You’ve got to love the title of this book. And David has shown me many truths and insights I definitely overlooked. This book has challenged me unlike most others. I loved it. I heartily recommend it. It is an easy read, and Rabbi Fohrman’s breezy style makes it fun.

Whether Rabbi Fohrman is correct in his insights about the Exodus or not, my main takeaway from this book is his approach to Torah. I feel challenged to stop skim-reading the Scriptures and discover what I’ve passed over.

First, some background.

Rabbi Fohrman is an Orthodox Jew and the founder of Aleph-Beta (https://www.alephbeta.org/), whose web page declares their purpose:

Fall in love with Torah – for the first time, or all over again – with Aleph Beta’s over 1,000 beautifully produced videos, podcasts, and printable guides.

I connected with Rabbi Fohrman through the Bema podcast (https://www.bemadiscipleship.com/) – which I also highly recommend. My grandson Alex recommended this podcast to his brother and our daughter, who, in turn, recommended it to me. Thanks, Alex. Fohrman and Bema will supercharge your love for the Bible. They have mine.

Acknowledgements

It is not very often that I quote from the acknowledgements. But that is the kind of book this is. There is much to learn – everywhere.

Rabbi Fohrman partnered with a computer scientist who:

has specialized in data mining — finding and analyzing hidden, often nested, patterns in seemingly random bursts of data.

Those who know me know that I would be at home here. Fohrman goes on:

Those patterns exist in our sacred texts, too, and we each shared a sense of elation at finding them and setting about the task of discerning what they might mean.

Those words summarize what this book is all about: finding hidden and often nested patterns in the Exodus story and then discerning what they might mean. I have loved what they found, but often disagree on what they mean. That’s okay. The key is finding these gems. And the secret is in not passing over the details.

In the acknowledgement, he highlights two of the questions I have passed over, which he will deal with in the book:

1. 1. Why does the end of the book of Exodus place so much emphasis on the child-care arrangements for Jacob’s funeral? Missed that!
   2. Why does the Torah detail the connection between the relationship of Joseph and Jacob and the Exodus? Missed that one too! Stay tuned!

Preface

What Kind of Book is This?

Quoting from that great book by Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book, Rabbi Fohrman tells us that we should know the kind of book we are reading before we start. If we think of a poetry book as history, we will be in trouble. Or I would say we are in trouble if we read the Bible as a science textbook. In this case, if we think of this book as a biblical commentary on the book of Exodus, you will be in trouble.

The Kind of Book This is Not

As a Biblical Commentary, it is not

1. 1. Critical Academic Scholarship
   2. Commentaries that deal with the Text from Personal Relevance – finding nuggets of truth that we can apply
   3. Anthology – where a vast array of scholars are quoted on the text to help us understand the text.

The Kind of Book This Is

Fohrman sees this as a guidebook that attempts to engage with the original Hebrew text to find what God was actually trying to say, and then to determine what we are to take away from it (meaning).

Part I – Taking Apart the Exodus Story

Chapter One – The Angel in the Backroom

Rabbi Fohrman teaches me by showing me how to slow down (and not pass over any details in reading the Bible). He asks questions that I have never asked. Like in this chapter: Why name the Jewish feast: Passover? Why not Freedom Day or Independence Day? Yes, the angel of death passed over the Hebrews on that night – but that wasn’t the essence of the story. Or was it? Here, Rabbi Fohrman poses one of the first of many questions that will pepper this whole book:

Perhaps the name suggests that we should adjust our sights somewhat. We tend to think of Passover the way I’ve just described it to you, as the holiday on which we got our freedom. And yet, the Torah’s own name for the night we went free doesn’t emphasize the “free” part; it emphasizes being “passed over.” Could it be that, somehow, the essence of the holiday really does revolve around the mysterious salvation that our firstborn experienced that night?

And because Fohrman is not a Messianic Jew, perhaps he also passed over the emphasis that followers of Jesus put on the Passover and its connection with Jesus’ death.

Next question I passed over: Why did God mandate[1] that the law-of-the-broken-necked donkey get put in the little boxes (tefillin) that Jews were to wear (Exodus 13:13)?[2] Why did God pick these specific aspects of the Torah to be bound to their bodies?  Fohrman claims that God wanted them to remember that He spared their firstborn sons. Hmmm! I leave it to the reader who lives on this side of the cross to see if there is some significance there.

Then the Rabbi poses another question I never asked: Why does God refer to Israel as his firstborn son when He called Moses in the desert? (Exodus 4:22-23).

He concludes Chapter 1 with this:

Maybe, then, the Exodus story is about more than we ever suspected. Is it about freedom? Yes, it surely is. Independence and the birth of a nation? Yes, that, too. But it is about more than this. In this book, I want to argue that the Exodus story tells us who we are. It is a story that tells us not just about our past, but about our future. It speaks not only of our birth, but of our destiny. It speaks of why we are here and what we are meant to achieve. The story is about what it means to be a firstborn nation.

Chapter Two – The Exodus Game

Chapter Two takes us on a thought experiment in which he asks us to play the three primary characters in the Exodus story: God, Moses, and Pharaoh. I would add Israel, but that is another story.

Imagine You are God

Goal: Deliver Your People from Slavery: Or is that the goal?

If deliverance was the only or even the primary goal, why did He use 10 plagues? Wouldn’t plague 10 have done the job? Or the ninth plague: the plague of darkness for three days, where the Egyptians couldn’t see a blasted thing, but Israel could see fine. Why not tell Israel just to walk out?  And of course, with God’s superpowers, He could have done anything to have zipped them out. Or even the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire that protected them. Just surround them before the Red Sea and march them out.

But there’s more! What about that duplicitous request to go worship in the desert for three days and then come back? If you were God, would You ask Moses to frame the request that way? No! I think if we were honest, we would just have delivered Israel and skipped the drama.

Rabbi Fohrman writes:

In the movies, by the way, that’s the way it always goes. From Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments to Steven Spielberg’s Prince of Egypt, Moses’s interaction with Pharaoh looks very different. In these Hollywood portraits of the Exodus, a stern-faced Moses sets forth a no-holds-barred ultimatum to Pharaoh: let my people go! Somehow, the rest of Moses’s speech — the word please, and the part about the three-day vacation — always gets left on the cutting room floor.

And how about the interaction with Pharaoh in Exodus 8:

²⁵ Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” ²⁶ But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? ²⁷ We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us.” ²⁸ So Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness; only you must not go very far away. Plead for me.” ²⁹ Then Moses said, “Behold, I am going out from you, and I will plead with the Lord that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people, tomorrow. Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the Lord.” ³⁰ So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. ³¹ And the Lord did as Moses asked, and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people; not one remained. ³² But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go.

Fohrman writes:

It all seems faintly ridiculous, the squabbling back and forth. One wonders: Isn’t all this a little beneath Moses’s dignity? Isn’t it beneath God’s? God doesn’t need to bargain with Pharaoh. God doesn’t even need Pharaoh to say yes at all! The Master of the Universe is perfectly capable of delivering His people to the Promised Land, whether Pharaoh agrees to the plan or not. So why go through all of this?

One thing seems clear. For some undetermined reason, there appears to be an unwritten rule throughout the Exodus narrative, a rule that God is choosing to adhere to: the Israelites aren’t going anywhere unless Pharaoh says they are.

All of this is to help us see beyond the Exodus as Liberation Day or Independence Day. Did you notice these things in your reading of the Exodus? I sure didn’t.

Here is another thing I missed that Fohrman points out. I am sure all of us have seen the basic pattern:

• • Moses asks
  • Pharaoh says no.
  • Moses calls down a plague
  • Pharaoh says yes
  • Moses calls for an end to the plague
  • Pharaoh reneges

But did you notice what happens after this? Fohrman again:

Instead of Pharaoh changing his own mind, God seems to step in and do the mind-changing for him. In the words of the Torah, the Almighty “hardens Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 9:12).

Fohrman closes out the chapter with two dilemmas: a moral and a tactical.

1. 1. Moral: “To the extent that Pharaoh’s free will was compromised by God Himself, how can this same God hold Pharaoh responsible for his actions?”
   2. Tactical: “…it just doesn’t seem to add up. Here God is, sending Moses repeatedly to Pharaoh, enduring endless bargaining sessions with the Egyptian monarch, even coming up with a dubious three-day vacation offer — all in the interest of getting Pharaoh to say yes. Finally, it actually happens! Pharaoh says yes, and it really is yes; he’s not going to back down and change his mind. Why, at that very moment, would God interfere with Pharaoh’s free will and make him say no? Wasn’t this the moment we had all been waiting for?”

Again, Fohrman closes the chapter:

Does God care about Pharaoh’s free-willed consent, or not? If He does, then once Pharaoh gives that consent, the game should be over. And if the Almighty doesn’t care about that consent, why needlessly ask for it to begin with?

Stay tuned. There is more that we passed over!

Chapter Three – Power and Precision

Calculated Ambiguity – I certainly passed over this little morsel:

⁴ So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, ⁵ and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle Exodus 11:4-5

What? Does God have something on His calendar a little before midnight that might run shorter or longer? We later learn in chapter 12 that the angel of the Lord struck “at midnight” (Exodus 12:29). The Sages propose a solution that, since Pharaoh was so nit-picky, if Moses proposed an exact time, Pharaoh’s clocks and God’s clocks might not be synced, and this would be an excuse to deny the prediction.

Sounds to me like the Sages don’t have enough to do. But there is some method to their madness. Notice that when Egypt was overrun with frogs and the stench was intense, Moses asked Pharaoh when he wanted the frogs to go away. He says, “Tomorrow!” (Exodus 8:10). What! Your country is overrun with frogs, and you give Moses till tomorrow to get rid of them? Clearly, Pharaoh was interested in timing. The Sages point out one other odd request.  When his cattle were destroyed, he did not ask how many. He wanted to know what happened to the children of Israel’s cattle (Exodus 9:7).

Perhaps Pharaoh is not so much interested in keeping the children of Israel as he is in the precision of God’s predictive power.

Chapter Four – The Tale of Two Speeches

Another detail I passed over. Look at the two speeches Moses makes to Pharaoh and note the differences:

^5:1 Afterward, Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’”

³ “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three-day journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.”

