Standing With Divinity

When you go back to the Book of Kings, you see this constant encounter between the religiously minded, prophetically minded, God's revelation minded individual who stands over against the leader and the people with the reminder that there is a perspective and a counter perspective, a calling and a counter call that ultimately the Kingdom of God must reign supreme, in your life individually, in our lives as family members in the community and the nation at large.

And so when Elijah goes off the scene, you begin to see how important it is that he has a successor because Elijah had encountered Jezebel and Ahab, and when Ahab died and Elijah is about to leave, the first Book of Kings ends and the second Book of Kings begins. And that second Book of Kings begins with a farewell to Elijah and now comes, all of a sudden, Elisha, and he was going to be dealing with the successor of Ahab. And I want to take for you the motifs that are addressed, to mention at least a couple of things here.

Number one, God is intimately involved in nations. He is intimately involved in individual decision-making. And he cares how the people of God respond to the issues of their time. It is thoroughly pervasive, intentionally penetrating, and with a message and a call to a higher order. So I want to look at five different places in which the message speaks so clearly. First, I want to speak to you on the place of history.

Do you not know... Have you not heard... Has it not been told to you from the beginning... Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth and his people are like grasshoppers. He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground than he blows them away and they wither. And a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff. Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary and his understanding no one can fathom.

He will not grow tired or weary and his understanding no one can fathom. "Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint". Listen to that last verse again. "...Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength". Why does it say that? Because sometimes our strength is going. You're not going to be able to make it if it's not renewed in some way. "They will soar on wings like eagles". Why is it important for us to do that? Because sometimes we can get so bound into a narrower vision, we don't see the total picture and the higher view of what God is doing across the world and what God is doing across history.

"They will run not grow weary". It's easy to get tired when you're running and give it up and say, "I'm not going to continue anymore". "They will walk and not be faint". Your daily directions, step by step: it's easy for you to sometimes say, "Is this all really worth it"? And what I find is that stunning next verse that begins in Isaiah 41. It says in these words, "Be silent before me, you islands. Be silent before me".

So I want to talk to you about what God tells us about history. It is remarkable that we understand it. Of all the definitions of histories that I've read, one of them stands out the most, and it is this: History is nothing more than a compilation of innumerable biographies. It's individual lives writ large, how it makes a change for better or for evil. Martin Luther talked about history and he said, "It's like a drunken man reeling from one wall to the other, knocking itself senseless by every hit". Like a drunken man reeling from one wall to the other, knocking itself senseless with every hit.

When will we ever learn that we can't live profane lifestyles in a nation? When will we ever learn that our leaders need to know how to honor God and not think that they are supermen or superwomen and can do it all in their own strength? I see three implications of understanding the nature of history. The first is this: when the sacred trust of God is abandoned, the web of evil gets more complex.

When the sacred trust of God is abandoned, the web of evil gets more complex. It doesn't get simpler. It only gets more entangling, more puzzling, and more convoluted to find your way out of this mess.

- Ravi Zacharias (The Skeptic's View II)