Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 16. Faith and the Past

Heb 11:21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.

Although this may also be true of Isaac blessing his boys I believe it is much so applicable to Jacob's situation later in life – that facing death he is faced with the fruit of his life and he still has something to do about it. It is the fact that he is dying that perhaps provokes this action although there may be other factors. Let's look at the story.

As he is aware that he is reaching the end of his life, Jacob calls his son Joseph to him. You may remember they are living in Egypt and Joseph is the nation's second leader next to Pharaoh, but old man Jacob (renamed Israel ) is still the patriarch of the family. And yet Joseph is the one with the power so Jacob sends for him and gets him to promise that when he dies Joseph will take his bones back to Canaan and not allow him to be buried in Egypt (see Gen 47:29-31).

A little while later Joseph is informed that his father is ill (Gen 48:1a) and so he takes “his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim along with him,” (v.1b) presumably to say goodbye to the old man before he dies. There appears nothing significant about the two boys going along with him and what follows is promoted by Jacob. Jacob was nearly blind (48:10) but he could just see two figures with Joseph and when he is told they are his two grandsons he says, “Bring them to me so I may bless them .” (v.9) He had obviously learnt from his father Isaac something of the significance of a blessing, to be given to the oldest son, but more than that, even as in his own case he had learned that a blessing was to be a prophetic declaration of God's will, not his.

Thus when Joseph brings the two boys to him and places his hands on their heads the right hand, (the hand of authority) on the older boy expecting him to get the greater blessing, Jacob switches hands and then, intriguingly blessed Joseph as their father but says, “May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the Angel who has delivered me from all harm --may he bless these boys. May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth” (v.15,16) i.e. may God bless these boys and make them famous and may they increase in number on the earth. Now this switching hands annoyed Joseph but Jacob insists, “I know, my son, I know. He too will become a people, and he too will become great. Nevertheless, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a group of nations." He blessed them that day and said, "In your name will Israel pronounce this blessing: `May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.' " So he put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh.” (v.19,20) The lesson is clear: when you impart a blessing you impart God's will, not what others think it should be, and the blessing is a truly prophetic word.

Note the time elements in all this. Jacob is old and about to die. Joseph had had two sons, first Manasseh and then Ephraim. The traditional expectation would be that the older son would inherit the family name and business and be better known, and so on. In other words, so often we let the affairs of the past govern what we think about the present. Very often we allow ourselves to be governed by our past but God knows what He wants and what will be and it is NOT determined by the past. You may have had negative things spoken over you in the past and you may be living in the light of those negatives. When you were born again you entered a new time dimension, a heavenly one, an eternal one and the same rules no longer apply – only God's will.

Your negatives can be thought of as a curse, things that decree bad for you. The apostle Paul wrote, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” (Gal 3:13,14) Summarize that and you have, Jesus was cursed to take all our curses so that now we can be inheritors of all the blessings God has for all people of faith. Jesus has taken all your negatives; you do not have to be bound by them. More than that Jesus has opened the door to heaven for you so that all the blessings of God for His children may flow to you. It doesn't matter what order in the family you were – you are a child of God. It doesn't matter if your parents gave up on you, your heavenly Father will never give up on you. It doesn't mater if you have felt lonely through life (for whatever reason), you have a big brother in Jesus who is totally for you. It doesn't matter if you have felt utterly weak in your life, you are a container for the Holy Spirit, the very power of God.

Ephraim became probably the most powerful of the northern tribes and indeed the northern kingdom was sometimes referred to as Ephraim. Your future is not to be subservient to the expectations of others, the lies of Satan or whoever else, or even the events of the past or even traditional expectations; you are a child of God, precious to Him and He has a great future for you. Accept it today, declare it and praise and thank Him for it. Go for it!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 17. Faith and Holding to the Plan (1)

Heb 11:22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.

God had a plan and God has a plan. It is a plan that has been contested by the enemy and the world almost from the moment He first spoke it out on the earth. Joseph now understands this plan because, even as we read in the previous meditation, old man Jacob had instructed him, “ Do not bury me in Egypt , but when I rest with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt and bury me where they are buried." (Gen 47:29,30) He had then gone on to explain, “Jacob said to Joseph, "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan , and there he blessed me and said to me, `I am going to make you fruitful and will increase your numbers. I will make you a community of peoples, and I will give this land as an everlasting possession to your descendants after you.'” (Gen 48:3,4) Note the word ‘everlasting' when there are disputes about the land of Israel .

The reality of Joseph's understanding of this plan comes through some time later when he is about to die: “Then Joseph said to his brothers, "I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath and said, "God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place." (Gen 50:24,25) This is now a faith action. God has said Canaan is to be our land; our father is buried there and his land is my land, so bury me there as well. The unfortunate thing is that Joseph is a top Egyptian in the eyes of Pharaoh and the brothers have no power and so we read, “So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt .” (v.28)

But look what he had said in the earlier part to them in verse 24: “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." He restates the Lord's will – God will take them back to Canaan . Of course they had to wait for the Exodus but God DID do it. Joseph states it as a declaration of faith: God has said it so He will do it, so keep your minds focused on that. Faith is sometimes – as we saw in respect of Abram looking for a city – holding the goal before you and looking for it, even if it doesn't come this side of your time here on this earth.

Now amazingly, although the brothers were not able to carry out Joseph's wishes, Moses did centuries later, to fulfil the promise they made: “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath. He had said, "God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.” (Ex 13:19) Not only that after the conquest of the land, Joshua made sure it was literally carried out: “And Joseph's bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph's descendants.” (Josh 24:32)

Now note something here: Jacob declared God's will as conveyed to him by the Lord and passed it on to Joseph. Joseph accepted it for what it was. But it goes back beyond Jacob. It started with Abram: “In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure." (Gen 15:16), continued with Isaac, “Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.” (Gen 26:3) and eventually to Jacob, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Gen 28:13-15) That “I will bring you back to this land” was twice fulfilled, fist when he returned from living with his uncle and later when his body was brought back by Joseph to be buried.

We have already seen how he conveyed that to Joseph and now Joseph gives instruction before his death, instructions to continue the plan, instructions for his bones to be returned to Canaan . Now the use of the word ‘bones' is interesting because he did not say his ‘body' for burial. Did he perhaps have a prophetic sense that his embalmed body would not get there but that years would pass and the body (perhaps not looked after properly by the Egyptians that followed) would decay so it was just the skeleton to be taken back. Both the Exodus and Joshua verses speak of just ‘bones'.

God has a plan and faith involves being aware of living within that plan. You may know one of my favourite verses is, “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” (Eph 2;10) which speaks of God's sense of pre-planned purpose. Ephesians has much more of this sort of language, for example, “he chose us in him before the creation of the world ….he predestined us … the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ…. him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will…. that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (Eph 1:4,5,9,11,18,19) It's all the language of The Plan, formulated from before the foundation of the world and you and I are part of it. Amazing! Live it by faith.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 18. Faith in Conflict

Heb 11:23 By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

The thing about Moses' parents was that they were living in an environment of conflict, an environment of stress. The people of Israel had started out as one big family and in time of famine had settled in Egypt and then over the years grown into a nation. To really catch a sense of this – and this is important – we need to read the account of what had happened over the years. As you read these verses, note particularly the ‘stress words' in them: “ Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt . "Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country." So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed , the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly . They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly . (Ex 1:8-14) This was not a fun time for Israel !

Another way of putting this perhaps, is to say they were living under persecution. Every aspect of their lives was dominated by this one thing – they were slaves. (As an aside, I am told that the slave trade across the world is worse today than even in the years when slaves were regularly being shipped across the Atlantic to America ). Put another way, they were not free to do what they wanted.

