Decisiveness is the fulcrum of true discipleship.Luke says that Jesus “resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51)He’s about four months away from Calvary and the language that Luke employs emphatically illustrates our Lord’s decisiveness in seeing His mission through to the end.It’s more about His state of mind and not a geographical change.It has nothing to do with His checking MapQuest or getting a TripTik from Triple A.He knew who He was, what He was called for, and nothing was going to get in His way.
A few verses down, He encounters three would-be disciples.He says to each of them, “Decide!”Me?Or the world?Me?Or your will?Me?Or your level of comfortability?In each case they chose what was behind Door Number Two and left satisfied with that.
He says that a true disciple is one who has set his hand to the plow, or, in Elisha’s case burned the plow (see 1 Kings 19:21).Jesus set His face (“like flint”, Isaiah 50:7) to Jerusalem and we are to set our hand to the plow.Plowing is about harvest, and in the succeeding verses, Jesus sent out the seventy with this pep talk: “Pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send more plowers into the field.”Some plant, some plow, some water…but the Lord gets His beautiful harvest!
Our Lord cannot use scribes (the first guy) who are worried about looking foolish to their rich buddies when they are found sleeping in caves or under bridges “for a carpenter” instead of their large-mortgage house.He cannot use the ‘I’ll catch up with you down the road but right now I have a lot of personal stuff to iron out’ candidates (the second guy).The call is NOW. And there’s the plow!And He will pass over those who waver between two worlds and the Lord knows this world will usually win out (the third guy).
The call is NOW.And there’s the plow.
Who are the harvesters?Who are the ones “pressing into the Kingdom” (Luke 16:16)?They are people who will empty their entire life savings at His feet even though the religious tell them every reason why they shouldn’t.They are people who will walk away from a lucrative career because their life and livelihood is in His hands.People who will drop the nets at their feet, leaving every security behind because they see the Greater Incentive, a Treasure you cannot refuse.
We need to be more decisive than ever in these changing times.Before I finished that last sentence I was interrupted by a call from someone I know who just won over $20,000 in the lottery tonight.Isn’t that ironic?The world will do stuff like that for us—anything to keep us from treasuring Christ.Anything to keep us from pressing in, pressing on or setting our hand to the plow. Tragically, the third certainty of life—after death and taxes—is that twenty grand’ll be gone in a few days, weeks or months.
Then what?
Decisively pressing in means fighting against that twinge that says, “man, I wish that had happened to me.”It means being unimpressed by what the world offers because you know nothing can compare to the richness of knowing about a Greater-than-all Treasure and going after it.
There’s the plow.It may look worn, earthy, scarred and rusty, but it’s Who you set your affection on at the far end of the field that really matters.
Got it? Okay, now turn to song numbers 88 and 89. I’ll wait…
All right. Let’s say we brave the depths and scale the heights of these two very different compositions. All we know from the men who wrote these Psalms is that they were from the same tribe. They were singers in the King’s choir and these two Psalms are their respective solos. They probably knew each other, might even have been brothers, who knows? Whatever the truth is, we know they saw things differently.
Two men.
Two perspectives.
One was a Friday Man.
The other, a Sunday Man.
Two men.
Same choir.
One sang funeral dirges and preferred the Minor Key. The other couldn’t wait for the “Hallelujah Chorus”. One lived in the uncertain times of B.C. The other lived in the new dawn of A.D.
The world today is a vast ocean of Friday Men, people who know very little beyond the Minor Key of Psalm 88. The verbs they identify with are:
“troubled” “without strength” “forsaken” “cut off” “thrown out like yesterday’s trash” “afflicted” “the object of loathing” “hemmed in” “wasted away” “camped on the edge of hell” “rejected” “unloved” “hopeless” “nobody listens to me” “nobody sees me” “nobody cares for my soul”
That is a Friday world. Bleak, broken, unbearable. An insane treadmill that gives the sense of motion but gets you nowhere but the grave. An afterlife? Ha! I can barely stomach the life I’m in. Who needs another?
Trust God? I’ve tried but He never comes through for me. I’ll just make the best of things on my own.
That’s Friday thinking.
