Predictable / Unpredictable God

I was reading a sermon yesterday afternoon and in the introduction was this passage:

"When we feel that we have some great need, we mould God to the shape of that need and then expect that God is going to meet that particular need, and sometimes in your experience and mine, He doesn’t because we’ve simply invented our own Jesus. It isn’t what His strategy and purpose is … to meet that particular need in our lives maybe. And so we’re told in John Chapter 1, verse 11, that when Jesus was born, “He came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him.” And the reason they did not receive Him was because He did not meet their predetermined expectancy of what the Messiah would be like. He wasn’t born in a palace of royal parents and going to become a military leader. And they rejected the true Messiah because He did not conform to their own expectancy."

Charles Price- MARY: FROM FEAR TO FAITH TO FULFILLMENT 

It was so good to be reminded of this: Don't make an idol of your expectations and substitute them for Christ.  When we invent our own Jesus, he cannot save us. Don't limit Him to your own "predetermined expectancy" or you will end up rejecting the true Messiah. 

The glory of Christ is in how completely radical He is. He works outside of the "rules" of how we think life is supposed to go. He never works in our lives the way we think He will.  With Christ you must always expect the unexpected. We cannot predict Him. 

I heard another sermon by Charles Price in which he talked about this very thing. Entitled “Following God's Direction”, Price showed how Christ's miracles are not predictable—He works differently every time, and in His miracles, He used many different means to heal those who came to Him: He spoke, touched, even spit. He did not work in predictable ways or have a set formula that He used, but each time someone came to Him in faith, their faith was rewarded.

Price shows that this unpredictable way that God has of working with His people is also demonstrated in the story of Moses and the Rock at Meribah.

The first time (Exodus 17: 6), Moses was told to strike the rock.

5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 

The second time (Numbers 20: 8) he was told to speak to the rock.

and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 8 “Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.” 9 And Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he commanded him.

Moses decided that he knew how this was supposed to work.

10 Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” 11 And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock. “

It worked—but that was not how God had wanted him to give water to His people.

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” (Number 20:12)

Moses didn't believe-- He did not have faith in God's power to do what He said He would.

In 1 Cor 10: 4, Paul tells us that “the Rock was Christ.” This Rock is our fount of Living Water.

The lesson Price says is that we must not come to Christ the same way each time—we cannot just come to the crucified Christ, but must come to the risen Christ. We must come not just to a slain Sacrifice but to a victorious Saviour. Christ died once for all. By striking the Rock the second time, Moses implied that this one Sacrifice was not enough. To get the Living Water of salvation from this Rock of Christ, we must follow God's directions.

Lately God has been teaching me to trust in His immutability. God is ever the same (Ps. 102: 27); this is part of what makes Him God. (See A.W. Tozer's excellent book The Knowledge of the Holy  for more on this.)

He demands that we trust in HIS unchanging nature by following His leading each time—we cannot just “do what worked” the last time—cannot stay with the traditions, and be hide-bound and static.

This was the sin of the Pharisees: blind faith in “tradition.” They thought they could just do what they had always done. They thought they could predict what the Messiah would be like, how He would come, etc. But they were dead wrong.

He is our LIVING God. He is Unchanging, yet dynamic and unpredictable. He demands our trust in Him through every situation. There is no formula for Christian living. No “do this if this happens”, “do that if that happens”, etc. 

God guides us and teaches us in ways we do not expect. (Isa 30: 21)

Living in obedience is a matter of trust. Trusting God that even when obeying Him is difficult or painful, He knows what is right. If we do what is right in our own eyes, we will always fall.

God wants people who will do what is right in His eyes (Exodus 15: 26; 1 Kings 11:38; 1 Kings 14: 8; 1 Kings 15: 5). All the good kings of Israel are said to have done “what was right in the eyes of the Lord.”

We are to look to Him.

Like Peter walking on the sea—once we take our eyes off of Christ, we will sink. Peter “forgot” that Christ was the Son of God and ruled the wind and the waves, reverting back to believing the “rules” of nature—you can't walk on water, it is not possible— and he began to sink.