But it is also important to note the intentions of the Egyptian king and his leaders. While Israel were just a family they were no threat but now they had multiplied – and some scholars suggest there were probably between one and two million of them – they became a threat as a people within a people and if war ever broke out they might not side with Egypt. His initial intention then was clearly to limit their numbers and control them. To do this he made them slaves and made them work so hard they would be too exhausted to have children. It didn't work; they just kept on multiplying. The response of the king to this was to instruct the Hebrew midwives to kill any baby that was a boy, (Ex 1:16) but when that didn't work, he gave a general instruction to all his people to kill any baby boy born to the Israelites (Ex 1:22) That is how desperate this situation had become.

We then find the story focusing on this one family where the wife conceives and a baby boy is born. Now the king's instruction was that any baby boy born to the Israelites was to be thrown into the Nile with he presumption they would be drowned. We have come to that well-know story, so often told in Sunday Schools, where the baby, named Moses, is put into a papyrus basket by his mother and put into the Nile where it is known the Pharaoh's daughter often comes to bathe. She comes, finds the baby, is moved by the sight, leaves the baby with its mother to be cared for initially before she takes him into her family in the palace where he is raised as a Prince of Egypt (see Ex 2:3-10)

So she ‘threw' him into the Nile didn't she? Wisdom and hope – yes but also faith, the writer to the Hebrews tells us. She knows she is part of a special people. Yes, we know they haven't been designated a special people yet, we've got to wait for the Exodus and Sinai for that, but the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their encounters with the Lord would have been passed down and so she has that revelation. She also has that inner feeling that killing babies is wrong. Add to that a mother's love for the baby she has brought into the world, and we have three ways that God's will is expressed – special revelation, conscience and ‘natural' feelings of a mother. Faith, the New Testament says, comes from hearing the message or the will of God (Rom 10:17) and she has heard it in three different ways and so she is not going to give way to the dictates of this despot of a ruler, she is going to obey the will of God and preserve this little boy's life. It is an act of faith which, history will show, has incredible repercussions. He is going to be God's instrument to defy the next Pharaoh and become the leader of God's people for forty years.

Sometimes we are faced with circumstances in life where we are put under pressure to act in certain ways and yet deep down we know that this is not the right way. What is put before us may not be illegal and it may be the way the rest of society goes, but deep down we know that this is not God's way. Maybe there is the special revelation – the Bible reveals it is not His will, maybe it is the quiet inner witness of the Spirit, or maybe it the words of someone else. Whatever the pressures to conform, resist it. It doesn't have to be pressures of persecution it can just be the pressures of the world's way of thinking – well everyone does it, don't they.

These things tend to be do with relationships or the fruits of relationships, so sleeping with a person you are not married to maybe OK for the world, but not you. Having an abortion maybe OK for the world but not you. Flirting (and a bit more) with someone other than you partner maybe OK for the world but not you. If it's not to do with relationships it probably to do with money or ambition. Taking bribes, or handouts, or call them what you will, may be OK for the world, but not for you. Giving bribes maybe OK for the world, but not for you. You can no doubt think of plenty more ways that the enemy pressurizes God's people to conform to his unrighteous and less than godly way. Faith stands out and says, I will obey the Lord and His will.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 19. Faith and holding to the Plan (2)

Heb 11:24,25 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.

A couple of studies back we noted Joseph holding to ‘The Plan', the plan spoken out by God to Abram, Isaac and Jacob – this is my land and now it will be your land, for ever, and you will multiply and become a great people. Over four hundred years have passed – four hundred years, how long that sounds! That was the same length of time that passed between the end of prophetic revelation in the Old Testament period to the start of the events recorded in the Gospels in the New Testament! It's like us thinking about things happening in the early 1700's, but with God time is not an issue, His plans and purposes remain regardless of how many years pass.

So Moses is living some 400 years on from the Patriarchs but he knows his history, he knows that he is a Hebrew, an Israelite as they will become. Somehow he's done his history and presumably kept contact with his natural mother even though he was being brought up for the first forty years of his life as a Prince of Egypt.

Stephen in Acts 7 tells the story: “ At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father's house. When he was placed outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. "When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.” (Acts 7:20-25)

Now of course we know that it all went wrong and the next day one of his own turned on him and it became public knowledge so that he had to flee from Egypt and spent the next forty years looking after sheep in the desert, until God called him to look after over a million human sheep in the desert. But it really all happened on that first day when, as Stephen put it, “he decided to visit his fellow Israelites ”. Up until then he had been living a life of privilege behind palace walls, with everything laid on for him. Perhaps it wasn't that he had kept touch with his family but had just learned about them in his private tuition in the palace and, knowing his own history, how his own palace mother had taken him out of the Nile, he decided to go an look for himself and visit the people from whom he originally came. When he arrived at where they were he saw they were slaves and he saw one of them being mistreated by a slave driver and at that point he stepped over the line and stood for being a Hebrew. All of his history, the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob came rushing back from the lessons he had received and he knows these are his people, a people with a special relationship with God, Yahweh.

Yes, at that moment he ceased to be the son of Pharaoh's daughter and was a Hebrew with a history that could not be ignored. At that moment he decided to stand for them and went too far and killed the slave driver. As the Hebrews writer puts it, “By faith Moses, …. chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” The ‘pleasures of sin' were simply the life of luxury and leisure in the royal palace, self-concerned and godless.

Now there is a possible course of action that we don't usually think about. He was a Prince of Egypt, no doubt a powerful man. The slave driver is likely to be just another slave as far as Pharaoh would be concerned, two a penny. So he died, so what? These things happen. He could have faced it out, but he didn't. These were his people and he found himself going back to them the next day, at which point he has to remonstrate with two Hebrews who are quarreling and who turn on him. This is the point of decision. He could have brazened it out – “Who do you stupid slaves think you are? Don't you realise I am a prince of Egypt , get back to you work or I'll have you killed.” In his role that was a very real possible way through this – but he's a Hebrew himself, and it's got to him, and so “He regarded disgrace ….of greater value than the treasures of Egypt , because he was looking ahead to his reward.” (v.26) His reward? To be counted as one of the people of God. At that moment he made the decision to leave; he could no longer handle this, being a prince in Egypt while his own people were slaves. He ran, and it was an act of faith. Whatever the future held it must be better than the reality I now know exists here in this land.

But there is an aspect of the record we have missed: “When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian.” (Ex 2:15) We have just examined what could have happened but for that to happen Moses would have to deny his people, deny his own birth and stand up in this situation as an Egyptian who cared nothing about the Israelites – but he couldn't!

There is an unusual phrase I have taken out from the middle of that verse 26: “for the sake of Christ .” Now of course he would not have known about Christ, not known about the coming Messiah because that was something to only be revealed through the prophets in the centuries ahead – but we are told elsewhere in scripture that Moses was a prophet, a great prophet and so even here at this early part of his life, he senses there is something more to life, something more of God's plans. He's learnt about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and he's no doubt seen the God factor in their histories and as he catches that in his spirit, something says, “There is something more” and even that is just a glimmer of the revelation that is to come. We've seen it in Abraham who looked for a city with God, a dissatisfaction with the present and a yearning for what God has on his heart, and Moses has it as well.

So this forty year old embryo prophet, who doesn't realise it yet, senses something at this turning point in his life, something of the eternal will of God and in a moment of desperation, he goes for it, he rejects his life in Egypt and has to flee. He's caught something from God and he goes for it. That is faith.

