The Way of the Lord

Introduction

During the week I received an email from some friends who are touring Italy, “We have seen lots of beautiful and interesting places, met many hospitable people, eaten heaps, too much, good food and lost the way so many times, that we think God is trying to tell us something, and we are in the process of figuring out what!”.  The first thing that came to mind as I read this is that their experience images the condition of most of the Australian Church; somewhere along the line we have lost the way and don’t know how to get back on track. Jesus was very emphatic about their being one direction, ““Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”” (Matthew 7:13-14 ESV). Whilst this is a statement about entering the kingdom of God, it is also says something about the essential character of Christianity as an enduring way of life.

It is quite common for people to come to me for help who some time after a very real conversion experience reach a point where they feel “stuck”; I can clearly remember the last time this happened to me[1]. When believers are “stuck” they lack a vital sense of growth in Christ-likeness and remember as a past reality the sweetness of their first love experience with the Lord (cf. Rev 2:4). Intimacy with Jesus has dried up. Whatever the situation there is always a way forward and all I try to do is to help people become aware of where God is already working in their lives. Sometimes however it is the most dedicated believers who need to be de-programmed.

Lots of people have been taught that the way out of spiritual dryness is to read the Bible more, prayer more fervently and witness more boldly. I am fully committed to scripture, prayer and testimony, but this sort of superficial advice keeps the spiritually uncertain wandering around in the wilderness of despair and confusion. There is something even more worrying than frustrated believers who are conscious that they are going around in circles. It is the self-confidence of those who think that the intensity of their spiritual experiences, their financial prosperity, good health or success in witnessing are sure signs that they on the right way. Both of these groups have committed a very serious error, the grave mistake of making things other than Jesus the Way. Jesus himself is the Way, his is a way of life which frees us from confusion and stagnation, a way which, whilst simple, is never easy. It is the struggle to embrace the pain of following God that is the root cause of spiritual immaturity, a problem that plagues the story of God’s people from the beginning to the end of the Bible.

Losing the Way

Humanity first lost its way in Eden. God spoke directly to Adam and Eve, ““of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” (Genesis 2:17 ESV). The first temptation was an opportunity to delight in the testimony of God even when it had come in the form of a warning (Ps 119:14). On the surface Satan’s word appeared far more palatable than God’s as it offered pure painlessness, ““You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” (Genesis 3:4-5 ESV). A proverb summarises what happened in Eden “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Prov 14:12 ESV cf. 16:25).

When “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” (Gen 3:6 ESV). Everything about the forbidden fruit seemed pleasurable, and to the common person pleasure is a sure sign of the rightness of something.  I remember (decades ago) when I used to do street witnessing and young people would say something like, “Sex with my girl friend feels so good it can’t possibly be wrong.”  “If it feels good, do it.” has become a foundational value of our culture.

The primary pleasure that Eve felt opening up to here in Eden was not however a physical one. What felt good at the deepest level of Eve’s psyche was the appeal to enjoy a personal inner wisdom on the same level as God’s[2]. Eve had become “wise in her own eyes” and the feeling was one of sheer elation, this prideful condition made her and Adam an enemy of God (cf. Prov 3:7; 12:15; 26:5, 12; Isa 5:21; James 4:4). Since God who alone is wise and immortal (Rom 16:27; 1 Tim 1:17; 6:16) always opposes the proud (James 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5) humanity was handed over to foolishness and death (Rom 1:21; 6:23). Inwardly Adam and eve were immediately ravaged by shame and fear (Gen 3:7-8), but further sufferings were to come.

The LORD drove the man out of Eden and barred the way to the tree of life (Gen 3:24). The trauma of being cast out of Eden must have been almost unimaginable, and it is something from which humanity has never recovered. When Paradise was lost, with its perfect weather total peace, complete health and the friendliness of all nature, humanity was traumatised beyond measure[3]. Outside of Eden lay a sheer struggle for survival[4] with no clear way forward. I was reflecting on a few of my experiences of being lost in some strange place with no obvious way out e.g. lost in Prague as night was falling and it started to pour with rain, wandering around the streets of Cairo well before dawn with no idea where I was, and finally, the one that was experienced as the most serious, going astray in the Australian desert in summer, until I came to a road.

Ever since the Fall humanity has sought a way back to the uninterrupted pleasures and deathlessness of Eden (Ecc 7:29). In rejecting the wisdom of God people must construct a whole new world of life and meaning in place of the reality God has made. The world’s religions and philosophies are an attempt to escape God’s way that alone leads to eternal life. This way is exclusively laid out in the story line of the Bible.

Israel Fails on the Way[5]

The history of salvation takes a dramatic and unexpected turn when God calls Abram and speaks promises of land and descendants to him and his offspring. This covenant marks the way forward through which the power of God’s presence will be restored. (Fast forward to the exodus.)

