On Eagle’s Wings

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The LORD is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

his understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint,

and to him who has no might he increases strength.

Even youths shall faint and be weary,

and young men shall fall exhausted;

but they who wait for the LORD shall renew (exchange) their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)

I’ve often watched eagles soar o’er the Owyhee River, rising out of the canyon on thermal updrafts, scarcely flapping their wings, peerless examples of effortless strength and grace—reminding us that we too can rise above our busy days and duties; we can “run and not become weary.”

But, it’s worth noting, we can also “walk and not faint.” We can plod through monotonous, pedestrian days when we’re sheltering in place, distanced from family and friends, living in a house full of restless moppets, or living by ourselves—alone. In that place, as we rest in him we can “renew” (Heb: "exchange") our strength. 

Our weariness and exhaustion for God’s inexhaustible strength. Ours for the asking. Such a deal we got!

David Roper

3.28.20

Sheltering In Place II

"Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it’" (Genesis 28:16).

Jacob was on the lam, fleeing from Esau’s wrath, and came to “no particular place,” as the Hebrew text suggests. As night was falling, he cleared a spot in the rubble-strewn ground, and found a flat rock on which to lay his head. He soon lapsed into a deep sleep in which he began to dream. In his dream Jacob saw a stairway, rising from the stone at his head, connecting heaven and earth. 

The traditional ladder is such a favorite image it’s a shame to give it up, yet the picture of angels in ungainly apparel scrambling up and down the rungs of a ladder leaves much to be desired. The term usually translated “ladder” actually suggests a stairway or stone ramp like those that led to the top of ziggurats, the terraced pyramids raised to worship the gods of that era. The ziggurat with its steep stairway was a symbol of man’s efforts to plod his way up to God. It was hard work, but there was no other way to get help when you needed it (see Genesis 11:1–4). 

It’s odd how that pagan notion has found its way into our theology. Some early Christian writers used the ladder as an analogy for spiritual progress, tracing the steps of Christian faith from one stage to another, rising higher by self effort. Walter Hilton’s literary classic The Ladder of Perfection is based on that notion. The  old camp-meeting song “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” draws on that association. 
In each case the emphasis is on the ascent of man. 

What arrested Jacob’s attention, however, was the fact that God had descended. He had come down the stairway and was standing next to him, for that’s the meaning of the adverb in 28:13. (“And behold, the LORD stood beside him.” The same Hebrew word is translated “nearby” in Genesis 18:2 and  “in front of,” in Genesis 45:1.) 

God was standing beside him. The God of Jacob’s father, Isaac, and grandfather, Abraham, was in this lonely place with him, contrary to Jacob’s expectations and far from the traditional sites he normally associated with God’s presence. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it,” Jacob declared with wide-eyed, childlike astonishment. “This [place] is none other than the house of God.”

Jacob got the message, but God was taking no chances. He highlighted the picture with a promise that would sustain Jacob through the long, weary days ahead: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised” (Genesis 28:15).

His promise is your promise as well. “God has said, ‘I will never leave you; I will never forsake you’” (Hebrews 13:5). He is present with you today—in the house or room where you find yourself sequestered, sheltering in place, isolated and alone. You can say of every site and circumstance, “Surely the Lord is in this place.”

G. K. Chesterton was asked by a reporter what he would say if Jesus were standing beside him. “He is,” Chesterton replied with calm assurance.

David Roper

Adapted from the chapter “Jacob’s Ladder” in The God Who Walks Beside Us

No Way Out but Through

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you will not be burned, and the flame will not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2).

We might wish that Isaiah had said, “You will never pass through floods or walk through fire,” but God has not promised to keep his children out of trouble. No, “we must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22)

I’m not wise enough to know the reasons for the present crisis, but if it is the judgment of God on the earth his children will of necessity suffer along with the world—in which case, there’s no way out of our trouble but through.

Nevertheless our Lord is with us when we walk through the fire and pass through the flood, lending his strength to our weakness, giving us peace in our unrest. The flood will not overwhelm us; we will not be consumed. We can pass through this crisis not somehow but triumphantly. We are “more than conquerors through him who loves us” (Romans 9:37).

Oh, we may be swept up in the virus and die, but, I remind us once again, not one of us will lose a single hair from his or her head! (Luke 21:18).

David Roper

3.24.20

Grass or Grace

“And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar. (This was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself the Jordan Valley…” (Genesis 13:10,11)

“Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” A cynical question…unless God is the one that asks it.

