GOD SAID WHAT?!

    There are many instances in Scripture where God had made it clear that His ultimate wisdom and human logic stand at odds with each other. 

    We tend to treat human logic as universal and the ultimate court of appeals.  The truth is that what seems completely logical to the people in the west does not seem so to the people from the east.  The difference between the wisdom of God and human logic is yet more divergent than that.

And it shall come about when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off, and the waters which are flowing down from above shall stand in one heap."   Joshua 3:13

The wisdom of God said that the waters will roll back when your feet touch the water.  Human wisdom would certainly say, let the waters roll back and then walk across to the promised land.  There is reasoning behind both positions.  Human wisdom is simply playing it safe.  Divine wisdom always calls upon His people to place their full trust in Him and then He will do the miraculous.   The priests carried the Ark into the waters of the Jordan and then, and only then, the waters rolled back.

    In Joshua 6:6 Joshua instructed Israel as God had directed him as they were about to approach Jericho.

So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, "Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests carry seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark of the LORD."   Joshua 6:6

Put yourself in the place of the leaders of Israel.  What would you have said if our president had instructed his troops to take trumpets and blow them as they walked seven times around Bagdad?   That is the kind of thing God commanded and is what Joshua did.  God’s wisdom seemed very strange and one suspects that there were some in Israel that thought that perhaps for Joshua “the lights were on, but there was no one home.”

    In Judges, there is another “head scratcher.”   The author said,

And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior."   Judges 6:12

    The angel of the Lord said these words to Gideon.  Gideon was hiding and beating out a little wheat so that they would have something to eat.  And the angel called this frightened Jewish man, “O valiant warrior”?!  Would you have called him that?  Truthfully, he was not behaving that way, but God could see not just what he was, but what he could become.

    In Judges chapter seven, Gideon, “the valiant warrior,” used the fleece because he couldn’t believe what God was calling him to do.  Gideon had 32,000 untrained men to fight in the army.  The Israelite Draft Board met and prepared some questions to ask each recruit.  First question,” Whoever is afraid and trembling let him return.  It is a wonder that 10,000 of the 32,000 remained.  Second question – how do you drink water – down on all four’s or hand cupped to bring water to your mouth?  This left Gideon with only 300 men!  In essence, God was saying, “your army is too large.”  In the history of warfare, there have been many armies that were too small, but none that were too large.   God said that 300 men was just the right size army to take Jericho.

    If you look at the 12 men Jesus trained to carry the message of salvation, there is an illustration of what we are trying to say.  There is not one of the disciples that would appear to be a good candidate, from our perspective.  We would get the people who had the greatest understanding.  Like Peter?  We would get the people who had the greatest confidence in their leader.  Like Thomas?  Paul was a keen observer of everything Jesus did and said.   Paul followed Jesus’ example meticulously.  It is not surprising that Paul said,

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; 27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, 1 Corinthians 1:26-27

This is at least part of the reason that we are sometimes reluctant to do what we know is God’s call upon our lives.  Every Christian denomination is now retiring two or three times as many as they ordain.  Is this a prescription for success?  Is God not calling sufficient numbers to be pastors?  Nonsense!  The numbers are much, much worse when it comes to missionaries.

    Again, most every church, large or small, experiences great difficulty enlisting their members to teach Sunday School or perform other vital ministries.  Does God not call a sufficient number of His people to serve Him?  On the basis of what God did in both the Old and New Testament, the reasons people give for not serving in the local church or on the mission field are the very things that qualify them to be the kind of servant God can use and gain glory from their service.  An idea to ponder