Know Before Whom You Stand

“Prayer: Know Before Whom You Stand” That was a chapter title in a book I finished reading last night, Between God and Man, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel was a Jewish rabbi and I am a Christian pastor, and so there were some things in his book where he and I agreed, and other areas where I would see things differently. But that chapter title grabbed my attention, particularly as I read it the evening before the Jicarilla Apache Prayer Run. 

Yesterday morning I was invited to come and give an opening prayer for the Prayer Run that the tribe’s Department of Youth would be hosting this morning. As a Christian pastor living in a place where many different religions are practiced, including a Jicarilla Apache understanding of God, I am conscious that all understandings of the person of God are not equal. A corollary of that is that all persons prayed to as God are not really God, but gods. People may turn to them and worship but they are what the Bible would call false gods. They are given the honor, respect, or what have you, of God but they are not truly the God of the Bible, the One True God.

Can a person know God? According to Heschel, perhaps, but he also noted other rabbi’s who found God to be unknowable.

Can a person know God? My answer would be “absolutely!” Taking a step back I would say that a person can know much about God, without really knowing God. The Bible has much to say about who God is and what His character is like. As we read the Bible we learn of God’s holiness, power, beauty, love, righteousness, justice and goodness, to name just a few of His attributes. Throughout history many pastors and theologians have written on the topics of God’s attributes, and I have been richly blessed in reading some of them, particularly Stephen Charnock and Herman Bavinck. Similarly, many excellent sermons have been preached and published on the character and attributes of God. And so it is possible to much about God, but not really know God at all.

But can a person know God? Again, absolutely, for He is revealed to us most clearly in the person and work of Jesus. And as we read of Him in the New Testament and take to heart the truth of who He is and why He came, trusting in what He did to forgive our sin and heal us, we pass from “knowing about” to “knowing” and in doing so we find that He has sent His Spirit to be with us, His dearly loved children, forever.

This, then, is the God before whom I stood this morning, offering prayers to Him on behalf of the gathered people. Again, speaking from my point-of-view as a pastor, everyone at the Prayer Run was not a believer in Jesus, but my prayers were offered in the name of Jesus, and in my own times of prayer I pray that one day all the people of this place may know and love Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Amen. 

According To Plan

One day Robin and I plan to retire. Several years ago, as a part of that “plan,” we bought a house. Retirement is still several years away but we are working on a few things at the house before it becomes time for us to live there. One of those things is moving a split rail fence, which we worked on a few days ago. Our original “plan” was to take down and relocate the fence in a single day. From nearly the moment I put my hands on the fence to get to work things began happening that changed our plan.

The first post cracked and broke off. Couldn’t reuse that one. The same thing happened with the second post. I was able to remove a post intact and see what depth would be required. Twenty inches. I went to work with a power auger to drill the holes. I could only reach ten inches before the clay became impassible. I had no tools along to break up the clay and help the auger.

Back to work removing the posts. It turned out that three of them had been set in concrete, and so, as the picture shows, I removed them as best I could with the tools I had on hand. What we had thought would be a one-day job to take the fence down and rebuild it in a new location turned out to be a full day just to remove the fence. My new estimate on the remainder is three more days to build the new fence. So it goes sometimes with the plans we make in life. Good plans and bad plans alike are often subject to unplanned changes.

This Sunday I will be preaching from Matthew 11:1-15. One thing in that passage is that John the Baptist, through his disciples, because he is imprisoned, ask Jesus this question:

“Are you the one to come, or shall we look for another?”

A key part of John’s ministry was to herald the arrival of the promised Messiah, someone he rightly believed was Jesus at the time he baptized him. But imprisoned for, as we might say today, “speaking truth to power” in calling out Herod Antipas over his illegitimate marriage to his former sister-in-law Herodias, John seems to be wondering what is going on with God’s plan. If Jesus is the Messiah, and all things are to be made right by him, then why is John in prison? Why haven’t Herod and Herodias repented? What is going on with God’s plan?

The answer, which I intend to bring out more fully as I preach this Sunday, is that God’s plan is working, on God’s timing. We have an advantage that John did not, which is that while he was living things out as they unfolded in real time, we can look back and read the Bible and see the fullness of God’s plan of salvation being worked out in the person and work of the Lord Jesus.

Everything that needed to be done to accomplish our salvation, and John’s as well, was done. It was all done according to the perfect plan of God, a plan that was revealed in bits and pieces in the pages of the Old Testament, and which is seen in it’s entirety in the testimony of the New Testament.

May you know peace with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. May God’s perfect plan of salvation be something that brings you peace, now and forever. Amen.

 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.