Trust in an Eternal God

Isaiah 26:4- Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.

The picture of God that the Bible paints is one of a steadfast, faithful and trustworthy God. However, despite this, those of us who profess to knowing Him often times seem to find it easier, more convenient, even preferable, to put our hope and out trust in less deserving parties and in less deserving places.

Paul instructs Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 6:17 to ‘command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God’.

That we, as people, ‘put our hope in wealth’, is merely one example of our tendency to put far too much of our hope and far too much of our trust into places and people that are so uncertain. When these places and people prove their uncertainty, our misdirected, (meaning we never should have put our trust there), or undue trust, (meaning we put too much to our trust there) can lead to disappointment, disillusionment and discouragement.

Unfortunately, I’m sure that there is not one person will read this that does not know what it feels like to have had their trust broken, even their trust abused. The pain that often results from these negative experiences can often stay with us and can become a stumbling block to us, especially when we are called on to trust again. I know many people who have a very difficult time trusting people who have given them no reason not to trust them, on account of people in their past who have abused their trust.

What’s the saying? ‘Once bitten, twice shy’? How about ‘twice bitten’? How about ‘five times bitten’? How about ‘it seems like whenever I give trust somebody, I get bit’- what then? Shy? No. Terrified.

The world conspires, it seems, to erode your ability to trust anybody, or anything. The pain of the disappointment that results from broken and abused trust is crippling, in that it hardens us, and hinders us from trusting even those who deserve to be trusted.

God calls on us for our complete trust.

Proverbs 3:5, a much loved Proverb, calls on us to - ‘Trust in the Lord with all of our heart…’

The tragedy is that often times, we struggle to put our complete trust in God, even when we want to, because of those negative experiences of our past that we have endured as a consequence of our misdirected or undue trust. And I don’t believe that God is unsympathetic to this dilemma. That’s likely why one of the most determined and constant messages of God to His people throughout scripture is ‘trust me’- because He, unlike anybody or anything else, is completely trustworthy.

In Isaiah 49:23. He makes this bold promise- ‘’those who hope in me will not be disappointed’’.

Many of the many times where the Bible appeals to us to put our trust in God, it references God as an eternal God. The scripture mentioned at the top of this blog is a great example of this.

Isaiah 26:4- Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.

So, the scripture appeals to us to trust in God and then gives us reason as to why we can- that He is ‘the Rock eternal’.

God is eternal. But how does that help to establish His trustworthiness? Because it is helps us to put our trust in God to know, and to be reminded, that God is not uncertain, that He is not liable to collapse, rather, He is eternal and He is everlasting.

And not only is He eternal, but He is eternally the same. It’s hard to trust somebody who is one way one day and another way the next. God’s not like that! He is eternally the same. God declares, in Malachi 3; "I the Lord do not change…’’

It is said of Jesus in Hebrews 13:8; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

God is eternally the same- which means He is eternally trustworthy.The Psalms constantly talk of God as a refuge; a safe haven, where we can find shelter in times of distress.

Psalm 62:8- Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. Selah

Pour out your hearts to him….give over your whole heart to Him…because He is our refuge...under the shadow of His wings, we are safe…as He is completely trustworthy, at all times, and with all things, and for all time.

Selah.

The church is a stage...

Ephesians 4:7-16- But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

This is the blueprint for Christ’s living temple- the description of how the church must work in order for it to fulfill it’s God-ordained purpose.

The foundation of the church is this; Jesus Christ descended, rescuing us and ransoming us from sin and death.

Ephesians 4:8-10- This is why it says: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

Here, Paul references Psalm 68- a victory Psalm that David composed to celebrate the conquest of a Jebusite city and the triumphant ascent of God, represented by the Ark of the Covenant, up Mount Zion. After a King had won such a victory, it was customary that he would have a victory parade, parading the spoils of the battle and the enemy prisoners before his people.

Another feature of the parade is that there would be a parade of the King’s own soldiers who had been captured by the enemy and recaptured by their King in his victory. They were often referred to as ‘recaptured captives’- prisoners who had been taken prisoner again by their own king (and it’s interesting that Ephesians 4 begins with Paul identifying himself as ‘a prisoner of the Lord’)- recaptured, and given freedom.

This is the case with us;

Christ descended to wage war against sin and death. As He was victorious, we are ‘recaptured captives’- God’s own people who once were prisoners to sin and death but now have been freed on account of our King’s victory.

Spurgeon puts it this way;

‘’As great conquerors of old led whole nations into captivity, so Jesus leads forth from the territory of his foe a vast company as the trophies of his mighty grace. From the gracious character of his reign it comes to pass that to be led into captivity by him is for our captivity to cease. The Lord Jesus puts death to death.’’

