Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Faith in God's Providence
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Numbers 11:4-6
A number of quite serious sins are exposed in this particular issue, perhaps the most serious being their lack of faith in God's providence. This sin is driven by an arrogant self-concern that forgets that God is working out a purpose and plan in us and overseeing everything in our lives. He bought and paid for us with Christ's sacrifice, and we vowed to submit to His authority when we gave Him our lives. What He provides to those of faith within that purpose is more than fair. In fact, it is usually quite generous. He promises to supply the faithful with their every need, but in Israel's fearful and fickle discontentment, they did not seek Him to understand what He was doing. Instead, they sought something different from what He was providing in terms of experiences within the relationship. This drive for fulfillment in variety remains within the Israelitish people. Though the emphasis under the New Covenant has shifted to the spiritual, God shows us in numerous ways that His desire is for His children to be unified in one system—His. The manna provided under the Old Covenant represents God's desire that we are to be strengthened in His way only through His Word. Uniformity with His way is illustrated in several ways in the Old Testament. For example, the priests could use coals only from one particular fire for the incense offering. They had to be uniform in the clothing they wore when officiating at the one altar God permitted in only one place in Israel. In addition, Israel was allowed only one festival site, Jerusalem. Consider how God concludes His instructions in Deuteronomy 12, which limited Israel's sacrifices to Him to one location: When the LORD your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, "How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise." You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the LORD which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it. (verses 29-32) This instruction is specifically aimed to stifle Israel's proclivity to look into foreign religions. The lesson is "curiosity killed the cat"! Deuteronomy 23:6 adds concerning the heathen, "You shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days forever." In Ezra 9:12, where this also appears, God tells them to keep themselves so separated that they were never to make any kind of alliance with neighboring peoples! As the Bible shows, Israel did not heed God's counsel. In stubbornness, she sought fulfillment in variety and became a great whore.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Beast and Babylon (Part Six): The Woman's Character
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Ecclesiastes 8:14
The righteous seem to receive all of the bad things, and the wicked seem to go through life unscathed, untouched. They have the big cars and the nice houses on the hill. They can take fancy vacations. Nothing bad ever seems to happen to them. A main reason that I Peter 2:18-24 was written is to warn us that sometimes the innocent are caught in God's justice. They will have to suffer for something that they have not caused. The test for us is whether we will be able to accept God's justice, His judgment, and take it in the same spirit that Christ did. If anyone could ever cry out, "Unfair! Unfair!" Jesus Christ would have to be the One. How about us? What trials have we gone through, in which we did not cause the trial but became caught in somebody else's sin? It is very easy in such cases to cry out to God, "Unfair! Unfair! God, why are You allowing this to happen to me?" The implication of our complaint is, "After all the good things that I've done for You, God, You treat me like this." We are, in effect, trying to vindicate ourselves. We become frustrated and accusative, never even stopping to think that, if we received truly fair treatment, we would get what happened to Nadab and Abihu and Ananias and Sapphira! God wants to see if we have faith in His judgment, in Him as an absolutely perfect Judge. Do we trust Him, or do we only trust Him when the going is good?
John W. Ritenbaugh
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Matthew 24:12-13
The Bible shows us the damage caused when God's people do not believe how special we are to Him. How do we keep our love from going cold? We must go to the source to replenish it. Where is that source? Where does real love come from? The answer is found in I John 4:19: "We love Him because He first loved us." The next verse, Matthew 24:13, reinforces this thought: "But he who endures to the end shall be saved." Jesus sets up a contrast. Verse 12 describes people without faith in God's love for us growing cold and not enduring. In verse 13, "but" suggests that those with faith in His love will endure and be saved. What happened over the past decade or so is nothing compared to what is ahead for some of us. The time of Jacob's trouble will be terrible. Many will face famine, pestilence, and persecution. Friends and family may turn on us. Church members will die. When all this happens, there may be no physical evidence to see how much God loves us. How will we endure those times? We will, but only if we absolutely believe in how special we are to God, how much He loves us. That is the faith we will need to endure any trial.
Pat Higgins
Faith to Face Our Trials
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John 3:27
John the Baptist responded in this manner because others had told him how Jesus' fame was eclipsing his own, thinking he would be jealous. But John understood and submitted to God's governance. God does not gift everybody in the same manner but according to His purpose for him or her. In Philippians 4:19, Paul supplies an overall guideline: "And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Do we trust the apostle's statement?