Lot cast his eyes on the steppes of Sodom, but he could not see it’s corruption. He “chose for himself” and lost everything worth having (Genesis 14:1-12).. 

Abraham let God choose and got everything in the end (Genesis 13:14-18). God’s will is always better than trusting our lying eyes. 

David Roper

3.22.20

Faith instead of Fear

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

It occurred to me today that Jesus did not say, “I have overcome the world. Nevertheless, in this world you will have tribulation.“ He put it the other way ‘round: “In this world you will have tribulation. Nevertheless, take heart. I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). 

Hope not fear is the last word. 

David Roper

Sheltering in Place

 

I was watching the news on television last night and heard the Covid-19 pandemic described as a “terrifying seige.” I thought of the day Elisha and his servant were beseiged at Dothan (2 Kings 6:8-19).

 

Dothan was an insignificant Israeli settlement about twelve miles north of Samaria, Israel’s capitol. The city wasn’t much to look at—about 10 acres in size—and there wasn’t anything worth defending there for the residents never bothered to build a wall. The only defense system in evidence today is a stone rampart from an earlier period that was pressed into service and, as ancient walls go, was of no significance.

But Dothan was of great significance to Elisha for there were Israelites there that had not yet bowed the knee to Baal and kissed his feet. 

On one occasion when Elisha and his servant were residing at Dothan, Ben Hadad, the Syrian King, besieged the city in order to kill the prophet. He had good reason for Elisha had been supplying Israel’s King Jehoram with intelligence about Syrian military movements. 

The Syrian army gathered by night, surrounded the city, sized up the situation, decided the city was nothing to worry about, and bedded down for the night.

Early the next morning, Elisha’s disciple awakened and began making preparations to return to their permanent residence in Samaria (6:32). He looked over the wall and discovered to his dismay “an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city.” He ran to alert Elisha and cried out in despair,  “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” 

“Don't be afraid,” Elisha said. “The odds are in our favor.” Or words to that effect. 

Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, open the young man's eyes so that he may see.” So the Lord opened his eyes and he "saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” He saw the legions of heaven at God's disposal, against which Syria’s forces were powerless. 

Seeing into the unseen world, as I have written before, is a mark of spiritual maturity. It’s an insight that assures us that we are never at loose ends. We may feel small and insignificant in the face of present danger, but “the chariots of God are myriads; thousands upon thousands” (Psalm 68:17). God and a googol of angels encircle us. 

This does not mean that we will not be overrun from time to time. Indeed we will. “Disturbances, troubles, wars, captivities, cries, groans, and frights,” may assault us, as Mr. Sagacity assured Bunyan’s hard-pressed pilgrim. Despite our best efforts Corvid-19 may overwhelm us. We and our loved ones may sicken and die. But we are safe, shielded and sheltered by God’s power unto eternal salvation (1 Peter 1:5). As Jesus said with such fine irony, they may kill us, but not one hair of our head will perish (Luke 21:18).

And, in the interim, God is with us in the moment, wherever we are and whatever our circumstances may be. He is here to meet each emergency as it arises. This is not a new condition: “His is the presence in which we have ever been.”

He is pleased when, though we cannot see him, we speak to him as though we were looking into his face. We can say with confidence, “He is in this place.”

This is a solid fact on which we stand and with which we can meet the present hour in peace. We can put God and his armies between us and all that we fear.

 

When at length 

the day is through, 

shall I find 

I failed to tap 

the Infinite Resources 

forever open to the weak 

who seek (Ruth Bell Graham).

 

David Roper

Adapted from the chapter “Dothan” in Seasoned With Salt.

Until the Present Troubles Cease

My soul is greatly troubled.

And you, O LORD—how long? (Psalm 6:3).

We like to see closure, the end line, the respite, but God never tells us when our troubles will cease. We must then trust Him in the moment, and “let patience do its perfecting work" (James 1:3). God's goodness and love is sufficient for today (6:4). 

Let our hearts then turn to Heaven, 

  where God bides his time in peace.  

Giving him our heart's devotion 

  till the present troubles cease.

David Roper

3.18.20

Babylon, "the Great"

“Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying,

‘So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence,

and will be found no more;

and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will be heard in you no more,

and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more,

and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more,

and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more,

and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more…’” (Revelation 18:21-23).

Babylon, the proud City of Man, "laid waste in a single hour." 18:17) The arts, the crafts, the industries, the arenas, the markets, the meeting places and all the joys of life sink like a millstone into the sea.

