“For the LORD will rise up as at Mount Perazim, He will be stirred up as in the valley of Gibeon, to do His task, His unusual task, and to work His work, His extraordinary work” (Isaiah 28:21).

That is, literally, His “task is strange,” His “work is alien.”  

I learned along time ago, from the late Bible teacher Derek Prince no less, that judgment to God is “strange,” is “alien.”  That is to say, it is not His nature to judge; by nature He is merciful, kind, and compassionate.  But Judge He is, judge He must, and judge He does.  

I have always been intrigued by what follows the verse above, as if a completely separate portion of Scripture; today, however, I find it to be completely joined to God’s judgments. Here is the passage, starting in verse 23 and ending at verse 29:

“Give ear and hear my voice,

Listen and hear my words.

Does the farmer plow continually to plant seed?

Does he continually turn and harrow the ground?

Does he not level its surface

And sow dill and scatter cummin

And plant wheat in rows,

Barley in its place and rye within its area?

For his God instructs and teaches him properly.

For dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,

Nor is the cartwheel driven over cummin;

But dill is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a club.

Grain for bread is crushed,

Indeed, he does not continue to thresh it forever.

Because the wheel of his cart and his horses eventually damage it,

He does not thresh it longer.

This also comes from the LORD of hosts,

Who has made His counsel wonderful and His wisdom great.”

There is so much to be had from these verses.  Years ago–I can recall it vividly, I took it as practical wisdom for marketing and managing my company’s projects.  I reasoned that if God instructs the farmer, He can teach me how to run a painting business.  However, although it stands by itself as a wonderful illustration about how God involves Himself in the work of men, I find that in context it is a fleshing out of the words found beforehand.  It describes how God works through His judgments.  You can see, if you look at it this way, God’s wisdom and wonderful counsel.  You can also see His love at work through painful discipline.  Think of the father, about to spank his child, saying, “This is going to hurt me more than it will you.”  

I was greatly helped by reading the commentators, all of whom seemed to agree.  I first turned to Matthew Henry who, I think, is less ‘theological’ than the rest; his writings seem more like meditations than they do word studies or scholarly dissertations.  Yet they are filled with insight.  Here is what he writes,

“The Lord, who has given men this wisdom, is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in his working. As the occasion requires, He threatens, corrects, spares, shows mercy, or executes vengeance. Afflictions are God’s threshing instruments, to loosen us from the world, to part between us and our chaff, and to prepare us for use. God will proportion them to our strength; they shall be no heavier than there is need. When His end is answered, the trials and sufferings of His people shall cease; His wheat shall be gathered into the garner, but the chaff shall be burned with unquenchable fire.”

You see, what God does He has to do even though He doesn’t want to do it.  But He has an end in mind; He is after producing something in His people.  Suffering has its place; it is “after you have suffered for awhile…..” (1 Peter 5:10).  

Expostiors’ explains it this way,

“God’s purposes require him to act differently at different seasons, perhaps sparing Jerusalem in 701 B.C. and destroying it in 586 B.C.  Once again, the variety of God’s ways with people is being underlined.  Plowing, sowing, threshing, and grinding are all means to this end. So God has his purposes in history, and through a sequence of events he brings them to pass. God’s power and wisdom, united in his nature, bring forth a pattern of events in the story of the human race. The agricultural processes here suggest pain, implying that it is possible to find oneself on the wrong side of God’s purposes in history and so to experience his judgment.”

A. R. Faussett writes, 

“God adapts His measures to the varying exigencies of the several cases: now mercy, now judgments; now punishing sooner, now later (an answer to the scoff that His judgments, being put off so long, would never come at all); His object being not to destroy His people any more than the farmer’s object in threshing is to destroy his crop; this vindicates God’s ‘strange work’ in punishing His people.”

So are the will and ways of God; He does what He needs to do in order to bring about His designs for men and nations.  We on the receiving end should take heed and trust in the goodness of God, as while He leads us through the valley of the shadow of death, He prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies.  His goodness and lovingkindness always chases after us.  That is the nature of God and the reason for His judgments.  

I have said it over and over–I shall say it again:  God’s judgments are redemptive.  I reason that absent God’s dealings with men, they would not in the goodness of their hearts turn to Him.  Keep in mind that there is “none good, no, not one.”  We are a fallen race, a condemned one.  But for the grace of God, no person would come out of this reconciled to God.  If it weren’t for the consequences of sin, which send men reeling, they would not ponder God. The whole human race is under judgment–save those who have believed in the Son of God (see John 3).  