Speech 1 failed, so Moses tries again. Here are the major differences:

1. 1. What are the children of Israel called
   2. Direct or Indirect communication
   3. Celebration or Sacrifice
   4. What happens if Israel doesn’t go
   5. A command versus a please
   6. Limited departure of 3 days
   7. Yahweh versus the God of the Hebrews

Fohrman argues that two completely different pictures of God are portrayed:

1. 1. God of speech #1 wants to celebrate.
   2. The God of speech #1  identifies Israel as personally mine
   3. A God who has a specific name
   4. A God who addresses people personally

Look at it yourself and see if you agree that these are two different portrayals of God.

David doesn’t tell us why – Yet. Stay tuned.

Chapter 5 – Much Ado about Names

Fohrman claims that God doesn’t normally make a big to-do about His name. He rarely corrects someone about what they call Him. Perhaps this bothers you when a friend corrects someone about the name Allah. It got me wondering, when Jesus appears in dreams to a Muslim, does He say: “Oh, by the way, my name isn’t Allah. I am offended when you call Me that?”

But Fohrman claims that God does just that after the two speeches.

² God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the YHVH. ³ I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the YHVH, I did not make myself known to them.

To a close reader of the Bible, they would see a couple of things that passed me by:

1. 1. The name YHVH was made known to the fathers. This text implies that it was not made known.
   2. God had already told Moses that His name was: “I am that I am” and “I am” when Moses asked Him straight out: What is Your name?

He leaves with this question, which he guarantees he will address – later.

Part II – The Exit Strategy

Chapter 6 – What’s in a Name

In this chapter, David looks at the difference between God Almighty (El Shaddai) and YHVH. He does that first by looking at the names as words. El is a Hebrew word for power (See Genesis 31:29). And when used in Elohim, it is a powerful force.

Have you ever wondered why God tells the Hebrews not to have any other gods before Him when He is the one true god? The 2^nd commandment reads a little differently if you put “Elohim” in place of “gods.”  No other powerful forces before me. What that means when we address God as El Elohim, we are addressing Him as a powerful God.

So, what does it mean when we address Him as El Shaddai? Shaddai doesn’t appear in the Scriptures apart from El Shaddai. But the Sages of the Mishnah give us a hint. As a combination of Hebrew words, as they put it – El Shaddai means “the god who knows how to say ‘Enough.’”

That brings us to the name change that God is invoking with Moses.

God makes it clear to Moses that power is not His name. It is not who He is fundamentally. God will make use of power, as He is about to do – but [power] doesn’t define Him. Instead, the essence of God is about something else. It is about YHVH.

Which he addresses in the next chapter.

Chapter 7 – Do you believe in Parker

In this chapter, David takes a look at the Hebrew word for Yahweh: (יהוה). He tells us that we cannot know what the word means because it is only and is ever used for the name of God. But, undaunted, he attempts to figure it out anyway. He tells us that the last three letters of the name: הוה spell the Hebrew word for is or to exist. Three out of four of the letters spell the word “was.” And the word is close to the Hebrew word for will be. Then he says:

To summarize: this name of God is close, but not exactly equivalent to, each one of the three Hebrew words that denote past, present, and future existence.

He then makes a distinction between an eternal being and the God whose name is יהוה. To exist eternally means that you exist for a long, long time. But at any given moment, an eternal being exists in the now / in the present. But God’s name implies that God exists in the past, present, and future simultaneously.

Finally, he has us overlay the Hebrew words for past, present, and future, and what you get is the Hebrew word for Yahweh. (יהוה)

In discussing the God who exists not just eternally but in the past, present, and future simultaneously, Rabbi Fohrman has us imagine a conversation between two board tokens in the Parker Brothers game of Monopoly. Imagine that one of them doesn’t believe in Parker. He has been around the board countless times, but never finds him. “My dear Little Hat, you’re looking for Parker in all the wrong places. Parker doesn’t live on the board. He made the board!” So it is with God. He isn’t “in” time. He made time.

God’s speech to Moses just before the Ten Plagues begin, God was saying that in the past, He had been revealed as a powerful force (an el), perhaps even an ultimately powerful force (el shaddai); but now, through the Exodus, He would be revealed for who He really was: YHVH, the one who is “off the board,” outside of time and space; the Maker of time and space. Parker. The Creator.

I had never looked closely at the Hebrew in this particular dialogue between God and Moses. The English translations actually had the detail, but I didn’t fully understand it until now. Here is my summary:

When God says, “I AM WHO I AM” in Exodus 3:14, there are actually 3 Hebrew words with the first repeated. As Fohrman points out, the repeated word for I AM ( היה) is very close to the Hebrew word for YHVH (יהוה).  Later in the verse, when He says “I AM has sent you,” He is not saying YHVH but the Hebrew word for I AM. Then, in verse 15, when He says: “Say to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord … has sent me to you.’” the Hebrew word for YHVH is used. Then, in Exodus 6:4, when God says, “But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them,” He uses YHVH.

This is where I never made the distinction between the three distinct names that God uses in this short section: I AM WHO I AM; I AM; and YHVH. But what does it all mean? Stay tuned. Fohrman keeps us in suspense.

Chapter 8 – More than a Numbers Game

The point of this chapter is to contrast polytheism and monotheism. He claims that it is more than just believing in one God and believing in more than one god. Concerning polytheism:

The bottom line is that every god had its realm of power. Conversely, every deity had its own area of vulnerability: pagan deities had needs, and if you were clever enough, you could use those needs to get a god’s attention.

Furthermore, polytheism

means nothing around me is the product of anyone’s intention — pitiful little me least of all. My job, then, as a human, is to make my way in this cold universe as best I can. I am not thrust into a relationship with any transcendent force who can claim responsibility for my existence.

By contrast, monotheism means:

the universe is not the product of blind chance, but was created by a sentient being, well, that means there is intention behind existence. The universe is here because that being wanted it to be here, and willed it into existence.

If I really have a Creator, then my life is not just the byproduct of cold, blind chance. Someone wants me to be here, brought me into this world, and gave me the wherewithal to make something of myself here on earth. Love seems an entirely fitting response to that.

Fohrman asks us to:

Imagine a household where children were somehow deluded about the identity of the grownups in charge of the family. They thought the grownups were just “powers” who, for some unexplained reason, controlled all the goodies in the house.

Then he asks us to picture what it would be like to be a child in such a household. That is how it is to be a pagan. And relative to the Exodus story, God’s purpose was in part to contrast for the Egyptians what a monotheistic God was like compared to their polytheistic gods.

Chapter 9 – The Hidden Agenda

David asks us to imagine we were God and wanted to demonstrate to the world that there was a single Creator. How would we do it?

Maybe, he says, that was what God was doing with the Exodus. Exodus 7:5 says as much:

And Egypt will know that I am YHVH, as I stretch My hand out over Egypt, and deliver the Children of Israel from their midst

The Exodus was not just about delivering Israel but demonstrating that He was YHVH.

Then, as he challenges us to come up with a plan to accomplish this two-fold objective, he tells us to remember that we have to counter all of these pagan powers. Remember our original question about why all of the different plagues were required.

I had been taught that each of the plagues was an attempt by God to show His power over all of the other pagan deities of Egypt. And in one sense, that is what Fohrman is saying. But, in Fohrman’s inimitable way, there is more to it than that.

Chapter 10 – The Case for Monotheism

Rabbi Fohrman notices (another thing I passed over) the Pharaoh’s request for precision with respect to the time the plague would strike, as opposed to power in the proposed plagues. He asks:

Why would the precision with which a plague came and went — whether Moses could turn off the frogs at precisely the moment you picked, or whether a given plague distinguished precisely between Israelites and Egyptians — matter so much to you?

In a polytheistic universe, you would see lots of power, but very little control.

That Moses can do this suggests a hitherto unheard-of entity. It suggests a Creator whose control over the forces of nature is complete and absolute. It suggests a Force that does not share power with any true competitors.

He then points out yet another factoid I passed over that was a counter to paganism. In a pagan worldview, there were competing powers over the elements. One might control the rain. One might control the frogs. But look at this:

And there was hail — and fire encased inside the hail (Exodus 9:24)

There was a god of fire and a god of ice – but they never worked together. This is more evidence I overlooked of God’s purpose in the plagues. It wasn’t just to let the people go; it was also to convert the nation of Egypt to monotheism. In Fohrman’s words: “by causing diametrically opposed natural forces to work in harmony toward a common end.”

Fohrman restates his theory:

the Exodus had a dual goal — free the Hebrews from slavery, but do so in a way that educates Pharaoh in the nature of the force he is opposing. That power is not a mere god in a pantheon of divine beings, but the one and only Creator. If the most established civilization of the ancient world, entirely devoted to paganism, were to embrace the idea of monotheism, if its leader were to accept the truth that the world contains a Creator to whom he is subject — that would certainly be a historical testament to the truth of monotheism.

Chapter 11 – Stubbornness and Courage

Next, Fohrman addresses the question of free will. Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart to prevent the successful completion of His plan?

Fohrman proposes that the plagues might convince Pharaoh to let Israel go, but not acknowledge the Power behind the plagues. Then he heads down another path and asks if someone encourages another to continue on with a struggle, are you violating their will? I think most of us would say: No. Fohrman sees this hardening of the heart in just that way. Pharaoh was ready to give in to the request to let Israel go, but not accept YHVH as the creator. So, hardening the heart was a way of encouraging Pharaoh to persevere in accepting God as the monotheistic creator. But then the question is: Is that in the text? Let’s listen to David:

Pharaoh has many changes of heart over the course of the plagues, but the Torah doesn’t always use the same verb to characterize a change of heart. It switches off between two different verbs. One comes from the Hebrew root כָּבַד (k-b-d),[3] and the other, from the Hebrew root חזק (ch-z-k).[4]

חזק (ch-z-k) – carries the sense of to be strong, to strengthen, to harden, to prevail, to take hold of

Thus, in David’s words:

if, in reading through the plagues, you ever find that God is the one to change Pharaoh’s mind, and the phrase used to describe that change of mind is chizuk halev [חזק (ch-z-k) ]— then that, right there, is an instance of God lending courage to the embattled Egyptian leader,

כָּבַד (k-b-d) – carries the sense of stubbornness or heaviness or even glory (and thus the “weight of glory”).

we need to consider a second problem that could interfere with God’s plan to reveal Himself through Pharaoh’s free-willed recognition of a Creator-God. … What if, instead of giving in too soon, Pharaoh never gives in and recognizes the Creator, even when the evidence is absolutely overwhelming? We might call this the problem of stubbornness. As it happens, Pharaoh does occasionally act with something akin to blind stubbornness. The Hebrew word for that is [כָּבַד (k-b-d) ].