Israel is God’s people, and the Promised Land is the new Eden. This was “a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands.” (Ezek 20:6 cf. Gen 13:10; Isa 51:3 etc.) a land that was to be ruled according to the good laws of God[6]. In the wisdom of God however Israel must endure an arduous journey from her captivity in Egypt to the land of Canaan. This challenging way represents a paradigm for God’s dealings with his people down to the present day.

Israel had showed her true colours from the beginning of the exodus. Even while Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments they made a golden calf, and the LORD said “They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them; they have made themselves a metal image.’” (Deut 9:12). Only Moses’ urgent intercession held back God’s wrath from consuming the stiff-necked nation “on the way” (Exodus 33:3 ESV). The crisis of the Golden Calf moved Moses to pray for something more from the LORD than the wonders he had seen on this way, ““please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favour in your sight. (Exodus 33:13 ESV). The radical difference between Moses and Israel is expounded by the psalmist, “He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.” (Psalm 103:7 ESV)

Moses understood the ways of God to be deep, profound and tender. Here are his words to the people on the edge of the Promised Land, ““you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’” (Deut 1:31 ESV)[7]. These were the same people who grumbled about thirst, who hated the manna from heaven and feeling lost in a trackless waste desired to turn back to Egypt, as such God’s judgement fell on them time and again (Ex 15:24; 16:2; 17:3; Num 14:1-38; 16:41-50 etc.; Job 12:24; Ps 107:40). In the wisdom of God the way to the land of promise is always through the wilderness of discontent. Only the suffering that the wilderness brings can expose the “thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12) so we know who we truly are before God.

The LORD of the covenant who promises so much always puts his people through the severest tests[8]. Here is how God explains his purpose. “And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger …that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” (Deut 8:2-3 ESV). The wilderness[9]is the place where the fatherly discipline of God can best be revealed to the human heart[10].

Israel never understood this inner journey[11]. Even when Canaan was conquered the idolatries of the people seemed to keep them going around in circles for century after century. The typical history of the chosen people is summed up in Jeremiah; “But my people have forgotten me; they make offerings to false gods; they made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient roads, and to walk into side roads, not the highway,” (Jeremiah 18:15 ESV cf. Deuteronomy 11:26-28)[12]. Despite such tragedies the Old Testament always contains a positive prophetic dimension. The psalmists speaks of those “in whose heart are the highways to Zion”, the path of such persons knowingly must pass through “the valley of weeping” (Ps 84:5-6). God promises to lead his people who cry to him on a straight way to the city of his appointment (Ps 107:7). Israel as a nation never learned such deep things of God, and often the Church has failed too, from such lostness only Jesus can deliver us.

Jesus is the Way

The advent of Christ comes in just the way we would expect from our Old Testament readings; “the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” (Luke 3:2-4 ESV). At once Jesus comes to John and is baptised in the Jordan (Luke 3:21-22); then he is immediately driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for 40 days (Matt 4:1; Mark 1:12; Luke 4:1-2). On the trip I made to the Middle East several years ago we crossed by land across the river Jordan into Israel, the wilderness of Judea is a place that has nothing in common with the delights of Eden but everything in common with the route of the exodus.

God took Jesus into the wilderness to go back over the journey of the people of Israel who failed their test of sonship in the desert (cf. Ex 4:22-23). Christ is totally conscious that the environment of extreme hunger, thirst and intense spiritual attack that he is enduring is the way of the wisdom of his Father. Confronted by the devil Christ speaks from the heart of a true Son who knows the way of humility in the presence of God, ““It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”(Matthew 4:4 citing Deut 8:3). Fully obedient to the Father’s purpose Jesus returns to civilisation “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14) and commences a ministry of extraordinary insight and power that images the restoration to wholeness of life which God had always promised (Matt 13:54). Jesus knew that the way of God always embraces struggle.

What preacher today would proclaim words like these at the start of their public ministry, ““Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”” (Matthew 7:13-14 ESV) These words of Jesus had about them a ring of total authenticity and complete authority (Mark 1:22ff.), for he stood before them as someone who had come out of the wilderness and overcome in the difficult way where Adam and Israel had fallen. Jesus way to supreme authority was however not yet complete (Matt 28:18).

The whole central section of Luke’s Gospel (9:51-19:10) has Jesus on a journey; it is on this route that it becomes increasingly clear that the way to Jerusalem is the way to the cross. “some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” And he said to them…I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’” (Luke 13:31-33 ESV). As yet however not even Jesus closest disciples understood the depths of what it meant for Jesus himself to be the Way of God.