And, if it weren’t for difficulty and trouble, who among we who have believed would grow?  This is a different matter, though it is related.  

I think some reading (if ever anyone reads what I spend hours writing) would wonder why I seem to focus so much on the negative, on judgment.   Do I?  Am I not speaking of God’s goodness, His love, His tender mercies?  Again, read Hebrews 12 and Revelation 3.  He treats people according to their need.  Whatever we require to return us to God and for Him to produce the sons and daughters He desires, He does for us.  This is no less than the love of God in action. 

I am reading the account of our Lord’s visit to His hometown where, at first He enjoyed a great welcome.  Yet things turned south quickly, and after speaking well of Him at first, within a short period the people were all about destroying Him.  “No prophet is welcome in His hometown,” He had said; and then went on to tell of how the earlier prophets Elijah and Elisha had ministered not to the Israelites, but to those of other lands, to pagans.  

What strikes me are the Lord’s words as paraphrased by commentator David Brown:  “Too much familiarity breeds contempt.”  I cannot help but think that this applies to we in our day concerning the person Jesus.  

I understand that presently there is a generation rising up that ‘knows not the Lord’; whereas, in a more general sense, America is an evangelized nation.  That is to say, there is no want for professing Christians, churches, Christian media, Christian literature, and overall Christian culture.  Yet the title of Phillip Yancy’s book, The Jesus I Never Knew, comes to mind.  Most people do not know Jesus Christ, nor do they pursue knowing Him; He has become all too common to them.  Jesus Christ is taken for granted in our land.  

I know this to be true simply by considering those in my extended family.  While I have not surveyed them, from what I have observed I would say that they would all, upon asking, profess a belief in God and Jesus.  And though I have not consulted Barna recently, but have read the data at some point in this last year, most Americans would likely say the same thing.  But does Jesus Christ occupy the life?  Motivate the soul?  Fill the mind?  Is He worshipped on Sundays? Any day?  Hardly.  Church attendance is on the decline, and these days even those who sincerely believe in the Lord do not consider going to church a necessity.  

Yes, there are those who hate the Lord and all He represents; they would wipe Him and all the vestiges of a believing nation from the land.  And that they have done to some degree; they have removed Him from the public square, from the public schools, and even from some of the churches!  But still, Christians and Christianity is commonplace.  Jesus Christ is even among the curse words Americans use, and not for praise.  

What is needed?  If Americans do not know the One they profess, if our familiarity with Him has bred contempt–what then?  They must see another aspect of Him they haven’t seen; they must come to know Him as He really is.  How would that be?  

I shall from here speak randomly, writing as things come to mind.  

First of all, let the truth be told.  “Truth has stumbled in the streets,” the prophet Isaiah wrote.  Since the church is “the pillar and support of the truth,” and since she has been more or less silent for many, many years, let her rise up and call a spade a spade.  Let her speak the truth in love. Let her address the issues of the day on behalf of the One who has the answers.  Let her confront the lies being perpetrated by the chief of liars, Satan.  

Second, let there be a demonstration of a true, experiential knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.  When the Bible speaks of knowing God, it is not just head knowledge–my goodness, the world has enough of that!  “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.”  It is not the theologian that exhibits Christianity, but the person who is living in communion with Jesus Christ.  This is seen by the relationships Christians have with one another.   “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Christ and Christianity will be seen to be altogether uncommon if the life of the believer stands out in stark contrast to the rest of the world.  And this in his love for his fellow Christians.

Third, let the power fall.  I think of Che Ahn’s book, Say Goodby to Powerless Christianity,  which is certainly what must happen to dispel our familiarity with the gospel.  “The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk,” Paul writes, “but of power.”  In another place he says, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”  

Perhaps the single most greatest need of the hour is for a display of power.  I believe people seeing and experiencing God’s power will knock familiarity with Christ right out of the park. 

I say “let the power fall” because that is crucial; we need God to unleash His power upon and through His willing people.  A good example is from my own life just recently.  I know a man who is so much like those I have described above.  He would, and has, professed Jesus; yet there is no evidence that he is an active follower of Jesus Christ–at least as I understand it.  They say he is going blind in one eye.  So one day I laid my hand upon his eye and prayed it be healed–this, in accord with our Lord’s own words in Mark 16 (which I believe with all my heart!).  But, so far, nothing has happened; his eye remains as is.  What if, when I laid my hands on him his eye was instantly and forever healed?  I think his relationship with Christ would be dramatically changed!  

