Desiring God's Best?

All your leaders have fled together; without the bow they were captured. All of you who were found were captured, though they had fled far away. Therefore I said: “Look away from me; let me weep bitter tears; do not labor to comfort me concerning the destruction of the daughter of my people.” For the Lord God of hosts has a day of tumult and trampling and confusion in the valley of vision, a battering down of walls and a shouting to the mountains. (Isaiah 22:3–5)

I have been criticized for being concerned about the downfall of church leaders, or the sinfulness in Christians that I know. More than one person has told me that those things are not my problem, or given other reasons to ‘mind my own business.’ While I agree that it is possible to complain or gossip about others and forget that they are God's responsibility and not mine, it is also possible to be His spokesperson to address sin in His people, not to others but to those needing it.

The words of the OT prophets express their love for God and for His people. He wants holiness and when they strayed into sin and idolatry, the Lord did not pat them on the head and look the other way. At the same time, I’m not to have or even think a ‘holier than thou’ attitude about myself. So what options are okay?

The entire Bible tells me to love God and honor Him, and to love His people who are my neighbors as myself. This love most certainly includes empathy for any harsh discipline they are experiencing. Isaiah specifically tells his critics to leave him alone and not try to make him feel better about the harsh discipline of God in the lives of others.

But his tears are not pity or sympathy as if that discipline should not be happening. I know that tears can be shed that this discipline is necessary. We have a God who gives us fullness of life and all that we need to live for Him in peace and joy, and yet we do things our way and fall into sin? This is like being in a banqueting room and starving to death. He offers everything we need and we complain and feel poor and mistreated? He offers love, peace, joy, goodness, self-control and all godliness — and we gossip, worry, complain, and live in the opposites of what He wants — without realizing that what we crave could be so easily ours? Not to glorify ourselves, but to bring glory to Him.

This is why prophets weep. I don’t consider myself a prophet, but I understand that too many of God's children live as if He is not all we need and are not happy with that, yet refuse His will so we can live our own way. How sad indeed.

Jesus, my pastor is praying for revival. I am praying for revival. Each day You show me how much I need it, and I am willing to change and to fully obey You. Pour out Your power. Help me have the attitudes You want me to have for those who are suffering under discipline. I know You are concerned about their sin and self-effort. May none of us ask You to give us what we crave but then refuse to give up those things that keep it from happening.

 

Don’t ruin the soup…

Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow’s cause does not come to them. Therefore the Lord declares, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: “Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes. I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy. And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. (Isaiah 1:23–26)

The psalmist describes the leadership of God's people as corrupt, doing things that make the needy totally unwilling to come to them. Widows and orphans know that they will not get relief so why bother?

God speaks to this by promising to remove that which has corrupted them and restore their righteousness so that these faithless people will be as they once were.

In our modern times, this activity by God would be called a revival, a restoration to the changes He had done earlier. The sad part is that even today, God's people backslide. Life becomes comfortable, and although Christians grow in trials, our prayers are often “remove the trial” rather than asking Him to use it and make us more like Jesus.

This week I made chicken soup from one earlier roasted bird. After a few hours in a slow-cooker, the broth was strained and any pieces of meat added to it. Then it went into the fridge overnight. Why? So the fat would float to the top and be skimmed off. ln my thinking, all that fat would ruin the soup.

In God's thinking, any injustice and unrighteous ruins His people. He therefore said He would turn His hand against them and remove the problem. In other words, He would bring trials, not to punish but to revive:

Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right! Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, and their blossom go up like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts, and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them, and the mountains quaked; and their corpses were as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. (Isaiah 5:22–25)

Yet even today, along with the trials comes grumbling and pleading to make them stop, to restore our comfort. We want godly leaders but not the work of God to make them godly. We may want godliness for ourselves, but not the trials that produce spiritual maturity.

Oh God, I see the need for revival, not because our leaders are unjust or sinful in ruinous ways, but because too many of Your people are more interested in seven-day Sabbaths than doing what work that God tells us we should be doing. Oblivious? Some are. Some make excuses. All need skimming off the dross. All need to keep short accounts and forgiveness and renewal. Me too.