So Jesus Christ descended, securing victory for us from sin and death; He then ascended into glory. However, just before His ascension, He gave this commission to the church.

Matthew 28:18-20- Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

So on account of Christ descending and ascending, we have been rescued from sin and we have a commission to reach those who need rescuing, as we have been rescued. The church’s commission is a rescue mission. And vitally, each of us, whether you were aware of this or not, have been assigned by God a part to play in the fulfillment of the church’s commission. It is vital to the realization of this church’s call that all of those who have been assigned by God a part to play do play their part.

For this reason, Jesus gave, as we read in verse. 11,

Ephesians 4:11-13- ‘’…some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Earlier, in Ephesians 2:20, Paul establishes that the church is built on the foundation of Christ Jesus, who is the chief cornerstone, and also on the foundation laid by the Apostles and Prophets.

To build on this foundation today, God in His grace gives to the church some to be evangelists for the purpose of reaching out to those who are God’s own, but still in sin’s captivity. Now, all of us do have the opportunity to be involved in evangelism; simply by sharing with those around us the good news of Jesus and His gospel. But God does call and gift some by His grace specifically to and for the setting aside of their lives for the proclamation of the Gospel as Evangelists.

To build further on this foundation, God in His grace gives to the church some to be pastors and teachers for the purpose of building up God’s people into maturity and equipping them for the task of reaching out to others and building up others. All of us do have the opportunity to be involved in the process of building each other up and ‘spurring one another on towards love and good deeds’. But God does call and gift some by His grace specifically to and for the setting aside of their lives as Pastors and Teachers, for the building up of God’s people into maturity and the equipping of the saints for good works.

That, Biblically, is the role of the pastor.

Acts 6:1- In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

So, there’s a practical ministry task in the church that is being neglected; a group of people who are being overlooked. This task evidently brought to the fore a philosophical question about the functionality of the early church; which was this- how could the pastors of the church, the Apostles, continue to fulfill their responsibility to the ministry of the Word of God and to prayer, without these practical ministry tasks being neglected?

Acts 6:2-6- So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

This is the way that it is to be.

It’s not that some things are beneath some people; it’s that each of us have parts to play and the church function bests when each person plays their part.

Have you ever seen a stage play where an actor is playing more than one part? Dialoguing with himself, portraying 3 characters simultaneously? The church often is that stage play. I have seen this too often- churches become stagnate when the pastor ends up doing too much of what he shouldn’t be doing and not enough of what he should be doing.

So the Apostles wisely turned various responsibilities of the church’s ministry over to the people, in order that they could then focus fully on their part, the ministry of the Word and prayer, for the equipping and building up of the people. And look at the result

Acts 6:7- So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

My prayer, and my ambition as a Pastor, is that we would remain in Christ, and bear fruit as we remain in Him; and that as we are strengthened in unity and maturity, our church would grow and build itself up in love, as each part does it work.

What I ask of you is that you would play your part and you would allow me to play mine.

God suffers with us

1 Peter 1:3-6- Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

Let me attempt a paraphrase of that. Peter is saying to us here, ‘praise and worship God and greatly rejoice in God, because He has given you new birth into a living hope and eternal life, even though now, in your life, you may have had to suffer in various ways’.

One of the major themes of the writing of Peter is suffering. Peter understands that even though we have been given ‘new birth into a living hope’ and even though we have been given ‘eternal life’, on this side of glory, there is suffering. That’s an important point.

Paul wrote this to his protégé Timothy;

2 Timothy 4:2-5 ‘’…preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.

What I would say is that the time when people ‘will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires’ that time is not coming- it has come.

Some people teach the Bible in a way that causes believers to believe what they want to believe; that the Christian life is supposed to be free of suffering; that the Christian life is free of grief. They teach that Jesus came and suffered and was grieved, so that you don’t have to suffer or be grieved and that a life on earth, lived with God, will be free of suffering and free of grief. People flock to this sort of preaching and teaching. Who wouldn’t want to follow a God who offers and delivers life, right away, completely free of suffering and completely free of grief?

But there’s an obvious flaw in this teaching- it’s untruthful.

The Christian life is not, and was never promised to be free of suffering.To teach that is ear tickling. It is a myth. Its false teaching and it’s destructive.

Let me quickly give you just a couple of reasons why it is destructive.

First, if you swallow the lie that when God is in our lives, grief and suffering is not, when life doesn’t go well and when we suffer and are grieved, we rationalize the advent of suffering with destructive and faulty lines of reasoning. Let me give you a couple of examples of what that might look like.

If I believe that when God is with me, I will not have to endure suffering or combat feelings of grief, when times of suffering and grief do come through no attributable fault of my own, I might come to the conclusion that God is no longer with me- that God has abandoned me. Typically then, what can happen is that God gets blamed for the failure of promises that He never made.