All because of a tiny germ... 

“The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity" (1 John 2:17, The Message).

David Roper

3.16.20

Jannes and Jambres

The power of Sauron is still less than fear makes it.

—J.R.R. Tolkien

Warm–up: Exodus 7:11-12, 22

Jannes and Jambres were the two court magicians who opposed Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh. They’re unnamed in the Old Testament, but in his second letter to Timothy, Paul uses the names tradition has assigned them (2 Timothy 3:8). 

The two men appear frequently in extra–biblical sources as dark wizards. According to Jewish tradition, it was they who led Egypt’s pharaoh astray until he and his army met death in the sea, where the two magicians perished as well. One ancient traveler, Macarius of Alexandria, claimed he visited their garden tomb in Upper Egypt, an immense monument dedicated to the memory of their immense power and influence.

The essence of all the traditions regarding these magicians’ is their deliberate and determined opposition to God, driven by the forces of evil. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls relates how Moses and Aaron arose with the help of the Prince of Lights, while Belial (Satan) raised up Yohanah (Jannes) and his brother. For this reason many believe that Jannes and Jambres are the source of the German legend of Johann Faust, the magician and alchemist who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for power and knowledge. 

But the biblical record is sparse. It simple reports that Jannes and Jambres were Pharoah’s magicians who through their magic were able to duplicate the plague on the Nile.  They were also able to counterfeit the plague of frogs, but were unable to remove it, which suggests that the devil and his minions have no power to alleviate human suffering. It is our God of mercy who brings eternal consolation.

The magicians were frustrated at last by the plague of lice and confessed that their powers were limited. This is “the finger of God,” they said, in that this stroke could not be explained by natural causes. In the end, they were overwhelmed by the plague of boils and driven from Pharaoh’s court in disgrace (Exodus 9:11). 

Paul, in speaking of the opponents of the gospel in his day, says of them: “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected as regards the faith. They will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two (Jannes and Jambres) came to be” (2 Timothy 3:9). 

Interesting word, “folly.” Paul’s term means, “to lack understanding.” Those who promote error don’t “get it.” They may have a modicum of knowledge, but they have no real understanding, no answers for the deep distress of human existence, no counsel for the issues that break our hearts, which is why, in the end, even their own people turn away from them. 

Furthermore, Paul says, they are wicked—“men of depraved minds” to use his precise phrase. Under the surface lies darkness and moral corruption. Though suave on the surface, they are corrupt and ruined people, and their character will come to the surface in time and be seen by all.

The only people who are seduced into cults and ensconced in them are those who want to be. Those who truly want God will always see through evil men and women. “The Lord knows those who are His,” Paul assures us and he will not let his children go (2 Timothy 2:17-19). 

And so, we need not fear those who inveigh against the truth, though we feel their presence and they grow in strength and numbers. In due time, their folly and impotence will be manifest. “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots,” Jesus said. “Leave them (alone)” (Matthew 15:13, 14). 

David Roper

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015,  

A Defective Leader

"He has not a single redeeming defect."

 —Benjamin Disraeli of another British parliamentarian

Warm–up: Exodus 5:21–23

I read somewhere that a Huey Cobra helicopter, practicing auto rotations during a military night-training exercise, landed on its tail rotor, separating the tail boom from the rest of the aircraft. Fortunately, the aircraft wound up on its skids, sliding down the runway doing three-sixties in a shower of sparks. As the Cobra passed the tower, the following exchange occurred: 

Tower: “Sir, do you need assistance?”

Cobra: “I don’t know, tower. We ain’t done crashin’ yet!”

As I look at my life and leadership over the years, I have to admit that much of it has been one resounding crack-up after another. My best–laid schemes have crashed and burned, my brilliant strategies have augured in, and “I ain’t done crashin’ yet.” 

Yet God wastes nothing—not even our failures. He discerns the possibilities in every humiliating debacle and uses them to make us better leaders than we ever thought possible. 

God’s ways are not our ways: We equate leadership with lordship; He equates it with servanthood. We seek power so we can set things right; He strips us of importance so He can do a better job. We want strength so we can help God get on with His work; He weakens us and reveals our ineptitude so He can get us out of the way. We advertise our credentials so others can be sure of us; He lets our assets fail us so others see that apart from God we can do nothing.

Conventional wisdom contends that weakness is a hindrance. We must be strong and able. But in spiritual matters, flaws and frailties are valuable leadership traits. For one thing they help others count less on our leadership and make them more dependent on God to find their way.