Because of the presence of the Holy Spirit indwelling us and making us Christians, we too catch this sense, the will of God. The enemy will challenge it and maybe we will be confronted by difficult circumstances where we have to either own up or shut up, we either stand for the truth or we join the rest who deny truth. We ARE the people of God. Pharaoh doesn't like it and will threaten us. ‘Pharaoh' is the world attitude today that denies God, challenges Him and His people and we resist him in the same way Moses eventually came to resist the next Pharaoh, with the will of God, the word of God and the power of God, but we'll only do that when we've made the same decision by faith that Moses made – I am one of God's people. I am not a prince of this world. I will do His bidding and leave the rest up to him. Amen!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 20. Faith and Perseverance

Heb 11:27,28 By faith he left Egypt , not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel .

In these two verses the writer to the Hebrews, at first sight, appears to make a great leap and covers events spread over forty years. First he seems to be referring to Moses' initial departure from Egypt, from his life as a prince of Egypt and then forty years later as a prelude to the final of the ten plagues, to the keeping of the Passover which preserved Israel from the destroying Angel ‘passing over' Egypt.

So we start back in Egypt , as a follow-on to what we considered in the previous meditation. Verse 27, when you stop to think about it, is really strange. “By faith he left Egypt .” Well that bit is the easy bit which we covered yesterday and we saw the decision he took to leave which was a decision based on faith. But then he adds, “not fearing the king's anger.” Ah! Hold on, there are two Pharaoh's in Moses' life, the one whose daughter acted as his mother, and the one he confronted forty years later. The first one we read about in Exodus 2: “When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian.” (Ex 2:15) THAT ONE he clearly did fear and he fled from him. When you come to the other Pharaoh, it is a different ball game; he did NOT fear the king's anger!

In the whole account of the Plagues leading to the Exodus there are three things that stand out – God's sovereign power, Pharaoh's foolish pride and intransigence – and Moses' fearless faith. Faith, we have repeated many times, comes from hearing, and Moses ‘hears' God again and again. In fact without God's instructions he would have been utterly lost. But he not only hears, he goes and does and the doing in this case is confronting the most powerful man in the Middle East and challenging him to let Israel go. A most scary scenario. But time after time Moses hears and Moses does and the plagues get gradually worse and worse.

But still in verse 27 it goes on, “ he persevered.” That wouldn't make any sense if this referred to the first leaving Egypt , but put in the light of the ten plagues it makes absolute sense. To persevere means to press on against the odds and to do that is, every time, an act of faith. Perseverance is an act of faith.

But then the verse finishes, “because he saw him who is invisible.” Now Stephen recounting what happened in Acts 7 said, “After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai .” (Acts 7:30) This corresponds to the account in Exodus: “There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.” (Ex 3:2) The presence of an angel is often synonymous in scripture with the presence of God. The focus moves from the flames to the angel to the Lord's voice, but seeing the angel is why the writer can say, “he saw him who is invisible.” In reality he saw the angel but that is in such times, equivalent to seeing God because the angel comes as the messenger of God to exactly convey God's will. It was the incident at the burning bush that took Moses from being a shepherd in the desert to a king-challenger in Egypt .

And so we go through the ten plagues with Moses hearing God and then confronting Pharaoh with the message and then standing back while God brought the next plague. And so eventually as each successive plague gets worse, there is nothing worse left than death of individuals (Previously people had died in the hail but this was decreed deaths). Pharaoh remains resistance to God and so perhaps a judgment that had just been waiting to happen for years, comes. For years – we don't know how long – Egypt has had an occult-based religion based on superstition where virtually everything was a god and was worshipped fearfully. At the top of the pile, so to speak, was Pharaoh, also designated a god. It is a situation so at odds with God's design for His world that it was a wonder that God had not acted against it previously. The fact is that He builds the plagues, each one based upon something that was worshiped by this superstitious people, so that only gradually do they get worse and worse, and this is an indication of God's grace, warning Pharaoh again and again and again. Pharaoh's pride and arrogance, no doubt fuelled by the occult (as it so often is), eventually means that the ultimate judgment is about to come. (Actually the ultimate judgment, I suggest, would be the death of every Egyptian).

The judgment is pronounced but so is the way to escape it – by taking a lamb and putting its blood on the doorposts of each Israelite home so that when the destroying angel ‘passed over' the land bringing death to the firstborn son in every home, he would not bring death to any home where he saw the blood. This was the Passover, and this says, the writer, is an act of faith by Moses leading his people to obey. He hears it from God and passes on the instruction. The modern atheist would laugh at the idea of the blood being shed (and they do) but if they had been there, their home would have been a house of mourning next day.

John the Baptist described Jesus as “the Lamb of God” (Jn 1:29,36) and Jesus appeared in the throne room of heaven as “ a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.” (Rev 5:6) Jesus is the Passover Lamb who, when his blood is appropriated by the believer, is the means for the angel of judgment to pass over and the believer be spared. For Moses it was an act of faith and so it is for us, the greatest and most important and significant act of faith any person can make.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 21. Desperate Faith

Heb 11:29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned

Faith can sometimes lead us to do great and amazing things. In a more rational moment we may look on what happened, gazing with the wisdom of hindsight, and conclude that our action was motivated by desperation. Yesterday we considered perseverance as an expression of faith but sometimes it is an expression of desperation although the two can hardly be understood apart. I used to know a youngish woman who had three children. As is so often the way, her husband had abandoned her. Her children were still young and so she had to care for them and could not work and thus lived on benefits. Life was a struggle and one day I said to her, “How do you cope on your own with these three, how do you keep going?” She replied, “What else is there to do, they are mine and I love them.”

A mother's love provided the motivation for her to persevere. I was put in mind of Peter's reply to Jesus on one occasion when a number of the other disciples were leaving Jesus and we find , “ You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." (Jn 6:67-68) i.e. there is nowhere else to go, there is no one like you. Sometimes the course of action appears drastic but it is the only one that is either reasonable or feasible.

Our verse today follows the one of yesterday when the Israelites held the first Passover and then were told to leave the country: “During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go.” (Ex 12:31,32) Now there were three sages in what followed. First the Lord told them to go by a particular round about way (see Ex 14:1-3) and this will make Pharaoh think they are lost and he will come after them. Second, the Lord revealed that this was His plan to lead Pharaoh to his destruction for this was His judgment on him (v.4). Third, Pharaoh heard what they were doing and we read, “Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them,” (v.5) and decided to pursue and destroy them.

So far Moses has led the people of Israel as the Lord has told him and that in itself was an at of faith. They have put themselves into a difficult position where they are on a peninsular with sea on three sides and Pharaoh is coming up behind them full of wrath. Humanly speaking it looks as if they are lost and, indeed, the Israelites, “were terrified and cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt ? Didn't we say to you in Egypt , `Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!" (v.10-12) They are desperate, understandably so.

Then we read, “Then the LORD said to Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen." (v.15-18) This Moses does, the waters part, the people pass through, Pharaoh and his army follow but the waters come back and they are all drowned, and thus the writer to the Hebrews records it, “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.”

Faith we keep saying is hearing the Lord and responding to Him. In the accounts of Exodus we have observed the Lord speaking, Moses hearing and obeying in respect of:

•  The plagues, (dealing with the world)

•  The Passover (avoiding judgment)

•  Leaving the land by a roundabout route (leaving the world behind)

•  Coming into an impossible situation with Pharaoh behind (finding trying circumstances)

•  Moses parting the Red Sea (experiencing the miraculous)

•  The people passing through on dry ground (ditto)

•  Pharaoh being destroyed as the waters returned. (the enemy being cut off)

Every one of the above acts was an act of faith, an act of responding to God and I have put after each one of them a general description which corresponds to what happens in the spiritual realm when we are saved and become a Christian.