A bit of the fly in his ointment here is Exodus 10:1, where God puts the stubbornness in Pharaoh. Will he discuss that in his musings? Keep reading.

So there are two kinds of reversals of Pharaoh’s will in the text. Sometimes it occurs when he gives in to the request but doesn’t acknowledge God. And then there are the times where he doesn’t give in or acknowledge God as YHWH.

Again, David:

Perhaps there is a Plan A, a nonviolent sign of some sort that overwhelmingly indicates the existence of a Creator. Perhaps there is a Plan B, an effort to educate Pharaoh, over time, as to the existence of a Creator. But if these efforts fail, there has to be a Plan C. Was there a Plan C? And did it ever have to be implemented? These are questions we will look to answer as we read through the story of the Ten Plagues together. We’ve developed some theories about Plans A, B, and C — what they might have been, and how they might be executed. But the ultimate litmus test is the text. As we return to the biblical text and actually read through the Exodus story, it will be time to see how theory translates into reality.

Read on.

Part III Putting the Exodus Story Back Together Again

Chapter 12 – The Path not Taken

David kicks us off:

The story of the plagues is, to some extent, the story of a protracted negotiation between Moses and Pharaoh, a process marked by constant changes of mind on the part of the Egyptian king. As we noted, those changes of mind are characterized by two different Hebrew phrases, chizuk halev and kibbud halev, which we have rendered as “strengthening of heart” and “hardening of heart,” respectively.

Where does all this begin he asks. In the tale of two speeches, he presented in Chapter 4. Revisit that if you forgot about that. Given what we learned about polytheism earlier, David visits the two speeches and proposes:

But looking at the speeches now, it seems evident that the God of Moses’s first speech is God-as-He-truly-is, whereas the god that Moses presents in the second speech seems to portray the Almighty in terms we might use to describe a mere “power” within a larger pantheon of powers.

David then paraphrases Moses’ second speech:

Let me make things a little easier for you. Forget about that YHVH name that you found so confusing. Let’s at least agree that this god who sent me is no less than an ‘el,’ a power. You know about powers. And forget, at least for the moment, the idea that there’s some sort of precious relationship between this deity and a people He knows by a special name, Israel. Let’s just call them Hebrews. And forget about that whole celebration thing. Let’s just say we’re really worried that our ‘el,’ our power, might get angry with us if we don’t go into the desert to sacrifice to it. You can understand that, can’t you? Arbitrary and capricious deities we must appease with sacrifices, who might strike us down if we don’t obey? You know, sort of like your sun god? All we’re asking for, Pharaoh, is a little religious freedom; a three-day break to appease our god, the same way you would appease yours.

Thus, the education process has begun.

Next, he asks why Moses stooped to lying about a three-day pass rather than letting the slaves go. He concludes that it may not have been lying. If Moses saw the need for an incremental approach to having Pharaoh accept YHVH as Lord of all, perhaps there might have been another step after Israel came back. However, Pharaoh’s response crushed the possibility of a plan A – a non-violent conversion of Pharaoh away from his many gods to YHVH. The educational process will continue but in a much harder way.

Chapter Thirteen – A Journey to Tomorrowland

In this chapter, Fohrman takes us through the plagues – looking in particular at the various hardenings and the use of power versus precision.

I have always been upset that the magicians turn their staffs into serpents. And though I did not pass over that Aaron’s staff swallowed the magicians’ staffs, I did not see it as evidence of monotheism. One God (one staff) is over the many.

He then points out to us something I passed over. After the serpent demonstration, Exodus 7:13 tells us that Pharaoh’s heart was strengthened (chizuk halev). But 7:14 has God telling Moses that his heart was hardened (kibbud halev). Which is it? David says it is a matter of perspective. Pharaoh sees his heart strengthening. God sees Pharaoh hardening his heart.

Yes, Pharaoh might obstinately choose to see this fight as nothing more than a match of dueling magicians. He might believe that hardening his position counts as nothing more than “strengthening his resolve.” But in fact, he is being stubborn. He is blinding himself to a truth he does not want to see. He is hardening his heart, not strengthening it.

The first plague also results in the magicians duplicating it, and again, we see in Exodus 7:22 that Pharaoh’s heart is strengthened.

The frog plague follows, which includes the strange request for precision. Following this plague, we hear for the first time that Pharaoh hardened his heart. What was previously seen as strengthening is now hardening. Fohrman claims that it is because of the precision of the use of power that this YHVH is something different.

He blinds himself to the implications of what he’s just seen, and continues his struggle against the God of the Hebrews. All of a sudden, Pharaoh has a new enemy. It is no longer just Moses, or even Moses’s God, that Pharaoh opposes. He is now at war against the ancient and timeless enemy of all stubborn men: reality itself.

Chapter Fourteen – Escalation

In this chapter, the Rabbi takes us through plagues 3-6. We have seen the blood and the frogs, and now we have the lice, the wild animals, death of livestock, and boils. He sees a pattern (which I obviously passed over) in these plagues. “They are intensifying along alternate lines: power and precision.” The lice mark the end of the astrologers’ ability to duplicate and their acknowledging that it is the finger of Elohim (Exodus 8:15). The power is greater than any of their gods. But still not the power of YHVH. Pharaoh strengthens his heart to this one. Then come the wild animals. The precision is the exact location of the plague. The frogs showed a precision of time. The wild animals a precision of space. Why? “’ So that you shall know that I am YHVH in the midst of the land.’ Precision, in time and space, is the unmistakable signature of the Master of both these realms, YHVH Himself…” Now Pharaoh hardens his heart (Exodus 8:28).

The precision and power axis escalate. Now, the death of the livestock is predicted in time, but the precision in space is further refined. Not just a specific locale, but to the inhabitants within that locale. Just as God “wondrously distinguished” the land of Goshen (Exodus 8:18), now He “wondrously distinguishes” the people of Israel within the land. (Exodus 9:4). Pharaoh’s attention to this precision is caught, and he sends for verification and gets it (Exodus 9:7). No Hebrew livestock is affected. The final escalation is an escalation of power. The power of the plague of boils was so great that the astrologers lost their ability to even stand before Moses. (Exodus 9:11).

In all of these, God did not enter Pharaoh’s heart. In this last plague, God enters the realm of Pharaoh’s heart. Of course, all of this I have passed over.

Chapter 15 – Hail to the King

We read that following the sixth plague, God strengthens Pharaoh’s heart. We have already discussed the commentator’s view that:

God, however, did not wish the Egyptian king to capitulate out of mere expediency. If it was courage that Pharaoh was lacking — well, God would supply him with the courage to pursue his vision.

Enter the seventh plague.

For this time, I will send all My plagues into your heart…so that you shall know there is none like Me in all the world (Exodus 9:13–14)

What does that mean?

The ground to be conquered in this plague is nothing less than Pharaoh’s heart itself.

And it is more than that:

God is telling the Egyptian king that there is a reason he is still here, a reason larger than Pharaoh himself. He is part of a momentous drama — the revelation of the Creator to humankind.

Exodus 9:16 It was only for this that I’ve allowed you to stand: it was to show you My strength, so that My name will be told of, all over the world

Only for this?

Allowed you to stand?

This clearly is a climactic section of the story (which of course I passed over). This seems to be God revealing that there is indeed a Plan C. This plague has a new, unique feature. God gives the Egyptians a way to avoid the plague. (Exodus 9:19). Fohrman claims that this is God’s way of demonstrating His power. He is so assured of His ultimate victory that He can afford to warn His enemy. Not too long ago, when the U.S. attacked Iran, we saw just that. The U.S. gave advanced notice as to when and where they were going to strike. Many questioned this. Yet here is God doing the same thing.

Previously, we mentioned the fire inside the ice. What was it to accomplish? Let’s look at how Pharaoh responds.

And Pharaoh sent and called to Moses and Aaron and said to them: I have sinned this time. YHVH is the righteous One, and my people and I are the wicked ones (Exodus 9:27)

Fohrman points out that this is new and moral language. You don’t sin against impersonal gods. Pharaoh finally acknowledges the personal and moral nature of YHVH. One would think that this would end the story. God has accomplished His goal. But the story is not over. Why? Stay tuned.

Chapter 16 The Desecration of Remorse

After the hail, Fohrman points out that Pharaoh changes his mind yet again. But (no surprise here), there is something I passed over. Fohrman calls it the tipping point of the whole Exodus story. Even though Pharaoh had admitted sin, the Torah says that he sinned. He claims that ignoring evidence is a “subconscious act of resistance.” He claims that this is not a sin. In effect, Fohrman sees Pharaoh saying:

I know there is a Creator, that I am duty bound to listen to Him, and I know what He wants from me. But I just don’t care. I’m keeping my slaves anyway.

This is the essence of sin.

The other unique thing I passed over, Pharaoh both hardened his heart, but he also strengthened his heart. (Exodus 9:34-35). Fohrman  sees this as what he calls the “desecration of remorse.”

Remorse is a noble and sublime product of the free and unfettered human will. Once you cynically mock it, it doesn’t come easily anymore.

Pharaoh will never again see the truth as clearly as he does now.

In the great drama of the Exodus, he has chosen, in effect, no longer to be an actor, but a pawn.

I don’t know about you, but I passed over this major turning point in the great drama.