John W. Ritenbaugh
Power Belongs to God (Part Two)
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Romans 8:28
This verse captures the essence of what a Christian absolutely must have faith in if he wants to conduct his life without falling into the same state of mind that Solomon did as shown in the book of Ecclesiastes. We, too, are subject to our own unstable convictions, opinions, and decisions. In addition, we are subject to decisions and circumstances that others make and over which we have no control, yet which cause us to descend into a blue funk. We seem to be powerless over people making these decisions, so life seems unfair that such things should happen. But we Christians cannot lose our perspective! Romans 8:28 is the right perspective for a Christian, a wonderfully encouraging and comforting promise. However, it does not automatically apply to everyone. Two conditions must be met. First, we must respond to God's grace, to His gift, to His calling, to His gift of Christ, to His gift of the Holy Spirit, to His gift of revealing to us knowledge and understanding of what is happening. We must respond - that is, love God in return. Second, we must be one of "the called according to His purpose," one of the elect. This does not apply to those who have merely received an invitation from God, because that summons goes out to many more than actually respond to it. Just as in advertising, the call, the invitation, may go out over radio, television, or through the newspaper to millions of people, but few respond as compared to the mass of invitees. The calling of God is similar: The invitation goes out to many, but few become part of the elect (Matthew 22:14). If we meet these conditions, God is with us, and we can be encouraged and take comfort in that assurance.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Ecclesiastes and the Feast of Tabernacles (Part 1)
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Romans 12:17-21
These remarkably high standards are possible because God is our strength. He works unseen to human eyes and makes living according to these standards possible. Deuteronomy 32:35-37 is the source for Paul's instruction. God demands this apparently passive requirement of us as an act of faith in our intensely close relationship with Him. It may seem as if a Christian who submits to God's instruction is spineless and easily intimidated, but in God's judgment, he is strong where it really matters: in faith. The Christian, like Christ, has committed himself to the One who judges righteously, who will act in due time, using His powers in love toward all concerned (I Peter 2:23). When a person in a situation like this uses his natural powers to retaliate, he invariably does more damage than good. Because our God is all-powerful, we must grow to trust Him, understanding that His judgment will be exactly right because He is not only there, He is also powerful in wisdom and mercy. This measure of faith enabled Abraham to trust God to raise Isaac should he actually be sacrificially slain.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Power Belongs to God (Part One)
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Ephesians 2:8
Where do we get the faith that is required for salvation? Ephesians 2:8 answers: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." We cannot work it up—that would be our effort (Isaiah 64:6). Consider when God first started working with us. One year we were clueless, the next year things were making sense. We read the Bible and understood it, but more importantly, we believed it. Where did that belief come from? It was, as Ephesians 2:8 says, a gift from God. The real miracle is not that we understood, but rather that we now believed those words we understood. And this happened only because God made it possible. What was the evidence that we believed those words? We began living by them. Our new works and actions were the evidence of our faith: keeping the Sabbath, tithing, eating habits, etc. Just like Abraham, our actions showed our desire to begin a right relationship with God motivated by His gift of faith. "Don't you remember that our ancestor Abraham was declared right with God because of what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to do. His faith was made complete by what he did—by his actions" (James 2:21-22, New Living Translation). To complete our faith, are we willing to believe and do whatever God tells us? Consider those first experiences as we began to believe. We faced family pressure, work pressure, peer pressure, etc., to obey what we now believed. What evidence did we have to back up our actions? All we had were God's words. Armed with only those words, we willingly faced any opposition to act on what God commands. Just like Abraham, it was our faith in those words that encouraged us to obey and begin our journey, not knowing where we were going (Hebrews 11:8). At our baptism, could we have predicted all the twists and turns our lives have taken since? Just like Israel's journey after baptism in the Red Sea, God has taken us in a zigzag route across this wilderness we call life. What was our evidence of things not seen? Only the words of God. That was the only evidence we had then, and it is the only sure evidence we have now. As we deal with our trials, do we remember that first love? Do we remember the challenges we were willing to confront with only the words of God as our evidence? It is no different today. Will we believe God or what we can see? God needs to find out just as He did with Abraham—to "know" we will obey, no matter what, until the end (Matthew 10:22). To test our faith, God's pattern is to bring us to a point—a brick wall or a Red Sea—that seemingly allows no escape. That is where He can find out what is truly in our hearts—hearts of belief or evil unbelief (Hebrews 3:12). Will we believe Him or our eyes?
