Abraham, my Friend 40

They that wait upon the Lord

And then after the sitting, running, lying, and working comes the standing — the posture of a servant, you will recall from our last devotional.  As we read Genesis 18 slowly we get a definite feeling of the hustle and bustle of Abraham as he prepares for the wellbeing of his guest, and then suddenly it all slows to a complete halt:

And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. (Gen 18:8 ASV)

The previous verbs are very graphic; he ran to meet the guests, he bowed, he hastened to instruct Sarah, he instructs ‘make ready quickly’, he runs to the herd, he ‘hasted to dress it’… Such preparations are fitting. But when he sets it all before them, he stood by them under the tree. We live in a day when the techniques of prayer are constantly advocated, and in an era peculiarly given to method we are inundated with ‘How to…’ manuals. An earlier generation was wiser. Samual Chadwick wrote, ‘A season of silence is the best preparation for speech with God.’ (The Path of Prayer). The first criterion for prayer is not ‘need consciousness’ but ‘God consciousness’.

The preface to Abraham’s intercession

This chapter reveals Abraham as he receives the final promise of the seed; the promise will find its fulfilment now. It also reveals Abraham as an intercessor — a man who pours out himself in prayer for others. In both cases we discover that these events are preceded by a season of Abraham ‘waiting on the Lord’ (Gen 18:8,22).

Later when the judgements fall we find Abraham watching them from the same spot — the place where he had stood before Jehovah.

And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Jehovah: and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the Plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the land went up as the smoke of a furnace. (Gen 19:27–28 ASV)

Central to the events of the fulfilled promise and the expression of God’s will upon the earth, we find Abraham ‘waiting upon Jehovah’.

Before we examine the promise and the judgement, which we shall do in subsequent devotionals, let’s pursue the topic of ‘waiting upon God’.

The first thought is of silent attentiveness to the person of God Himself. We are so anxious to get on with the job that we forget the qualifications for the job:

Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons… (Mark 3:14–15 NKJV)

The order here is not accidental. A man may have great power in his oratory, but if he has not received his message, he has nothing to say. If he has not come from the presence of the Lord, how can he be described as ‘sent’?

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. (1 Cor 1:17 NKJV)

Or as the Revised Standard Version has it:

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. (1 Corinthians 1:17 RSV)

Was there ever a more sobering verse for preachers?

The Levitical priesthood

Later in Israel’s history, God ordained the priesthood whose life and ministry is summed up in one of the shortest psalms:

Behold, bless ye Jehovah, all ye servants of Jehovah,
That by night stand in the house of Jehovah.
Lift up your hands to the sanctuary,
And bless ye Jehovah. (Ps 134:1–2 ASV)

These men are not busy in the outer sanctuary with the rituals of Israel’s faith; they are not occupied with ablutions or bloody sacrifice. They are ‘the servants of Jehovah’ who ‘stand’ in the house of Jehovah. It is a glimpse into a forgotten aspect of priesthood; they ‘stand’ by night. They ‘wait upon’ their God separated from the busy-nesses of the day; they have passed beyond the sight of ordinary men. This service is unseen by Israel; they are the ‘servants of Jehovah’. In the outer sanctuary they will wash, kill, heave, cut, flay, burn, cleanse… but here in this ‘hidden’ service they ‘stand’.

The earthly sanctuary

Israel’s ‘worldly sanctuary’, as the writer to the Hebrews was to call it,  was an amazing structure, designed, not as a canvas church building but, as a mobile palace. The tabernacle was not pretty from the outside; its outward aspect was in the shape of a shoebox and was black. Three coverings separated and insulated the inner sanctuary from the outside world. When the door-hangings fell back into place those inside were oblivious to all that was outside; they were deaf and blind to all worldly activity. The priests stepped into a little embassy, a bit of heaven’s territory on earth. Day and night were the same there, as were war and peace or summer or winter. They were ‘shut in’ with God; the world no longer existed for them.