Fohrman sees this as the beginning of Plan C. God uses language never before seen in the story:

And YHVH said to Moses: Go to Pharaoh — for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might establish My signs in the midst of them. And so that you will be able to tell your children, and your children’s children, how I played with Egypt, and My signs which I have done among them. [I have done this] so that you will know that I am YHVH. (Exodus 10:1–2)

Notice what I passed over. The goal is not so that Pharaoh would know the YHVH is God, but so that the children of Israel would get to know YHVH. Plan C!

And what’s this business about toying with Pharaoh? According to Rabbi David, Pharaoh will have free will for the rest of the story, but God will see to it that Pharaoh “endlessly pursues his lost cause” by toying with him the rest of the story.

Chapter 17 Pharaoh’s Last Refuge

Per Fohrman, Pharaoh has now adopted a “damn the torpedoes” approach to ignoring the stubborn fact that God is the supreme creator. If you doubt man’s ability to act like this, just look at politicians who refuse to acknowledge the polls (or even the votes) in an election. Stubbornness can soon become a fortress as he will soon see. We mentioned that normally, Pharaoh has been hardening his heart. But at this transition, now we see God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. (Exodus 10:1). And this will not end well for Pharaoh. As Fohrman says:

Denial of reality is never a strength; it’s always a weakness.

I was once confronted by a dear friend about something I had supposedly done. But when I brought up the facts, he said, “I don’t care about the facts.” I was shocked. This was a “Joe Friday” kind of guy – “Just the facts, ma’am!” As John Adams once famously said: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” And for Pharaoh, denial of the reality of YHVH will catch up to him.

Normally, we think of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart as some kind of supernatural internal move of God on Pharaoh’s heart. But perhaps not, says David.

Maybe God was making use of an entirely natural process to influence Pharaoh. Maybe God was using Pharaoh’s own stubbornness against him as a weapon that would force the Egyptian king deeper and deeper into a prison of his own making.

He points us to Exodus 10:3:

And Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh and said to him: Thus says YHVH, the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you withhold yourself from bowing in submission before Me? Send out my people that they may serve Me!’ (Exodus 10:3)

This is quite a bold way to speak to the most powerful leader in the world. Any chance this will work? Not with Plan B or Plan A. But:

God has declared that he would “harden Pharaoh’s heart” (Exodus 10:1), and this is exactly how He is going about it. In Plan C, God has a secret weapon. It is nothing fancy, nothing supernatural; the secret weapon is Pharaoh’s own pride, the root cause of his stubbornness.

From now on, Pharaoh’s pride will be God’s primary target.

After Pharaoh’s servants pleaded with him to let the Hebrews go, Torah tells us that Moses and Aaron “were returned” to Pharaoh. By whom? Some kind of “Deep Throat” within Pharaoh’s servants? Of course, you can imagine that I passed over that detail.

Pharaoh offers a face-saving question to Moses that could have allowed Pharaoh to save face. But Plan C would not allow that. And Moses is sent packing, and the locusts are sent plundering.

With the next plague, Moses is summoned back and again offered a way for Pharaoh to save face. Just leave some cattle. Moses response? Absolutely not! You are going to provide us with the cattle for our sacrifices. This ticks off Pharaoh, who threatens Moses with death if he ever sees his face around here again.

Okay. Are you tired of me telling you what I passed over? Hold on. This plague has a major miss. I never noticed that the last plague (death of the firstborn) did not exempt the Hebrews automatically, as did all of the other plagues. Why? Stay tuned.

Chapter 18 Birth Night

David starts this chapter with a question asked earlier. Why did God call Israel his “firstborn” even before the first plague? And what is the significance? He proposes a possibility in the form of a question: What if Israel was not His firstborn but was to become His firstborn?

Fohrman develops the concept of the bechor (firstborn) as the one in the family who transmits the family values to the rest of the children. On the night of the last plague, Israel became a nation and accepted the role of the bechor. And it did it through the blood of the goat. All of God’s children (including Egypt) are in God’s family. But you choose to become part of it. This is why the holiday is called Passover and not Freedom Day.

Passover looks at the events of the Exodus as significant not in terms of history but in terms of destiny. When you think about becoming free, you think about where you are now, in relation to an awful past. When you think about becoming a bechor, you think about where you are now, in relation to the future you must help bring into being.

Chapter 19 Creation and Uncreation

In this chapter, Rabbi David attempts to explain why the Jewish sages portray fruit trees on both sides of the walls of water as the Hebrews pass through the Sea of Reeds on dry land. He points us to four parallels between the Exodus Sea of Reeds crossing and the Creation story.

Creation (Genesis 1)	Exodus
Spirit moving across the  waters	Wind is blowing to separate the water
Let there be light to separate the light from the darkness	Pillar lit up the night (14:20)
Sky divides water from water	Sky divides water from water (14:22)
Let dry land appear	Water recedes and dry land appears

 

But the next thing missing from the creation story is the vegetation – the fruit trees. So the sages put them there. But what does this mean? No question I passed this one over, but Fohrman says that by this parallel, God was ratifying His role as Creator.

Okay!?

As the Egyptian army is crushed under the wall of water, Plan C draws to a close.

Preface to Part IV

The Exodus that Might Have Been

Fohrman supposes:

Even if we were to accept that Plan A or B had originally been on the table, should we care that those plans never materialized? Was it not enough that the entire nation of Israel came to know YHVH? What, if anything, was lost when those plans failed to come to fruition? And if something terribly important was lost, is that loss permanent? Is there some sort of unrealized potential in the Exodus whose loss we should mourn, or perhaps seek to recapture?

Part IV Joseph and the Phantom Exodus

Chapter 20 – All the King’s Horses

Of course, David starts with something I missed (see, I don’t always have to say passed over).

And I (YHVH) will strengthen the heart of Pharaoh, … and he will chase after you. (Exodus 14:4)

Thanks, God! But what really bothers David that I truly passed over (“There you go again”), is that God says He is going to derive honor by killing Pharaoh’s army. If that doesn’t bother you, you can stop reading.

But the Sages of the Talmud recognize the problem and have a scene where the angels want to sing and celebrate this great victory, but God says, “My own creations [the Egyptians] are drowning in the Sea, and you want to sing before Me? (Megillah 10b).” What is going on here? Which is it? Did the Sages get it wrong, or are we interpreting the verse incorrectly?

Before David answers this, he wants to take us on a journey back to the story of Jacob’s burial. Buckle your seat belt.

Chapter 21 – A Moment of Truth

The lynch pin of this piece of the puzzle comes from Genesis 50:8:

And the whole house of Joseph, his brothers, and his father’s house [all went up to bury Jacob]; only their little children, their sheep and their cattle did they leave behind in the Land of Goshen (Genesis 50:8)

Herein lies the big takeaway from this book. It has to do with the way I read the Bible. I feel like I have always skim-read it when I am with Rabbi Fohrman. Take a minute and see if you can see what I passed over in that passage.

Ready? Why do we care about the child-care provisioning for Jacob’s burial?

Through a series of fine points that I clearly missed (Hey – this isn’t the Exodus story anymore – or is it?), Fohrman builds several points:

1. 1. Oddly, Jacob makes Joseph swear that he would bury him with his fathers in Canaan.
   2. Oddly, Jacob did not realize that Joseph remained loyal until this moment.
   3. Jacob had concerns about Joseph’s loyalty despite significant evidence to the contrary
   4. This odd request uncovers an intriguing triangle between Joseph, Pharaoh, and Jacob.

Ah – but you need to read on to unravel this intrigue.

Chapter 22 – The Triangle

Rabbi Fohrman raises some troubling questions about Joseph in this chapter:

1. 1. Why did Joseph never write home during his stay in Egypt? One rabbi suggested that Joseph may have been the victim of a terrible misunderstanding.
   2. What did Joseph know about what his brothers told his father?
   3. Assuming nothing, what misunderstanding about what happened might Joseph come to?
   4. After Jacob got mad at Joseph for the dreams, he sent him on a dangerous trip. Why did Jacob send Joseph to check on his brothers? What misunderstanding did Joseph have about that?
   5. Given what Joseph knew, why didn’t Dad send out a search party?
   6. From all this, is it unreasonable for Joseph to think he was thrown out of the family?
   7. What role did the precedence of throwing Ismael out of the family play in Joseph’s speculations?
   8. Why does the Torah use the word “pit” (same as where Joseph was thrown) to describe what Pharaoh pulled Joseph out of? Could it be that the Torah is painting an inverse chiasmus?:
      • A Father rejects the dream’s interpretation
        • B Stripped of Clothes
          • C Thrown in a pit
          • C Extracted from the pit
        • B Given new clothes
      • A Pharaoh accepts dream interpretation

Fohrman brings up Joseph’s allegiance to his family compared to his new family (Pharaoh). He never questioned Joseph’s allegiance to YHVH. This seems to be confirmed by the naming of his first child (okay – I won’t mention it): “God has caused me to forget my travails, and all my father’s house” (Genesis 41:51). All of these speculations could explain the inexplicable way Joseph initially toys with his brothers.

Chapter 23 – The Land of Nearness

Playing on the theory that Joseph believed his father Jacob had thrown him out, Fohrman has Judah’s speech (Genesis 44) turn Joseph’s world around. He puts these words in Joseph’s head:

This whole time, my father thought I was dead! For all these years, Father had somehow been deceived. He never threw me out of the family, no! Every moment I’ve been away, he has been mourning me…

This chapter provides us with the background of Jacob’s request to Joseph. We see:

1. 1. God spoke to Jacob on the way to Egypt that he need not fear. We didn’t know that Jacob was afraid. (Genesis 46:3)
   2. Joseph deeded (ancestral holdings) the land of Goshen to Jacob’s family – they were not just visitors (Genesis 47:11) but now landowners.
   3. Jacob whined about not having settled in Canaan as God had told him in his discussion with Pharaoh. (Genesis 47:9)

All this helps us understand that Jacob is wondering how we will ever get back to Canaan – our destiny.

Chapter 24 – Fence of Thorns

We now know why Jacob requires an oath that he be buried in Canaan. Jacob was saying in so many words:

Look, Son, Egypt is nice, and Pharaoh is very gracious — but, at the end of the day, Egypt is not our place. Home is Canaan, the land God promised to us. That is where our family has an achuzah waiting for us, an ancestral holding…. Are you on board with that vision?

