Our Loving Husbandman

“I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time: [but] they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto [that] shame; and [their] abominations were according as they loved.” (Ho 9:10 AV)

I know a bit about wild grapes.  They need tending.  If wild grapes are not tended to, they become small, bitter, and unfit for human consumption.  Firstripe figs are similar.  The first few yields of a fig tree are not fit for human consumption.  The husbandman must tend to the trees in order to produce usable fruit.  In short, the way God found us in the wilderness of sin required a husbandman to prune, support, water, and fertilize us so that fruit may come of our lives.  Someone once said that growing up is hard to do.  It is.  There are many hard lessons to learn.  There are many painful corrections to make.  We were created in the image of our father, Adam.  We have a wicked streak that runs deep.  We are not acclimated to doing right.  We are naturally bent to do wrong.  To correct who and what we are takes someone with the knowledge to do so and the compassion to know how to do it.  We need a God who loves us enough to allow some are times so that we can produce sweet fruit that benefits God and man.

Down through the years, I have known several parents who gave birth to children with severe disabilities.  Some of these situations require surgery and recovery.  These treatments can last over many years before the child’s physical infirmity is corrected.  One such family that is dear to my heart gave birth to a daughter with a rare condition.  Among other things, this small child had skeletal deformities.  This little girl has had several surgeries and may be facing more surgeries as she nears adulthood.  Each one is rather extensive.  One of the first surgeries saw this poor little girl in a cast from her waist to her ankles.  That made life very hard for her.  As her parents, they knew that inflicting pain early on would save her from a lifetime of pain that would follow.  Surgery to reshape her joints and legs was no doubt very painful.  But the alternative was growing into a permanent state of being a cripple and all the complications that could arise from it.  In short, these loving parents received a daughter whose body was acclimated toward crookedness and deformity and, with a wise and compassionate heart, fixed her.

God finds the sinner in a wild and broken condition.  He finds us in an undisciplined way.  He knows that, like a grapevine left to itself, it would be unproductive and self-destructive.  The compassionate husbandman must correct that which our sinful nature has produced.  The first thing the husbandman does is to remove the grapevines from its source of support.  They often use existing trees as hosts.  In the process, they kill the tree and destroy themselves.  So, the husbandman builds a fence.  He weaves the vine into the fence.  The fence is permanent.  The vine cannot kill it.  The husbandman removes unproductive branches from the vine so they do not drain much needed nourishments from the grape-producing branches.  He ties the lowering branches to the fence so dust or mud doesn’t kill the branches.  There is much that a husbandman does.  Our God does the same thing.  He removes us from the sinful crutches upon which we rely.  He attaches us to the church and our Savior which are far more permanent.  He removes unproductive parts of our lives that hinder Christlikeness.  And He cleanses us from sin that can kill our walk with Him!  Praise the LORD for a Husbandman who found us in our sorry and sinful state.  It is best to yield to His hand, for He knows and cares more than any and all on whom we rely.  Praise the LORD for our Husbandman!

Comfort In Predictable Reconciliation

“I will go [and] return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.” (Ho 5:15 AV)

What puzzles me is why we think that our relationship with the LORD; at least in principle; works differently than any other relationship.  If we deeply offend someone we love, they are not bound to remain as though nothing happened.  There is an offense that needs to be acknowledged and forsaken.  There needs to be forgiveness and reconciliation sought.  For the LORD to put up with our rebellion, disrespect, and lack of faith as though they are nothing is unrealistic.  Quite frankly, it is insulting to God.  Asking Him to open to abuse without and reaction on His part is not right.  The affliction spoken of is the affliction of the absence of God’s presence.  Israel and Judah are left to themselves.  God removes His hand of protection and provision.  They are on their own.  This loneliness will drive the child of God back to His presence. 