•  We are convicted of the wrongs of godless life

•  We receive Jesus as our saviour to save us from God's judgment

•  We commit our lives into God's hand as He leads us out of our old lives

•  We trust Him to lead us in new paths

•  We experience the miraculous, being born again and then being led by the Holy Spirit

•  The old life is cut off and we walk free from the shackles of the enemy.

Each one of these things is an act of faith. We hear God, we believe Him and we respond to Him and He puts His own Holy Spirit within us, we are adopted into His family and He leads us out into a new life, a life of continual faith. It required faith to get here, it will require faith for us to remain faithful until the time when we eventually enter heaven. It is a life of faith.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 22. Faith without Fruit

Heb 11:30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the people had marched around them for seven days.

The story of the taking of Jericho is one that exemplifies repeated faith with no fruit until the end perhaps like no other story in the Bible does. Consider God's instructions to Joshua and then what it must have been like, and then perhaps we can see how that is like so much that happens in life.

First of all God's instructions: “ Then the LORD said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in." (Josh 6:2-5)

Now observe the stages in that: Stage 1: March around the city once a day for six days, you and all the armed men. Have the ark with you and have seven priests with trumpets in front of it as you go. Stage 2: On the seventh day you are to march round the city seven times with the priests blowing their trumpets all the time until as they complete the last circuit they are to give a long blast on the trumpets and everyone is to shout as loud as they can. At that point the walls will fall down and you can go in and take the city.

Now think about what it must have been like doing that. Day 1 – a sense of excitement. The armed men gather and leave the camp, the Levites are carrying the ark and the priests are out front. Now where is it we're going? Oh, yes, Jericho , that city on the horizon whose walls seem quite high. March, march, march. We're getting nearer. My word, those walls look high! Half way round. Ignore the shouts and jeers of the defenders up on the wall and the occasional arrow some optimist sends out. It's hot out here. March, march, march, back to camp. OK, day one over. Day two: OK off we go again, been there, done it before, we can do it, the defenders are too scared of us, this is a walk in the park. March, march, march. Getting close again. You know those walls are not only high, they must be pretty thick because there are a lot of people up there and they seem to have catapults and other stuff up there. This is a mighty city. March, march, march. It's hot. What are we doing this for, let's get back to camp quickly. Day three: Right, come on, I suppose we'd better do this again. It seems a bit of a pointless exercise but, hey, it's keeping us fit. March, march, march. The more I see those walls, the more I don't like them, They have windows high up, they seem to have houses built into them, they're massive. How can anybody take this city. This is crazy. It's also hot. March, march, march. Back to camp, thank goodness. Day four: Do we really have to keep doing this? What is this achieving? Can't we just jump to day seven? I'm tired. Look the watchers on top of the walls are even fewer than they were, they find us boring, same old, same old. This daily hike is hot and boring. Day five: Boring! Day six: Boring!! Day seven: the walls are going to fall down? How come? All right, we'll do what we're told and let's see what happens. March, march, march. Circuit one. March, march, march. Circuit two. My goodness, it is hot out here. Circuit three. March, march, march. I'd rather be up on the walls, I'm stinking hot and tired out. Circuit four or was it five. I hope someone is counting. March, march, march. What did Joshua say, “Get ready to shout”? It's time!

Now I used to have a non-Christian friend who derided this story and said it must have been like when solders have to break-step when marching over a bridge because the vibration of so many boots can set up a shaking that will shake the bridge to bits. That, he used to say, is what must have happened to Jericho . Just a couple of problems about that. First they have been doing it for six days and if vibrations of marching feet were going to shake the walls down, they would have done it long ago. Second if you have to create a great trumpet blast and a shout as loud as possible, it is almost certain they would have all come to a halt and faced inwards to the city. A shout and trumpets wouldn't have caused the vibrations necessary. But they did and the walls fell and Israel went in and took the city.

Now what warrants my earlier comment that ‘ perhaps we can see how that is like so much that happens in life.' Well, it is very simple. I believe there are many times in life when the Lord asks us to dig in with a particular situation and just persevere, keep on doing the same old stuff until a time will come when suddenly it all changes. The example is sometimes given of a demolition contractor's wrecking ball, that gets swung against a wall again and again. Again and again nothing appears to be happening and then eventually, suddenly it collapses and comes crashing down.

This repetitious act of faith is challenging. Naaman was told to dip himself in the Jordan river seven times before he was healed of his leprosy. (2 Kings 5:10). He must have had the same thought. I am put in mind of wonderful Christian wives whose husbands are unbelievers and the apostle Peter instructs them, “ Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.” (1 Pet 3:1-4) Whether it be unbelieving husbands or other unbelieving members of the family or at work, school or college, it is the same; we won't get them into the kingdom by nagging them.

The Lord simply calls us to day by day remain faithful to Him and express His love and grace and goodness and be there to bless. Day after day passes without the signs of fruit – but remember the wrecking ball, remember marching around Jericho . Faith sometimes is just being constantly obedient to your calling to be a purveyor of love and grace until the time comes when Peter's other words become applicable: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Pet 3:15) If we are revealing God's love and grace and we are praying for those around us, we can leave it to the Lord for when He will bring down the walls of their resistance and they say, “OK, what must a do to be saved?” Get ready, make sure you have your answer ready.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 23. Faith and Understanding

Heb 11:31 By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient

Rahab is an interesting case to study. Some suggest she was merely an innkeeper in Jericho, others (as with the NIV text) that she was a prostitute, neither of which come to mind in the thoughts of good Christian people for a potential follower of the Lord but, nevertheless she earns the right to appear in these halls of faith. As before, let's look at the story and then see what it teaches us.

The story involves two spies sent by Joshua who enter Jericho and find their way to Rahab's house. (Josh 2:1) Presumably it was known as either a lodging house or a house of ill-repute. Either way it seemed to be a place to stay. However the entry to the city by the two Israelites had not gone unnoticed. Someone at the gates must have noticed these two strangers and identified them for what they were. They were obviously followed and the king of Jericho was told (v.2). He sent a message to Rahab to bring out the two men who had come to stay (v.3) but, we are told, she had hidden them (v.4). She also had clearly recognised them for what they were and had hidden them up among the stores on the roof (v.6) but told the messengers from the king that the men had left the city at dusk (v.4b,5) and so pursuers were sent out of the city and the men were saved.

But the story doesn't end there for we are then told that before the men on the roof went to sleep (v.7) Rahab went to them and explained why she had done what she had done: “ I know that the LORD has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted and everyone's courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.” (v.9-11) I always find that amazing. They had heard how the Lord had led Israel through the Red Sea and then what they did to the two kings who had opposed Israel and when they heard they were fearful. She makes an amazing statement of faith: “I know that the Lord has given this land to you .” Wow! She understood the will of God, and it was that which made her act as she did to save them.

She then pleads with them to save her life and that of her family when they come and conquer Jericho and this they agree to do (v.12-14). Because her house was built into the city wall she was able to let them down a rope from one of her windows with instructions to go and hide in the nearby hills until the search for them was called off (v.15,16). To ensure her safety and that of her family they instruct her to keep her family in her house when the army comes, and to hang a scarlet cord out of the window to indicate where she is so that they may spare them (v.17-21).

The end of this part of the story comes later in Joshua: “But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho --and she lives among the Israelites to this day.” (Josh 6:25) But the fascinating real end of the story comes in the New Testament: “Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab , Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.” (Mt 1:4) It is believed – because only well-known women in Israel's history are included in Matthew's genealogy – that this Rahab, who we read ended up living with Israel, eventually married a man named Salmon and they had a child named Boaz who ended up marrying Ruth who had a son named Jesse, who in the passing of years had a number of sons, the youngest of whom was David, (see 1 Chron 2:11-15), later to become the famous king and one named in the family of the Messiah often referred to as “the son of David”. Because of her faith, Rahab ends up being part of the family line of the Messiah! James also adds a note about her: “was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?” (Jas 2:25) Again the link between faith and righteousness we've seen before.

