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
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