Another point Fohrman makes is that Jacob, being the father of the savior of Egypt (Joseph), meant that he was royalty (he was mourned for 70 days by all of Egypt – Genesis 50:3 – following his death). His funeral will be a state funeral. Burying him in Canaan would be like burying Queen Elizabeth in Madagascar.

He closes with an account from the Talmud that is so loosely based on the Torah that we will skip it.

Chapter 25 – A Conversation, Delayed

David gives us a little background about embalming. For the Egyptians, burying an embalmed body would make no sense. Embalming is to prepare the body for the afterlife. We learn that Joseph waited until after the mourning to tell Pharaoh about his promise to his father. Even then, he didn’t speak directly to Pharaoh but asked members of the court to talk to Pharaoh. It certainly appears as if Joseph is afraid to tell Pharaoh about Jacob’s request.

Chapter 26 – Honor Guard

Much to everyone’s surprise (Pharaoh, his court, Joseph, and even the residents of Canaan), Egypt sends an honor guard to attend the family for the burial. It must have looked odd to all involved. And yet, now it is time to tie this forward to the story of Exodus.

Chapter 27 – Take the Long Way Home

Fohrman provides 3 connections back to the Exodus in this chapter:

1. 1. Both took the long way around to get to Canaan[5]
   2. Both involved child-care arrangements (Genesis 50:8)
   3. In both, Pharaoh dispatches chariots and archers (50:9)
   4. Both had the Canaanites looking on

Thankfully, David doesn’t leave us there.

The Torah appears to be asking the reader to line up and connect these two journeys from Egypt. But why?

Why indeed? Maybe, he proposes, the two stories are, in essence, the same. Huh?

Chapter 28 – Convergence

He takes us back to Plan A. Just let us go out and celebrate YHVH. What if Pharaoh had responded positively to Plan A? Here is where we see the convergence.

The stories of Jacob’s burial and the Exodus really do converge; their essential theme is one and the same. In each, a grand procession was supposed to take place, to honor Father the way Father wanted to be honored.

In this chapter:

… we retold the story of Jacob’s burial and the story of the Exodus from the “child’s” perspective in each story: how Joseph acquitted himself in the great choice facing him, and, centuries later, how the Children of Israel made their choice in the decision facing them.

In a lengthy section, David ties the two stories together. I leave it to you, the reader, to do it yourself – or buy the book.

But it doesn’t end there. The stories don’t converge except in our minds as rejected Plan A. Why do they diverge? Stay tuned.

Chapter 29 – Divergence

A successful Plan A would have resulted in Pharaoh saying at the first sign:

There’s a deeper parent than me, and these Hebrews owe Him their allegiance. That parent wants them back, for His own purposes. How can I stand in the way of that?

And just as the first Pharaoh sent Egypt out to honor Jacob, he would have sent an entourage to honor this father.

In the end, Joseph’s Pharaoh didn’t just go along with the idea of the burial procession; he wanted Egypt to be part of it. He sent dignitaries, multitudes of Egyptians, a military escort of chariots and archers, to accompany the burial procession. It didn’t matter that Israel wasn’t doing things the Egyptian way. Jacob was their father, too.

Now we have a deeper insight into our question: What does it mean for God to be honored by the presence of Pharaoh’s army? God had intended to be honored in Plan A as Jacob was honored. So the chariots and archers will come and bow before Me. And honor Me.

I shall be honored through Pharaoh and all his army; through his chariots and through his archers (Exodus 14:17)

The Exodus was supposed to be a uniting of Gentile and Jew. But Pharaoh made it a dividing line in the sand. Genesis 50:9 and Exodus 14:20 show how one camp has become two camps.

Chapter 30 – The Unfinished Journey

Rabbi Fohrman concludes that the Torah was painting an Exodus that could have been a guide to us.

Judaism has always insisted that the Torah wasn’t written to be merely a history book. Instead, the Torah is meant to be a guidebook. That is what the name Torah implies: it teaches. It guides. Sometimes the Torah guides by telling us laws. Sometimes it guides by telling us stories about our past.

The Exodus is not just a story about setting slaves free and birthing a nation.

Exodus was about other things as well. It was about a Father who, like Jacob long ago, needed to make His presence known to a child. It was about a potential bechor (firstborn), who, like Joseph, had to summon reservoirs of strength to recognize that Father as his own, deepest parent. It was about a nation, Egypt, who had to recognize, like Joseph’s Pharaoh long ago, that this was their Father, too, and act accordingly.

But also, it teaches us about the future:

It will be the destiny of Jew and Gentile to one day realize the promise of that journey as it should have taken place: to march side by side and join hands, proclaiming in unison the oneness of a Father they both share. (See Isaiah 56:6-8)

Appendix A – God, Moses, and the Worst-Case Scenario

Appropriately, David starts with something I passed over in this entire book. He tells us that one of the things he is trying to teach us in this book is not to read the Bible with the end in mind. He calls that folly. Read the Bible without presupposing how it is going to end. You will find things you would otherwise have missed.

Since God foretold Moses that Pharaoh would not let Israel go at the burning bush without a strong show of force on God’s part, how can we not read the story with its ending in Plan C as a foregone conclusion? How can there even be a Plan A? Using Jonah as one example

I’d like to suggest that, strange as it may seem, the “mere” fact that the Almighty broadcasts a future occurrence to one or more human beings does not mean that those events must, of necessity, occur.

He goes on to provide some guidance from Rabbi Rambam:

Rambam writes that if the prophecy the person delivers foretells some future act of compassion, mercy or beneficence on the part of God, and this event does not materialize, then the supposed prophet is surely a charlatan, because God would never renege on a promise of good tidings. If, however, the prophecy promises bad tidings — famine, destruction, or the like — then the failure of the prophecy to materialize cannot be taken as evidence that the prophet is a liar. This is so even if the prophecy of bad tidings was given unconditionally, because, Rambam argues, there is no such thing as an unconditional promise of bad tidings; the possibility of reversal always exists, even if the prophet doesn’t explicitly state this.

Why tell Moses in the worst-case scenario if Plan A is the real plan? Because it allows for free will on the part of Pharaoh, and not to discourage Moses. If Plan A had worked out, do you think Moses would have gotten upset as Jonah did? In effect, God is saying:

Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it, no matter what. Even if everything else we try here fails, I have the ability to do this unilaterally. You need not fear a thing.

Fohrman concludes:

on rare occasions in biblical history, God may prophetically warn someone of a worst-case scenario, to help the prophet, or future generations, withstand that worst-case scenario, should it ever come to pass.

Appendix B – One Coat, Two Coats

Previously, David brought up the fact that Joseph had two coats. One reason for this is from the Torah, which says that the bechor (firstborn) should receive a double portion. And if that is true, it means that Jacob was treating Joseph as the bechor. This isn’t as unusual as it sounds since Joseph was the firstborn of Rachel – Jacob’s “1^st” wife.

However, the Torah expressly addresses this issue in Deuteronomy 21. But it has some strange phrases that don’t make a lot of sense. And those strange phrases show up in the Genesis 37:32 story. Perhaps the brothers brought the 2^nd coat to Jacob and, using the same phrasing as Deuteronomy 21:17, asked Jacob, “Shouldn’t this coat belong to Reuben?”

Rabbi Fohrman uses this to show that the Torah was declaring that Jacob considered Joseph his bechor – or firstborn.

Notes:

[1] The four sections of the Torah that command the Hebrews to place the following inside the tefillin are:

• • Kadesh (Exodus 13:1-10): The duty to remember the redemption from Egypt.
  • Vehayah Ki Yeviacha (Exodus 13:11-16): The obligation to instruct children regarding this commandment and the law of the broken necked donkey.
  • Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9): The declaration of the unity of God and the commandment to bind them.
  • Vehayah Im Shamoa (Deuteronomy 11:13-21): The assurance of reward for following the commandments.

[2] ¹³ Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck.

 

[3] Exodus 8:15, 32 (Pharoah); 9:7, 34 (passive – was hardened). 10:1 (God)

[4] Exodus 4:21; 9:12; 10:20, 27; 11:10; 14:4,8,17; (God); 7:13; 7:22; 8:19; 9:35; (passive)

[5] He notes that the burial party stopped on the east of the Jordan. He tells us that if we look at the geography, this means that they really went the long way around. It reminds us of what? The Exodus.

Waiting on God

Preface

“PREVIOUS to my leaving for England last year, I had been much impressed by the thought of how, in all our religion, personal and public, we need more of God. I had felt that we needed to train our people in their worship more to wait on God, and to make the cultivation of a deeper sense of His presence, of more direct contact with Him, of entire dependence on Him, a definite aim of our ministry.”

Murray opens this set of 31 meditations with this fact: We need more of God. John Eldredge in his book – Getting Your Life Back – tells us that we would have more of God if we gave more of ourselves to Him. These daily meditations will help you give more of yourself to God as you learn to wait on Him and Him only.

Murray gives another shot over the bow: “The great lack of our religion is, we do not know God”

Oh Lord, train us to wait on You. Train us to cultivate a deeper sense of Your presence. Train us to make more direct contact with You. Train me to be entirely dependent upon You. And Lord, help me to teach others.

“whoever does them [the ways of God] and teaches others, will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:19

“Blessed is the one who does them and teaches others.”

Day 1 WAITING ON GOD: The God of Our Salvation

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation. Psalm 62:1

Summary of the Meditation

If salvation “comes from God and is entirely His work” therefore our “first and highest duty is to wait on Him.” Waiting is the only true way to know God. Every problem we have in working out our salvation comes from a “defective knowledge and practice of waiting on God.” Murray equates waiting on God with “absolute and unceasing dependence upon God.”

Murray then tells us why there is this deep need for learning and practicing waiting on God:

The Nature of Man

• • “Man was not [created] to have in himself a fountain of life, or strength, or happiness: the ever-living and only living One was each moment to be the Communicator to him of all that he needed.”
  • “Man’s glory and blessedness was not to be independent, or dependent upon himself, but dependent on a God of such infinite riches and love. Man was to have the joy of receiving every moment out of the fullness of God.”