Thus the writer to the Hebrew sums this all up: “By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.” Studying the taking of the Promised Land, Canaan , it is clear that God's objective was to drive the Canaanites out of the land and only if they resisted was death on the agenda. A third option, that Rahab took, was to join the Israelites and become part of God's people.

Rahab – the possible disreputable woman of Jericho stood out by listening to the gossip, hearing the reports of Israel 's activities, and recognizing that this was the work of God, and so joined herself to it. She trusted by her activity that she and her family would be saved and they were and went on to join Israel and even more become part of the Messianic family line. How amazing.

At the very least an example of how God receives into His family even the disreputable who He is not ashamed to identify with. From her side an example of how a heart can be caught by hearing testimony of God's activities and become linked to them. This is faith. When we hear of God's activities do we respond with a rising of faith within, that links us to His works and rejoices in them, or do we feel defensive and judge and remain out in the cold?

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 24. God loves wimps

Heb 11:32,33 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak , Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised;

Perhaps it is a good thing to know when to draw a halt to the examination of individual lives and so the writer moves into summary mode yet what he has to say in the closing verses of this chapter is worthy of examination. “And what more shall I say?” He could say loads more and even with the short list he then gives us, we realise that the Bible is full of faith, indeed it's ALL about faith – people who interacted with God, who ‘heard' God and responded positively to Him. That's what the Bible is all about; it is a testimony of God's dealings with people and their responding to Him.

But I can't help looking at these six men and wondering. I mean, look at them. He starts with Gideon . I love Gideon; he is the epitome of low self-esteem (Judg 6). An angel comes to speak with him and starts with that classic, “The Lord is with you mighty man of valour,” (Judg 6:12) and Gideon replies with what in modern language would be summarised as, “You've got to be joking! The signs are that God isn't with us and as for me, I'm a nobody.” And yet, bit by bit Gideon does the stuff and ends up delivering Israel from the hand of Midian. That reminds me that faith can start small.

On one occasion Jesus said to his disciples, “ Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, `Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Mt 17:20) Look at that – “Because you have so little faith.” He recognized their starting place, just like Gideon and so often just like you and me, starts with only a tiny bit of faith. In fact, he says, as long as you start with faith, it can be as small as the smallest of the seeds, the mustard seed, and you can end up moving mountains. Awesome!

So you may have been reading these meditations about faith every day and perhaps you think, “Well, it's all very well for him, he's obviously a church leader and a Bible teacher, but I'm just a nobody.” Hey, Gideon was a nobody. I'm a nobody. Don't you remember Jesus said, “apart from me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5) Nothing! I'm a nobody until I let him do stuff in me, until I listen to him and do the little thing he puts before me, and if I keep on doing the little things they will get to be bigger things until one of these days I'm going to speak and a mountain is going to get out the way! That is faith and it starts small, so us small people had better stick together.

But then he talks about Barak . Barak was a wimp! Deborah the prophetess was the hero of the day, leading the people but she wasn't a man and fighting was best done by meaty men – except Barak doesn't seem to be very meaty! She sends for him with a word from God: “She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, "The LORD, the God of Israel , commands you: `Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor . I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.'” (Judg 4:6,7) There you are Barak, easy as can be. Just turn up with soldiers and I will give the enemy into your hand. What a simple word and if God says something, it is a promise. So what a great promise.

So how does Barak respond? “Barak said to her, "If you go with me, I will go; but if you don't go with me, I won't go." (v.8) I need someone to hold my hand. Oh come on! Man up Barak, be the man, go and do the stuff. If God is with you, you can't go wrong. But it's never that simple is it? We are what we are and Barak was what he was, so Deborah agrees to go with him but says the glory and fame won't be his, it will be hers. The outcome is that he goes and gets tremendous victory. So OK, someone else gets the glory, does that matter? I like what follows in the next chapter: “On that day Deborah and Barak son of Abinoam sang this song: "When the princes in Israel take the lead, when the people willingly offer themselves-- praise the LORD!” (Judg 5:1,2) Did you see that? Deborah AND Barak sang the song of victory. The truth was that the Lord had called Barak. The Lord believed in Barak more than he did in himself and at the end of it, yes, he did lead the army and yes he did have victory and yes he did it alongside Deborah but so what? He did it!!!

You know I'm not going any further today. These two men are enough for the moment. They say God takes little people like you and me and does stuff through us. It's not all about us, how about great we are; it's all about Him, about how great and powerful He is. It's about the Great God who can take little people, people with low self esteem and still do great things through them. Gideon and Barak were a couple of wimps. What made them appear in the halls of fame? They took the grain of mustard seed and went with it even though they thought nothing of themselves, and mountains ended up getting moved. Don't start with a mountain, start with focusing on the little thing the Lord has put before you – today, today's activities. Look to Him, listen to Him and approach the affairs of today with Him and look for His blessing and when it comes rejoice in it, and look for a bigger seed tomorrow, you potential mountain-mover you!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 25. God and the mixed up

Heb 11:32,33 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised;

I have to confess that Samson is not my favourite individual in the Bible and yet he appears here in this list of heroes of faith. How can that be? What does that say to us? Let's see how it begins before his birth: “ The angel of the LORD appeared to her and said, "You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son…. the boy is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” (Jud 13:3-5) Another of these cases of a barren woman enabled to conceive by God, but surely God would have known what this boy would be like? Let's follow the story, or at least key parts of it.

“The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the LORD blessed him, and the Spirit of the LORD began to stir him.” (Jud 13:24,25). Samson arrives and from the outset the Holy Spirit stirs him. Now watch. “Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. When he returned, he said to his father and mother, "I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.” (Jud 14:1,2) Young, presumably teenage, Samson, has a taste for women, any women, but he is a Hebrew and his parents try to dissuade him (v.3) “But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me. She's the right one for me." (His parents did not know that this was from the LORD, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel .)” (v.3b,4) Now merely because the Holy Spirit stirs a person that does not mean He stirs the desires of that person, yet God clearly knew that this is what Samson would be like and so used this particular propensity to get him in a position to rise against the Philistines who were oppressing Israel . There follows an incident where Samson kills a lion with his bare hands (v.5,6) showing his immense strength.

To cut a long story short, Samson plans to marry the girl and at the wedding feast teases her male friends with a riddle which they cannot solve. The girl pleads with Samson to tell her the answer and when he eventually gives way she passes it on to her thirty male friends. Samson is so annoyed he kills all thirty of them, Philistines you may remember, (see 14:8-20) specifically we are told under the power of the Spirit (v.19).

As the couple are no longer living together Samson goes to visit his wife only to find she has been given to another. This so annoys him that he burns their crops to the ground as well as their vineyards (see 15:1-6). They respond by killing his wife and her father and Samson in return killed many of them (15:6-8) The stories of his killing the Philistines (who the Hebrews now seem to be tolerating) continue and he kills another thousand of them (see 15:9-16). The Lord is clearly with him for when he needs water the Lord provides it miraculously (see 15:18,19) and we are told he then led Israel for the next twenty years (v.20).

Now to save space we will not detail the famous story of Samson and Delilah and how he ended up killing both him and a whole palace full of Philistines (see it in Judg 16:1-31); we have said enough already to show the sort of man that Samson was.

