6.7 - God’s Face, The Sovereign Servant
There was once a prophet in Israel named Elijah, who lived during the evil reign of king Ahab. As with most Jewish prophets, Elijah often spoke unwelcome words to Israel’s kings and people. In one dramatic encounter (1 Kings 18:20 - 19:18), Elijah arranged a meeting between his God and the idols of Israel’s false prophets. Elijah and the idols’ prophets prepared a slaughtered bull upon their respective altars and each prayed to their own God to bring fire upon the bulls and receive them as sacrifice. For all their pleading and dancing and cutting of their own bodies to draw blood for their gods, no one answered the idols’ prophets. Nothing happened to their offering. But when Elijah called out to his God, his bull was consumed with fire from heaven, lapping up even the water he had poured on and around the altar. When the people saw this miracle, they bowed their faces to the ground and together declared, “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God” (18:39). Elijah directed them to kill all the false prophets who led them away from God. When king Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, heard that all her prophets were killed, she sent this word to Elijah: “So may the gods do to me and even more, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow. . .” (19:2).
What more could have been done by God’s prophet than to speak God’s words to His people and do His will? This is just what Elijah did, but his obedience to God was not enough to protect him from an evil queen’s malevolent threats. He fled far from the queen and all the rest so that he could be alone with his God and ask of Him to die. He was bereft of all hope that God would be known by His people, and in what else is a prophet’s hope and purpose if not to speak God’s words for His people to hear and know Him? So God took His child on a long journey of deep sleep and sorrow, of angelic feedings with water and bread, of a forty day long walk through the desert without food or drink until he reached the mountain of God, Mount Horeb, where God and Moses communed so many centuries ago.
“What are you doing here, Elijah?” (19:9), God asked when he finally arrived at Mount Horeb. The God who calls His people to listen to Him always listens, even though He knows their answers and their ignorance of what He is doing. Like Moses, Elijah poured out his heart to God: “. . . the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant. . . I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away” (19:10). God answered His child’s despair so he could hear Him and understand. First, a mighty rushing wind tore through the mountain and rocks before Elijah’s eyes, but God was not in the wind. Then an earthquake shook the very ground beneath him, but God was not in the shaking. A fire ensued, but God was not found in the fire.
After such great demonstrations of God's power, a voice came that sounded crushed. It was a voice described by the Hebrew word daq, which means thin, small, fine, and comes from the word daqaq, meaning crushed, pulverized. When Elijah heard that voice - the voice of God calling him - he wrapped his face in his mantle before coming out to meet the face of God. Again God asked, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” and again he answered with the same words he answered God the first time. But something had changed. Elijah heard a precious revelation of God as the One who comes not only in might but also pulverized and crushed. God delivered Israel from Egypt by His mighty hand and outstretched arm. How He delivers her from her heart’s idolatry is as One who is pulverized and crushed, as the Messiah would be daka, crushed (Isaiah 53:5). He would come as an infant born out of wedlock and die on a cross. This crushed voice promised Elijah, “I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to baal and every mouth that has not kissed him” (vs.18). Elijah was given hope because God kept a remnant of Israel for Himself. They will turn back to God, because He will turn them (Lamentations 5:21).
The closer we behold God, the more amazed we are by His ways that confound anything our minds can imagine. God’s will is to become dust for us so that we who are dust might share His divine nature. To the great wonder of anyone seeking this God, we discover that His will is
not any kind of iron-fisted force that crushes all opposition to have its way and gloat in its brute power. Instead, we see the will of God that pursues us by being crushed as a sacrifice because that is the nature of His love. What we see beyond our blinding judgments of Him is the gracious way God calls us to come to Him through His chosen Son, that we may also be chosen in Him. It is not by our deserving or our efforts that God chooses us. Not at all. It is by His gracious Son who emptied Himself to be our way to Him.
God has revealed Himself as sovereign not only in might but also in the weakness of His Son’s crushing. The will of God is controlled by His love (2 Corinthians 5:14) that is all vulnerable to us. He wants our response to Him. In some ways, God needs our response. In one of Jesus‘ parables of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 22:1-14), a King sends out his servants to personally invite many to His son’s royal wedding. Those who were invited refuse to come and some among them even violently attack and kill the messengers. But the King perseveres and keeps inviting until the wedding is fully attended for the joyous celebration. Jesus concludes this parable by explaining that many are called but few are chosen. This God, from whom and through whom and to whom all exists, wants and needs us to respond to Him. God invites all to come. Those of us who respond to Him discover that we have answered yes to God’s yes, reflecting His gracious will. God wills to come in weakness and vulnerability, in the naked sacrifice of Himself. There is nothing demanding or usurping in God’s will. Instead, we find it is His good pleasure to bestow all good things to us with His good, not as an abstract concept but as One whose face possesses eyes that see and ears that hear and a mouth that speaks life to the one who turns to Him.
There was no judgment in God or His creation until Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Since that time, we have lived by a kind of knowing that infects everything it touches with judgment. It is a knowing far removed from the life and presence of God. But God’s knowing is seen in the face of His Son, in Jesus who endured all our judgments at the cross and now lives beyond our judgments with His God. The knowledge of God in His Son explains that all is made by Him, all is given by Him, and all who choose Him are freed to walk in His way of holiness and love. It is a way that is most intimate, where true names are heard and true faces are seen and wills are free to unite as one.
The will of God is often portrayed as a most burdensome grinding against our own will. This indeed is how we experience His will when we confuse the nature of our will with His and assume we can seek Him and live by any way we choose. But when we seek God in His way that seeks us, we discover our burden changes into the blessing of God. God’s will for us is revealed in the face of Jesus. The truth of God’s sovereignty, goodness, faithfulness and love for us runs deep and personal, in the innermost places of our being. The more we know Him in us, the more our will is free to rise up and say yes to His will favoring us to be His own. We are not bound by God’s will but by our own will that insists we compete and be as God. When we accept that God alone is God and we are not, we are freed to know who He is and we are not, and who we are and He is not. When we “. . .cease striving and know. . .” (Psalm 46:10) that He is God, we can rest in Him, free to live in His free will because He is faithful to fulfill it.