Feature
Perseverance in Ministry:
A Meditation on Psalm 90
by Ken Garrett
(Continued from Page 4)
When hurricane Katrina leveled the city of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, some of our brothers in ministry were quick to identify the disaster as the work of God, unleashed against a fallen, sinful, Mardi Gras culture of dissipation and sexual immorality. They were roundly rejected and censured—for they had applied salt to a still-bleeding wound rather than a bandage. But I think they were spot on in one respect—the hurricane did come from God. If we believe in a God of complete mastery over every part of His creation, including wind speeds and water-surface temperatures, then we must admit His ability to cause a Category 5 hurricane. The problem behind the reasoning of the dark prophets who spoke of God’s judgment after the hurricane was in their claim to understand the purpose of God, the reason He allowed, even planned (!) a storm of such cataclysmic proportions. We all saw the levees break, the waters flood the streets and turn into a toxic stew that simmered for days afterward. But none of us have been told by God His precise reason for sending the hurricane.
Moses had seen great acts of historic significance in his life. He’d seen the economy of the greatest nation on earth take one bizarre hit after another, and finally collapse. He’d seen the agricultural power of the Nile River valley, one of the most fertile places on earth, become diseased and barren. He’d seen darkness “so thick it (could) be felt” cover the Egyptians while their Hebrew slaves walked in the sunshine. He’d seen the first-born sons of his own people saved from an angel of death by the blood of a Passover lamb, while the Egyptians watched their own firstborn boys taken, in one family after another, throughout a night of death and wailing. He’d seen a sea split down the middle, forming two walls of water through which he led thousands upon thousands of Hebrew slaves to freedom. He’d stood on the sand the next morning and saw the bodies of Egyptian charioteers washed ashore after those watery walls were suddenly collapsed around them. Those were all historical events. They really happened, and could be observed, reported, and remembered by any people. But Moses, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians alike all were shown the hand behind those events. They were clearly told not only Who was turning water into blood, bringing plagues of locusts, frogs, and lice, but why those things were happening—the Lord God was freeing His people, enacting His plan to fulfill a promise made over 400 years earlier to bring His people out of bondage.
Moses, however, knew his people well. He knew that, in time, with neglect of the word of God would come a blurring of the work of God in history. So, he asks that God’s work would be made visible, would appear, to His servants. He asks that the Lord’s work would be made evident not only to the leaders and citizens of the nation, but also to the leaders and citizens of the generations to follow: And Your majesty to appear to their children. The word majesty is a derivative of the word ornament, an observable feature of something that adds grace or beauty to its appearance. Apparently, it was not enough for Moses to simply know that his people had the word of God in their hands to be preserved throughout their generations; studied, copied, and obeyed. Moses prayed that the succeeding generations of Israelites would see the dazzling, wonderful, awe-inspiring beauty of the Lord; that their hearts would be as captivated by the sheer beauty of the Lord Himself as his had been on the first day he heard the Lord speaking to him from a burning bush . . . a heart that was still captivated on the day he stood before the Lord on Mt. Nebo.
We are just like Moses in this regard. My children all have professed faith in Jesus Christ, bowing the knee, going forward, being baptized, learning doctrine, etc. All the ing’s that we Christians observe have pretty much been done by my kids. But I long to see more in them - more than the wondrous assurance that they are saved and will spend eternity with the Lord - more than a life lived along the lines of the basic moral constraints of evangelical Christianity - more than having walked the Romans Road at a point in their youth. I want them to love, really love the Lord. I want them to gaze on His majesty and glory and holiness with nary a thought of themselves, only an enraptured abandonment to His beauty. I don’t want them to merely know His attributes; I want them to marvel at them! Moses knew that the generations of Isrealites to follow him would not find their blessing and hope in mere knowledge about their Lord, but only in intimate knowledge of Him. And so Moses prays that they would gain just that: a revelation of the majesty of the Lord that cannot be discovered by human ingenuity, but can only be revealed by divine initiative.
WE NEED GOD'S CONFIRMATION
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; and confirm for us the work of our hands; yes, confirm the work of our hands.
The wilderness pastor concludes his prayer with two final requests. Firstly, he asks for the Lord’s favor. The word suggests loveliness, grace, and beauty. I’m struck that Moses does not ask that God’s people themselves would become more spiritually beautiful or lovely. Instead, he asks that they would gain a greater measure of the Lord’s beauty, of His favor. When my wife and I were courting we would drive to the majestic, wild Oregon coast—just for a few hours of walking on the beach, sitting on a driftwood log, watching the sun set. When I left her to enter the army, it was the way she looked in that warm, orange glow of a fall sunset that I remembered from thousands of miles away. In that favorable light, I saw her in a way no one else ever could – in a way no one had ever been privileged to see. In a similar fashion, Moses prayed for his people to be seen in the light of God’s favor, with the unmistakable humility and graciousness that could only have come from the very face of God Himself. He wanted God’s favor to rest on, to bathe, to be upon them. It’s what we should want for our people as well.