First we have to acknowledge that he was a man who responded to the Holy Spirit and rose up in the power of the Spirit to defeat the Philistine oppressors and deliver Israel . That has to be the faith side of Samson, and we have to credit him with that and recognize that God was able to use him accordingly to defeat the Philistines. But then, putting the Spirit side of his life into the shade, if we may put it like that, there is what some might describe as the carnal side of his life that, bluntly, liked sex and didn't care about the fact that he was a Nazarite, set apart to God and supposed to be holy. He also disregarded his parents counsel. One way and other he was all out for Samson.

So here we have this sobering picture of a man who God uses but a man who is also utterly all out for himself. In fact it would be fair to suggest that the Lord used his unrestrained desires to stir up strife between him and the Philistines. Putting it another way, God used his wrong attitudes to achieve His will – the deliverance of His people. Now I used the word ‘sobering' just now because this story destroys any idea that those of us who might describe ourselves as charismatics or pentecostals might think we are holy because we exercise gifts of the Holy Spirit. Samson was, as I have once heard him described, a carnal charismatic. That is the scary thing. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are just that – gifts; they are not earned and they are not given to ‘special' people, and in fact the people who exercise them can have just as many problems (if not more) than anyone else in the church!

If this upsets your ideas about who God can or might use, bear in mind the whole history of the book of Judges, where again and again, as in today's story, God used the unholy neighbours of Israel to discipline them. Later he would use an unholy despot by the name of Nebuchadnezzar to bring about the Exile. Oh yes, God uses the unholy world for His purposes. In the context of this series, the lesson is short and sharp – faith does not necessarily mean holiness. The encouraging side of that is that God can use you before you are perfect; in fact if He waits until you are perfect He will have to wait until you get to heaven and He doesn't want to do that! This is not an excuse for unholy lives but it does put faith in perspective.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 26. God and the rejected

Heb 11:32,33 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah , David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised;

Jephthah seems an afterthought in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews because chronologically in the book of Judges Jephthah comes before Samson. It is like he writes Samson and then thinks, well, yes, I suppose Jephthah was a man of faith as well; he ought to be included in this list. Very well, let's have a look at this man. As always, start with his earliest of days: “ Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead ; his mother was a prostitute. Gilead's wife also bore him sons, and when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away . "You are not going to get any inheritance in our family," they said, "because you are the son of another woman.” (Jud 11:1,2) Gilead , his father, had been with a prostitute at some point in his life and she had borne him Jephthah. Unfortunately he also had his proper family and they rejected Jephthah and drove him away. No wonder he was a mighty warrior with a background like that; it's the only way you survive!

It doesn't get much better: “So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob , where a group of adventurers gathered around him and followed him.” (v.3) He gets in with a bunch of mercenaries, men who were all out for themselves and would side with anyone with whom it seemed profitable. This has got to speak to any of us who consider that we did not have a good start to life.

A while later the leaders of his home land (as so often happened in Judges) were under pressure from an enemy and knowing he was a warrior with a bunch of mercenaries asked him to come and fight off the Ammonites (v.4-6). Jephthah queries this but they persist and say he can be their leader, so he agrees to come (v.7-11). Jephthah then gets into a dialogue with the Ammonite king during which, to cut a long story short Jephthah refutes the claims on the land by the king and reminds him what Israel had done when they had taken Canaan (v.12-26), concluding the king has no claim on the land in question. He concludes with , “I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong by waging war against me. Let the LORD, the Judge, decide the dispute this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites.” (v.27)

“The king of Ammon, however, paid no attention to the message Jephthah sent him .” (v.27) There appears, therefore a stalemate but, “Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead , and from there he advanced against the Ammonites.” (v.28,29) Now we have to say that so far he has acted well, and has stood for the name of the Lord and is now moving under the power of the Lord. This is faith.

But there we have to pause and take a breath because what follows shows the signs of an insecure man (which takes us back to his childhood) who now feels he has to bargain with God and indeed bribe God in a most foolish way: “And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD: "If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” (v.30,31) Whatever do you mean, “Whatever comes out of the door of my house”? Don't you mean, ‘whoever' and that means you are talking about sacrificing a person? That is crazy and unwarranted. Don't you realise you have been called by God to deliver Israel and defeat the Ammonites – that's what God wants and so you don't need to bribe him, you clown!!!!!

Again to keep the story short, he defeats the enemy (v.32,33) and when he comes home his daughter comes out to greet him (v.34,35) and so he feels obliged to kill her because of the vow he has made. Now I don't care how important you think vows are, God thinks human life is more important and so if Jephthah is going to have to break his vow, he needs to go to the Tabernacle and make a sin offering – but Jephthah hasn't learnt that at the heart of the life of Israel is the sacrificial law that makes provision for sin.

So what we have we got here? We have a man who does act by faith in the way he stands for the Lord and is prompted by the Spirit to go and defeat the enemy. What we also have is a man whose life is wrecked by insecurity, probably coming from the rejection he received as a child or young person. He does not understand that he is moving in the will of God to deliver God's people and therefore he has to bolster up his insecurity with talk of bribing God.

Here, as they say, is where the rubber hits the road. I believe there are thousands of Christians who, for a variety of reasons, feel that they have to prove themselves to God, to earn His love and general approval. Thus their lives are full of constant attempts at appearing worthy – mighty testimonies, big prayers, amazing revelations, all of these things so often being the crutches of hobbling faith, faith that is not secure in God's love because we have been hurt or rejected along the way, and our self-esteem has taken a beating. Please – the Lord loves you just like you are and, yes, He does want better for you, but you don't have to prove yourself to Him. You probably are a person of faith but you don't have to bolster that up with approval-winning activities.

Some of us grew up with parents for whom nothing was ever good enough. God is not like your parents. You are ‘good enough' exactly as you are right now as far as His love is concerned. Yes, He wants more for you but that is simply because He loves you so much that He wants you to be even more blessed that you are now. Jephthah was obviously damaged by rejection and, yes, he does appear in the halls of faith, but he never learned that he didn't have to bribe God. Please, don't be like that side of Jephthah.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 27. Such all round faith

Heb 11:32,33 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David , Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised;

My original intention was to simply make a courtesy mention of the men in these verses but when I paused and thought about them I realised that each one was a mine containing immense wealth that needed digging out. When it comes to David it is more like open-cast mining because his faith is everywhere to be beheld, so near the surface all the time. Here he is hidden among this list of Old Testament saints, just another name, and yet he is a giant of faith, a man who in many ways stands head and shoulders above most others in both Old and New Testaments.

Faith, we have observed many times, comes from hearing God. With some people we've looked at there were specific limited times it seems when they heard and responded. With David, this definition seems almost an insult. David didn't just once or twice hear God, he clearly had a living, vibrant relationship with the Lord. If we start with the historical accounts, we need to wait until David's words are recorded for us, and the first time he comes to light really, is in the incident involving Goliath. Listen to the words of this young man when he comes to the battle front bringing supplies from home for his brothers who are there in Saul's army and he finds everything at a standstill before the taunts of this giant.

Listen to some of his opening words. Three times he reveals his knowledge of the Lord. Let's first start with his question when he arrives: “ Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” (1 Sam 17:26b) Uncircumcised Philistine? An enemy who has no relationship with the Lord. The living God? This is the language of reality. Now, second, listen to his testimony to Saul: “Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” (1 Sam 17:36,37) Again exactly the same language, the language of one with a relationship with the Lord, and then ‘The Lord who delivered me' again speaks of real relationship, experience of the Lord.

But then, third, see how he addresses this Philistine giant: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel , whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel . All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves ; for the battle is the LORD's , and he will give all of you into our hands.” (1 Sam 17:45-47) Look at the living relationship language of those verses that I have put in bold. No question about the faith level of this young man. He KNOWS God!

