Dig Deeper
Scripture: Deut 33:26-27
Song: "What a Fellowship" (Leaning on the Everlasting Arms)
I don't know about you, but this has been a rough couple of weeks for me, with a lot of questions.
How can God, the God whom I love and whom I have served, the God that I thought I knew after so many years, the God whom I trust as my best friend, how can He allow a woman who gave herself in service to Him become pregnant with the joy of triplets and have not one of them live through birth? How can the God whom I trust with all of my heart and for all of eternity allow my friend to choose death over life?
I thought of Moses, who went through the same challenges to faith. And I came up with the same answer that I think he found. "Dig Deeper." Why? Because underneath any situation, underneath every appearance of hardship or difficulty, are the everlasting arms.
In Deuteronomy 33:26-27, Moses is addressing the people of Israel before he departs from them to go to the mountaintop and die. Moses is the leader who did not want to be a leader, leading a people who did not want him to be their leader, who don't want to be led anywhere, who are being led into a place they don't want to go. And because of their rebellion, the LORD is going to take Moses' life when their obnoxiousness finally overcomes Moses' patience, and he disobeys God's orders out of frustration with them.
Moses addresses the children of Israel as "Jeshurun", a pet name for Israel meaning "Upright and straight." If you've read your Bible you know that the people of Israel were anything but "upright and straight." They wandered into crooked ways for 40 years. That's why they had to wander through the desert all that time. And yet Moses addresses them as the way God envisions them, the way they are intended to be, just as the angel who finds Gideon in the book of Judges hiding in a winepress from his enemies as "you mighty warrior." Just as JESUS addressed the two young men who had to have their mother make requests for them as "Sons of Thunder." Moses, the angel, and JESUS called upon these people to dig deeper to whom they were in the power of God rather than on the surface. Underneath their appearance of rebellion, fear and shyness, the everlasting arms of God stood to empower them.
Above us every day is the LORD's majesty, but underneath are the everlasting arms. WHy underneath? Because there is a "fundamental" nature to the ground, "rock solid." Genesis 1:1, John 1:1-3, Acts 17:28
The pain of loss is because of the joy we knew from these things we lose, and it is God who gave us these joys to begin with. We wouldn't know them without Him. But we judge Him when He chooses to take them away. We focus so much on the gift that we forget the giver. We are disillusioned and disheartened, disappointed with life and with God because we have turned our focus onto the situation rather than God who is behind it all.
So when we get disappointed with God we need to dig deeper and realize that underneath the situation we can't understand are still the everlasting arms. We don't understand, and perhaps we never will, but we know that because God was before all and is beyond all, there is more to the issue into eternity than we can grasp here and now. Just as we can trust Him to handle eternity which we don't understand, we can trust Him to resolve those things that confuse us here and now and resolve them in eternity.
Does digging deeper save us? No. We know that salvation comes only from God, from the finished work of JESUS. His finished work, the salvation He offers for the believing, is that rock-solid foundation we can depend on.
I'm not much for secular illustrations, but there is one that I think will make my point here about the fundamentalness of the everlasting arms of God. It's in the movie "Ben Hur." The crucifixion of Christ is taking place, and his blood is running down the cross. A huge rainstorm is going on and the downpour is washing the Blood of JESUS into the ground, down rivulets which run through the countryside and into a cave where Ben Hur's mother and sister are hiding with leprosy. The water bearing the blood runs into the cave and the leprous women are healed. The Blood of JESUS is underneath any of the situations we face in life. No matter how horrible the circumstance, it stands on the blood of JESUS beneath it. Those everlasting arms are the arms of God Himself who came to earth as fully God and fully Man, nailed to cross for you and beneath any situation that you face.
Despite the death of children, despite the tragedies of life, GOD who is the author of life is still good. He is not good because of what He does for us. He is not good because of what He does not do to us. He is good because it is His fundamental nature to be good. Some folks say "God is good...all the time." But we must be careful not to make it a trite saying but to realize it is a powerful reality in the face of the caustic circumstances and caskets of death in the midst of life.
