26. For the Joy Set Before
For the Joy Set Before
Think about the golden plough of the wild oat, with every spike and hair so set that it slips forward and will not be pushed backward. “He steadfastly set His face toward Jerusalem”—and the Cross.
TALKING ON THE PHONE with my daughter Valerie one day I heard howling and singing in the background.
“What’s happening” I asked.
“Oh that’s Elisabeth, singing in the bathroom to try to cheer up Jim who doesn’t want his ears scrubbed!”
Elisabeth was seven, Jim two. I asked what she was singing.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives, all fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because
He lives!
A two-year-old has to howl sometimes. Singing about the resurrection to a little boy with soap in his eyes is adding insult to injury. We know how this feels.
The resurrection, however, is the anchor of our hope. We know that heaven is not here, it’s there. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. Through myriad variations of “soap in the eyes” God is forever luring us up and away from this kingdom of pain, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom where what we so keenly long for we shall, if we stoop to enter the small gate, most certainly find.
“And God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rv 21:3-4, RSV).
The Bible begins with perfection and ends with perfection, but in between is the saga of man’s sin and God’s mercy, the mercy that endures forever, reaching down to loved sinners. The story is faithful to the dark side and the bright side, to blatant disobedience and heroic obedience, chaos and order, suffering and joy—it’s all in there, with God the Father standing always within the shadows, keeping watch above His own.
Joseph was the victim of his brothers’ jealousy and a rejected seductress’s fury, but through many years of suffering God brought about the salvation of His people.
Esther, a beautiful Jewish virgin in the harem of a Persian king, risked her life to save her people when the king issued an order to exterminate them.
Daniel, in a den of lions for refusal to obey a heathen king’s orders, stands as one of the towering heroes whose deeds speak louder than any sermon, making visible to us that faith in God means obedience with no thought of consequences. It means not only do or die but sometimes do and die. Daniel was ready for either.
For Jonah the honor chamber of a fish’s stomach became the place of spiritual illumination and repentance.
Paul’s prison chains made the Philippian Christians more confident in the Lord, more bold to speak the word of God without fear. An unnamed illness led to his bringing the gospel to the Galatians.
For all these there must have been excruciating emotional suffering. We can try to put ourselves in the pit or the prison with Joseph. We can imagine to some degree how Esther’s heart was in her mouth as she waited to see if the king would receive her. Listen with Daniel to the heart-stopping snarling of the lions—at what moment will the first one spring out of the blackness? Smell and feel with Jonah the fetid slime of a marine animal’s digestive tract. Lie in the filth of the prison with Paul. Although the physical suffering was great, the mental and emotional suffering must have exceeded it—how long will this go on? Will I be able to endure? What will the end be? Has God forgotten me?
Many modern afflictions fall into this category—abandonment by parents or spouse, depression and mental illness, the scourges of addiction or homosexuality in someone we love, the indelible memory of sexual abuse.
Is there no balm for such pain? The fragrance of the balm of Gilead permeates the sacred story. Men and women in fear and pain and helplessness of all kinds found solace and peace. That balm has not lost its restorative power. A woman whose childhood was filled with indescribable abuse and defilement shared with me three principles which had revolutionized her life. I who had no such past am glad she permits me to share them with you.
1. Forgiveness—Mark 11:25—is essential. It is so insidiously pleasant to hold onto the “right” to feel angry, hurt, depressed, vengeful, etc. Unless we forgive our childhood tormentors the way Jesus forgave us as we tormented Him on the cross, we will never have any spiritual freedom in our lives. This is merely an act of the will. We must will to forgive them and God works the forgiveness in our hearts.
2. Trust in God’s sovereignty—Genesis 50:20. If I am going to trust God for my future then I must trust His sovereignty over my past. He could have prevented it. He allowed it to happen. He makes no mistakes. He hath done all things well.
To consider the life of Joseph makes it impossible to complain about the “injustices” in our lives. Human injustice is a mere chisel in the hand of God. The instrument may seem sharp and cruel but the Sculptor is the epitome of kindness and love.