There are two things that make this relationship an extra challenge.  First, it is the perfection of God.  In any other relationship, two parties have equal ability to offend the other.  A husband and wife have equal ability to wrong the other.  A parent and child relationship is the same.  Two siblings, friends, or classmates can hurt the other as much as they are hurt themselves.  So, there is equal expectation of humility and conformity.  What makes human relationships easier than one with the Divine is that if we wrong our loved one, we know that eventually, they will wrong us.  Not as retribution or vengeance.  Rather, it is part of being human.  So, we can seek forgiveness because we know that eventually, we will have the privilege of granting it right back.  This is not so with God.  Confessing and forsaking are one-way actions.  God is perfect.  He cannot offend.  If we are offended as something God caused or allowed, then that is on us.  This means that we are constantly humbled before God, and He is never humbled before us.  That is the way it should be!  Yet if we are not careful, pride will stop this in its tracks.  Pride will get sick of apologizing when there is no apology ever, coming from God. 

Second, there is a false idea that God possesses infinite tolerance.  This idea that God accepts us just the way we are is a lie from hell!  He loves us in spite of what we are.  Jesus died because of what we are and intends to change us from what we are to what He wants us to be.  Theology like this cannot see a God who walks away.  All they see is a gracious God who will always put up with our sin.  This is not the God of the Bible.  The opposite side of the coin is just as dangerous.  I came from a tradition that taught an angry God.  There was nothing we could ever do right.  Purgatory was the best we could do.  We had to be perfect in all our ways just for God to acknowledge us.  That is also wrong.  The truth is somewhere in the middle.  God put up with a lot of evil from His chosen people.  He corrected them time and again.  But when they replaced Him with idols of gold and silver, that was it.  God didn’t stick around.  Why would He?  He had been replaced.

The hope and promise of this verse are found in the latter part of it.  For the LORD to make that heavy of an emphatic statement is encouraging.  With complete absolutism, the Father states His children will return quickly once the affliction of their choices catches up with them.  It is not a possibility.  It is not a probability.  It is an absolute certainty.  Praise God!  Once an intimate relationship with God is established, and the goodness of God is experienced, no matter how far the child of God may wander, he will return.  If he does not, there is a real possibility that he was never saved to begin with.  I don’t know about you, but this is the best news I have heard in a long time!  No matter how far from God I get, I’ll always come back.  I have also noticed that the longer the saint walks with God, the less and less those times away become.  Praise be to God for our rubber band relationship with the LORD!

Only Truth Delivers

“A true witness delivereth souls: but a deceitful [witness] speaketh lies.” (Pr 14:25 AV)

The first five words of this proverb are powerful!  The king does not elaborate as to who these souls are or how many the true witness tries to deliver.  There is no guarantee that the true witness will deliver all the souls he encounters.  The comparison isn’t in the results.  Rather, Solomon is making a comparison between the two methods.  One speaks the truth.  The other lies.  The intimation is that the true witness delivers trouble souls, whereas the deceitful witness does not.  The difference is in truth versus error.

Truth is in short supply.  We have seen this especially over the last few decades.  Error is the ground of grand conspiracy theories.  Sometimes, poor practices are a result of simply not knowing better.  We have a practice that may have seemed right at the time, but upon further inspection and research, it is discovered there is a better way.  In fact, the current path causes more harm than good.  This is especially true in the field of medicine.  The protocols change over time.  More research is conducted, and it is discovered that the current standard of care does not have the results hoped for, and may even introduce more complications.  This is very common.  It is not necessarily the healthcare professional or the facility that governs treatment that is directly responsible.  They are working of an industry standard that has not evolved into the best care possible.  Treatments are often changed because what the scientist thought was true turned out to be false.  There simply wasn’t enough data, or the data was skewed by an unknown stimulus that the best care at the time did not deliver.  Truth always delivers.  Falsehood never does.