Let's move from his testimony to his actions, a few little examples of his reliance upon the Lord: “When David was told, "Look, the Philistines are fighting against Keilah and are looting the threshing floors," he inquired of the L ORD, saying, "Shall I go and attack these Philistines?” The LORD answered him, "Go, attack the Philistines and save Keilah." (1 Sam 23:1,2) and then , “When David learned that Saul was plotting against him, he said to Abiathar the priest, "Bring the ephod." David said, " O LORD, God of Israel , your servant has heard definitely that Saul plans to come to Keilah and destroy the town on account of me. Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me to him? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O LORD, God of Israel, tell your servant." And the LORD said , "He will." Again David as ked, "Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me and my men to Saul?" And the LORD said , "They will." (1 Sam 23:9-12) and later, “Now the Philistines had come and spread out in the Valley of Rephaim; so David inquired of the LORD , "Shall I go and attack the Philistines? Will you hand them over to me?" The LORD answered him, "Go, for I will surely hand the Philistines over to you." (2 Sam 5:18,19) So easy, so natural and yet beyond so many of us! This is what relationship is all about – faith, seeking God, hearing God, obeying God. Awesome and yet no natural and what God expects.

Finally, just a glimpse or two at the psalms written by David that speak of his faith relationship with the Lord: “The Lord is MY shepherd.” (Psa 23:1) or “In the LORD I take refuge.” (Psa 11;1) or “I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.” (Psa 13:5,6) or “I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.” (Psa 16:2) We could go on and on and on. The psalms are a constant testimony to the relationship David had with the Lord, a relationship of faith, of talking to the Lord, of hearing the Lord, of obeying the Lord.

David, I suggest, is possibly the greatest challenge to our lives of faith. There is a simplicity about it, an obviousness about it, a sense of all-round faith, if I may call it that, faith that is obvious in every area of his life. Was he perfect? By no means. We are probably all familiar with his failure in respect of Bathsheba and Uriah. Later on in the history of Israel we find David is used as a measuring stick for subsequent kings and so we find, for example, in respect of Abijah, “He committed all the sins his father had done before him; his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his forefather had been . Nevertheless, for David's sake the LORD his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem by raising up a son to succeed him and by making Jerusalem strong. For David had done what was right in the eyes of the LORD and had not failed to keep any of the LORD's commands all the days of his life--except in the case of Uriah the Hittite .” (1 Kings 15:3-5)

What a testimony of this man of faith. On only one occasion did he get is wrong, oh yes, very wrong. But a man of faith he still was. There is more we could say, but let's leave the challenge there. Could that be our testimony: fully devoted to the Lord… did what was right in the eyes of the Lord… and if you are worried about how a sinful, repentant person prays, read Psa 51. Faith people will also be repentant people at some time or other in life. Faith does not preclude failure, but faith seeks out the forgiving God who has given His Son to make a way back for us.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 28. The Epitome of a Listener

Heb 11:32,33 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised;

It is a strange thing but I have never thought of Samuel as a great man of faith but of course he was. The story from his childhood reveals someone who heard God – audibly! That doesn't seem to happen very often; indeed it only seems to happen in extraordinary circumstances where God wants the individual to be under no illusions about their calling. Because Samuel was still a child, unfortunately that was what almost did happen. You find the story in 1 Samuel 2 & 3 where, as a boy, Samuel ministered in the Tabernacle, overseen by old man and chief priest, Eli. Up until this point Samuel probably knows about the Lord – he would have been taught something – but he doesn't know the Lord personally, which is why he can be excused when something happens which many people today wish fervently would happen.

When teaching people to learn to listen to the Lord, the comment so often comes, “Oh, if only He would speak out loud!” Well He did with Samuel but Samuel didn't recognise who it was – well, why would he? It needed Eli to guide him how to reply before Samuel was able to join in a conversation with the Lord (see 1 Sam 3:1-14) Part of the ‘conversation' was a judgment on Eli and his family and in the morning Eli made him repeat what he had heard and when he did Eli responded, “ He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes .” (v.18).

In the verse that follows we then find, “The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground.” (v.19) The Message version puts it in an interesting way: “ Samuel grew up.   God   was with him, and Samuel's prophetic record was flawless, ” while the Living Bible puts a slightly different slant on it , “ As Samuel grew, the Lord was with him and people listened carefully to his advice.” (which only goes to show how you can interpret things differently!) Put them all together and we would have, Samuel held onto all he heard from God through the years and faithfully passed it on to his people, letting nothing get lost along the way. That's what makes a prophet and that is faith. We've said it again and again, faith comes through hearing God, and Samuel heard the Lord and that formed the basis of his ministry.

Now I think our danger is having heard that the Lord spoke to Samuel audibly, that one time when he was a child, we assume that that was how He continued speaking to Samuel, but I doubt that very much. As we said earlier, the audible voice of God – the voice out loud – is reserved for special occasions. Apart from identifying who is the speaker, hearing the audible voice doesn't need faith, you just hear it. No, I suggest that as the years went on Samuel heard the Lord speaking into his spirit and that is what he conveyed to his people.

Indeed I believe this is confirmed in the following words: “ And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD. The LORD continued to appear at Shiloh , and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.” (v.20,21) It is the “through his word” God's ‘word' came to Samuel, not God's ‘voice'. In the many prophetic writings of the Old Testament we find this similar language: “The word of the LORD came to me.” (Jer 1:4) and there is no indication that it was an audible voice. Don't expect an audible voice but do expect the Lord to speak into your spirit via your mind when you are listening for Him.

I have given examples in past studies of how I have experienced this but one more might help here to encourage you. One day I was quietly minding my own business reading about the church and came across a record of how some American evangelists had been operating in a way that was somewhat without integrity, shall we say. Without thinking I found myself thinking, what was tantamount to a prayer, “Lord, how could you use such people?” Quick as a flash came back into my mind came, “The same reason I use you.” I paused in surprise. I had not expected that. A second passed and then came, “Son, I use you because you are available, not because you are right.” I tell you, that released me in a whole load of ways. I shouldn't be careless but God would not be marking me to see if I was ‘good enough' to serve Him.

A more recent addition to that was a revelation I had as I was about to lead a session teaching people to listen to God, a lovely bunch but with one or two fearful people in it, fearful of getting it wrong. “Don't think me a heretic,” I started, “but did you know that God is a God of the second best?” Some of the stronger evangelicals looked startled if not affronted. “No,” I explained, “you can never guarantee to always get it right but God still loves you and will use you. Best is you being perfect, but this side of heaven, if I may put it like this to anchor it in your minds, you are second best. We will each of us try to get it right and do and say what is right, but sometimes we'll miss that target but your second best will not stop God using you.”

You see Samuel didn't always get it right and we know that because when he was getting old, we read, “When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel . The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba . But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.” (1 Sam 8:1-3) Did that stop him hearing God and being a prophet? No, but it did open the way for the people to complain and use his sons as an excuse: “So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” (v.4,5)

Later on Samuel challenged the people: “Here I stand. Testify against me in the presence of the LORD and his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated? Whom have I oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe to make me shut my eyes? If I have done any of these, I will make it right. You have not cheated or oppressed us," they replied. "You have not taken anything from anyone's hand. “ (1 Sam 12;3,4) Samuel had behaved righteously through his life. That was an act of faith, living for God. He couldn't control what his sons did and possibly parental limitation made him less than perfect.

So here is today's lesson: you can be a person of faith but not perfect. This side of heaven that's how it will be. Don't let your imperfections stop you serving the Lord and following your calling. Just allow it to work humility into your package. Be blessed, imperfect man or woman of God. The Bible is full of imperfect faith-filled people. Live it, even if you stumble over your feet from time to time!

