, “Bring your best thoughts and express them in the best language to the sweetest sounds. Take care that your singing is “unto him,” and not merely for the sake of the music or to delight the ears of others. Singing is so delightful an exercise that it is a pity so much of it should be wasted upon trifles or worse than trifles. O ye who can emulate the nightingale, and almost rival the angels, we do most earnestly pray that your hearts may be renewed that so your floods of melody may be poured out at your Maker’s and Redeemer’s feet.”[C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David: Psalms 88-110, vol. 4 (London; Edinburgh; New York: Marshall Brothers, n.d.), 336.]
4. Delight Yourself in God More Than Just His Gifts (vv. 10-11)
“Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!”
Notice the focus here, “Glory in his holy name….those who…seek the Lord (2x)….seek his presence.” Today we will find ourselves giving thanks for many blessings and gifts, and we should. But our love and the thanksgiving that accompanies it, should be more for God and not only for what he can and has given to us.
Remember what it says in Habbakuk 3:17-19? “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.” (Habakkuk 3:17–19, ESV)
Our ultimate joy and thanks should be for receiving Christ as our Savior and Redeemer. That is the best gift we have ever or will ever receive. Everything else is simply grace upon grace. Jesus said, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?” (Mark 8:36–37, ESV).
5. Dwell on What the Lord Has Said and Done (v. 12)
“Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles and the judgments he uttered,”
Our struggle with being discontent is usually a memory problem. The root of our discontentedness is most often found in our unwillingness or inability to recall all that the Lord has already said to us and done for us.
I always think it’s a perfect sign of the self-centered world we live in that the day after “Thanksgiving” we have the biggest shopping day of the year. We are thankful, but we must have more! And we as Christians can get sucked up into that same attitude. Instead of dwelling on the eternal blessings and gifts given to us, we look at the flashy bobbles everyone else seems to have and we want to know why we don’t have them. We want to know how we can have them. And it’s not just tangible “stuff” that we crave. We crave prestige, power, influence, friends.
But listen to the prophet Jeremiah: “Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”” (Jeremiah 9:23–24, ESV)
Our greatest riches are not from the Lord: our greatest riches is the fact that we know the Lord. Let us give thanks for this most magnificent gift!
Always Reforming 