And they ‘stood’. They had no other option; there was only one seat in the Tabernacle. In this mobile palace only the King had a seat in the Most Holy place of all, and there He ‘sat’ between the golden cherubim. The Holy place had lamps and incense and bread, but no seats; here the servants of the Lord ‘stood’ perpetually. This ‘standing’ position of the priests is so characteristic of their role that the writer to the Hebrews uses the fact to show the absolute uniqueness and finality of Christ’s priesthood:

And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God… (Heb 10:11–12 NKJV)

Poised for action

The picture here with Abraham and with Israel’s priesthood is of someone who ‘waits upon’ God as a trusted servant would wait upon the King. They stand because they are constantly poised to move into action. They function like a professional waiter; their only business is to be available to fulfil the diner’s wishes. They wait in inconspicuous attention, ready at a moment’s notice to fulfil another’s will. There are angels who wait upon God too. His will is converted into immediate action by these wonderful beings. Ezekiel says:

And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: every one had two which covered on this side, and every one had two which covered on that side, their bodies. And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings like the noise of great waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a noise of tumult like the noise of a host: when they stood, they let down their wings. (Ezek 1:23–24 ASV)

As they ‘stand’ in God’s presence they veil themselves with their wings, but when they ‘move’ to execute God’s will they are like lightning! In fact, they ‘run and return’ like a flash of lightning:

And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. (Ezek 1:14 ASV)

For those who have grown tired calculating how many angels can dance on a pinhead here is a new project; how fast can they travel? A return journey like a single flash of lightning makes them the fastest creatures known, travelling at 362,000 miles per second! I like to think of these creatures who wait with let-down wings until they know the will of God and then, before you knew they had gone, they are back waiting for the next job.

Impossible things are possible to the man or woman prepared to ‘wait upon the Lord’.

They that wait upon the Lord

…but they that wait for Jehovah shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary;
they shall walk, and not faint. (Isa 40:31 ASV)

This is a well known verse but most of our versions including the King James Version and the American Standard Version hardly do it justice. This is not ‘renewing’ in the sense of replenishing or refurbishing but ‘renewing’ in the sense of replacing old with new. They that wait upon Jehovah shall exchange their strength… The eagle of the Bible is almost certainly the griffon vulture. In 1973 a griffon vulture was sucked into the intake of a jet flying at 11,270 metres (37,000 feet, or seven miles) over West Africa; this is the highest altitude at which any bird has been identified. Sometimes Christians seem to regard ‘prayer’ as a religious way of worrying, but you don’t get to that height by ‘flapping’; it is only by utter reliance on another power — with the griffon vulture, the thermals; for us, God Himself. So let us  quit ‘flapping’ and start ‘waiting upon the Lord.

In Isaiah’s day Israel might be justified in thinking her time was over, her glory all in the past (40:27). But this is not the truth. The remainder of the chapter and the first verse of the next are a call to faith and dependence upon this God, not a frantic call to action but a strong call to faith. The refrain of these verses is ‘fainting’. But Israel’s God neither faints nor grows weary; his resources are never depleted (40:28). And this limitless resource is available to those who do faint and whose resources are absolutely exhausted (40:29). An older man or woman views the apparent inexhaustible energy of the young with envy and wonder, but their resources too ultimately pass away and they too will faint and fail (40:30). But they that wait upon the Lord exchange their strength.

They, and they alone
shall renew their strength
shall mount up, effortlessly like the eagle
shall run tirelessly
and in the steady requirements of the daily plod, they shall walk and not faint (40:31).

Drawing near to God

The culmination of Isaiah 40 is in Chapter 41. Bustle and business is prohibited. Spiritual energy is not renewed by technique or determination, or by our decisions or promises. The revelation of an eternal truth is followed by an invitation which has a telling sequence:

Keep silence before me, O islands;
and let the peoples renew their strength:
let them come near; then let them speak;
let us come near together to judgment. (Isa 41:1 ASV)

Do we always draw near before we begin to make our requests? Let’s imagine an eastern court or throne room; the king sits in splendour and his servants ‘wait on him’. They stand at the edges of the room instantly available but never imposing their presence upon their king. As they wait upon him, they are equipped to serve him. They cannot serve him at their own bidding but must wait for His. He guides them with his eye upon them. His signal gives them permission and authorizes them to serve him in undreamed of ways. Now, and only now, they can draw near and having drawn near they can speak. Weariness is no disqualification now, nor is previous failure an excuse; the ruins of the past are no impediment, and weakness is no cause for discouragement. And now having drawn near they hear his voice:

Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. (Neh 2:4 ASV)

Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD! (Ps 27:14 NKJV)