Whenever a soldier, a child, a friend is laid into the ground, underneath that casket are the everlasting arms of God. When your time comes, if the LORD does not return soon, and your body is laid into the ground, if you are a Believer in JESUS Christ for the eternal life He offers as God Himself, your body is not just being lowered into the earth, but into the eternal arms of the Father who loves you and suffered death Himself so that your death becomes simply a passage into His Presence.
(SIDE NOTE: This is a bit of conjecture, but as a high school student I studied Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Egyptian Book of the dead. In hieroglyphics. the arm extended meant offering, or giving. The arms in a pyramid shape meant "kah", the soul. The Egyptians buried their kings in pyramids of the same shape to preserve them into eternity. The Star of David is a star comprised of pyramid shapes in different directions, and the Kaballah, the mystical study of Judaism, portrays the Star of david as 3D, spreading in every imaginable way. The sense in each case is a depiction of all points being covered.
Now did Moses, raised as a prince of Egypt, learned in all of the ways of the Egyptians, use this phrase "everlasting arms" as some connection to this people who were leaving Egypt? Was he saying to them that behind their misunderstanding and false gods of Egypt there was a fundamental truth they were missing about the True God?)
In Matthew 15:46 JESUS talks about a pearl buried in a field being discovered by a man. Who buried the pearl? It's not on a shoreline where nature buried it under the waves and sand. Someone put it there. Although the passage discusses the kingdom, in second and third order effects, we can see that if we dig deeper under any problem, there are treasures awaiting discovery in the presence of God and in the Word of God which points to Him. There is a plan we might never otherwise discover without the trauma that had us dig deeper to find the underlying arms of God's support.
When God's word seems cold to you and doubts arise, dig deeper until you understand that God is a Person. Underneath all of creation, all perplexities, are the everlasting arms of God. He will hold you, He will catch you, He will sustain you. And "if you seek Him, you will find Him, if you seek Him with all your heart."
Song: "What a Fellowship" (Leaning on the Everlasting Arms)
I don't know about you, but this has been a rough couple of weeks for me, with a lot of questions.
How can God, the God whom I love and whom I have served, the God that I thought I knew after so many years, the God whom I trust as my best friend, how can He allow a woman who gave herself in service to Him become pregnant with the joy of triplets and have not one of them live through birth? How can the God whom I trust with all of my heart and for all of eternity allow my friend to choose death over life?
I thought of Moses, who went through the same challenges to faith. And I came up with the same answer that I think he found. "Dig Deeper." Why? Because underneath any situation, underneath every appearance of hardship or difficulty, are the everlasting arms.
In Deuteronomy 33:26-27, Moses is addressing the people of Israel before he departs from them to go to the mountaintop and die. Moses is the leader who did not want to be a leader, leading a people who did not want him to be their leader, who don't want to be led anywhere, who are being led into a place they don't want to go. And because of their rebellion, the LORD is going to take Moses' life when their obnoxiousness finally overcomes Moses' patience, and he disobeys God's orders out of frustration with them.
Moses addresses the children of Israel as "Jeshurun", a pet name for Israel meaning "Upright and straight." If you've read your Bible you know that the people of Israel were anything but "upright and straight." They wandered into crooked ways for 40 years. That's why they had to wander through the desert all that time. And yet Moses addresses them as the way God envisions them, the way they are intended to be, just as the angel who finds Gideon in the book of Judges hiding in a winepress from his enemies as "you mighty warrior." Just as JESUS addressed the two young men who had to have their mother make requests for them as "Sons of Thunder." Moses, the angel, and JESUS called upon these people to dig deeper to whom they were in the power of God rather than on the surface. Underneath their appearance of rebellion, fear and shyness, the everlasting arms of God stood to empower them.