Ego gets in the way.  Truth completely delivers, yet few want it.  Falsehood may bring relief without deliverance, and many want that!  The ego, because it wants to be seen as effective, is lulled into using falsehood.  Those who only want relief affirm the value of the false witness.  He is seen as caring and effective.  The reality of it is that a false witness, at best, merely kicks the can down the road.  He doesn’t deliver anyone.  He makes them twofold the child of the devil.  The true witness must take pleasure in the few he delivers more than the many he could not.  He must look at the eternal results rather than the temporal ones.  There are many religious organizations that bring much relief.  But they do not deliver.  They peddle their falsehoods or half-truths and build a following.  They are seen as highly effective.  Yet there is not deep repentance from sin and faith in the Only Way – Jesus!  I don’t know about you, but I don’t like putting a Band-Aid on a serious injury.  I want to heal it.  As one who is entrusted with truth, it is our obligation to share it faithfully.  It is the only way we can deliver the sin-sick soul.

Under Control While We Are Under

“The day [is] thine, the night also [is] thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun.” (Ps 74:16 AV)

Our psalmist’s observation is in the light of oppression.  God is not oppressing.  The enemies of Israel are.  The psalmist cites the active hand of a sovereign God.  This verse, by no means, could support the position of a Deist.  It actually accomplished the opposite.  The writer’s plea for intervention is predicated on the fact that God created all things and controls all things.  God controls all things all the time.  Whether day nor night, the times are His.  They are in His hands, and there is no one who can turn Him.  The psalmist further cites the provision of sovereignty which God provides.  The light and the sun are what governs our time.  The sun governs our day and night.  The stars and moon govern our months and seasons.  To summarize, our sovereign God is in control of time itself.  All that happens is under His direct care.  All things are caused or allowed by His mighty hand.  Nothing gets past our God, nor does anything supersede His power to control it.

Now and again, I am amazed at the human body.  Have you owned anything that ran continuously for seventy to ninety years that was self-maintaining, self-generating, and worked regardless of any outside administration?  Do you realize that from the moment your heart beat for the first time, it hasn’t stopped?  That is amazing!  If I ran my car for that entire duration, it would have eventually stopped.  My lungs, from the moment of my birth have not stopped.  They go on night and day.  They go on without my need to think about it.  When one considers how long our ancient progenitors lived, this truth is mindboggling.  Our first parents lived over nine-hundred years.  For the human heart to beat for nine hundred years without stopping is beyond comprehension.  Now, think how much trust you and I have to go to sleep at night.  If our hearts stopped beating or our lungs stopped breathing, we would not have the ability to call for help.  We would be at the mercy of those around us.  Every night we lay our heads down and place our trust in something we cannot control.  Then we wake up.  Our trust was well-founded.

Our psalmist speaks great comfort to us.  During the times we cannot interact with our environment, God has it all.  It is all under His sovereign control.  Most of life is out of our control.  We can choose.  We can act.  We can interact.  But the outcome is never guaranteed.  God controls it all.  It is not so much His control while I sleep that I find comforting.  Rather, if I can totally surrender to the LORD and close my eyes for a much-needed time of rest, there should be no reason to do that same while I am awake.  As the moon and stars govern the times of the night, the sun governs the time of day.  They are set and controlled by the sovereign hand of Jehovah.  If I can rest at night, I must be at spiritual and emotional rest during the day.  He has this!  Going to sleep is a great step of faith.  Living in the day is no less.  Trust the Keeper of it all!

Rejecting The Best for the Status Quo

“And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof [shall be] with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” (Da 9:26 AV)

The scriptures are very plain here.  The Jewish Messiah will die for others.  To be cut off is to be cut off from the promises made to Israel.  This means the Messiah must be cut off from the promises to Israel by a judicial act of the Father.  The Messiah must be cut off from the promises made to Israel for the sake of Israel.  What follows is a prophecy regarding the Messianic kingdom that follows a seven-year period.  Putting this all together, the word of Got foretold the death, burial, resurrection, and restoration of the Jewish Messiah for the sake of Israel.  Yet when Jesus Christ came, they either didn’t see it, wouldn’t see it, or did see it and rejected it.  We can pass judgment on Israel for rejecting the obvious, but one has to wonder how many times the New Testament saints are doing the same thing.  Whether it is ignorance, unbelief, or rebellion we can dismiss clear teaching of the word of God for a choice of our own.