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 29. Faith worked through

Heb 11:32,33 And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised;

So we have briefly examined each of those named in our two verses above and the temptation to be casual would say it is time to move on to the next verses but I find myself caught by the closing words of these two verses. The words “and the prophets” seem almost too vague initially to make much comment upon but the words that follow say that faith is not just about words but it is about achieving things.

We have noted in two previous studies how two people exercised faith by adhering to God's plan for His people and we need to think more about that concept. From God's earliest dealings with mankind we see warnings and instructions and indicators that God has standards. When He made the world He saw all that He had done and it was “very good” (Gen 1:31), but then came the Fall (Gen 3) and Sin entered the world which is soon expressed as Cain kills Abel (Gen 4). Not too long later we find, Sin having developed across the earth, “ The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain,” (Gen 6:5,6) and then seeing Him taking steps against its spread.

When we come to Abram the Lord declares His plans in the words about blessing: “I will make you into a great nation ….. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:2,3) The implication is clear: through this plan to create a great nation out of Abram, the Lord will bring blessing to the whole world. In the long term that nation was first to display the Lord to the world (the Old Testament period) and then be the environment into which His Son would come to become the world's Saviour. From Abram through to the time of Jesus, this people were to be a people of faith, interacting with God throughout. The tragedy is that for much of that time they failed as again and again they drifted away from the Lord but, nevertheless, there were numerous people and numerous times through whom God's glory was revealed as they responded in faith to Him.

The first thing to note about this people was their very existence . They became a people in Egypt , went through the ten plagues before God was able to deliver them from Egypt , take them through the desert and, after a forty year gap, take them up into the Promised Land, overcoming opposing kings on the way and ousting the kings in Canaan . Their ongoing history involved fending off opposing neighbours again and again, Indeed one of the main ways the Lord disciplined them when they went off the rails, was to lift off His hand of protection from them and immediately, the Sin in their neighbours, no doubt prompted by Satan, stirred their neighbours against them.

The amazing thing about Judges is that whenever they cried out to the Lord, He raised up deliverers who, with the anointing of the Holy Spirit fought off the invaders and defeated those neighbours. When the Lord allowed them to have a king, Saul's first job was to beat off the invading Philistines and when David became king, and later Solomon, they continued to stand against those opposing kingdoms. Time and time again these men, raised up by God, “through faith conquered kingdoms.” Their very existence depended on men of faith who could stand in the war against the enemy who was out to destroy them. Read Ephesians 6 and we find that we too are in a war. For us the battle is to hold the ground that Jesus has won for us – right standing before God, to be a holy people, a people still reliant upon the Lord, still a people of faith, but it still is a battle.

The second thing to note about this people was their standing in the world . From Sinai on they were God's special people and with the Law of Moses given to them at Sinai, they had a blueprint of how to live out practically as that special people. That required them to live according to specific standards and when those standards were broken to bring justice to bear, punish or correct offenders, bring restitution where applicable and generally ensure they “administered justice,” so that they stood out as (and enjoyed being) this special people. Likewise, as the apostle Peter said, we “are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” (1 Pet 2:9). Similarly we are to stand out in this world, displaying the Lord and His love and goodness to the world around us.

The third thing to note about them was their end goal . Put most simply, it was to be blessed by God and thus reveal Him to the rest of the world or as our writer says, “gained what was promised.” Remember God's initial promise to Abram: “I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” (Gen 12:2) The first obvious outworking of that was in the reigns of David and Solomon. These were the peak years of their existence and even though subsequent years rarely matched those, those particular years stood out for them as a nation blessed of God – and they were!!!! For us this does not happen as a nation, as a people, but it can happen as individuals and as groups (maybe local churches). Our inheritance is to live as children of God with all His resources available to us, and then into eternity to be with Him for ever. While here on this planet, the goal is to reveal Him by entering into all He has for us – and I believe we have got a long way to go before we realise that. It means, I suggest entering in with humility and grace into a much greater fullness of sonship than we normally see, where we lean on His wisdom, His guidance and His power, to reveal His love and goodness in ways that the church rarely does. I leave you to think that one through.

But that was the outworking of faith for God's people both in the nation in the Old Testament and in the Church in the New Testament – to conquer the enemy, to live righteously and justly, and to reveal Him to the rest of the world until He comes. May it be for us.

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith' : 30. In the face of fear

Heb 11:33,34 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions , quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies

There are two parts to this general description in these two verses of the activities of men and women of faith in the Old Testament and they both begin with ‘who'. The first one we considered in the previous meditation, a more general description. The second one that we now move on to speaks of specific events that stood out in the Old Testament history as outstanding acts of faith.

The first reference to those “ who shut the mouths of lions,” must surely refer to Daniel in the lion's den found in Daniel, chapter 6. The long and the short of it was that Daniel was an official in Babylon in the reign of Darius and was doing well, so well that others were jealous and looked for a way to bring him down. The only thing they could think of was to get the proud king to issue a thirty day edict that everyone should worship the king as their god and no one else. Daniel first of all prayed: “Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem . Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before. Then these men went as a group and found Daniel praying and asking God for help.” (Dan 6:10,11)

Daniel accordingly refused and was thrown into the lion's den but the king was much upset about this and said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!” (v.16) The next morning he came and called to Daniel from outside, “Daniel answered, "O king, live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, O king." The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.” (v.21-23)

Now this action by Daniel is a specific example of faith from a man of faith. The earlier chapters of Daniel reveal a young Israelite man who is all out for God and who acts with the wisdom of God, even when he is carried into captivity in Babylon .

Now we need to be quite clear abut this. There were at least three occasions when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came against Israel, defeated them and took people back to Babylon as slaves, and all this, the many and varied prophetic words at the time made very clear, was the specific work of God bringing discipline to Israel. The last and final time resulted in Nebuchadnezzar totally destroying Jerusalem and everything in it, including the Temple . For the Jews this would have been devastating. However it appears that Daniel was carried away in the third year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign while Jehoiakim reigned in Israel , probably the first deportation in 605BC (remember the final one and destruction of Israel took place in 587BC some eighteen years later.) Years pass, Nebuchadnezzar is followed by Belshazzar who in turn is followed by Darius who had appointed Daniel as one of the leading men of the nation.

There are various things to note here. First, I want to reiterate that what we considered above is one act of faith – a remarkable one where Daniel refused to cower before the schemes of men and determined to remain faithful to God in whom he could trust – but it is one act in a life of faith. We have made this point before and it need emphasizing: yes we may make individual acts of faith but ultimately the whole life for the Christian is a life of faith.

The second thing to note – and in the romanticism that sometimes follows the Sunday School stories that are told about Daniel and his friends (because they are good stories to tell) we lose reality – is the incredibly difficult times Daniel and his friends lived through. Their nation was pillaged and they were taken as slaves to a foreign country. Now many people would just sink into abject misery in such circumstances but the record shows that Daniel and his friends – good Jewish boys – stayed faithful to God and, with the wisdom and revelation of God, actually prospered and were promoted and promoted and promoted in this alien court. Daniel survived and prospered, we might say, by receiving and using spiritual gifts of revelation. There's a challenge!

Now for much of the time, here in the godless West, we live in an age of plenty and prosperity and, up until this time of writing (early 2016), relative peace as far as other nations are concerned. But suppose we go through another and worse financial collapse than 2008 (which some economists are forecasting) and suppose there are national upheavals, war, revolution, terrorism, whatever, how would you and I respond? Would we recognize the judgment of God? Would we remember we are His children even in the face of whatever might come? Would we hold fast to Him, seek Him, listen to Him, receive His resources? Please note I am note saying these things will come, but if they did would we be people of faith like Daniel or does our ‘faith' rely upon peace and stability and comfort?