This morning I was reading the opening chapters of Ezra and the notes that I was using pointed me back to Joshua 23:14. Essentially the link (and therefore the point) was that God fulfilled His promises. That God was ‘trustworthy‘ if you like.
Now this got me thinking. If someone promises you something and then delivers on it, it makes sense (based on empirical evidence) to trust them again. It’s only in the face of someone not keeping their end of a bargain that we should (rationally speaking) dis-trust.
So why then, knowing what the Bible reveals about God and His dealing with the Israelites (time after time fulfilling promises) and what it reveals about Jesus and how He, just like He said, came back from death having died for our sins, why oh why would we not trust the other things he tells us?
Why oh why are we so prone to disbelief? So prone to lack trust and faith? So prone to turn away from the one who up until this point has proven Himself entirely trustworthy? I think of promises like the one given to the women at the well, that who ever comes and drinks the water Christ gives will not be thirsty ever again! Why then, in light of His obvious trustworthiness(?), am I so prone to search elsewhere for refreshment? Why do I find it hard to believe that Christ will totally satisfy…for ever?!
Nowadays we are encouraged endlessly by those ‘who know best’ to be rational, to engage our intellects, to employ logic as we look at life and contemplate the world (At least that’s what I understand a good, scientific, enlightened person should do). So please, please, please, lets follow that advice. Lets be rational for a moment and trust the one who is trustworthy. It’s simple logic people!
October 29, 2008 at 9:17 am
It struck me in the bath this morning that the sciencetific method, being the search for the ability to predict future events based on observations of prior events could also a good illustration of getting it wrong!
By this I mean, if I want to know how an apple will fall I can study how other similar objects would fall and use their motion to predict how the apple would fall. However if I just studied ’round objects that fell’ I might come unstuck. For instance I may study how a helium balloon falls and based on those observations I’d get the motion of the apple totaly wrong. Get it?
Well I’ve made the point above that people should trust God now because He’s proven Himself trustworthy. But some people would say that He hasn’t been trsutworthy in the past, hasn’t delivered on all His promises. BUt I’m hazarding that that will be because they have either misunderstood God or one of His promises (like me misunderstanding that the balloon, although round, isn’t the same as the apple).
So if God has been ‘unfaithful’ in the past, your best bet is that you’ve made a mistake about what it is God promised to do!