The Nature of God

• • “God, as Creator, formed man, to be a vessel in which He could show forth His power and goodness.”
  • God began the work of salvation, God will continue it, and God will complete it.
  • “God, as Infinite Love, delights to impart His own nature to His child as fully as He can”

Why don’t Christians know the blessedness of waiting? “Christians do not know … their own absolute poverty and helplessness, that they have no sense of the need of absolute and unceasing dependence, or of the unspeakable blessedness of continual waiting on God.”

“May God teach us the blessedness of waiting on Him.”

Father – where do I not know my own absolute poverty and helplessness. Where am I not in a position of absolute and unceasing dependence? Do I actually believe that there are unspeakable blessings of waiting on You continually?

Day 2 WAITING ON GOD: The Keynote of Life

‘I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord!’— Gen. 49: 18

Summary of the Meditation

Murray admits that we don’t know exactly what Jacob is talking about in this passage. He is prophesying over his sons’ future destiny. Clearly it is a statement of faith. He then drops this gem on us in this devotion:

God cannot part with His grace, or goodness, or strength, as an external thing that He gives us, as He gives the raindrops from heaven. No; He can only give it, and we can only enjoy it, as He works it Himself directly and unceasingly.

God’s grace comes to us – not as something dispensed from heaven – but He comes with it. This reminds me of something Paul says in Romans 8. “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, with Him, graciously give us all things.” Notice the “with Him.” God comes with all of His good gifts.

And he exhorts us, in our private and public prayers to practice waiting on God.

What holds us back? Murray says: “We hinder Him either by our indifference or by our self effort, so that He cannot do what He would. ”

Father, reveal to me my indifference. Where am I indifferent to You or Your ways? And where am I relying on my own efforts? Have thine own way O Lord.

Day 3 WAITING ON GOD: The True Place of the Creature

These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.
²⁸ When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. ESV Psalm 104:27-28

They all wait for You
To give them their food in due season.
²⁸ You give to them, they gather it up;

You open Your hand, they are satisfied with good. NASB Psalm 104:27-28

Summary of the Meditation

“Just as much as it was God’s work to create, it is His work to maintain. As little as the creature could create itself, is it left to provide for itself? The whole creation is ruled by the one unalterable law of— waiting upon God!”

Murray is telling us that God does not leave us to fend for ourselves. He provides. Our job is to wait on Him. That can easily be misinterpreted to say: God will bring me a job. I just need to wait for Him to do it. Clearly Murray isn’t saying that. He goes on to say that the word wait in Hebrew is used to inspect a wall. So waiting in not passive. It is actively looking. Looking for the job that God will provide. But not being anxious about it. He will provide. I will pursue – actively inspecting the walls of employment.

“And just as this is the very place and nature of God, to be unceasingly the supplier of every want in the creature, so the very place and nature of the creature is nothing but this—to wait upon God and receive from Him what He alone can give, what He delights to give.” … If once our eyes are opened to this precious truth, all Nature will become a preacher, reminding us of the relationship which, founded in creation, is now taken up in grace”

Papa, I know my place in the scheme of things. I know Your place. Yet I so often put it all on me. I put all the weight on me to get the car through inspection. I put all the weight on me to help Barbara through these difficult health issues. O Lord, help me to wait on You who desires – nay delights to give us good things. May I be like that little bird with my mouth wide open to be filled!

Day 4 WAITING ON GOD: For Supplies

The Lord upholds all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.
¹⁵ The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season. Psalm 145:14-15

Summary of the Meditation

“What the universe and the animal creation does unconsciously, God’s people are to do intelligently and voluntarily. … He is to prove that there is nothing more noble or more blessed in the exercise of our free will than to use it in waiting upon God.”

Murray starts the meditation by encouraging us to pattern our waiting after the animal kingdom and an army. For the animal kingdom, we need to see God’s faithfulness.  Then, Murray uses the analogy of the army that doesn’t move forward until it is fully supplied. In the same way we are to not move forward until we have received the grace and strength we need to move forward.

Next he addresses how our praying should be shaped by waiting. He says that even when there is much praying, there is often very little waiting:

“In praying we are often occupied with ourselves, with our own needs, and our own efforts in the presentation of them. In waiting upon God, the first thought is of the God upon whom we wait. We enter His presence, and feel we need just to be quiet, so that He, as God, can overshadow us with Himself. God longs to reveal Himself, to fill us with Himself. Waiting on God gives Him time in His own way and divine power to come to us.”

How do we do it?

“Just be still before Him, and allow His Holy Spirit to waken and stir up in your soul the childlike disposition of absolute dependence and confident expectation.”

Jesus, show me where I am relying on my own broken cistern. My own supply.

Show me where there is much praying and very little waiting and then help me to wait.

Day 5 WAITING ON GOD: For Instruction

⁴ Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
⁵ Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long. Psalm 25:4-5

Summary of the Meditation

“I SPOKE of an army, on the point of entering an enemy’s territories, answering the question as to the cause of delay: ‘Waiting for supplies.’ The answer might also have been: ‘Waiting for instructions,’ or, ‘Waiting for orders.’”

Murray asserts that the need for instructions is as important as supplies for the army and to us.

“The writer [of Psalm 25] knew and loved God’s law exceedingly, and meditated in that law day and night. But he knew that this was not enough. He knew that for the right spiritual apprehension of the truth, and for the right personal application of it to his own peculiar circumstances, he needed a direct divine teaching.”

Cessassionists would disagree  and could just as easily say:

⁴ Make me to know your ways from Your written word, O Lord;
teach me your paths as I read the Scriptures.
⁵ Lead me in your truth and teach me from the Bible,

But Murray is clear that this instruction is to come directly from God.  And how does he say that it comes?

“And what is needed in us to receive this guidance? One thing: waiting for instructions,  waiting on God. ‘On Thee do I wait all the day.’  We want in our times of prayer to give clear expression to our sense of need, and our faith in His help. We want definitely to become conscious of our ignorance as to what God’s way may be, and the need of the Divine light shining within us…”

And the emphasis is on the “all the day.”

Lord, help me not just to wait on you in my quiet times. But all the day long. In all that I do. Not to become crippled in doing but empowered in my doing. And Lord, I need to hear directly from You. Be it through illumination by You from Your word or through others or through the still small voice of Your Spirit, I ask for You to speak.

Day 6 WAITING ON GOD: For all the saints

Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame;
they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Psalm 25:6 (ESV)

Summary of the Meditation

Murray asks us to turn our attention and prayers away from ourselves and towards all the saints who are waiting.  “how many there are, sick and weary and solitary, to whom it is as if their prayers are not answered, and who sometimes begin to fear that their hope will be put to shame. And then, how many servants of God, ministers or missionaries, teachers or workers, of various name, whose hopes in their work have been disappointed, and whose longing for power and blessing remains unsatisfied.” He tells us that this is a way to bear one another’s burden and so fulfill the law of Christ.

How do we do that? Murray teaches by example:

Blessed Father! we humbly beseech Thee, Let none that wait on Thee be ashamed; no, not one. Some are weary, and the time of waiting appears long. And some are feeble, and scarcely know how to wait. And some are so entangled in the effort of their prayers and their work, they think that they can find no time to wait continually. Father! teach us all how to wait. Teach us to think of each other, and pray for each other. Teach us to think of Thee, the God of all waiting ones. Father! let none that wait on Thee be ashamed. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Father, bring to mind those who are waiting for You. I seem to get caught up with just the few who are immediately in front of me. But I know there are many. Open my mind and my heart towards them. And may I pray for them.

Day 7 WAITING ON GOD: A Plea in Prayer

May integrity and uprightness preserve me,
for I wait for you. Psalm 25:21

Summary of the Meditation

Murray encourages us to hold to and claim this promise from Psalm 25 that we reflected on yesterday: “none who wait for you shall be put to shame.”

Then, based on this Psalm, Murray calls for something I cannot abide with:

If we draw near to God, it must be with a true heart. There must be perfect integrity, wholeheartedness, in our dealing with God. As we read in the next Psalm (26: 1, 11), ‘Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity,’ ‘As for me, I will walk in my integrity,’ there must be perfect uprightness or single-heartedness before God. As it is written, ‘His righteousness is for the upright in heart.’ The soul must know that it allows nothing sinful, nothing doubtful; if it is indeed to meet the Holy One, and receive His full blessing, it must be with a heart wholly and singly given up to His will.

If to draw near to God requires: a true heart; perfect integrity; wholeheartedness; allow nothing sinful, nothing doubtful – we are all doomed. If God judges us by the integrity of our walk, there is no hope. He is taking David’s Old Covenant theology of works and law and proof-texting this idea. The scripture is clear – “there is none righteous, no not one” and “our righteousness is as filthy rags.” You cannot have both.

So what is going on in these Psalms? The more we draw near to God, the more we see our need to be like Him – to walk in integrity, to appropriate the imputed righteousness from Jesus’ finished work. And the more we appropriate that imputed righteousness, the more our heart longs to walk in that way.

Murray does acknowledge that our first attempts at walking in integrity may fail, but he strongly implies that it is possible. He turns these failures around  and sees them as a means of blessing that waiting brings about.

A soul cannot seek close fellowship with God, or attain the abiding consciousness of waiting on Him all the day, without a very honest and entire surrender to all His will.

So the blessing in our failures is the open door to honest and entire surrender to Him.

He encourages us to specify exactly what we are waiting for:

It is good that we sometimes count up to ourselves exactly what the things are we are waiting for, and as we say definitely of each of them, ‘On Thee do I wait,’ we shall be emboldened to claim the answer, ‘For on Thee do I wait.’

What will motivate our waiting and awaken our attention to wait on God?

It is the presence of a beloved or a dreaded master that wakens up the whole attention of the servant who waits on him. It is the presence of God, as He can in Christ by His Holy Spirit make Himself known, and keep the soul under its covering and shadow, that will awaken and strengthen the true waiting spirit.

Lord, as I spend time in Your presence, awaken my whole attention to expectant waiting.

