Here is the audio lecture on Ruth 3:9-18
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Here is the audio lecture on Ruth 3:1-9
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Today while I was praying the Lord reminded me that I am just a student like the rest of you. I am just learning as I go, making mistakes, drawing the wrong conclusions, feeling inadequate to the task. I try to be as careful with the text as I can be. I try to be cognizant of the many different approaches to interpretation. But my horizon is just as limited as anyone’s and I am sure that I often fail to capture what you might see or believe. This is a journey together and while I might be a step or two ahead of some, I lag far behind others.
In particular, I struggle with prayer. Yes, I teach seminars on the subject and I have written quite a bit about the vocabulary of prayer, but when it comes to those times on my knees, I still fight distraction, I still find I am talking too much, I still miss the presence of the Father. Prayer is without any doubt the hardest part of my discipleship. I am not sure why this is the case since I certainly know intellectually what prayer is about and why it is so essential, but right now it is difficult. I have not learned to weep, but I need to.
My mother died last week, on Thursday night. She was 95. She lived a long, Spirit-filled life. She prayed often. I have not come close to her sense of God’s presence. Nor have I dealt very well with her passing. It is not that I am ovecome with emotion. It is that I am not feeling the deep sense of loss that will some day become a reality. I pray about this. I don’t know what else to do.
Several of my childern are in desperate need of God’s guidance. They face personal crises and long-lasting decisions that must be carefully weighed. It is the same for most of us. Life rarely comes in black and white. Most of us must struggle with gray to find our way. I pray about this too.
I am not looking for your sympathy. I am only feeling quite insufficient for the role God’s seems to have given me at the moment. I ask only that you remember who I am: just one more of the crowd trying to hear His voice and respond.
Shalom.
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“Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass unless the Lord has commanded it?” Lamentations 3:37 NASB
Command – This Hebrew word (tsiva) has an important place in our thinking about God. Here it is found in a book that most of us don’t know very well. Lamentations is made up of five poems. They are laments about the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. These poems were read every year at a specific time as a national day of mourning. It is about suffering on a national scale. It speaks eloquently of God’s interaction in history.
The word here is not the same word for “commandment” although they are related. Here is the word means “an instruction or an order from one who rules.” Today we need to look at the entire sense of this verse. It is a rhetorical question. That means it is a question that implies an expected answer. Here the answer that is expected is: “There is no one who makes anything happen unless God orders it to happen.” The reason that this implication is important in the Jewish national day of mourning is that it reassures the believers that the destruction of the temple occurred only because God allowed it to occur and only to serve His purposes. It was not accident, tragedy, fate or the will of evil people. God stood behind everything.
Maybe we need a national day of mourning to remind us that God stands behind everything now. So often we feel that bad things are out of control. Terrorism, catastrophes, genocide and all kinds of individual and corporate disasters seem to challenge our faith in God’s care. But here is the reminder. God stands behind it all. Nothing happens unless He says so. We can mourn, grieve and lament. God hears us. But life is not out of control. We are not left helpless.
Many of us have gone through great tragedies. God wants us to know that He is still the One giving the final orders. Nobody and nothing can get to us without His involvement. That doesn’t mean our lives are protected from bad things. Obviously not. It means that no matter what happens, God is there. Are you living a lament? Do you see God there? If not, maybe you need to take a deeper look. The Man behind history always leaves clues.
There is one other implication of the word sawa that needs to be articulated. Sawa only works within an assumed hierarchy of responsibility. Commands are passes from one person to another with the expectation that they will be followed. God is in charge, no doubt, but the execution of His will depends in part on the acceptance of the hierarchy of order. And we are not at the top of the chain of command. In fact, the more people refuse to acknowledge the natural order of things (God’s design), the more God’s will is not accomplished as He planned it. That doesn’t mean His will can’t be done. It just means that it won’t be done with the cooperation He intended. Tsava means following according to design.
Topical Index: authority, hierarchy, command, tsava, Lamentations 3:37
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