Psa 88:10 Will You perform wonders for the dead? Will the departed spirits rise and praise You? Selah. Psa 88:11 Will Your lovingkindness be declared in the grave, Your faithfulness in Abaddon? Psa 88:12 Will Your wonders be made known in the darkness? And Your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
These are rhetorical questions that, from Heman’s perspective, have a “no chance in hell” attached to them. “Perform wonders for the dead”? Why, dead was dead and any hope at all is swallowed by the tomb. “God’s lovingkindness declared in the grave”? “Declared” in the grave? The “GRAVE”? The Jews believed the grave—Sheol, Abaddon—was silent and deaf. No words could be spoken or heard in the grayish grim halls of the entombed.
“Wonders in the darkness”? Not on Friday, mister. No how, no way.
The Friday Man cannot see beyond the veil of death. To him, all is pitch. All is inky blackness. To him, there is no light, only thick, penetrating darkness—his very existence is the “dark night of the soul.”
What Heman, the Friday Man, does not know is: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies it bears much fruit…”
Jesus is that grain of wheat.
He is the Fruitful Seed.
Heman—a Friday Man—cannot see what is happening beneath the cold concrete of death. A Vine is growing and the strongest, most prolific stone that man can put in the way is no obstacle to the path of such an organic, cosmic force. Like a stubborn blade of grass shoved ever upward through resistant sidewalk until it breaks through to the world above, so life is brewing and brimming and being birthed behind that devilish slab and the Friday world must soon give way to Sunday!
Enter Ethan. You know, the Sunday Man…and his solo is the showstopper! The contrast between these two Psalms is as striking as the Man of Romans 7 and the Man of Romans 8. As different as the Prodigal who found redemption and the older brother who found obscurity. They are as far opposite as the Pharisee who patted himself on the back and the publican who prayed with trembling lips…one is bound while the other is released from the cow-stall of Law…
We see perfectly what the Law and Law alone can do to a man in Psalm 88…unredressed yearning, saviorless despair, bitter isolation and the hopelessness of a man without salvation.
Though the first cry that erupts from the throat of the Friday Man (88:1) is to appeal to the God who saves, chapter 89 is the picture of a man who now swims in the glorious waters of redemption. Hey, no one wants to live in a Friday world, but we need Friday. It is Friday that shows us the demands of a holy God. It is Friday that shows us we are lost and undone if left to ourselves. It is Friday that shows us we need a substitute, a Law-keeper, a perfect, spotless Lamb. The Law—that which is all Heman ever knew—cannot save but it can lead us to the One who does! This is why Paul could say of the Law: it is “holy, righteous and good…it is spiritual.”
Friday is necessary but that’s not the end of the Story.
Seeing these two Psalms, side-by-side, gives this amazing fresco of grace: Friday’s questions give way to Sunday’s answers!
Friday Man gets no redress. But when the Man of Sunday, Christ Jesus, the Tree of Life, marched His way back into the Garden against every assailable force evil could throw against Him, one can almost hear HIM ask the same questions above the gale-force winds of the Destroyer:
Will You do wonders for the dead, Father? This time, no silence. But this: Oh yes, My Son…You will be the Firstfruit of the resurrection and I will raise ALL those who find themselves in You, for if you take the firstfruit out of the field and offer it to Me, the rest of the field is made holy!
Father, will Your loyal love be proclaimed from the gaping maw of Sheol? Oh yes, My Son! You will hear the garish shouts of triumph exploding from the damned who are set free while the groans of finality will echo hollowly among the lower denizens of the forever damned.
Those same questions were met with silence for the Friday Man, the man who knows only Law. Will I do wonders for the dead? Will praises be heard in the grave? God’s resounding answer: NOT UNTIL JESUS! Yeshua: the Very One who volunteered for the Greatest Love Story Ever Told. The One who told His Father, “the sacrifices and offerings of men will not release redemption for mankind but through a Body prepared for Me. Yes, Father, I come to do Your will.”
Every concern and question of chapter 88 is dealt with in chapter 89. Agony becomes ecstasy. Tragedy becomes triumph. Grief becomes glory. Isolation becomes adoption. The grave becomes a cradle. “Not yet” becomes “Arise, My Love!” and by the time verse 15 rolls around, Ethan is no longer enjoying a solo. He is now joined by the full choir.
“How blessed are the people who KNOW the joyful sound!”
When was the word “blessed” ever used in chapter 88? How about “joy”? And I just love that word “sound”. In the Hebrew it reads: HOW BLESSED ARE THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW THE SHOUT!”
Do you know the shout?
I’ll bet it’s on your tongue right about now:
Friday’s over with!
Saturday’s come and gone!
Strike up the band!