There are times we reject something that is perfect for us.  Sometimes we think we have a better option, or that the option we now possess is the best we can have.  Israel was content under the rule of Rome.  In fact, several times the leaders of Israel stirred the people to conclude the same end.  For them at the time, the Pax Romano was more to their liking than the Messianic kingdom.  This sounds a bit silly.  Especially in hindsight.  Rejecting their Messiah also meant rejecting eternal life.  Hell was their end.  The rejected God’s best for them because the best of the world would suffice.  But do the saints of today to the same thing?  All the time!

Our churches are filled with worldliness and corruption.  Sin is at every corner.  The escape from it is our daily walk with God.  This must incorporate Bible reading and prayer.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Otherwise, prayer and bible study become merely a religious exercise.  Both must be done in the context of a relationship.  They are not exercised as an academic curiosity.  God is not a subject to study.  Rather, there is growth that comes by both.  Part of growing as a Christian is enduring through trials and/or correction.  We are told not to faint while under either.  The word of God promises peaceable fruits of righteousness, holiness, and a deeper love for God if we allow the hand of God to have its perfect work.  Yet, we see the risk or stress involved and avoid it at all costs.  Maintaining the status quo is good enough for us.

Our churches are filled with three types of people.  Those who are newly saved and start growing.  There are those who will always continue to grow.  Then there are those who are satisfied with where they have come and have drawn a line in the sand.  They have ceased to grow and will grow no more.  That is what happened with Israel.  They have suffered centuries of warfare and persecution.  For the first time in their history, they lived in Palestine with relative peace.  Their liberties were limited.  But at least there was no trouble on the horizon.  They were overtaxed.  They were victims of imperfect justice.  They lived under the hand of Caesar.  But at least the sun was coming up tomorrow.  At least life was predictable and livable.  Why would they want change?  Even if the promised change was better than they had, staying put was their choice.  This is sad.  But too many people live that way today. The bulk of God’s people are right where Israel was.  There is no desire to grow.  No desire to risk.  No desire to conform.  No desire for Christlikeness.  We are happy with mediocrity, and if Jesus ever did a great work in our lives, we would resent it.  They missed it because they wanted to miss it.  The same is true of many saints.

Help for the Helpless

“For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and [him] that hath no helper.” (Ps 72:12 AV)

That last part of the verse is special!  When you boil it all down, how much help do we really have?  David wrote this near the end of his life.  The next Psalm is Asaph’s biography and eulogy of his good friend, David.  It was known of this great king that was the apple of God’s eye.  He and the LORD had a very special relationship.  Despite the failures of his life, he loved God, and God loved him.  No doubt in the course of his life he felt as though he had no one.  Several instances come to mind.  Goliath was one of his first lone challenges.  Just before Saul died and when David took the throne, all his men left him.  Now, he lies on his deathbed and human help will be of no worth.  When compared to God’s help, there is little people can do for you in comparison to what you might be facing.  Don’t get me wrong.  The help of dear saints is absolutely needed and welcomed.  God uses them to meet our needs.  We cannot survive without one another.  But there are times when man’s help, although somewhat sufficient, lacks all that we need.  This is where David was.  Lying on a bed with a nurse at his side and his wife and encouragement, it was not going to change his outcome.  God was the only one who could truly help David.

