Revise Us Again by Frank Viola

Author:Frank Viola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Revise, Renewed, Insightful, Christian Life
Publisher: David C Cook
Published: 2012-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

2 For a fuller treatment on the cancer of self-righteousness and how the Lord views it, see chapter 8 of From Eternity to Here.

CHAPTER 8

THE GOD OF UNSEEN ENDINGS

REVISING OUR SPIRITUAL EXPECTATIONS

The psalmist said that the Lord made known His ways to Moses but His acts to the children of Israel (Ps. 103:7). We have a God who doesn’t do anything arbitrarily. He’s quite deliberate in what He does.

It takes a lifetime to understand the ways of God. But the more we understand them, the more we understand who He is. For His ways give us insight into His character.

Each Christian has an expectation of who God is and how He should act under certain circumstances. When the Lord doesn’t act according to our expectations, our faith gets tested. Some people are “offended” and fall away. Note the words of Jesus Himself about this.

Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me. (Luke 7:23)

Here’s the context behind those words. John the Baptist had just been put in a dark, cold prison. John’s prison experience caused him to doubt that his cousin was in fact the Messiah. So John sent emissaries to Jesus, asking Him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Luke 7:19).

Jesus’ reply to John comes straight from Isaiah 61: “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

Jesus, however, leaves out one very telling phrase from Isaiah 61, the one John would have expected to hear: to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

John never left the prison.

“Blessed are those who do not fall away from Me, especially when I do not meet their expectations.”

He Takes Away the First to Establish the Second

Along this same line, there’s a passage of Scripture that sheds light on one of the ways in which God works, especially when He doesn’t seem to follow through with what we think He’s promised. It’s found in Hebrews 10:9 (NASB):

He takes away the first in order to establish the second.

In this text, the writer of Hebrews is discussing the old covenant. He points out that God took away the old covenant to establish the new. God took away all the ceremonies and sacrifices of the old covenant to establish the new covenant embodied in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the reality of everything in the old covenant. Christ is the real lamb, the real sacrifice, the real priest, and the real temple.

The writer goes on to say that God takes away the first covenant to establish the second, and the second covenant is better than the first. Note the principle: God takes away to establish, and what He establishes is always better than what He takes away.

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