Moses is a good example of this notion. His experience, his background, his talents, his training had earned him the admiration of God’s people. They looked to Moses for their deliverance. Ye they soon learned that all such hope was vain, that their leader, at best, was as weak and frail as they. He could not break through Pharaoh’s defenses; he could not reduce Israel’s servitude; he could not set his people free. And thus the way was prepared for Israel to lean on God.

We are inclined to fix on personalities, to be impressed by intellect, education, leadership skills, the passion of a leader’s causes or strength of will. We believe that wisdom and power are vested in that person. Such adulation, however, is nothing more than humanism—making man or woman the measure of all things. What’s worse, it’s idolatry: a false centering on someone other than God.  

And so God lets our leaders fall off their pedestals. Failure, indecision, and inability to achieve what they’ve set out to do bring humbling certainty of their inadequacy and strip their followers of illusion and their dependency. Such weaknesses show us that they, as do we, “shuffle along on feet of clay,” to use Brennan Manning’s phrase. They teach us that the only good thing about us, whatever our position, is the goodness of God. 

Our Lord knew this truth well. He was fully aware that anything good in him came not from his himself but from His Father . When an effusive disciple began to gush, “Good teacher...” Jesus stopped him in his tracks. “Why do you call me good?” He said. “No one is good—except God” (Mark 10:18).[1]

David Roper

[1] There is mystery here for Jesus was fully God. Yet in the Incarnation he was fully man and as such he acted as a man wholly dependent upon God (cf. John 5:19, 30). 

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015

  

Holy Laughter

Fairy tales do not deny the existence of…sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat….giving a glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

—J.R.R. Tolkien.

Warm–up: Genesis 21:1-8

It is a commonplace of Christian thought that joy is deep tranquility, yet it seems to me that biblical joy is something more: it is “holy laughter”—the laughter of Sarah, for example: “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” 

Behind Sarah’s laugh lay a promise. Twenty-five years before, a mysterious visitor, actually God in disguise, promised Abraham that he would have a son (Genesis 18:9–15). Sarah, eavesdropping on the other side of the 

tent flap, chuckled to herself in disbelief. 

Why did Sarah laugh? Was it a belly laugh over the naivety of men? Was it the self–depreciating laugh of one who considered herself unworthy of God’s grace? Was it a bitter laugh over the disappointment of past hopes? We're not told. What we are told is that Abraham’s body was dead, and, as the KJV text so quaintly puts it, “it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women” (Hebrews 11:12; Genesis: 18:11).

But, though it seemed impossible, the Lord did for Sarah what He had promised: Sarah “bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” God created new life in Sarah’s dead body—the promised seed, the link to the One who would bring salvation to the world. And Sarah laughed again, this time the laughter of joyous surprise. 

Joy is akin to humor, which, they tell me, is the sudden perception of an incongruity. A story takes an unexpected twist, jerks our minds around and we laugh. A joke, in other words, is a “surprise.” 

The etymology of the word “joy” suggests a similar idea—surprise. (That’s the basis of the pun in Lewis’ autobiography, Surprised by Joy.) God sends a happy surprise and the emotion we feel is joy.

G. K. Chesterton claimed that joy, “which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian…and the dominant theme of Christian faith. By its creed (i.e., what we believe) joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special (occasional) and small.” In other words, certain things we believe lead us to laugh. We “get the joke.” 

Joy comes with a sudden perception of truth, when some word of God breaks into our minds. George McDonald says, “[The Christian] does not take his joy from himself. He feels joy in himself, but it comes to him from God.”  

Joy is an “Aha!” moment, a startling revelation, a sudden awareness, an abrupt remembrance of God’s goodness and grace. [1]

I think of a friend who spent four years and thousands of dollars pursuing a Ph.D. at a West Coast university only to be told shortly before graduation that his Christian pre–suppositions precluded the degree. For a moment Bob envisioned dollars and days sprouting wings and flying away. Then a truth came to mind, accompanied by the words of an old hymn: 

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold,

I’d rather be His than have riches untold . . .

I’d rather have Jesus than anything this world affords today. 

And Bob laughed, a clear, ringing laugh—at which point his advisor thought he’d lost his mind. But this was not insanity. Bob just “got the joke.”