He is always predictable in His character, but He is unpredictable in how He deals with us. We can't anticipate what He will do with us. Like C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan—He is not a tame lion. He will do whatever is necessary to bring us to Himself.

AS we are all individuals so He treats us individually. However, He demands the same thing of all of us—obedience and love. He demands our worship—not because He needs it, but because of Who He is.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrew 12:1-2

Refining

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. Isa 48:10

For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. Ps. 22:24

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:20-21

It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. Ps. 119:71

“Affliction is both a medicine if we sin, and a preservative that we sin not.”
–Richard Hooker, The Works of Richard Hooker: Tractates and Sermons

Affliction is a tool of punishing, but also one of teaching. God’s people suffer in the world because they, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, were made for another world. We don’t belong here. We are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”(Heb 11:13) and as such, we do not have a place of our own, a place to hunker down in and stay put. Nothing here on earth can fill the place of God. 

We are temples of Christ here on earth, but we must abide in Him as well.(Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. John 15:4) We are to be anchored in Christ. Our sustenance comes from the Vine: He is the One with roots, we are the wanderers, who find our place in Him.

Too often we attempt to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts with things, be they people, money, possessions, sports, or food. God commands us to worship Him alone, forsaking idols. When we do, we will grow in grace under God’s protection and produce fruit.

Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? [And God says] I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found. Hosea 14:8

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and the thing that keeps coming up is the fact that having possessions and having a desire for certain things (such as marriage) is not wrong, rather it is when we begin treating them like the answer to our emptiness that they become our idols and stumbling blocks.

 A. W. Tozer puts it this way, in his book, The Pursuit of God:

There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things’ with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my’ and `mine’ look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

It is difficult, since very often these things are comfortable and comforting, a refuge from the blows of the world. Just like a child must give up sucking his thumb/soother (or face the inevitable laughter of his school mates), we must give up these false comforters and find our Refuge in the true Comforter. Sometimes, it is necessary to cut ourselves off entirely from these things (Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?) in order to break our dependence on them. We may be able to reintroduce some things back into our lives, but we have to be aware that it will easy to fall back into old habits. The old nature is, as Joanna Weaver says in her book Having a Mary Spirit, our default mode and when we “crash” (as we will do–we’re not perfect after all), it will be the program that turns up most often.

However, we do not have to do this on our own–indeed, we cannot–God places the will and the strength in our hearts to divorce ourselves from these petty “lovers.” In C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan tells Eustace, who has, through loving dragon hoard, turned into a dragon, that before he can enter the pool and become human again,”first you must undress”–remove the dragon scales that cover him. Eustace scrapes away gamely, but each layer removed reveals another underneath. Finally, Aslan offers to help him and Eustace accepts (remaining afraid of the Lion’s sharp claws). The skin Aslan pulls off is much thicker than those Eustace had shed by himself and it hurt when it was removed.

The same thing happens when we scrape away at our old nature, we take away single layers, but God can remove much more with a single “claw”– affliction — in any guise Him choses. Not everyone requires a world-shattering tragedy to remove their dependence on “things.” God uses affliction in our lives to refine us,burning away the dross in our lives in “the furnace of affliction.” God knows how much we can stand and He will adjust the “temperature” to our individual requirements.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted [also can be translated "tested"] above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 1Cor 10:13

God also uses affliction to guide us and bring us closer to Himself.

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: Isa. 30:20

If we, instead of complaining, humble ourselves under His Hand and allow God to show us His working, we will see how “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).

And He will not leave us alone to struggle on blindly, but “will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: [He] will guide thee with [His] eye” (Ps.32:8). Not only will He guide us with His eye, but He will speak to us in a “still, small voice”–

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:21

We may not be aware at the time how God is working, but we may be sure that His purpose is to our future good–we have already been redeemed, now we are just waiting for our Bridegroom to come and take us home.