Secondly, Moses asks that the work of the people of God be confirmed. I have been taught that when something is repeated in the Hebrew language, it’s important! “Confirm the work of our hands. Yes, confirm the work of our hands!” Moses asks the Lord God to bring about certainty, lastingness, and significance to the efforts of His servants. These are things for which we work very hard in ministry; perhaps, too hard. According to Moses, these must come from God, and not ourselves. The Lord judges our work, and before Him alone each man stands or falls. The final confirmation of our success, our effectiveness, comes not from our own impressions, but from the Lord Himself. We are called to work hard at a task, to fulfill a commission from the Lord God, leading His chosen people through the dangerous, faith-choking, temptation-ridden wilderness of this world toward another place that has been promised. But it is He who actually gets them into that place. It is He who actually finishes what He began when He first saved them from a life of slavery and destruction. And so, like Moses, we are dependant on Him for a true, authoritative assessment of our labor in ministry. We often consider the work of our hands during our lifetimes. In the end, however, it is only the Lord God who truly confirms it.
I understand that many of the grand cathedrals of Europe, often taking decades and longer to complete, were begun by workmen who followed a set of plans they’d received from the building’s architect. Sometimes, after many years spent constructing the cathedral, a workman would die before the building was completed. But the plans would be meticulously followed by other workmen who replaced those who died, and thus the building project continued to its completion. We too have the plans of a Master Architect, and we faithfully carry out our part on the project. But most likely we will die before the building is completed—this building constructed of living stones (cf. 1 Pet. 2:4-5). Moreover, though our work can be observed by whoever cares to look its final evaluation and confirmation are something even the greatest pastor must wait to receive from God Himself. He watches the redemption project develop through the ages - from its beginning in a Garden where two people failed, through a day where His Incarnate Son was killed on a hill, to the end when that Son hands back to His Father a creation once marred but now perfectly restored. Then, our work will be truly confirmed, perhaps by the humbling commendation, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
CONCLUSION
A couple of months of ago I travelled to Jordan with a group of friends. I had the opportunity of standing atop Mt. Nebo, the highest portion of the mountain range opposite Jericho where Moses stood and surveyed the land of Canaan before he died and was buried in a secret place on that mountain. I gave a short message, looking into the faces of my friends, including my wife and my parents. I told them that we were on a spiritual journey, following in the footsteps of Moses himself:
Not because we drove from Petra to Nebo, loosely following the route that Israel would have trekked through ancient Moab, but because we’ve been saved from the slavery of sin and guilt, are in a wilderness, and expect to enter a land promised to us—heaven itself.
After peering through the clouds that hovered over the mountain range that day I asked the group to look down at the ground beneath their feet.
As much as Moses stood here and saw the land of Canaan stretching out before him, from ‘Beersheba to Dan,’ he also saw what you see right now, the earth he lived on, and would die on. That land, on the other side of the Jordan, was still promised to him, but this land is where he would die. Only a person on a genuine and, therefore, divine, spiritual journey is able to reconcile those two truths.
Our Jordanian guide had paid rapt attention and was
visibly moved. He later told me this was the first time he had ever
heard a touring pastor speak of the relationship of the two lands—Moab
beneath Moses’ feet, the Promised Land before his eyes. Most of
the time, he told me, tourists stand at that spot on tip toe, leaning
forward, cameras on landscape settings, fully zoomed to capture
pictures of the city of Jericho, the hills of Judea, and the northernmost
tip of the Dead Sea. They are not concerned about the land beneath their
feet, but wholly fixed on the land beyond. Moses saw that land. But
I think he must have looked down at some point, too, and seen that reddish,
gravelly, land of Moab beneath his feet. It was land, but not
the land to which he had been traveling for the past four decades. He
could see the Promised Land. His heart was there. He’d spent the
past 38 years assuming he’d die there. But the Lord who saved
a baby from the Nile, a murderer from the law, and a nation from slavery
would not save his leader from a death outside the land of promise.
Moses’ feet would touch that land on another day, in another time.
But on that day, he could only see where he would one day live. He died
there, in Moab, outside the land, in the wilderness—along with
his stubborn-hearted, troublesome, rebellious, law-breaking, idol worshipping,
Moabite-loving people.
We all stand on this lump of clay called earth, and one day we will
return to the dust from which we came—the earth will receive our
bodies. Our part in God’s great work will be suspended for a season,
and then resumed when He awakens us. There will be no immediately discernable
difference between those who were blessed with simple longevity and
those who chose to persevere in ministry. But upon a closer look you’ll
be able to tell those who persevered: Their hands and feet will bear
all the grime and scars of a long wilderness journey, and their eyes
will burn with a glow that comes from a lifetime of gazing intently
into a distant, but Promised Land, where a familiar Friend awaits.
. . . he persevered because he saw Him who is
invisible.
Ken
Garrett earned his Master of Divinity degree at Western Seminary in
2003. After a twenty-three year career as a paramedic, he now pastors
Grace Bible Church in downtown Portland, Oregon. Ken has served on short-term
medical mission teams in Uzbekistan, Iraq, and Vietnam. He also serves
on The Spurgeon Fellowship Advisory Team and is a frequent guest lecturer
in the Pastoral Ministry department at Western. Ken and his wife, Sharon,
have three daughters and reside in Portland.
