Is There an Obsession in Your Life?
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Oh Lord of Hosts! O
righteous Father!
“The angel of the Lord said, O Lord of hosts, how long
will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you
have been angry these seventy years?” (Zech.1:12) I love to find this little word oh in the Bible text. Why do the
translators find it necessary to include it here and in many places? It doesn’t
add anything to the meaning of the sentence; it doesn’t clarify any point. It
doesn’t name or indicate an action; it doesn’t define a noun or a verb. The
translators discerned an expression of passion and for that reason we have it
in this prayer from the Angel of the Lord to the Lord of Hosts. Oh! is an exclamation.
The Holy Spirit, author of
the Bible, gives us an unparalleled privilege, allowing us to observe a scene
that is too sacred for our eyes and unworthy thoughts. It is the communion that
Jesus, the Son of God, had with His heavenly Father in John, chapter 17. There
we see Him opening His heart and expressing His most intense and intimate
desires. In verse 25, He demonstrates His passion: “Oh righteous Father!” It
is holy ground and we ought to take off our shoes. The Lord Jesus Christ in the
Gospel is the same Person, who is called the Angel of the Lord in Zechariah.
We listen to His words as He
comes to the apex of His prayer: “I in
them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may
know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire
that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my
glory that you have given me because you love me before the foundation of the
world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you,
and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I
will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may
be in them, and I in them” (Jn.17:23-26). Now, that is the Gospel! This is
Christianity! This is the will of the Father in sending His Son into the world.
This is the Son’s deep longing, expressed to the Father.
I haven’t been able to find
it, but I am sure that I have read something from A. W. Tozer about an error in
calling the will of God “the work”. How can we call what we have just read of
the passionate prayer of Jesus, “the work”? He is pleading for His church, the people He has called out of
the world… His body… His bride. Our
message must be more than informative sermons over biblical doctrines; it must
be illumination over the three Persons of the trinity. From the onset of his
Gospel, the Apostle John presents to us a Person: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God” (Jn.1:1).
During the ministry of Jesus,
when the question came up, concerning the supreme commandment, the answer was: “You shall love the Lord your God with all
you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (and in Mark 12:30,
with all your strength).” Jesus then
cited the second priority: “You shall
love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt.22:37,39). Christianity has everything
to do with relationships. Take away everything else that might be built upon it
and you will see that Christianity will continue to exist upon the basis of
love between God and men and the love among the brethren.
Obsessed with the love of God
A little meditation over the
first commandment will bring you to the conclusion that what God expects from
us is an obsession. “Isn’t that what the word “all” infers? It enlists the
entire being, body, soul, mind and heart. It demands something that we cannot
give, if we are only motivated by a keen sense of responsibility. It must flow
liberally from the inside, immersed in a supernatural, overwhelming love.
Divine love is a unique love
that proceeds from God and is revealed in Christ Jesus. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn.4:10). What can
originate in a human being towards God is not worthy to be called love, and can never fulfill the supreme
commandment. That is why Jesus prayed “that
the love with which you have loved me may be in them” (Jn.17:26). This is
the love that moved God to sacrifice His Son for His enemies: “For God so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son” (Jn.3:16). This was the love that Jesus showed
towards His disciples: “Having loved his
own who were in the world, he loved them to
the extreme (gr. to perfection)” (Jn.13:1).
Because I have been studying
the prophecy of Zechariah in these last months, I am very conscious of what
this book teaches about the passion of God. “I am exceedingly jealous for Zion, yes, with great wrath I am jealous
for her” (Zech.8:2). The MacArthur Study Bible notes: “This very strong language expresses the idea that God can’t bear the
estrangement from his chosen people…”
If this love lives in us, we
will not be able to return less than our whole being. We will be like Mary, who
chose the one necessary thing (Lk.10:42), and like her also, who poured that
which was extremely costly over Jesus without taking into account its price or
its usefulness (Jn.12:3,5). Is that not an obsession? I believe that we are in
the last times and God’s is moving in a wife, who is preparing herself for the
Marriage of the Lamb (Rev.19:7-9). I am seeing people with passionate longings
to draw intimately close to God. They are devouring His word desperately in
order to discover its secrets, perturbed at any disturbance that interrupts
them. Isn’t that an obsession?
Obsessed towards a complete confidence in God
The word faith only appears
twice throughout the Old Testament, but when the writer of Hebrews describes
the testimony of those saints, he writes in one chapter, the 11th,
eighteen times about their faith. It’s
not possible to count the number of those in verses 32-34 or those of 35-38,
who did not except deliverance. Therefore, we can see that faith not only
existed in Old Testament times, but dominated the lives of these outstanding
people.
The word commonly used in the
Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, is trust.