Jesus said, “if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:1-6 ESV). That the person of Jesus himself  is the Way to God is not an easy point to grasp, but a story may help. A white explorer was lost in the trackless jungle and a native obliged to show him the way out. After a considerable period of struggle through dense forest with no visible sign of progress the white man’s doubts and anxieties burst forth, “Is this really the way?”,  “There is no way” said the guide, “I am the way.” The Way to the Father is internalised in Jesus own life experience and crucially the way of the Lord must pass through the crisis of the cross.

As a human being the deepest concerns of Jesus own heart could only be exposed through suffering. Only in the Garden of Gethsemane, “as his soul is sorrowful even to death” does Jesus uniquely address God as, ““Abba Father”” (Mark 14:34, 36). The intense anguish of Gethsemane reveals unmistakably that Christ’s innermost being has only one intimate focus, the Father. The greatest concentration of this reality comes at the cross itself.

When Jesus cried out, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34 ESV) all who heard him were sure that the so-called Messiah and Son of God had totally lost his way (Matt 27:40). For those who loved him it seemed that a life full of promise love and mercy had ended in total despair. The cross looks like a complete dead end. The mystery of God however is that Jesus loss of all consciousness of himself as the Way to the Father is at the heart of his being the Way to the Father for us as sinners. Unless Jesus Way embraces our way of blindness, deafness and the lostness of the outer darkness he could not lead us across the unbridgeable chasm between hell and heaven (Isa 42:19; Matt 8:12; 27:45; Luke 16:26). Jesus’ cry of dereliction is the sign that he has fully taken on our condition and its measureless pain is the final revelation that the sole concern of his heart was the saving presence of God; this alone makes him to be the Way to the Father.

The story of the way of Jesus does not end in the darkness of death. Because Jesus was solely concerned with the Father he was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father into the heights of eternal Sonship (Rom 1:4; 6:4). In Jesus paradise has been regained for lost humanity. The way between God and man has been restored by the healing of the broken body and spilled blood of the Son of God. As Hebrews puts it, “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,” (Hebrews 10:19-20 ESV)[13]. This perspective opens up new ways of seeing Christian discipleship.

The People of the Way

Readers of the book of Acts are sometimes surprised that the first believers were more commonly said to be followers of “the Way” rather than “Christians” (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 24:14, 22)[14]. The early believers understood themselves to be a prophetic fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy that “the Way of Holiness” “shall belong to those who walk on that way” (Isa 35:8). Being on the way is something that characterises our whole Christian journey. Tragically, much of contemporary “religious” Christianity has little understanding of the depths of this Way of discipleship. The simple but difficult truth is that there is no way to Christ e.g. Bible reading, prayer, witness, tithing; for Christ Himself is the Way.

The one outstanding thing that brings us to Christ himself is that which marked both the foundation and the culmination of his own earthly ministry, suffering. This should not surprise us, Peter remarks, ““Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12-13 ESV)

An old illustration expounds these truths, “If in an unknown country, I am informed that I must pass through a valley where the sun is hidden, or over a stony bit of road to reach my promised destination, when I come to each moment of darkness or jolt on the way it tells me that I am on the right road. So when a child of God passes through affliction he is not surprised but knows he is headed for home.” (F.B.Myer modified). Our times of shadow, struggle and perplexity (2 Cor 4:7-12) are not signs of our lostness, but when yielded to the Lord, signs of being on the way of the cross which is the way to glory (Luke 24:26). No matter what is happening in our lives, if we centre on Jesus, light and deliverance will come. Lostness, confusion or “stuckness” do not have to be normal states of affairs. In Christ we can have God’s perspective on the struggles of our lives for we are truly “seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6) [15]. Such an exalted view however comes only as we embrace the way of lowliness (James 4:10).

Conclusion

 Jesus declared that “the way is hard that leads to life”, so if you are a follower of Jesus there must be enduring struggles. This is standard, but it is our response to suffering which reveals to us whether the Way to the Father, Jesus himself, has been internalised in the very centre of our hearts. Adam and Eve were discontented with God’s provision of Eden, and those Israelites who complained in the desert failed to enter the Promised Land. The author to the Hebrews warned the believers of his day, “Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness…. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Heb 3:7-8, 12-13).

There is a renewed call to discipleship in the Church today, one marked by the quality of Christ’s own life (Matt 28:18-20; John 15:10). This means embracing the urgency of the call to walk with Jesus on his path to death and glory. Hear his command, “Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the way.” (Luke 10:3-4 ESV cf. 2 Ki 4:29). When his way becomes our way every ordinary human consideration: finances, friendship, comfort, acceptance, become secondary . Such a way is most definitely offensive to ordinary human sensibilities; but on such a journey I have never known anyone to become “stuck”, at least not for very long.