On one of my darkest days, this truth was made real to me.  Through the changes of life and other issues I was facing, all I could see were dark skies.  There was no sunshine.  There was no sunshine predicted.  As far as the mind was concerned, all hope was lost.  This poor saint found himself at the end of his rope.  There was no more left, and the knot was slipping through my grasp.  If God did not do something soon, my end was near.  In the wisdom of my wife, she called a close friend.  I had escaped to my room and sat there sobbing and rocking back and forth.  Too much loss had happened in a very brief time.  Spiritual issues were coming to a head.  Fear gripped me on every side.  There was no way to turn.  My good friend came to try to console me.  He tried the best he could.  The verses he used were familiar to me, and before he said anything, I knew what he was going to say.  It wasn’t helping.  I finally rebuked him a bit, and that is when he realized that God alone was my helper.  He sat there.  Simply sat there.  He said nothing.  He promised that he would not go anywhere until I was okay.  Other than that last bit of comfort, he simply sat there.  I imagine as he sat in silence, what he was really doing was praying.  I am certain of it.  He went to the throne of my only Helper and interceded on my behalf.  It worked!  His intervention drew me out of a pit of hopelessness deeper than I have ever been before, or since.  That day I learned the reality of the verse above.

The child of God is never without hope.  Never.  Don’t let the adversary tell you otherwise.  There is no failure nor sin that can separate you from your Father.  Repentance and forsaking are asked for, but the Father will never leave.  Ever!  Nor will He ever allow us to go through a trial without Him.  He promises to be with us in the midst of the deepest water we will ever tread.  He will be there.  And He will deliver.  Living in the hope of that deliverance is difficult.  Go far enough down a pit and the sun is blocked out.  All we see are the dark, constraining walls of our situation.  Whether we can see the light or not, it exists.  God is there. He promises to deliver those who have no helper.  Praise be to God!

Quickening Over and Again

“[Thou], which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.” (Ps 71:20 KJB)

The last few psalms of David’s book of Psalms are precious.  They are psalms reflecting his experiences in aging.  The above verse is an excellent verse supporting faith in the resurrection.  Although David is referring to his aging physical condition compared to the desire to do all he can for God until his last breath, he does allude to the resurrection as well.  The quickening referred to here appears in the preceding verses closest to this one.  The quickening referred to earlier is a physical strengthening David desires in the present tense.  “Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth….I will go in the strength of the Lord GOD: I will make mention of thy righteousness, [even] of thine only.” (Ps 71:9,16 KJB)  David knows that God strengthened him in the past.  In fact, David is sure to mention that from the womb until the very day that he writes the above passage, that the strength of the LORD is what enabled him.  This same strength will follow him into eternity.  The depths of the earth cannot hold back the strength of the LORD.  Herein is the hope of the LORD.

It is funny how we think an empty tank will never be full again.  However, sometimes the tank needs to be emptied completely and remain empty for a while before it can be filled again.  This often makes the tank healthier.  I discovered something by accident several years ago.  I am a fan of rechargeable electric toothbrushes.  I use a Philipps Sonic toothbrush.  I have used them for over a decade.  Over the course of using them, they appeared to last only a few years.  When brand new, they brush can hold a charge for almost two weeks.  After a few years of using one, the charge lasts only a few days.  I assumed that the life of the battery had seen its limit.  Then I went on vacation.  I deliberately let my toothbrush die and then let it sit for ten days completely dead.  Before I left, the charger lasted only three days.  Upon returning, the toothbrush was charged for 24 hours, and it was back to the condition it was when brand new.  Now, every time the brush beeps at me for low battery, I let it die all the way before I charge it.  If I am away for any length of time, I will run it empty and leave it that way until I return.  The tank had to run dry before it could be filled back up.  It made the tank empty.

David is nearing the end of his life.  His tank ran dry more often than in his youth.  That is not necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, it can be a good thing.  This causes us to rest in the LORD far more frequently than we did many years before.  Our bodies may not be getting stronger, but our spirits and souls sure are.  It is okay to be all used up.  We need to be.  David knew that as God was faithful to quicken him in the past, He will do so in the present and in the future.  Just like the earth and the grave cannot hold us back, life cannot either.  We may have to do the same, but in a more organized or efficient way.  We may not be able to simply muscle through life.  Rather, we will have to pray more.  We will have to read more.  We will have to seek the presence of our Savior more.  If a six-foot hole cannot hold me back, then the devil, the world, and the flesh cannot either.  God will quicken.  That is His nature.  Life is His heartbeat.  To serve Him must be our passion.