Psalms 62 expresses a singular trust or faith. The Psalmist is showing his
passion in the search that he launches to achieve a confidence placed solely in
God. I think we could call it an obsession: “My soul waits in silence for God only… He only is my rock and my
salvation… My soul, wait in silence for God only, for my hope is from Him. He
only is my rock and my salvation… Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out
your heart before Him” (Ps.62:1,2,5,6,8). Trust is synonymous with faith
and only a trusting faith is true faith. We can as well ask someone, if he
or she has trusted Christ, just as we
might ask if he or she has believed on
Him. To profess faith in God, without depositing our trust in Him, is to not
truly believe. The true believer has surrendered his whole being to the Father
and the Son.
I do not blame the word faith, as it is expressed in the Bible, but
I distrust the modern usage of the word. Perhaps trust better expresses, in these times, an intimacy with God. Certainly
Paul relates faith with intimacy, when he writes of “faith working through love” (Gal.5:6). Many times he joins faith
with love in his letters. His song of love in 1 Corinthians 13 unites faith with
hope and love permanently. They are inseparable attributes from eternity to
eternity. We will continue to hope and trust in God forever and ever.
Good theologians tell us that
Mark 11:22, “Have faith in God”, can
just as well be translated, “Have the
faith of God”. When the disciples asked for increased faith, Christ taught
them about a kind of faith, not a quantity: “If you had faith like a
grain of mustard seed…” (Lk.17:6). Speaking to Peter, Jesus said that he
prayed for him “that your faith may not
fail” (Lk.22:32), and was referring to something more powerful than Peter
himself and something that would remain after Peter’s fall. When I read Hebrews eleven, I see that these
people did not control their faith, but that faith controlled them. We see clearly
in Isaac’s case, who “invoked future
blessings on Jacob and Esau…” (v.20) that he did not do it as he pleased,
but that faith led him and even dominated over his will. Paul said, “Nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of
the Son of God…” (Gal.2:20, KJV).
The Christian life is
characterized by faith and so it is
called, simply because it is a life of faith, from its beginning and into
eternity. After giving the parable of the widow and the unjust judge, Jesus
added this question: “When the Son of
Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk.18:8). It’s a good question in
these days, when the world offers us so much, in which to confide. Since we
have seen that faith works by love, a confidence in the world denotes a love
for the world. According to the apostles, James and John, to love the world constitutes
us as adulterers and enemies of God.
Martin Luther taught on this
subject: “Yes, to have a god means to
trust and to believe in him with your whole heart. I have often said that only
the trust and faith of the heart can make God or an idol. If your faith and
trust are true, you have the true God, too. On the other hand, where trust is
false, is evil, there you will not have the true God either. Faith and God live
together. I tell you, whatever you set your heart on and rely on is really your
god.”
The faith and the love that
proceed from God work an obsession in the Christian to trust, as the Psalmist, solely
in Him. I remember the day, when there were no seat belts in cars. You may
think that I am a little too simple, but when I heard the insistence by the
media, persuading everyone to use them, I rebelled. I do use them now, but not
out of desire or my will for security, but because I am legally forced to put
them on. I still prefer to trust God and as time goes by, to trust Him more and
more! Our family has been kept alive and preserved from the threats of men. God
has supplied all our needs and has led us in all aspects of life. Before we
were conscious of it, He was working out all the preparations and means for our
eternal salvation. And am I not going to trust Him for all things the rest of
my life?
An obsession to obey
Studying the book of
Zechariah, I was impressed with the urgency that is clearly shown in obedience
to God. In 2:4, an angel was instructed, “Run, say to that young man…”. Instantly,
the word from God was given to the youth, Zechariah. In 5:1, we can observe a
scroll that flew and its purpose is to carry a curse from God to the houses of
those, who steal and swear falsely in the name of God. They flew in carrying
out the curse. In verse nine of the same chapter, Zechariah sees two women with
wings, with which they could rapidly fulfill their mission, and to speed them
on their way even more quickly, a wind blew in their favor. In chapter six, God
gave Zechariah orders to receive an offering from men, who recently arrived
from Babylon and he was told to go that
same day to a certain house to take a message to them.
My dad always expected an
immediate obedience. I remember a time that he gave me a job to do and about an
hour later, asked if I had done it. I answered that I was just at the point of
doing it. He didn’t seem to think that was soon enough. We were at the table at
our son’s home in Alaska and our youngest grandson stood on his chair. His
mother calmly told him to sit down. He kept standing, until our daughter-in-law
made a move to get up. He fell to the chair like a rock! In the
same quiet voice, his mother said, “Too late!” and took him to his room to
receive the just recompense of a retarded obedience. When God speaks, we should
not delay to obey! His word should be carried out immediately, by angels or by
human beings.
Genesis 24 gives us an
extraordinary example of obedience. In this chapter, we learn of a slave
totally obsessed with the will of his masters. His entire reason for existence
was entwined in their well-being, without taking into account personal matters
or rights. When something happened towards the success of his masters in his
mission, he worshipped God. Towards the end of the story, he had achieved the
purpose of his journey and his hosts attempted to detain him in their house for
a feast, but he responded, “Do not delay
me, since the Lord has prospered my way. Send me away that I may go to my
master” (Gen.24:56). His manner of obedience was not only to do as he was
instructed, but to do it as soon as possible.
