The Works of God

Thank you to Matt Perman who God used through his blog to plant this blog post in my head.

We need more volunteers for the disability ministry at Bethlehem.  This is not a new problem – we always need more volunteers!

But we want to recruit volunteers in ways that feed their joy in Jesus above all things.

After all, we did not earn our right standing before God through good works or fulfilling the requirements of the law. We did nothing to gain favor with God.  In fact, we were running away from God as fast as we could!

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. Titus 3:3

That describes me pretty well.

Thankfully, that isn’t the end of the story!

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:4-7

Isn’t that about the greatest sentence ever written?

And because that sentence is true, Paul is free to exhort people to do good works, for God’s glory and their joy, in response to what God has freely done for them:

The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. Titus 3:8

Not burdensome – excellent and profitable!

That leads to two very good things for those of us who see the need in the disability ministry:

1. We can recruit freely, knowing that volunteering in the disability ministry could be the ‘good works’ God would have for some of his people.
2. Those of us doing the recruiting, rather than being jealous or bitter when seeing people being called to do something other than the disability ministry, can be freely happy that people are doing those good works in other areas of the church and life!

And for those who are called into other kinds of good works, they can freely do those works, without any guilt at not being able to do every good work possible, including the disability ministry.  Because we know that God will supply every need, according to what is absolutely best for us.

Once again, God gets the glory and we get the joy!

So, please, pray like crazy that God would call more people to volunteer in this hard and happy work of the disability ministry at Bethlehem, and everywhere else there is a need, never out of guilt, but because they want to honor God and love people.

P.S.  Yes, we have all experienced that sweet irony of doing something out of less-than-purely-loving motives and discovered we enjoyed the experience and were filled up by it.  And I know that some people may have volunteered for the disability ministry out of guilt and then fell in love with the work God provided for them.  God does things like that all the time, turning hard hearts and bad motives into soft, loving hearts full of joy.  But I never want the recruitment message to be one that intentionally uses guilt as motivation!

This is the ‘amazing things’ I mentioned yesterday.

In 2 Kings 6, the Syrian king sends an army to surround the little city of Dothan to capture Elisha.  Elisha’s servant, from his point of view, has every right to be anxious.

Elisha prayed that this young man would see reality:

He (Elisha) said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”  Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 2 Kings 6:16-17

Not a few – a mountain-full, more numerous than the army that surrounded Dothan!  I imagine the young man was no longer anxious.

Matthew Henry talks about it this way:

He (Elisha) saw himself safe, and wished no more than that his servant might see what he saw (emphasis mine), a guard of angels round about him; such as were his master’s convoy to the gates of heaven were his protectors against the gates of hell—chariots of fire, and horses of fire. Fire is both dreadful and devouring; that power which was engaged for Elisha’s protection could both terrify and consume the assailants.

Are we not in the same position as Elisha?  We should have the desire to help others see what we see – the great reality and heinous depravity of our own sin, that Christ is beautiful beyond compare, that God is powerful beyond comprehension, “and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).”  Even things like disability.

There is also another part to this – we deserve all the terror and wrath that God could rightly pour out on us.  Only because of Jesus and his righteousness being freely extended to us do we have any hope.  What a hope it is!

Yet, only because God opens our eyes to this reality do we get to see and feel and understand this hope.  Just like Elisha’s young man.

Until Elisha prayed and God granted him vision, this young man thought that what he saw was real: an invading army that looked mightier than anything the little city of Dothan could withstand.  But then he saw reality.

God didn’t even use the horses and chariots of fire, but answered Elisha’s prayer for the Syrian army to be struck with blindness.

So, God grants eyes to see for one young man, and then blinds an entire army.  And everybody goes home.

As opposed to the Assyrian army with leaders who defied God and taunted the people of Israel.  Their encounter with God was very different:

And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 2 Kings 19:35

One angel, not a multitude!

And our one Savior Jesus opens our eyes to him, covers our sins.  It is truly amazing that any of us get to see the precious reality of how sinful we are and how Jesus’ righteousness covers it all, to the praise and worship of our glorious God.

2 Kings is an amazing book of the Bible.  All the books of the Bible are amazing, of course, but disability keeps showing up in different ways in 2 Kings.

In 2 Kings 6, the Syrian king knows that Elisha is frustrating his plans for military conquest.  So he sends an army to surround the little city of Dothan.  Amazing things are revealed (I’ll linger over that later, Lord willing).

Then Elisha asked for a very strange thing:

And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord and said, “Please strike this people with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha. 2 Kings 6:18

Elisha could have asked for a lot of things – like kill them all, Lord!  God had certainly demonstrated that kind of power before.  But Elisha didn’t ask for that.

God blinded them, and Elisha led them straight into the stronghold of the King of Israel.  The powerful had become the powerless.

Elisha prays again that the Lord would let them regain their sight – and this mighty army can clearly see they are now completely surrounded, helpless just like Elisha had appeared to be when the Syrian army surrounded the city of Dothan.

The King of Israel is very excited at what God has done!  The next course of action is clear:

As soon as the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “My father, shall I strike them down? Shall I strike them down?” 2 Kings 6:21

A great victory has been handed to them!  Elisha tells him instead, feed them and send them home.  The King wisely follows this advice.

This is another example of God being free to do whatever pleases him.  Throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel are spared in miraculous ways – armies are destroyed or armies are frightened away.  And there are times when God uses foreign armies to punish the people of Israel for their sins.

But in this case, God did a ‘monstrous’ thing in striking that entire Syrian army blind, making them completely helpless before their enemies.  And then sparing them.

Nobody died that day.  On either side.  Two hostile armies meet, and the end result is a huge dinner.

And, I imagine, more than one Syrian soldier walked home that day saying exactly what Naaman had said in 2 Kings 5:15b:

Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. . .

We should be very careful before calling anything God does as ‘monstrous’ or as a ‘curse.’

As one who used to see my son’s disabilities in those terms, I am very grateful for the patience God showed to me in those days.  And even more grateful today that he extended grace for me to see the extraordinary gift this boy is who God intentionally created for his glory.