Day 8 WAITING ON GOD: Strong and of Good Courage

¹³ I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
¹⁴ Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:13-14

Summary of the Meditation

The Psalmist tells us that he would have fainted had it not been for his belief that he would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Lord, we can grow weary (and faint) with all that is going on around us. But, do we really believe that we will see Your goodness? Do I really believe that I will see Your goodness in my family? In today’s troubles? Do I really believe that You will make a way for me in every situation I face – TODAY?

Am I waiting? Because that is the assurance of things hoped for. The evidence of things unseen. Do I believe that my quiet and confident waiting will be blessed and result in blessedness?  Do I have the courage to believe that God will hear and help? Murray tells us:

one of the deepest secrets of [waiting on God’s] blessedness and blessing, is a quiet, confident persuasion that it is not in vain; courage to believe that God will hear and help; that we are waiting on a God who never could disappoint His people. … Is waiting on God a work so difficult, that, for that too, such words are needed, ‘Be strong, and let your heart take courage’? Yes, indeed.  … The Psalmist says – Be strong and take courage. We normally think that applies to powerful and dangerous endeavors. But no! We must be strong and take courage just to wait!

Murray tells us we need to be strong and courageous to wait because we face:

• • Enemies before whom we are impotent
  • Spiritual needs which are basically unseen
  • Impossible tasks (for humans)
  • Supernatural realities totally foreign to us
  • The kind of relationship with God with which we are unaccustomed
  • A God who often appears to hide Himself

We who have to wait are often tempted to fear that we do not wait aright, that our faith is too feeble, that our desire is not as upright or as earnest as it should be, that our surrender is not complete. Our heart may well faint and fail.

Murray’s solution:

We ought to make up our minds to this, that nothing was ever so sure, as that waiting on God will bring us untold and unexpected blessing. … If you say that you are afraid of deceiving yourself with vain hope, because you do not see or feel any warrant in your present state for such special expectations, my answer is, it is God, who is the warrant for your expecting great things. … God’s love is just His delight to impart Himself and His blessedness to His children.

He gives us this analogy:

As a feeble, sickly invalid is brought out into the sunshine to let its warmth go through him, come with all that is dark and cold in you into the sunshine of God’s holy, omnipotent love, and sit and wait there, with the one thought: Here I am, in the sunshine of His love.

Lord, I need your strength and your courage to face what I am facing. You spoke to me last week that I don’t really believe that You “will make a way where there seems to be no way.” Then amazingly, you made a way in a situation where there seemed to be no way. May this time of waiting grow my faith and stamina; my strength and courage.

Day 9 WAITING ON GOD: With the Heart

Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord! Psalm 31:24

Summary of the Meditation

How do we wait on God? With our mind or our will? No, Murray says:

It is with the heart we must wait upon God. ‘Let your heart take courage.’ All our waiting depends upon the state of the heart.

Most of us, “know not how infinitely greater the heart is than the mind.”

People imagine that if they are occupied with the truth, the spiritual life will as a matter of course be strengthened. And this is by no means the case. … My mind is utterly impotent in creating or maintaining the spiritual life within me: the heart must wait on God for Him to work it in me.

Pastor Andre taught this morning that the Hebrew understanding of the heart includes the intellect.  Here are some quotes from  Pursue God :

• • In biblical Hebrew, the heart is where we feel feelings and think thoughts. In fact, ancient Israelites didn’t even have a word for “brain” that we know of. Jeremiah 15:16, Proverbs 14:33
  • The heart is also where we make choices. So the concept of the “heart” is best understood as the “inner person” – the seat of our mind (thoughts), emotions (feelings), and will (intentions). Psalm 37:4, Proverbs 4:23, James 1:14-15

And another from Torah Apologetics:

So the heart is the seat of the mind, it deals with thoughts and intentions. Just as it is used the very first time in Gen. 6, describing the “intent of the heart” of man. It is not the seat of emotions.

So, with this understanding we need to better understand where Murray is going with this. Murray goes on to say that we cultivate the religion of the mind rather than the religion of the heart. He quotes Proverbs 3:5-6 about trusting with our heart and not leaning on our own understanding. He makes an analogy to the physical world. Our mind plans the food it needs to eat but it is the body’s other organs that obtain the nutrients. In the same way, our minds obtain the information about God’s ways and tell me what God’s word says. But it is with the heart that we believe.  In the same way:

And so the Christian needs ever, when he has studied or heard God’s word, to cease from his thoughts, to put no trust in them, and to awaken his heart to open itself before God, and seek the living fellowship with Him.

Here is how he says we are to do this:

I confess the impotence of all my thoughts and efforts, and set myself still to bow my heart before Him in holy silence, and to trust Him to renew and strengthen His own work in me.

Lord, I am not sure that I can discern the difference between waiting with my mind and my heart. Or my will and my heart. Based on the Hebrew meaning of heart, I am even more unsure. Teach me O Lord.

 Day 10 WAITING ON GOD: In Fear and Hope

¹⁸ Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
¹⁹ that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.

²⁰ Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
²¹ For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
²² Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you. Psalm 33:18-22

Summary of the Meditation

Where is our focus? What captures our attention? Murray tells us where God’s attention is pointed and where ours should be:

GOD’S eye is upon His people: their eye is upon Him. In waiting upon God, our eye, looking up to Him, meets His looking down upon us. This is the blessedness of waiting upon God, that it takes our eyes and thoughts away from ourselves, even our needs and desires, and occupies us with our God.

Next Murray points out the apparent contradiction in the Psalm in the Hebrew parallelism – Verse 18 is saying the same thing twice. Fearing God and Hoping in God are two things cut from the same cloth. Murray address this by showing us how many apparent contradictions there are in our understanding of God:

Fear and hope (vs 18) are generally thought to be in conflict with each other; in the presence and worship of God they are found side by side in perfect and beautiful harmony. And this because in God Himself all apparent contradictions are reconciled. Righteousness and peace, judgment and mercy, holiness and love, infinite power and infinite gentleness, a majesty that is exalted above all heaven, and a condescension that bows very low, meet and kiss each other.

Another way to say this is that all parallel lines that never meet in our world come together at  infinity. All apparent contradictions come together in the infinite heart of God.

How then, do we get to that point of waiting for Him in hope and fearing Him? It certainly helps to define what we mean by fearing God. Murray doesn’t give us a  definition. I have attempted it in my blog about The Fear of the Lord .  There I attempt to describe exactly how the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Learning to work with electrical power requires a healthy fear and respect for its dangerous power. That is how it is the beginning of wisdom.  In that definition, Fear and Hope are not even apparent contradictions. Fear leads us to know the one we fear. And knowing God more, will give us more hope than we could ever imagine.

But I digress. Murray sees fear in the more traditional sense and he ties fear and hope together this way:

The lower we bow [because of our fear of Him], the deeper we feel we have nothing to hope in but His mercy. The lower we bow, the nearer God will come, and make our hearts bold to trust Him.

The Psalmist is realistic about the dangers in life:

“¹⁹ that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.”

But Murray and the Psalmist are clear:

Not to prevent the danger of death and famine— this is often needed to stir up to wait on Him— but to deliver and to keep alive.

The danger of death and famine are to stir up our need to wait on You Lord. Finally, Murray’s plea:

Children of God! will you not learn to sink down in entire helplessness and impotence, and in stillness to wait and see the salvation of God?

Father, continue to cultivate a healthy fear of You in me. You are an untamed lion.  And may that fear lead me to pursue You and in pursuing You, learn more about waiting on You.

Day 11 WAITING ON GOD: Patiently

Be still [Rest] before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
over the man who carries out evil devices!

⁸ Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
⁹ For the evildoers shall be cut off,
but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Psalm 37:7-9

Summary of the Meditation

Do you want to cultivate a Christ-like character? Here are Murray’s thoughts:

And nowhere is there a better place for cultivating or displaying it than in waiting on God. There we discover how impatient we are, and what our impatience means.

We think we are impatient with circumstances and other people, but ultimately he says, we are impatient with Him. Waiting on God opens our eyes to His wise and sovereign will

And to [helps us to] see that the sooner and the more completely we yield absolutely to it, the more surely His blessing can come to us.

All the spiritual disciplines have great value. But they can go no farther than this, that they point the way and prepare us in humility to look to and to depend alone upon God Himself, and in patience to await His good time and mercy. The waiting is to teach us our absolute dependence upon God’s mighty working, and to make us in perfect patience place ourselves at His disposal.

How do we develop this patience?

It is resting in the Lord, in His will, His promise, His faithfulness, and His love, that makes patience easy. And the resting in Him is nothing but being silent unto Him, still before Him.

Finally, in our patiently waiting:

Seek not only the help, the gift, you need; seek Himself; wait for Him.

Papa, help me to see that all of my impatience is ultimately directed at You. Show me where I am impatient.  Help me to rest in You; in Your will and Your promises. Finally Lord, may I not seek you as a means to an end but as the end itself.

Day 12 WAITING ON GOD: Keeping His Way

Wait for the Lord and keep his way,
and he will exalt you to inherit the land;
you will look on when the wicked are cut off. Psalm 37:34

Summary of the Meditation

Murray shoots right over the bow right out of the gate: If we are not walking in His ways, we cannot expect to find Him. I fear that Murray is building too much from the Old Testament Psalms’ works ethic. How can we find Him when we are not born again – yet we do. Or as Paul says: He finds us. Then he states it in a different way: “We may be sure that God is never and nowhere to be found but in His ways.” Ah! I find God in the way He wants to reveal Himself.

He notes that the Psalm speaks of both the inner-life (“waiting”) and the outer-life (“keeping His ways”). Both are needed. And they need to be in “harmony.” The “inner [waiting] must be the inspiration and the strength for the outer.”

Here is a statement about God’s economy: “Do what God asks you to do; God will do more than you can ask Him to do.”

Murray also further refines his understanding of keeping His ways: “Give up your whole being to God without reserve and without doubt; He will prove Himself God to you, and work in you that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ.”

Here are ways he suggests that we can keep His ways:

• • As you know them in the Word
  • As you have learned them from nature
  • As they are providentially pointed out
  • As directed by the Holy Spirit

Unlike a works mentality, Murray concludes by saying that as we are content to receive all that God has in store for us: “’Wait on the Lord, and keep His ways’ will be command and promise in one.”