Paul taught that the Christian
is a slave: “You are not your own, for
you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Co.6:19-20).
In the next chapter, he takes his point into the realm of an obsession, because
he instructs us to perform the service of a single Master exclusively, leaving
no room for another: “You were bought
with a price; do not become slaves of men” (7:23). We are Christ’s
possession, because we have been bought at the highest price… the price of
blood: “You were ransomed from the
futile ways… with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pt.1:18-19). We belong
entirely to God, because we are His creation. Listen to the praises for the
King of Glory around His throne: “Worthy
are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you
created all things, and by your will (pleasure) they existed and were created” (Rev.4:11).
However we should not
entertain the thought that our slavery is a hard bondage, but a glorious
privilege, carried out in practice liberally through the love of God, “poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit” (Ro.5:5). The fountain of obedience is love to Christ. When someone
is motivated by God’s love, he is quick to obey. Jesus Himself said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word” (Jn.14:23);
love will be the motivation for the whole of Christian living, and not only is
it the only motivation that makes it possible to live this life, but it transforms
it into a compulsive pleasure.
Hear Ruth’s obsession: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return
from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will
lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will
die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if
anything but death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:16-17). Through love’s great
power, Ruth did not find it difficult to follow the will of God for her life,
even in the culture of a strange land.
An obsession to live in holiness
I am referring especially to
holiness, according to Webster’s first and second definitions of the word holy, which is totally consistent with
the biblical meaning of the word: “To
be exalted or worthy of complete devotion” or “to be devoted entirely to the
deity”. To be holy means to be totally set apart and separated from all else,
in order to be consecrated to God. If we are contemplating purity, then it
means to be totally separated from the unclean for God’s sake. If we are
speaking of living a pious life, then it means to be set apart from the world,
in order to live wholly for God. In every case, holiness signifies departing
from every disturbance, so to be able to live as close as possible to the heart
of God. In the words of the writer of Hebrews: “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely” (Heb.12:1).
This obsession was expressed by Robert Murray McCheyne: “Make me as holy, as it is possible for a saved sinner to be!”
In the tabernacle of the Old
Testament, there were two elements that illustrated this theme of holiness. One
was the holy, anointing oil. In Exodus 30:31-32, God commands: “This shall be my holy anointing oil
throughout your generations. It shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary
person, and you shall make no other like it in composition. It is holy, and it
shall be holy to you.” God held the exclusive “patent” for this oil and no
one could duplicate it for common usage. The incense for the altar was to be
treated in the same way: “The incense
that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for
yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord” (v.37). God also forbade
that another composition could be used: “You
shall not offer unauthorized incense on it” (v.9).
In the New Testament, a holy act
is recorded, made by a woman, who poured a flask of extremely expensive
ointment, called nard, upon Jesus. The disciples were indignant, complaining
that it was wasted and that the money, if it were sold, could be utilized to
alleviate the poor. The disciples made mistakes from time to time, but none
were as flagrant as on this occasion. The greatest offense was to judge Christ
unworthy to receive such an honor. The second was to think that this perfume
could be used in some humanitarian work. It could not be! Just as the incense
in the tabernacle, this “composition” of the human heart could only be poured
out to God.
In the same way, when the
soldiers of David brought him water from the well of Bethlehem, David poured it
out to the Lord, because these men risked their lives, so that he could have
it. David judged correctly that no man should receive that kind of honor. This
consecration is exclusively for the Lord and only He is worthy to receive it.
No humanitarian should incite people to make sacrifices on this level and then
put his hand on their donations to distribute it to human need. There is no way
to offer this spiritual perfume and oil in an indirect manner. It is exclusively
for the Lord. Not always in serving man are we serving God.
Our first obligation is to
love God with all our soul, with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all
our strength. We should have an obsession for that which is sanctified and set
apart only for the Lord. As the disciples, we err seriously if we place
priority upon the second commandment over the first. This error come from a
false love (as Luther said), in a spirit of ecumenicalism or universalism. The Universalist
believes that in the end the entire world will be saved and he is winning more
and more people to his side from the evangelical branch of Christianity. He
pretends to love humanity, but the result of his doctrine in the end will be
the condemnation of many more, because they are deceived into a false hope
which he preaches. These preachers not only do not love God, but they don’t
even know the God of the Bible. They are false prophets.
May the following hymn be our
prayer and obsession:
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King.
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my will it is Thine own
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King.
Take my lips, and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my will it is Thine own
It shall be Thy royal throne
Take my heart it is Thine own
Take my heart it is Thine own
It
shall be Thy royal throne
Take my love, my God, I pour
At Thy
feet its treasure store.
Take
myself, and I will be
Ever,
only, all for Thee
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