19. Pernicious Presumption
19
Pernicious Presumption
The Case of Israel (Deut. 1:26–46; Num. 13–14)
About two years after the Lord delivered Israel from Egypt, He brought them to Kadesh Barnea, the gateway into the land of Canaan. Instead of obeying the Lord by faith, the people refused to enter the land, so the Lord announced that He would send them on a thirty-eight-year funeral march that would destroy everybody twenty years old and older, except for Joshua and Caleb. Then the nation said, “We have sinned against the Lord.” It’s doubtful that their repentance was sincere.
Predictably, this was followed by their decision to go into the land on their own, without God’s approval or help. Of course, they were miserably defeated. Moses had warned them not to act so foolishly, but they wouldn’t listen. It was all just that much more evidence that they were out of touch with the Lord. “You came back and wept before the LORD,” said Moses, “but he paid no attention to your weeping and turned a deaf ear to you” (Deut. 1:45). They experienced what William Culbertson used to call “the tragic consequences of forgiven sin.”
Israel went up against the enemy “in their presumption” (Num. 14:44), and presumptuous sin is a dangerous thing. First John 5:15–16 calls it “a sin that leads to death,” and Numbers 15:22–31 teaches that God made a distinction between unintentional sins and deliberately defiant sins. For the former, there were sacrifices provided that brought forgiveness, but for the “high-handed sinner,” no sacrifice was available. King David, the man after God’s own heart, upon committing adultery and murder, didn’t bring any sacrifices to the Lord. Instead, he threw himself on the mercy of God (Ps. 51:16–17).
God doesn’t answer the prayers of people who presumptuously defy Him and do their own thing, and then expect Him to straighten things out. The first two requirements for effective prayer are a faith that leads to confidence and a love that leads to obedience, and Israel lacked both. Except for Moses, Caleb, and Joshua, the people of Israel had a stubborn will that led to defiance, and because of this, they forfeited the privilege of claiming their inheritance.
The Case of Moses and Aaron (Deut. 1:37–38; 3:21–28; 4:21–22; Num. 20:1–13)
What Israel did collectively, Moses did personally, and as a result, he also was forbidden to enter Canaan. Moses was a humble man (Num. 12:3), and like more than one leader, he failed in his area of strength, not his area of weakness. He lost his temper, called the people rebels, exalted himself and Aaron above the Lord, and struck the rock instead of speaking to it. God graciously met the needs of the people and gave them water from the rock, but He informed Moses and Aaron that their arrogance had cost them the privilege of going into Canaan. Instead, Joshua would succeed Moses and lead the people into the Promised Land.
Moses prayed that God would change His mind and allow him to go into the land, but God would not listen to him. In fact, He told Moses to stop mentioning it. You get the impression that Moses had often prayed about the matter, but the Lord finally told him to stop. God did allow Moses to view the Promised Land from a distance before he died (Deut. 34:1–4), and he visited the land briefly on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–8). But the sin of presumption clearly had its pernicious effect even in the life of the great godly leader Moses.
There are sins of the flesh and sins of the spirit (2 Cor. 7:1), and the sin of Moses was a sin of the spirit. He became angry with the people, lost his temper, and told them that he and Aaron would provide water from the rock. By robbing God of glory, Moses and Aaron robbed themselves of the joy of entering the Promised Land. The refined sins of the spirit are just as wicked before God as the gross sins of the flesh, and they can cost us dearly.
The Case of Elijah (1 Kings 19:1–14)
“I have had enough, Lord,” Elijah told Jehovah. “Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors.” The prophet Elijah was engaged in a “pity party” that was inflating his ego but not solving his problems. It was only making them worse. But, before we criticize this great prophet too severely, let’s be sure we haven’t done the same thing ourselves during some low hour in life.
It’s obvious that if Elijah had really wanted to die, Jezebel would have accommodated him; but Elijah didn’t mean what he was praying. He had just been through a very demanding time of ministry—calling fire from heaven, slaying the idolatrous prophets, and ending a long drought by praying for rain—and he was lonely, weary, and emotionally drained. Whenever you feel like that, don’t make any important decisions—they’ll undoubtedly be wrong, and you’ll regret them.
Elijah made a big mistake when he left the battlefield and headed out alone for Mount Sinai. He had no reason to fear Jezebel’s threats, but he did have reason to fear getting out of the will of God. For the person of faith, sin is far worse than martyrdom. Up to this point in his ministry, Elijah had acted only when the Lord had commanded him to. “Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah” was always his signal to move (see 1 Kings 17:1–3, 8–9; 18:1). But now he was walking by sight and not by faith and was out of God’s will, and we can hardly expect him to have known what to pray. He was following his feelings, and they were leading him astray.
Elijah and Peter were both courageous men who failed in the area of their greatest strengths. Elijah ran away when Jezebel threatened him, and Peter wilted and lied when a servant girl asked him a question. But pride was also a factor in their tragic failures. “I am no better than my ancestors” indicates that Elijah may have been comparing himself to Moses (who died on a mountain) or Joshua and Gideon (who conquered idolaters) and found himself wanting. The apostle Peter had boasted that he would be faithful to Christ though all the other disciples forsake Him, but he didn’t keep his promise.
Suppose God had answered Elijah’s prayer and taken his life, leaving his dead body to rot in that cave. Elijah would have left his work incomplete, for he still had to appoint a successor. And he would have missed a glorious chariot ride to heaven! His prayer was selfish, of course—the kind of prayer we often pray when we’re alone and nurturing our fears and disappointments. Elijah needed to be with some of those seven thousand Israelites who hadn’t bowed their knees to Baal, or perhaps some of the students at the schools of the prophets. They would have encouraged him. Even our Lord didn’t face Gethsemane alone but asked three of His disciples to accompany Him (Mark 14:32–42). “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18) applies to ministry as well as to marriage. Jesus sent out His disciples two by two so they could encourage and help each other (Mark 6:7), and Solomon wrote, “Two are better than one” (Eccles. 4:9–12).
