DAILY DEVOTIONAL – January 7, 2021
“Wait and See”
Prayer: Everlasting Father, because we know You, we know it will be well. Because we have faith in Your Son, Jesus, which is itself a gift from You, we can rest with the assurance that all will be well with our soul. Thank You, Father, for calling us out of darkness and into Your marvelous light. Amen.
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Devotion – “Wait and See”
There is something powerful about a cardboard tube. You know, the kind that your paper towel or wrapping paper is rolled around. My kids love them. My daughter uses them as a magic princess wand and my son uses them as drum sticks. I remember my brother and I used to play with those just as much as we played with any other gift we unwrapped on Christmas morning. The wrapping paper tubes were always transformed into either a sword or a light saber the moment we got our hands on them. The paper towel tubes became a periscope, and if you had to smaller cardboard tubes, like the ones in your toilet paper roll, you could tape those together and have yourself a fine pair of binoculars. Of course, you better not be using your periscope while your brother still thinks his cardboard tube is a light saber!
Trying to make sense of this sinful and broken world while at the same time being in this sinful world is like trying to see the entire horizon looking through a cardboard tube. Sin has darkened our hearts and minds. As much as we want to understand everything, the truth is we just can’t. In our brokenness we are no more able to understand everything than we are able to see everything around us while looking through a straw. As Paul said in verse 14, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
When we are in pain or in times of hardship and suffering, this is when our inability to understand is perhaps most vividly clear and we often wonder why God doesn’t give us at least an explanation as to why things have to be the way that they are. The truth is friends, even if God were to tell us, we couldn’t comprehend it. We only have a cardboard tube through which to see and understand everything. God is the Creator of all things and exists outside of the time and space He created. No explanation from God would give us the peace and assurance we are looking for, that can only be received through a faith in God that trusts in Him, in His love, in His righteousness and holiness, in His perfect time, and in His perfect ways. Philippians 4 says, “The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
I recently read an illustration written by James Hewitt that I thought captures well the essence of the faith and trust in God that He promises will give us a peace that surpasses understanding.
“The child, before birth, must certainly feel secure and safe. The environment, however limited, is warm and comfortable. The unborn infant knows what to count on in its existence. Birth must seem like death to the child, being thrust in such a traumatic way out of the comfortable and known. We would say to the child, if it were possible, that it is all apart of the plan. We would assure the child that there was even more love, and even grander existence awaiting him/her than could be imagined. We would say, ‘You can’t believe the world that waits!’ But we cannot give those encouraging words. The child must pass through before finding out.”
“Death is like that,” Hewitt says. “We have to leave all that we have known. There has been security in our existence, in spite of its limitations. We know what we can count on. Death takes us from the comfort and safety, ending the only life we can imagine. For the person of God, however, there is waiting an even greater existence. There is more love and the possibility of service and life than is beyond our imagination. It is all part of the plan. God would say to us, “You can’t believe the world that awaits!”
In 2 Corinthians 12, the Apostle Paul talks about “a man” who God allowed to peer into heaven. Paul says, “I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.” As you found out a few verses later, Paul is actually talking about himself in the third person. Why? Because though Paul was allowed a brief experience of heaven, Paul was still living this life as we are, he was still a sinner and like us would still have to die in order to live; to pass through death in order to be born to eternal life. What I find fascinating is what Paul says about what he experienced in heaven. Paul says in verse 4, “ and he [I] heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” Essentially Paul is saying that though he saw and heard heaven, because he has yet to die and be brought fully into life, he has no way, no words, no capacity to describe what he saw and heard. To utter anything describing what he experienced in heaven with sinful human lips would be, well, a sin. That is how beautifully beyond our wildest dreams and imagination heaven will be as we live in the eternal light of the presence of the glory of God. As the same Apostle Paul also writes in our text for today, quoting the prophet Isaiah:
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”
The Good News of the Gospel my friends is that, “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.” When and where did God do this for us? In our baptism, where God marked us as His own and put His Spirit within us. How do we know this for sure? Because we believe in God, we believe in Jesus, and we believe that the death and resurrection of Christ has turned the grave into a passing from death to life. As Paul continues to say in verse 10, “For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.”
We have something far more valuable and far more reassuring than an explanation or a fuller understanding of this dead and dying world that will perish. We have a relationship with the One, Everlasting, and Eternal God of all life and light who has revealed Himself to us in His Word, called us by name, and who gives us the peace that surpasses understanding through the relationship He has made possible with us through the blood of His Son given in our place. As Paul also says in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Keep your periscope focused on Him, my friends. Keep your eyes fixed in the Word He has given, for as it says in Psalm 119:130, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” Keep it simple, keep the faith, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