I think of another example, this time from C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The White Witch, with deep magic, had put Aslan to death on the Stone Table. The children, distraught at his death, wandered back to the table to mourn him, only to find that he had risen from the dead! (A deeper magic had brought Aslan back to life.)

[Aslan] stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table. Laughing, though she didn't know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again. A mad chase began. Round and round the hilltop he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had, except in Narnia! 

“The joy of the Lord is your strength!” Nehemiah chortled (Nehemiah 8:10). This is gigantic joy, a joy that only God and His people can know!

May our sides split with holy laughter!

[1] The devil hates our laughter. “Joy,” C. S. Lewis’s demon, Screwtape, writes to his nephew, “is a disgusting and a direct assault to the realism, dignity and austerity of hell.”

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015,  

A Friend of Souls

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn,

In the place of their self–content;

There are souls like stars that dwell apart

In a fellow-less firmament;

There are pioneer souls that blaze a path

Where highways never ran;

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,

And be a friend to man.

— Samuel Walter Foss

Warm–up: Genesis 14:18–20

Consider Abraham, returning from the raid on Chedorlaomer and his coalition of Mesopotamian kings—battle scarred, exhausted, fearful, aware that he had angered four of the most powerful kings of that era.There in the Valley of Shaveh, Abraham is met by Melchizedek, King of Salem, who brings out bread and wine and blesses him. 

Who is this great high priest who blesses our father Abraham? “Without doubt the lesser is blessed by the greater” (Hebrews 7:7).

We know very little about Melchizedek—only that he was the king of Salem (ancient Jerusalem), that he was “a priest of God Most High,” that he fed and blessed the famished Abraham, and then passed off the scene. 

Much is made of his name, which means “King of Righteousness,” but it was a common throne name in those days. (The name is written in two parts if it were a title rather than a personal name.) 

So, I ask you, who was this king–priest who has been lionized in the history of Israel and in the Church? The Essenes of Qumran thought he was an angel; the philosopher Philo believed he was the divine Logos; the historian Josephus said he was just a righteous man, “but as such was by common consent…made a priest of God.”

David rightly saw Melchizedek as a prototype of the promised Messiah who would establish a new order of king–priests (Psalms 110:1-4). 

The author of Hebrews, taking the argument further, said that he is like Jesus, who is a priest despite his non–levitical ancestry, whose title is “King of Righteousness” and “King of Peace,” and who, because he appears in the account without beginning or end of life, “remains a priest forever” (Hebrews 7:2-3). 

David and the writer of Hebrews have the last word, of course— Melchizedek is a type of Jesus. But, as Josephus correctly noted, he was also a man, and as such is an example of the kind of man I want to be.

I want to be a friend of souls. I want to stand by the way as Melchizedek did, waiting for weary travelers, “….laying low, in the places where the ragged people go.” 

I want to look for those who have been battered and wronged by others, who carry the dreary burden of a wounded and disillusioned heart. I want to nourish and refresh them with bread and wine and send them on their way with a benediction. 

I cannot “fix” those who pass by, though I want to and frequently try to, but I can love them and listen to their hearts. I can pray with them. I can share a word of scripture when it’s appropriate. I can sing “sustaining songs,” as every good Poohphile knows to do. And I can leave them with a blessing. 

A “blessing” is more than a parting shibboleth, or a polite response to a sneeze. We bless others when we bring them to the One who is the source of blessing. Melchizedek blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High…” As Billy Graham would say, he blessed him real good.

“To bless,” is to “bestow something that promotes or contributes to another’s happiness, well-being, or prosperity.” The Hebrew word comes from a root that means, “to kneel,” perhaps because of an old association between kneeling and receiving good from a benefactor.

In the Old Testament God is the benefactor. He alone bestows the blessing. “This is how you are to bless the Israelites,” God commanded Moses. “Say to them: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace’” (Number 6:24-26). 

I cannot strengthen feeble hands, nor can I straighten knees that have given away, but I can bring weary travelers to the one who can. His bread gives endurance, strength and eternal consolation. His wine gladdens the heart and sustains it.

I cannot undo the cruel or dreary circumstances of anyone’s journey, nor can I take away its travail, but I can remind those who trudge by that there is one who walks with them—who holds them with his right hand, who guides them with his counsel, and afterward will take them into glory.

I cannot help the helpless, but I can pray with them and bring them to the throne of grace to find help in time of need.  I cannot show them the way, but I can “show them God” (John Piper).

This is my benediction. 

From, Out of the Ordinary, David Roper, Discovery House Publishing, 2015.