Or maybe, if I believe that when I live in faith and abide in Christ, that this will shield me from suffering and grief, when times of suffering and grief do come through no attributable fault of my own, I might arrive at the superstitious conclusion that I am doing something wrong. I am doing something I shouldn’t be doing. I’m not doing something I should be doing. Because if the hallmark of the Christian faith was the absence of suffering from our life on earth, when I suffer, I would be right to conclude that perhaps Christianity is not working because I am not doing it properly.

If you’ve been lead to believe that suffering is not a normal part of the life of the believer, you’ve been lead to believe a lie. It may be a blissful ignorance when things are going well, but it will be a destructive and confusing point of contention when things are not going so well.

Secondly, for the believer to go on believing the lie that when Jesus is in their life, grief and suffering and hardship is not, they will have to ignore the witnesses of the evident truth, which testify to the contrary.

For example, they’d need to

• dull the conviction of the Spirit,
• read the Word of God selectively,
• turn a blind eye to the suffering of their fellow believers

All of which testify to the reality that a life free of suffering is not promised to believers on this side of Christ’s return.

Where does that lead? Now you’ve got a believer who

• has habitually ignored the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the point of desensitivity.
• has turned the Bible into a collection of half truths
• is blissfully ignorant to those that they ought to be yoked to

Yeah, they’re believers all right- but believer in what?

Like Paul foretold, they’ve ‘turned away their ears to the truth to turn aside to myths’- that’s idolatry.

I’d love to follow a Jesus who promises that in this world we would have no trouble- but that’s the precise opposite of what Jesus actually promises. If the Jesus that you’re following is offering a starkly different deal than the Jesus that we read about in the Bible, perhaps you need to ask ourselves whether we are actually following the Jesus of the Bible, or just some invented idol of our own desires that we’ve anointed with a name it isn’t fit to carry.

The Bible talks a lot about suffering because it is an honest text and it acknowledges that a lot of life is suffering- all of us, in life, experience difficulty and hardship. It’s part of life. But in these words of Peter, we find that Jesus gives us cause to have a great ‘living hope’ despite of and in the midst of our suffering- in the understanding that the suffering that we endure in this fallen world, where life isn’t always right, will not compare to the glory of our inheritance in heaven, where God will right every wrong and where suffering will be no more. So we greatly rejoice in what God has done in redeeming us and giving us new birth into a living hope and while this does not remove suffering, it outweighs our suffering in its glory.

1 Peter 1:6-7- ‘…for a little while (there, he’s talking about life on earth) you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These (trials) have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Whenever I read this verse, I think of the story of Job. God himself declared that Job was ‘blameless and upright; a man who feared God and shunned evil’ Satan accused Job’s faith of not being genuine; he told God that if he ‘stretched out his hand and struck everything he had, that Job would curse Him’ And so God allows Job to go through a trial and suffering; and it was this process of trial and suffering that proved Job’s faith genuine.

In talking about trial, Peter picks up this analogy of refinement- a process where, by intense heat, precious metals are made more pure and more valuable. He teaches that God uses trials to refine our faith, in order that it would ultimately be proved genuine. Just like our friendships are refined and our love for our friends is proved genuine when we stand together through hard times. Just like our marriages are refined and our love for our spouse is proved genuine when we stand together through hard times together. So too our faith in God is refined and our love for God proved genuine when we stand with and for God through trials.

So God allows even fiery trials in the anticipation that we would emerge from them with a refined faith that will endure, and not perish, to the end. That is that on that day that Jesus returns and His eternal kingdom is fully revealed, we would be found, though having suffered grief in all kinds of trials, to be praising, glorifying and honouring Him with a faith, hope and love proved genuine by fire.

1 Peter 1:8-9- Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

I love this.

My understanding is that happiness is circumstantial. If things are going well, we’re happy. If things aren’t going well, we’re unhappy. It’s alright to be happy. It’s just not enough to be happy. Because life will throw curveballs at you that happiness won’t be able to bunt. Happiness is not enough. Happiness will fade in hard times, but joy can be present, and even thrive, during times of deep suffering and difficult trial.

I believe that God want us to know what it is to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy from the Lord that sustains and strengthens us in our time of need. For example, the day that Jesus went to that cross was not a happy day for Jesus. Happiness was not enough for him to endure the cross- it was ‘for the joy set before him’ that he endured. I believe that God wants to give us joy, glorious, inexpressible in the midst of our suffering, so that we will not grow weary and lose heart. And this joy can weather and suffer this world’s circumstances without losing its hope, because it knows that you are receiving the goal of your faith- the salvation of your souls.

It would be great if it were true that God causes our life to be free of suffering- but it isn’t.

But even more wonderful, I think, is the truth- that God suffered for us. And God suffers with us.