3. Having a view to eternity—Colossians 31-4. This life is nothing but a vapor. My childhood must be less than a blink of the eye. I have all of now and forever to enjoy God’s love and the wonderful things He has planned for me. Perhaps one of Satan’s craftiest tricks in this age of psychoanalysis is to keep us focused inward. The Word tells us to focus upward, put off the old man, put on the new and go.
A few of the Scriptures which helped her were these:
“When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up” (Ps 27:10, AV).
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have engraved thee upon the palms of my hands” (Is 49:15, 16).
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21, AV).
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).
This, I believe, is what it means to embrace the cross. Here is a woman who has found in her own childhood tragedy the presence and the transcendence of God. Her ears have been open to His word, and by a profound and peaceful acceptance of an unspeakable experience and a humble self-donation she has received in exchange His grace which enables her to forgive, to trust, to fix her eyes on the invisible.
The Lord of Heaven desires and seeks our companionship (remember His words to the disciples, “Will you also go away?”), but we can never go far along the road if we refuse things that are hard for us. Our spiritual apprenticeship is served only as we earnestly observe what the Master does and do it after Him, not asking for shelter from winds that beat on Him, but turning our faces to that wind, taking up and embracing His cross.
A glad acceptance of hard things opens the way for glory. In John’s great vision of the rainbow-circled throne from which went out flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, he wept because there was no one worthy to open the scroll held by the One on the throne. One of the elders says to him, “Do not weep, for the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Scion of David, has won the right to open the scroll and break its seven seals” (Rv 5:5). Then John saw, not the golden-maned king of the beasts with burning eyes and swinging tail, but a little lamb, all bloodied as though it had been sacrificed. When the Lamb took the scroll the living creatures and the elders around the throne fell down before Him and sang a new song—He was worthy to take the scroll because He had shed His blood. Then the Seer hears the voices of angels, thousands upon thousands, shouting ‘Worthy is the Lamb, the Lamb that was slain, to receive all power and wealth, wisdom and might, honour and glory and praise!” (Rv 5:12).
All that the world so desperately seeks the Lamb won, not by aggression but by surrender. That is the principle of the cross. It takes the weak and makes them strong. It takes our sin and bestows Christ’s righteousness. Out of bondage we are made free. Darkness is overcome by light. Loss turns into gain.
Perhaps this page is read by someone who feels pinned down by depression, immobile, hating himself, worthy of nothing but the trash pile. People offer their cheerful little remedies and succeed only in arousing hostility and strengthening the conviction that it’s all over, there is no answer. Life is all husk.
Long before John wrote the Book of the Revelation, the prophets had written of wonderful exchanges—Isaiah wrote of pine trees and myrtles replacing camel thorns and briars; of God’s giving garlands instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourners’ tears, a garment of splendor for a heavy heart (Is 61:3). Nehemiah wrote of blessings where there had been cursing; the psalmist of dancing and joy where there had been laments and of pasture instead of wilderness. Were these mere visions of unreality?
Jesus spoke of transformations. The poor, the sorrowful, the hungry and thirsty, the persecuted would be happy, would inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, find consolation, be satisfied, have rich rewards. Was He offering only a carrot on a stick?
The apostle Paul was carried away with the prospects—the perishable to become imperishable, weakness to be turned into power, humiliation to glory, mortality to immortality, poverty to riches, vile bodies to resplendent ones, the curse of the law replaced by the blessing of Abraham. Was it truth or poetry?
Think of the golden plough of the wild oat, every spike and hair so set that it slips forward and will not be pushed backward. Why? There is a golden harvest ahead. And Jesus, for the joy that was set before Him, accepted, embraced, and endured the cross. And for all who follow hard after Him, faces set as His was, “like a flint,” refusing to be pushed backward, that same joy is in store, for He prayed “that they may have my joy within them in full measure” (Jn 17:13).