Jumping for Joy?

Can grief co-exist with joy? What about pain with contentment? Do our afflictions still allow us to have a sense of personal peace? These are difficult questions to ponder, especially in the midst of great turmoil and sorrow. The Bible, though, seems to suggest that the answer is “yes” to all these questions.

One passage that helps us reach that conclusion is found in Habakkuk:

“Though the fig tree should not blossom,
     nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
     and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
     and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
     I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
     he makes my feet like the deer’s;
     he makes me tread on my high places.”

We must remember that the prophet Habukkuk wrote to a very agrarian society - and so he used the language of vines and flocks. A modern day rendering of this Scripture would surely include words that we would be much more familiar with. But the essence of the passage is the same; yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Sometimes God takes from us what we cherish the most. Most likely that is the reason you are reading this; you have lost someone very close and dear to your heart. In the early years of grief it seems incomprehensible that joy, contentment, and peace will ever return as common emotions in our lives. But shouldn’t they? Isn’t it possible that grief, pain, and affliction will one day subside enough to allow positive emotions to surface once again?

Here is what Matthew Henry has to say regarding these verses in Habakkuk:

“But those who, when they were full, enjoyed God in all, when they are emptied and impoverished can enjoy all in God, and can sit down upon a melancholy heap of the ruins of all their creature comforts and even then can sing to the praise and glory of God, as the God of their salvation. This is the principal ground of our joy in God, that he is the God of our salvation, our eternal salvation, the salvation of the soul; and, if he be so, we may rejoice in him as such in our greatest distresses, since by them our salvation cannot be hindered, but may be furthered. Note, Joy in God is never out of season, nay, it is in a special manner seasonable when we meet with losses and crosses in the world, that it may then appear that our hearts are not set upon these things, nor our happiness bound up in them. See how the prophet triumphs in God: The Lord God is my strength, v. 19. He that is the God of our salvation in another world will be our strength in this world, to carry us on in our journey thither, and help us over the difficulties and oppositions we meet with in our way.”

If eternal salvation has been secured for us, then we can experience joy in the midst of our grief. We can feel pain and yet be contented in the reality of our future existence. And we can be filled with the peace that passes all understanding even when we are afflicted with great difficulties.

We must learn to trust God and not our circumstances. The God of our salvation in another world will indeed be our strength, both in this life and in the life to come.

Lamentations

What better place to turn in the Bible to help a grieving soul than the book of Lamentations? The actual name of this book originated from the Latin word lamentationem, meaning "wailing, moaning, weeping.” Jeremiah wrote this part of Scripture to describe the desolation of Judah after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, but there are many verses that are particularly appropriate for those of us sorrowing over the loss of a loved one.

Here is one such section:

“He (God) has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.’”

Isn’t this an apt description of grief? Lacking peace, forgetting what happiness is, flagging endurance, and hopelessness?

Jeremiah continues:

“Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.”

This prayer is directed to God that He would remember the many trials that have been already endured. Asking this causes Jeremiah’s soul, the very core of his physical, mental, and spiritual being, to bow down in humility, reverence, and submission to God’s sovereignty and providence in the midst of such anguish.

The tone of the next verse, though, changes dramatically:

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”

Reminding God of His actions reminds the one praying of a few things as well: God will never forget or forsake us, and He brings new kindnesses to us each and every day.

When we are engulfed by feelings of despair, there really is no better remedy than to recount the mercies of God. It is no small matter to “...count your blessings, one by one.” Doing so causes us to remember the faithfulness of God even when we are overcome by lamentation. Each morning we need to wait in confident expectation to see how God’s love and compassion will be revealed to us during the course of the day.

God is the source of our hope. When everything else fails, He alone remains faithful.

Words for the Weekend

"If there is one trial greater than another, it is the trial of being disappointed in those we love. It is a bitter cup, which all true Christians have frequently to drink. Ministers fail them. Relationships fail them. Friends fail them. . . . But let them take comfort in the thought, that there is one unfailing Friend, even Jesus, who can be touched with the feelings of their infirmities, and has tasted of all their sorrows. Jesus knows what it is to see friends and disciples failing Him in the hour of need. Yet He bore it patiently, and love them notwithstanding all. He is never weary of forgiving. Let us strive to do likewise.”

J.C. Ryle

Words With God

For those of you who know me in person, you probably have seen what I received from my family for my birthday on July 11th: an iPhone 4. I have now become one of those many Apple fans who think that Apple products are the best. I really don’t think I could return to any other type of phone after experiencing the fun and usefulness of this one. Let’s just hope I don’t drop it and have to make that decision!