Cue the singers!
It’s Sunday!
Let’s go out and tell the world: “I’m a Sunday Man!”
I’ve been waiting for the question that hasn’t come. But it will, I’m sure of it.
“Scott, aren’t you even a tad jealous that Kevin Everett will likely retrieve all his bodily functions and mobility after suffering a potentially grave spinal cord injury?”
This is going to sound weird, I know, but Kevin should be jealous of me. Hear me out. Kevin Everett is the tight end for the Buffalo Bills who sustained a near-crippling injury while making a tackle in Sunday’s NFL season opener. He launched at his opponent, driving his helmet into the player’s chest and immediately crumpled to the ground. Early indications were that he would be paralyzed for life, his career in football over in seconds. Twenty-four hours later we were hearing he was voluntarily moving his arms and legs and his doctors were hopeful even of a full recovery and return to normal life.
Two roads, he and I, with two patently different outcomes.
When I blew a gust of relieved air with the rest of America, I steeled my mind on the truth of God’s sovereignty. One man’s miracle is another man’s blessing. Sure, the enemy was there with his typical suggestions: “…it’s not fair, is it, Scott? You didn’t get the same break, did you? God is so cruel! I’ve been listening to your prayers for your own healing for almost 26 years now…and what? Nothing. Still stuck in that wheelchair! And you’re a, what, preacher of the Gospel? You’d think your Father would look out for you…”
But I sit here, clacking away at these keys, a blessed man!
(Nice try, Slewfoot.)
The fact I am in a wheelchair does not mean I have not been healed. Oh, I have, believe me! My paralysis is a pathway to glory and I am resting in the knowledge that my Maker has set me apart for a privileged season in His sun. He’s given me a break. You want to know Me? Your brokenness is the essential way. The same Apostle who said his own suffering was working for him an eternal weight of glory, said that in the life to come some will shine like the sun, some like the moon and others like the stars in glory. I’m after the former.
I am thrilled for Mr. Everett but I wouldn’t trade my journey for anything. Years ago I picked up a copy of Jerry Bridges’ Trusting God Even When Life Hurts and found in its pages the answer to my soul’s questions and even now, years later, find myself referring to its basic tenets time and again. Mr. Bridges says that God is sovereign, meaning He can do whatever He wants because He is God. He says He is also all-wise and His children can draw comfort from the fact that while God can do whatever He wants, He knows exactly what He is doing. Everything He does has purpose. The third truth pouring from its pages is that God is all-loving. Ah, this is the most comforting unguent of all! While God does as He chooses, He always does it in view of His own glory, and always, always, for our eternal good.
This is the God of my life and I am determined to follow Him through every vale of sorrow, every mile of struggle, and every season of loss and despair. I can do this because the broken road is the blessed road and my Savior walks it with me. Had feeling been restored to me on October 3, 1981 (the day “after”) and the next 26 years been “normal” for me, I have some doubt whether I would have known the Lord as intimately as I do tonight. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. I leave even that to His sovereignty.
I praise the God who sits on the circle of the earth, over those who walk and those who don’t. Over those who succumb to disease and those who get well. Over those who serve Him and those who shake their fists at Him. Makes no difference. He is Lord.
One last thing. There was a time when I could sit down (well, of course I’d be sitting!) and write song after song. Interesting that it was in the early years of my disability and I probably wrote three dozen tunes. One of the songs that flowed out of my belly pretty much sums up how I feel about these matters. Mind you, the lyrics were written over 25 years ago and they show some youth, but they are just as real for me today as they were in the early 80’s. To the praise of His glorious grace!
HE KNOWS WHAT’S BEST FOR ME
I know I can’t walk around and at times it gets me down But He knows and I’m kept by Jesus’ love There’s so many things I’d like to do Run a race and win one too But He knows and that’s enough for me
He knows how much my spirit can stand He’s so concerned for my good He is so wise and He hears all my cries He knows what’s best for me
Sometimes it’s hard to pray when He seems so far away But He’s there and He’s listening to my heart He reaches down in love From His heavenly throne above ‘Cause He knows what I need the very most
And when my life is done And my crown of life is won Then I’ll know my pain was worth it all…
It’s my guess that the question I’m still waiting for won’t come after you read this. Oh, one more thing. Please don’t think I am being haughty and patting myself on the back. The truest thing I know is this: none of this comes from me. Only God could take a broken man’s life and give it meaning and rhyme.
