Wow, have you ever taken a NY minute to pause and think of the accomplishments of modern man? We travel at 30,000 feet across continents at 600 mph and think nothing of it. We beam signals off of satellites in SPACE to communicate and how about the technology directing your daily commute through your computer on wheels (aka your car). When you stop and think about it, it’s quite mind-boggling.
It’s pretty easy to see how all of this advancement can lead us to widespread humanism where we believe mankind is the final “it,” it all begins and ends with our knowledge. We rely on science to fix everything, psychology has all the answers, and our beginnings and history are considered forged, and interpreted, by man.
The reality is that most first-world people in the 21st century, don’t think they need God. There’s an old saying that there are “no atheists in foxholes.” How true is that, we can do it all and solve it all…until we can’t. Until we get that bad news from the doctor, until our kids are in trouble, until we are underneath a giant rock in life, God just isn’t a thought. But, then. Then, we reach out to God and realize our mortality. All of this advancement, all of this comfort, means nothing if we don’t have the very breath that only God can give. Suddenly, we don’t have answers and we search desperately for God.
Ezra, in Ezra Chapter 8, saw this coming when he was to return home to Jerusalem after the exile. It was time for him, the High Priest, to return with his caravan. The king offered Ezra a guard group for the dangerous journey ahead. Surely, it would make sense to take the King up on this generous offer, for who wouldn’t want protection? But, Ezra saw deeper into the matter and considered what this would do for the people’s faith and for his testimony to the King. See, Ezra felt that accepting a guard group for their journey would hurt his witness for God. All the while Ezra was declaring to the king that God would protect them. To accept man’s help seemed hypocritical and faithless. Listen to the always-profound words of the one of the greatest preachers ever, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Spurgeon wrote “He could not bring his mind to lean on an arm of flesh in a matter so evidently of the Lord, and therefore the caravan set out with no visible protection, guarded by him who is the sword and shield of his people. It is to be feared that few believers feel this holy jealousy for God; even those who in a measure walk by faith, occasionally mar the lustre of their life by craving aid from man. It is a most blessed thing to have no props and no buttresses, but to stand upright on the Rock of Ages, upheld by the Lord alone.”
Far too often we, as modern-day Christians, rely on the arms of man to lift us up, thus denying God the opportunity to both grow our faith and provide for us.
I leave you with Spurgeon’s words again, “Few run too far in neglecting the creature’s arm; but very many sin greatly in making too much of it. Learn, dear reader, to glorify the Lord by leaving means untried, if by using them thou wouldst dishonour the name of the Lord.”
- H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).