Pat Higgins
Faith—What Is It?
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2 Timothy 2:13
This verse tells us that we can trust Him all the way to death because "He cannot deny Himself." God's very nature and character constitute a solemn obligation that He is His own law, that He is bound by what He is and that He can never be even in the smallest degree contradictory to or less than the level of His own consistent and uniform self. No wonder James 1:17 exclaims: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. As God, He must be true to the character of goodness and wisdom that His very name implies.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness
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Hebrews 11:6
Because faith is indispensable to a good relationship with God, its importance cannot be overemphasized. But notice the condition in this verse. It does not say that God is the rewarder of everyone but "of those who diligently seek Him." Living faith is direct; it has its foundation in diligently, actively, consistently, zealously seeking Him in study and prayer and in conforming to His will. Those who are doing these things are encouraged that they will be rewarded. The reward is to find Him. This, in turn, increases faith. The biblical word "faith" is most synonymous with the English word "trust." "Faith" can be a mere agreement with a cold, hard fact. This is fine as far as it goes, but it loses a great deal of meaning when we consider that this One with whom we are dealing is a warm, dynamic, powerful, loving Personality. Biblical faith, trust, is firm. It is faith in full flower, acting consciously and with agreeable feeling - we might call it "conviction." This faith is not done coldly and calculatedly - simply because a thing is right. It is not done with a "perhaps" or a "maybe," but with joy and with firm conviction, with a consciousness that one is in agreement with this dynamic and loving personality. We should be aware of our unity with Him just as we are aware of our sense of touch - our strongest sense in terms of evoking emotion: consider a punch in the nose compared to a kiss. But faith, trust, is sensitive in the same way. It is conscious of the things of God; it sees God. In addition, faith not only evokes the hard, cold facts (it has "a remembrance of truth"), but also responds emotionally to a wonderful, dynamic, gracious, and powerful Personality, who is our Friend.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Prayer and Fervency
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Hebrews 11:23
Moses was born into a terrible situation. We may think we were born into unfortunate circumstances, but our situations pale in comparison to Moses' start. However, he had one thing going for him humanly: his parents, Amram and Jochebed. Moses, of course, was unaware of these things, but God supplied the saving grace in the form of Amram and Jochebed. The Exodus account focuses on the part of Jochebed because it was she, undoubtedly, along with Miriam, who actually carried out the casting of Moses on the Nile. Hebrews 11:23, though, uses the term "parents," so that we understand that Amram was also involved—with his faith. Notice that they were not afraid of the king's command. The Bible does not say what strengthened their faith, but they did a pretty dangerous thing. They put their lives on the line, as well as Moses' life, by putting him out on the water. Did God speak to them in a dream? Did God give them a vision? Did God send an angel? Or did they rely on the promise given to Abraham, knowing that they were coming to the end of an age? We cannot know because God does not say. Whatever it was, in a way it does not matter. All that matters is that, somehow, they believed it and followed through by doing this thing that, at least on the surface, appears to have been very risky. Were they convicted that what they were doing was right? Certainly! Even the power of Egypt could not turn them aside from their conviction. Even the fear or the threat of losing their lives could not dissuade them. They did not have a preference—they were convicted! They put their lives, and their son's life, on the line because they trusted the word of their God.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Conviction and Moses
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James 5:15-18
To many people, it is a head-scratcher to consider the vagaries of answered prayer—or should I say "unanswered prayer"? That is precisely the puzzler: Why are some prayers answered and some not? Why are some people miraculously healed of a dreaded disease, while others with the same affliction suffer ghastly declines and die? Is there rhyme or reason to having one's prayer answered, or is it just the luck of the draw? So far, we have not mentioned God, yet it is our understanding of Him that either provides us the answer or leaves us confused, dejected, and perhaps in doubt. In fact, to true believers, prayer is a prime example of God's existence and providence. On the other hand, skeptics almost invariably bring up the "prayer question" when spreading their disbelief, saying, "How can a loving God allow those who pray to Him to suffer so much?" Or, "Statistically, praying people are only a little more fortunate than non-praying people