Above us every day is the LORD's majesty, but underneath are the everlasting arms. WHy underneath? Because there is a "fundamental" nature to the ground, "rock solid." Genesis 1:1, John 1:1-3, Acts 17:28
The pain of loss is because of the joy we knew from these things we lose, and it is God who gave us these joys to begin with. We wouldn't know them without Him. But we judge Him when He chooses to take them away. We focus so much on the gift that we forget the giver. We are disillusioned and disheartened, disappointed with life and with God because we have turned our focus onto the situation rather than God who is behind it all.
So when we get disappointed with God we need to dig deeper and realize that underneath the situation we can't understand are still the everlasting arms. We don't understand, and perhaps we never will, but we know that because God was before all and is beyond all, there is more to the issue into eternity than we can grasp here and now. Just as we can trust Him to handle eternity which we don't understand, we can trust Him to resolve those things that confuse us here and now and resolve them in eternity.
Does digging deeper save us? No. We know that salvation comes only from God, from the finished work of JESUS. His finished work, the salvation He offers for the believing, is that rock-solid foundation we can depend on.
I'm not much for secular illustrations, but there is one that I think will make my point here about the fundamentalness of the everlasting arms of God. It's in the movie "Ben Hur." The crucifixion of Christ is taking place, and his blood is running down the cross. A huge rainstorm is going on and the downpour is washing the Blood of JESUS into the ground, down rivulets which run through the countryside and into a cave where Ben Hur's mother and sister are hiding with leprosy. The water bearing the blood runs into the cave and the leprous women are healed. The Blood of JESUS is underneath any of the situations we face in life. No matter how horrible the circumstance, it stands on the blood of JESUS beneath it. Those everlasting arms are the arms of God Himself who came to earth as fully God and fully Man, nailed to cross for you and beneath any situation that you face.
Despite the death of children, despite the tragedies of life, GOD who is the author of life is still good. He is not good because of what He does for us. He is not good because of what He does not do to us. He is good because it is His fundamental nature to be good. Some folks say "God is good...all the time." But we must be careful not to make it a trite saying but to realize it is a powerful reality in the face of the caustic circumstances and caskets of death in the midst of life.
Whenever a soldier, a child, a friend is laid into the ground, underneath that casket are the everlasting arms of God. When your time comes, if the LORD does not return soon, and your body is laid into the ground, if you are a Believer in JESUS Christ for the eternal life He offers as God Himself, your body is not just being lowered into the earth, but into the eternal arms of the Father who loves you and suffered death Himself so that your death becomes simply a passage into His Presence.
(SIDE NOTE: This is a bit of conjecture, but as a high school student I studied Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Egyptian Book of the dead. In hieroglyphics. the arm extended meant offering, or giving. The arms in a pyramid shape meant "kah", the soul. The Egyptians buried their kings in pyramids of the same shape to preserve them into eternity. The Star of David is a star comprised of pyramid shapes in different directions, and the Kaballah, the mystical study of Judaism, portrays the Star of david as 3D, spreading in every imaginable way. The sense in each case is a depiction of all points being covered.
Now did Moses, raised as a prince of Egypt, learned in all of the ways of the Egyptians, use this phrase "everlasting arms" as some connection to this people who were leaving Egypt? Was he saying to them that behind their misunderstanding and false gods of Egypt there was a fundamental truth they were missing about the True God?)
In Matthew 15:46 JESUS talks about a pearl buried in a field being discovered by a man. Who buried the pearl? It's not on a shoreline where nature buried it under the waves and sand. Someone put it there. Although the passage discusses the kingdom, in second and third order effects, we can see that if we dig deeper under any problem, there are treasures awaiting discovery in the presence of God and in the Word of God which points to Him. There is a plan we might never otherwise discover without the trauma that had us dig deeper to find the underlying arms of God's support.
When God's word seems cold to you and doubts arise, dig deeper until you understand that God is a Person. Underneath all of creation, all perplexities, are the everlasting arms of God. He will hold you, He will catch you, He will sustain you. And "if you seek Him, you will find Him, if you seek Him with all your heart."
posted by Ariel Lion of God | 11:14 AM
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