Christianity is indeed all too common in these United States.  There is a Jesus we have never known–at least not in modern times.  There is even a contempt for Him and His followers.  All of which needs to change.  The truth of God’s word must be told–no more watering down Scripture to save our necks, fear confrontation, or avoid losing church members.  The life of Christ must be demonstrated in the church if it is to be exported.  And God’s power is absolutely critical if we wish to reach those who take Jesus for granted.  

With regard to which, this last need, I close with a prayer prayed by the church in the book of Acts:

“And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence, while You extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:29-30).

“The eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).

These words, spoken by Moses in a prayer at the end of his life, are seen also in a Psalm attributed to him, Psalm 90.  There he writes, “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations” (verse 1).  Well, not quite, as Israel was in and out of their relations with God; many times and in various ways they were very far from Him.  Yet, still, God was always there as a refuge for them, a place to come to, a place to live.  

The idea of dwelling in God perpetually strikes me this morning.  It means that we have made the Lord our home.  Not so much a place from which we go out and come in, but a place we live whether we go out or come in.  We are always there.  

In some respects this is true for all men, though only in a general sense, and in no wise a conscious one.  For it is written, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17).  All really do live in God, even those with rebellious hearts.  But this is not the sense of Moses’ words.  The man who lives in God has made a choice, that wherever he is and whatever he does, he dwells in God.  The Lord God is a home from which he never departs.  He is, as it were (as is so relevant right now), self-quarantined.  He has decided, not because of some disease, nor even for an escape from danger (though these are both valid and biblical reasons), but because this is a most wonderful place, this shelter of the Most High, this shadow of the Almighty.  

Yes, God is our refuge; He is our safe place, our fortress.  He is our shield from the terrors of the night, and the arrows that fly by day; from the “pestilence that stalks in darkness,” and the “destruction that lays waste at noon.“  But He is so much more than that!  I think it pleases God that we choose to live in Him for the sake of living in Him, not just to save our necks.  He is, after all, our exceeding joy; and in His presence is fullness of joy.  These are the best reasons to dwell in Him.  

If we move on from Psalm 90 to Psalm 91, we see a correlation between dwelling in God and loving God, because, really, this is what I am talking about.  

In verse 9 we read, “For you have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place”–and then it goes on to tell of the safety we will enjoy as a result.  “No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent.”  But then in verse 14 it continues, “Because he has loved Me…..”  You see that the idea of dwelling in God is all about loving God; that is the focus.  All the other things derive from this:  We love the Lord.  

“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him;

I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.

He will call upon Me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble;

I will rescue him and honor him.

With a long life I will satisfy him

And let him see My salvation.” 

We are not ‘using’ God to protect our skin–and don’t get me wrong, He is our protector, and we do need to protection.  And run to Him I shall!  Hide behind Him I will!  But stay there.  Stay there, for there is more to Him than that.  

To dwell indicates a sense of permanence, and that is the point.  You are not paying God a visit, then heading out to do your thing.  No, as in our opening verse, “You have been our dwelling place for all generations.”  Permanently. Forever.  

My thinking takes me to another place, John 15, where Jesus says, “Abide in Me.”  Webster makes a distinction between dwelling and abiding.  He puts the one as more permanent, and the other as more temporary.  I am certain that is not the sense in which Christ employs the term.  If that were the case given the context, then He being the vine and we the branches, if we were to leave off of abiding, then we would whither up and be fuel for the fire.  No, to abide in Jesus is to do so at all times and forever; that is the objective, that is the plan.  So the two, Moses’ words and Jesus’ words, they are the same.  

It is worth considering the outcomes, as both are very much desirable.  As with Moses, there is protection, deliverance, and long life.  With the Lord Jesus, there is fruitfulness, answered prayer, and the love of God.  Who would not want these?  

How to dwell in God?  I think it is a conscious choice.  As the title of Bother Lawrence’s book indicates, we practice the presence of God.  That is, if we live and move and have our being in God, we seek to intentionally live that way.  We make it our aim to be spiritually minded (Romans 8:6); to set our minds on things above (Colossians 3:2).  We see ourselves as being in God.  We turn what is mundane into acts of worship (Colossians 3:23).  We commune with God in His word and through prayer.  We live a life of love.  We obey Christ. 

“The eternal God is a dwelling place.”  Let Him be yours, be mine.  That is His will for us.  One day, through faith in Christ, we shall live with Him forever.  “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places, and I go to prepare a place for you.”  In the here and now, He wants to be this for each of us; and there, in Him, we get to enjoy all the benefits.  But best of all, we get to enjoy the Lord Himself.