The Lord
GOD has given me
the tongue of those who
are taught,
that I may know how to
sustain with a word
him who is weary.
Morning by morning he
awakens;
he awakens my ear
to hear as those who are
taught.
The Lord GOD has opened
my ear,
and I was not
rebellious;
I turned not
backward.
— Isaiah
50:4-5
This is from Isaiah's
revelation of Messiah as the Servant which crescendos in chapter 53. It is easy to see how it applies to Jesus,
and one might think that this particular passage was upon His mind often as He
rose in the early hours of the day to pray alone with His Father. Perhaps the last lines reverberated in His
soul, too, during that last night in Gethsemane.
For us, it is a call to
hear. Consider, though, that it says,
"The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are
taught." This is not a function of
human knowledge, education, and intellectual capacity. God simply pours His grace into His chosen
vessels. We can get in a position to
receive, but we cannot claim an acquistion.
Knowing "how to sustain with a word him who is weary" does not
come from obtaining a PhD in counseling or communications. We often see family members, friends, and
others close to us who are suffering, going astray, lost in mazes of their own
making. We want to help them, but we
find much of the time that our best efforts fail. Sometimes we even make matters worse. There is only one Helper, one perfect
Comforter. It is His word the suffering
and lost need to hear.
My wife and I had gone
over to the west side of the Metroplex one Sunday afternoon to visit our
friends who pastored a church there.
Naturally we went to their service that evening and my friend preached. At the end, he gave an invitation and a young
couple came forward to the mourners' benches.
Pastor called for his wife and my wife to come down and pray with the
young lady while I and one of his deacons went to pray with the man. I had been taught the "Roman Road"
from childhood as a standard, formulaic means of leading someone to
"salvation".
All have sinned and come short of the glory of
God (Romans 3:23); the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal
life in Christ (Romans 6:23); God demonstrates His love for in that while we
were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8); whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall
be saved (Romans 10:13); and, finally, if you confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you
shall be saved (Romans 10:9-10).
It was drilled in my head until I
can do it in my sleep. All that is true
and good, but it should have been obvious to a blind hog that this couple, and
especially the young man, was in serious and desperate pain. It was one of those rare occasions where I
was in the right place at the right time with a word for somebody, and I
suddenly knew who it was. Except that
our beloved brother, the deacon, rushed in flapping his big Ryrie Study Bible, bound
and determined to drag this poor boy down the Roman Road, regardless of what
the Holy Spirit wanted. After all,
hadn't the same Spirit inspired Paul to write the book of Romans in the
Original King James?
It is one of the
beauties of the story of Christ as recorded in the Gospels that He always
discerned the real need of the individual person to whom He ministered. Now and then He would ask the person to state
his or her need specifically, but I tend to think that was more to get the
person focused than it was to inform Jesus.
The Lord does not need formulas.
He does not need education. He
needs emptiness, and through emptiness, He brings enlightenment.
Sometimes I wake up with
my head already buzzing with what needs to be done for the day, but most of the
time, the morning can be a good time to be quiet. If morning does not work then perhaps it is
the late evening when all the day's work is done, and I can sleep on what I
hear. It is always, though, morning by
morning, day by day.
And
when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine,
flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.
When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is
it?” For they did not know what it was.
And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to
eat. This is what the Lord has
commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each
take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in
his tent.’” And the people of Israel did
so. They gathered, some more, some less.
But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had
nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. ... Each of them
gathered as much as he could eat. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as
much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted (Exodus 16:14-21).
What sustained me
yesterday may not be what I need for tomorrow.
Jesus told us to ask today for the bread we need this day. We can trust that there will be a fresh
inflow of exactly what we need for our challenges. We may not know where it comes from or
exactly what is it. Its name is a
question, yet we know it when we see it.
The Bible is a good place to start and even in the years when I don't plan to read through the Bible, I try to start the day with a verse or two or a chapter or two. We may find je ne sais quoi in a painting, in a photograph, in music, in literature, or up a tree stand. Up and down my sidebar and the sidebars of those in the sidebars, a
person may find manna on any given day. It is always somewhere. If one will look.
Where there is inflow
there must be outflow. Acceptance
implies surrender. To do otherwise is to
stagnate, to become a backwater of decay and corruption. And Moses said to them, “Let no one
leave any of it over till the morning.”
But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning,
and it bred worms and stank. ... (Exodus 16:19-20). Freely we have received, so freely we
give. As freely as we give, we will
freely receive. No matter what happens
in the material world, no matter how chaotic or dire the circumstances, the
same spiritual principles will always apply and succeed.
But you have
been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. (1 John
2:20)