When James wanted to encourage his readers to pray and trust God no matter how they felt, he advised them to consider Elijah. “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are” (James 5:16–17). What an encouragement, especially in those dark hours of life when we tell the Lord, “I’ve had enough.” That’s when the Lord draws near to us and carries us through, “for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14).
Both Moses and Elijah experienced the pain of disappointment and the rebuke of unanswered prayer. But both of them also shared the glory of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–8). Let’s remember Elijah on the mountain of glory and not in the cave of gloom. Where sin abounds, God’s grace is superabundant.
Salome, James, and John (Matt. 20:17–28)
Salome was one of the women who accompanied Jesus in His ministry and “cared for his needs,” and most Bible scholars believe she was the wife of Zebedee and the mother of James and John (see Matt. 27:56; Mark 15:40–41; 16:1). One thing is certain: she had high ambitions for her two sons. However, Jesus did not answer her prayer.
Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him.
“What is it you want?” he asked.
She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”
When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:20–28)
James and John had a praying mother who obeyed the basic rules for getting answers to prayer. First, she had the right attitude as she humbly came to Jesus, knelt at His feet, and stated her request simply and specifically. In his excellent section on prayer in The Institutes of Christian Religion, John Calvin lists reverence as the first rule of prayer, and this rule Salome had obeyed. Second, she claimed a promise, for prayer involves claiming God’s promises, and Jesus had said that the apostles would sit with Him on thrones (Matt. 19:28). Third, she exhibited great faith, because Jesus had just announced that He would be condemned to death on the cross (Matt. 20:17–19). Why ask for thrones when He had a cross in His future? Finally, she and her two sons had agreed on this request, and Jesus had promised to answer that kind of prayer (Matt. 18:19).
Society today is obsessed with “how-to” books with their “seven steps to success,” and the malady has unfortunately infected the church. Why seven steps and not ten? What biblical texts gave these authors the basis for using these numbers? One evangelical publisher I know changed a perfectly good title into one with a number in it because, according to the marketing people, “numbers are a big thing these days because people like things they can measure.” What ever happened to “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13)?
Salome followed the accepted rules for successful prayer, but the Lord still didn’t give her what she asked for. Why? Because she forgot to balance these rules with what Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer, starting with relationships. She ignored the fact that she and her sons belonged to the family of faith and that they were asking only for themselves and forgetting everybody else. No wonder the other apostles were indignant, for selfish praying divides the family of God.
James 4 is the “war chapter” of the Bible, explaining why some Christians can’t get along with other believers, and one of the basic causes is given in verse 3: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Salome was sure her sons deserved those thrones, which means she didn’t have much regard for the other apostles, some of whom may have deserved the thrones even more.
The concept of motivation in prayer moves us from relationships to the responsibilities stated in the Lord’s Prayer. Did Salome’s request glorify God’s name? Probably not. Did her prayer help to hasten the coming of Christ’s kingdom? No. Did it help accomplish God’s will on earth? Not according to Jesus. Had Salome and her sons run their request through the grid of the Lord’s Prayer, they would never have brought it to the Master in the first place. Prayer means much more than following rules; it also means respecting relationships and accepting responsibilities.
Prayer involves giving and not just getting. Cheap answers to prayer are really not worth receiving. For Jesus to sit on His throne, He had to suffer and die, but James and John wanted to get their thrones without paying a price. “You don’t know what you are asking,” the Lord said to them. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” Their answer has always startled me: “We can” (Mark 10:38–39). They not only didn’t know what they were asking, but they didn’t know their own hearts. They really thought they could follow Jesus in His suffering, but when the crisis came, they forsook Him and fled just like the other disciples.
Prayer is a gracious privilege, and the answers God sends are gifts, but there is still a price to pay. I’ll have more to say about this when we consider Paul’s prayer recorded in Ephesians 3:14–21, but for now, I want to emphasize this: we must be prepared not only to pray but also to receive the answer God sends and use it to glorify Him. James and John didn’t receive assurance that they would be enthroned in places of honor, but they did have the assurance that they would drink the cup and experience the baptism. James was the first of the apostles to be martyred (Acts 12:1–2). John was the last to die, but before he died, he suffered persecution and exile for the name of Christ.
Is it necessary for us to ask God for a throne when we are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6)? Furthermore, prayer is our throne in this world, a “throne of grace” (Heb. 4:14–16). God’s grace is reigning because Christ is reigning, and we have the privilege of “reign[ing] in life” through Him (Rom. 5:17). James and John wanted to sit in places of honor in the future kingdom, but we have a greater honor because we are today seated with Christ, privileged to come to the throne of grace, and therefore reigning in life as overcomers in the name of Jesus.
Finally, it’s a dangerous thing to tell Jesus that we deserve a throne and are prepared to pay the price. James did drink the cup. John outhved all the apostles, and when he was an old man, exiled on the island of Patmos (Rev. 1:9), he experienced the baptism. Even for Jesus Christ there first had to be the cross and then the crown, first the suffering and then the glory, and who are we to reverse God’s order? When it comes to prayer, we ask what we wish from God, but we must be prepared to pay for it. I’ll have more to say about this in the next section.
There are so many wonderful answers to prayer recorded in Scripture that the few unanswered prayers need not discourage us. If anything, they encourage us to examine our hearts and our prayers to be sure we’re asking in the will of God. That is our task in the next section.