Anyway, I digress from the main point of today’s blog. With this new technology in my hands, I am now fully engaged on the phone in the game of “Words with Friends,” otherwise known as Scrabble. There are five of us in our immediate family who play it constantly; the sixth and final abstainer knows who he is! The fun of this game is that it allows you to keep trying new letter combinations until you find one that is actually a word, even those that you never knew existed before. For instance, trial and error brought me to the word ‘Qi,’ which the dictionary defines as the “...circulating life force whose existence and properties are the basis of much Chinese philosophy and medicine.” I’m not sure what that really means, but I do use this word very often now to rack up points! Another new-found gem is ‘jun,’ which is a monetary unit of North Korea. Another beauty that I stumbled across was “jarl,” a Norse or Danish chief.

In the real world of difficult trials and spiritual opportunities, though, unusual and strange words don’t win you any extra points. In life, it is better to understand something about the words you use.

Here’s a word that can help you if you are able to know and accept what it means: Faith.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Here is what my ESV Study Guide says about the way the word “faith” is used in this verse:

“By defining faith as ‘assurance’ and ‘conviction,’ the author indicates that biblical faith is not a vague hope grounded in imaginary, wishful thinking. Instead, faith is a settled confidence that something in the future - something that is not yet seen but has been promised by God - will actually come to pass because God will bring it about. Thus biblical faith is not blind trust in the face of contrary evidence, not an unknowable ‘leap in the dark;’ rather, biblical faith is a confident trust in the eternal God who is all-powerful, infinitely wise, eternally trustworthy - the God who has revealed himself in his word and in the person of Jesus Christ, whose promises have proven true from generation to generation, and who will ‘never leave nor forsake’ his own.”

Do you have this kind of faith? Real faith can radically shape a person’s life and eternal destiny. It is solid and sure, an “assurance” and a “conviction,” since it is based on promises that will definitely come to pass. Thankfully, God is not just playing games with us. One day we will see with our eyes all that He has for us. Until then, we do well to live by faith.

Words for the Weekend

“The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued and that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time.”

Timothy Keller, The Reason For God

From Top To Bottom

The previous post really got me thinking about the 'best of' Biblical verses. Today I have a submission for “The Most Overlooked Passage.” It is Matthew 27:51a:

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”

This verse appears at the moment in the Gospel narrative when Jesus died on the cross. The “temple” was the place of sacrifice and worship for the people of Israel under the Old Covenant. Access to the most holy place within the temple was restricted to the High Priest, and he could only enter once a year, and only with blood. A curtain separated the holiest place from the rest of the temple.

So what makes this little verse in Matthew 27 so important? Here is what Maurice Roberts writes in The Happiness of Heaven:

“When the atoning work of our Savior was complete, Matthew says, the ‘veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.’ That incident was neither natural nor accidental. God was the only agent in the rending (tearing) of the veil, for it was not torn from the bottom, which human agents could do, but from the top, which only God could do. By the rending of the veil, God indicated that the ‘way into the holiest of all’ was no longer closed but open due to the complete, perfect sacrifice of Christ. This torn veil meant that believers now had access to God in prayer. But it means more than that. The ‘holiest of all’ in the Old Testament tabernacle was a a symbol of heaven, where the shekinah glory of God was visible. In this symbolic manner, Almighty God taught us that the way back to heaven for sinners has been accomplished through the death of Jesus Christ.”

Amazing. All that from the few words “...from top to bottom.”

One Little Verse

Have you ever wondered what the most important verse in the whole Bible is? Is it John 3:16? (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”) How about the end of 1 Corinthians 13? (“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”) Today, though, I found an author who offers a most unusual candidate for the best verse:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

The context, of course, is the fall of man into sin. These words are spoken after Adam’s disobedience. For those unfamiliar with this passage, the “you” refers to Satan, the “woman” is Eve as the mother of all living after her, “he” is Christ. God is predicting that Jesus will deal a death blow to Satan, and that in the process Satan will hurt Christ.

But there is more going on here according to Maurice Roberts, who writes this paragraph in his book entitled The Happiness of Heaven:

“All of human history, not to say of angels and demons, is included in this single promise. From that point of view, this is not simply the first announcement of the gospel. It is also the first announcement that Satan and those who fell with him, together with the future impenitent part of mankind, would eventually be confined to the punishment of hell. Conversely, Christ and the unfallen angels, together with the redeemed of Adam’s race, would one day overcome the powers of darkness, obtain the victory, and reign in the glorious kingdom of heaven. The entire Bible is embryonically present in this one statement (Gen 3:15). And the whole subsequent history of the world is neither more nor less than the gradual outworking, step by step, of what is already implicit here. “

Wow. I’d say that Roberts makes a pretty convincing case that this passage tells the entire story, not only of the rest the Bible, but of human history as well. We would do well to meditate on the truths contained in this one little verse, and thank God that He has provided us a way into the Heavenly realms.