when it comes to overcoming normally fatal illnesses." Or, "There is no proof whatsoever that one's prayers rise any higher than the ceiling. Didn't Solomon say, 'Everything occurs alike to all' in Ecclesiastes 9:2? So how can we know that a so-called 'answer to prayer' is more than mere happenstance?" No one who knows God would utter such cynical things. The Supreme Being revealed in the pages of the Bible is not capricious, uncaring, distracted, respecting of persons, or absent without leave, as these doubting comments suggest. To the contrary, Scripture shows Him to be reliable, loving, alert, just, and involved in the affairs of His creatures. If not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without His notice, how much more involved is He with the well-being of humanity—and individual humans? Thus, the mystery surrounding the answered-prayer question cannot be solved by finding fault with God or by doubting Him or His existence. The fault lies in us, in our understanding of His purpose and in our expectations of what He will do. At its most critical level, the solution to this prayer conundrum begins with the fact that God tells us to pray to Him. If we believe that He is reasonable and purposeful, we must conclude that He has determined that praying is meaningful and helpful to us. By itself, praying to God benefits us whether or not any of our requests are fulfilled. This has little to do with such things as whether we live longer or are healthier or happier because we pray. All things considered, God is less concerned with our length of days or our joie de vivre than He is with our eternal life and spiritual character, though He certainly wants us well and joyful. Therefore, the reason God commands us to pray to Him is fundamentally spiritual in nature and so the benefits of praying are also mostly spiritual. Jesus teaches in John 17:3 that eternal life is knowing "the only true God, and Jesus Christ." This informs us, then, that true spirituality, true religion, revolves around a relationship with God the Father and His Son. Communication is vital to the success of any relationship, and prayer is fundamentally a form of communication. Through the sacrifice of our Savior and the facility of the Holy Spirit given to all true Christians, in prayer we have an open line of communication with the very God of the universe! Prayer allows us to maintain and deepen our relationship with our Father and Elder Brother despite the distance and the differences in our natures. In addition, Jesus came to reveal the Supreme Being to mankind as a Father (John 1:18), and He instructs us to come before Him in prayer as children to their Father (Matthew 6:9). This sets the basic bounds of the relationship: of a loving, faithful Father to his obedient and adoring children. It is not a relationship of equals, nor is it a business partnership or trade association. It is a family relationship, in which God is the ultimate Superior and the other, the Christian, a humble subordinate. In all relationships of this kind, the will and purposes of the superior always take priority. As even Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, after asking for His cup of suffering and death to pass from Him, "Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done" (Luke 22:42). These are not the only principles we need to understand about prayer, but they are among the most important. What do they imply? First, prayer is not simply a means of getting things from God. In fact, if that is our approach to prayer, we are working counter to God's purpose for us, for He is trying to instill His giving, outgoing character in us. Until we change our motives for praying, we will find prayer to be frustrating and ineffective. Second, prayer is just one facet of a far larger, spiritual relationship. It must be seen in its place in God's purpose in our lives. We may be praying from morning until night, but it will be just a string of empty words if we are not also conforming the rest of our lives to the will of God. Third, prayer requires faith. The world's view of faith is cheap and simplistic, but biblical faith—real confidence in God's goodness toward us—is an essential part of Christian prayer. A Christian who prays in faith makes his petitions known to God and trusts that he is not only heard but answered to his ultimate good. Whether the answer is "positive" or "negative," he can smile and say, "What You decide on this request is the best for me right now." This final point is what Paul concludes in Romans 8:23-30: God knows best what will bring us to eternal life and glory in His Kingdom. So, in the end, to those who know God, there really is no prayer conundrum. Our prayers are heard and answered, and all things will work out for the good of those whom God has chosen to have a loving relationship with Him.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Prayer Conundrum
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1 John 4:18
In some ways, love and fear are opposites, enemies. Love's closest companion and ally is confidence. When we are completely confident, we do not fear that we can do what is required of us. Our problem is that we have not perfected love in us, and so, we fear.
Staff
Standing Up for God
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