A challenging assignment

 

READ Ezekiel 21–24

God’s anger is unleashed against His people and against the Ammonites. For both, “a sword is drawn for the slaughter” as God pours out His indignation and delivers them to those who will punish their guilt. For the people of God, this “seems like a false divination” that their lives and land will be ruined. For the Ammonites, they will be “fuel for the fire” and “no more remembered.” (Ezekiel 21) Not a welcome Word from the Lord!

Through the prophet, God declares the abominations committed by His people. He focuses on bloodshed, how they show contempt for fathers and mothers, exhort foreigners, do wrong to widows and orphans, despise sacred things, profane the Sabbath, commit sexual sins, take bribes, exhort their neighbors for dishonest gain, and forget God. For this, He will “scatter you among the nations” and consume their sin as dross is removed from metal in a furnace of fire. He condemns false prophets for speaking when God has not spoken, killing and making widows, for taking financial gain, not regarding the Sabbath and making no distinction between holy and common, clean or unclean. Leaders destroy lives for dishonest gain. The people also have oppressed the poor and needy and given no justice to those who pass through. He looked for “a man among them” who would “stand in the breach” and intercede for the land so He would not destroy it, but found none. Therefore He poured out indignation and the fire of His wrath. (Ezekiel 22)

The Lord describes Samaria and Jerusalem as two prostitutes who chased after the Assyrians and Egypt and were destroyed. His people lusted after the Chaldeans also and God said He would bring them against ‘her’ and deal with ‘her’ in fury. He said:

Behold, I will deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, into the hands of those from whom you turned in disgust, and they shall deal with you in hatred and take away all the fruit of your labor and leave you naked and bare, and the nakedness of your whoring shall be uncovered. Your lewdness and your whoring have brought this upon you, because you played the whore with the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. You have gone the way of your sister; therefore I will give her cup into your hand. (23:28–31)

They forgot God and would be laughed at as they were filled with sorrow and desolation, bearing the consequences of their sin, the slaughter of their children in sacrifice to idols and their lewd behavior — that they “should know that I am the Lord God.”

The prophet was then called upon to deliver a dreadful message by showing the people how they must respond to what God was going to do. God would take this man’s wife and he was not to mourn or react, but stoically accept this loss. For him, it was not deserved, but for them their punishment was deserved and they must respond knowing this was true.

Ezekiel heightens my sense that the role of a prophet is vital to the spiritual well-being of God’s people, but not a romantic or exalted role. All of the OT prophets suffered, some physically, some with the weight of their task, and for this man, the loss of “the delight of his eyes” without being able to mourn for her.

Since this gift is listed in Romans 12 as part of God’s spiritual gifting to the Body of Christ, it is with solemn thought that I consider the practical application of this reading. First, the ‘gift tests’ and other Christians verify that my two main gifts include prophecy. The testing devices usually change the term to “discernment” lest it be confused with declaring future events. Instead, this gift is about having insight from God into the will of God and into the spiritual state of others. It tends to see things in a black or white way, can be dogmatic and critical, but helpful if able to avoid being harsh and judgmental. Oswald Chambers correctly says that those who have this gift are to use it best in prayer, to be prayer warriors. Sometimes God uses it in a preacher, but “fire and brimstone” is not popular or necessarily God’s message today.

Personally, this gift tends to produce a tender conscience and high standards in those who have it. Obedience is important. So is the Word of God and saying only what God wants said. Prophets have few friends, are often misunderstood or dismissed, and are best helped by encouragers.

Reading Ezekiel gives me a sense of need for revival for I see the negatives in God’s family, but I try also to focus on the good stuff and praise God for it, as well as encourage those who are faithfully walking with Him. I don’t want to be unpopular with people, but pleasing God is far more important. The older I get, the easier it is to listen to Him and pray with confidence for whatever He puts on my heart. The downside of that is He asks me to check up my own life first before I ask Him to change anyone else.

Again, being a prophet is not a picnic; just read Ezekiel a few times.