Papa, I know that I fall short in many ways – not just outwardly but inwardly in my waiting. Yet You remain faithful.  Thank You for teaching me Your ways.  I am so grateful that You allow me to find You even after I have strayed. Your mercy never fails.

Day 13 WAITING ON GOD: For more than we know

“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.
⁸ Deliver me from all my transgressions.
Do not make me the scorn of the fool! Psalm 39:7-8

Summary of the Meditation

Do you ever reach the point in your waiting on God that you think: “What do I really want Him to do? What exactly am I waiting on Him for?” Although this may feel disorienting, Murray actually thinks it is a good place to be in our waiting.

God is able to do for us exceeding abundantly above what we ask or think, and we are in danger of limiting Him, when we confine our desires and prayers to our own thoughts of them.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they doubted that God could set a table in the wilderness.

Yes. God had done it: He could do it again. But when the thought came of God doing something new, they limited Him; their expectation could not rise beyond their past experience, or their own thoughts of what was possible.

Are we only waiting on a repeat performance or are we waiting for a world premier?

Let us believe that every promise of God we plead has a divine meaning, infinitely beyond our thoughts of them. … let us therefore cultivate the habit of waiting on God, not only for what we think we need, but for all His grace and power are ready to do for us. In every true prayer there are two hearts in exercise. The one is your heart, with its little, dark, human thoughts of what you need and God can do. The other is God’s great heart, with its infinite, its divine purpose of blessing.

Murray believes that seeing the feebleness of our requests and the little dark heart we have and God’s gigantic heart “is what waiting on God is meant to teach you. …Wait on God to do for you more than you can ask or think.”

May it not be that you have had your own thoughts about the way or the extent of God’s doing it, and have never waited on the God of glory, according to the riches of His glory, to do for you what has not entered the heart of man to conceive? … you hardly know what you have to expect. I pray you, be of good courage— this ignorance is often one of the best signs.

In “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis said:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Papa, show me the littleness of my expectations. Show me where my desires are too weak. I see that in me. Show me where my waiting is not the expectant waiting that You deserve. Show me how I am content with trifles and You want to give me Yourself. Where am I limiting You and what You can do in my waiting?

Day 14 WAITING ON GOD:  The Way to the New Song

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
² He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
³ He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord. Psalm 40:1-3

Summary of the Meditation

This meditation has more to do with Patience than a new song. Murray sees patience as:

• • foreign to our self-confident nature
  • indispensable in our waiting upon God
  • an essential element of true faith

What is patience. In the English:

The word patience is derived from the Latin word for suffering. It suggests the thought of being under the constraint of some power from which we want to be free.

In waiting on God it is of infinite consequence that we not only submit, because we are compelled to, but because we lovingly and joyfully consent to be in the hands of our blessed Father.

Here are some more of Murray’s insights on Patience.  It:

• • Is our highest blessedness
  • Is our highest grace
  • Honors God
  • Gives Him time to have His way with us
  • Is the highest expression of our faith in His goodness and faithfulness.
  • Brings the soul perfect rest in the assurance that God is carrying on His work.
  • Is the token of our full consent that God should deal with us in such a way and time as He thinks best.
  • Is our losing our self-will

Again, more about patience. It is:

• • The great stillness of soul before God that sinks into its own helplessness and waits for Him to reveal Himself;
  • The deep humility that is afraid to let its own will or its own strength work aught except as God works to will and to do;
  • The meekness that is content to be and to know nothing except as God gives His light;
  • The entire resignation of the will that only wants to be a vessel in which His holy will can move and mold
  • A grace

All these elements of perfect patience are not found at once.

if we are to wait on God in all patience: we need to be strengthened with all God’s might, and that according to the measure of His glorious power. … it is in the course of our feeble and very imperfect waiting that God Himself by His hidden power strengthens us and works out in us the patience of the saints, the patience of Christ Himself. …Patient waiting upon God brings a rich reward; the deliverance is sure; God Himself will put a new song into your mouth. … [If] you sometimes feel as if patience is not your gift, then remember it is God’s gift, and take that prayer (2 Thess. 3: 5 R.V.): ‘The Lord direct your hearts into the patience of Christ.’

Lord, You were patient in Your waiting for Your mission to be carried out. But You waited – when Your time was not yet at hand. Help me to learn to wait patiently. And then put a new song in my heart whereby I may sing Your praises.

Day 15 WAITING ON GOD: For His Counsel

But they soon forgot his works;
they did not wait for his counsel. Psalm 106 :13

Summary of the Meditation

Murray opens this meditation by remembering the three times the Israelites failed in Canaan during the time of Joshua: Going up against AI; making a covenant with the Gibeonites; and settling rather than taking the whole inheritance. All three were because they did not wait for his counsel. We are all in danger of this. Hearing God’s word, but then doing it our own way without waiting for God’s counsel.

Our whole relation to God is rooted in this, that His will is to be done in us and by us as it is in heaven. He has promised to make known His will to us by His Spirit, the Guide into all truth. And our position is to be that of waiting for His counsel, as the only guide of our thoughts and actions. In our church worship, in our prayer-meetings, in our conventions, in all our gatherings as managers, or directors, or committees, or helpers in any part of the work for God, our first object ought ever to be to ascertain the mind of God.

Ah! But how to do that? So little is written on learning to listen to God together.

I will let Andrew pour his heart to us on this issue of our need to learn to hear God together:

The great danger in all such assemblies is that in our consciousness of having our Bible, and our past experience of God’s leading, and our sound creed, and our honest wish to do God’s will, we trust in these, and do not realize that with every step we need and may have a heavenly guidance. There may be elements of God’s will, applications of God’s word, experiences of the close presence and leading of God, manifestations of the power of His Spirit, of which we know nothing as yet. God may be willing,

God is willing to open up these to the souls who are intently set upon allowing Him to have His way entirely, and who are willing in patience to wait for His making it known. When we come together praising God for all He has done and taught and given, we may at the same time be limiting Him by not expecting greater things.

A minister has no more solemn duty than teaching people to wait upon God.

More stillness of soul to realize God’s presence; more consciousness of ignorance of what God’s great plans may be; more faith in the certainty that God has greater things to show us; more longing that He Himself may be revealed in new glory: these must be the marks of the assemblies of God’s saints, if they would avoid the reproach, ‘They waited not for His counsel.’

Father, I don’t understand why this is not more well understood. Give me insight and help me to lead where You are leading on this issue.

Day 16 WAITING ON GOD: For His Light in the Heart.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
⁶ my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning. Psalm 130:5-6

 Summary of the Meditation

Who is it that waits for the morning light? Those in darkness. The watchman protecting the city waiting for a clearer view of the enemy. The shipwrecked sailor.  Murray tells us:

Our waiting on God can have no higher object than simply having His light shine on us, and in us, and through us, all the day.

What is that light? Murray answers:

‘The light of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.’ … Our heart is meant to have that light filling and gladdening it all the day. …But can we indeed enjoy it all the day? We can.

And how do we enjoy the light of God’s glory all day? Murray says that it is analogous to the flora and fauna. What do they do to enjoy the light of the sun?

They do nothing; they simply bask in the sunshine… The only difference between nature and grace is this, that what the trees and the flowers do unconsciously, as they drink in the blessing of the light, is to be with us a voluntary and a loving acceptance. Faith, simple faith in God’s word and love, is to be the opening of the eyes, the opening of the heart, to receive and enjoy the unspeakable glory of His grace.

Sometimes, the light reveals the pain of sin within. He continues:

The first beginnings of light may be just enough to discover the darkness, and painfully to humble you on account of sin. Can you not trust the light to expel the darkness? Do believe it will. Just bow, even now, in stillness before God, and wait on Him to shine into you. Say, in humble faith; God is light, infinitely brighter and more beautiful than that of the sun. God is light. The Father, the eternal, inaccessible, and incomprehensible light.

And this light is something we can trust.

What would I think of a sun that could not shine? what shall I think of a God that does not shine? No, God shines!

Shine your light upon me this day. May I walk in the light of Your love and grace all the day long.

Day 17 WAITING ON GO: In Times of Darkness

Isaiah 8:17 ¹⁷ I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.

Summary of the Meditation

The questions that this meditation begs is: Does God really hide his face? When we have the 24/7 Holy Spirit, is it possible to hide His face? What does it mean when we say “God is hiding his face.” Is His face the same as His presence? In human relations we can be present but not looking at each other face to face. Is that what is going on? Jesus had the Holy Spirit and yet the face of God was hidden. But isn’t that a different situation when the sin of the whole world is laid upon Jesus?

Murray seems to take a different approach and doesn’t directly answer the question. . He picks up from the Scripture that the Prophet is waiting on God who is hiding His face from Israel. And from the context, the people of Israel were in rebellion during Isaiah’s day. He says that we should use our access to God to intercede for “our less favored brethren.” Those who are less favored according to Murray:

• • Have little joy or spiritual life in the preaching and fellowship
  • Are in much error and worldliness
  • Seek after human wisdom and counsel
  • Trust in ordinances and observances
  • Have little power for conversion or edification
  • Have little of the Spirit working in their midst
  • Trust too much in men and money
  • Have too much formality and self-indulgence
  • Have too little faith and prayer
  • Have too little love and humility
  • Have too little of the spirit of the crucified Jesus
  • Have nominal profession

These are those with whom God is hiding His face. So Murray doesn’t really answer the question except by saying the ones from whom God is hiding His face are those who are hiding their face from Him. And his call to us is to intercede and wait on God for these less favored brethren.

There is a strong emphasis in this meditation, for us to be waiting on God for those who are in all kinds of error or who are lukewarm.  Clearly the people of Israel during Isaiah’s time were in great darkness.

Papa, who is walking in darkness right now that I need to be waiting on You for? With whom and for whom, can I be waiting on You?

Day 18 WAITING ON GOD: To Reveal Himself

It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” Isaiah 25:9

Summary of the Meditation

Murray identifies two precious thoughts in the words of the prophet Isaiah:

• • Revealing language from God’s people who are united in their waiting on Him
  • The blessing of united waiting on God is that God reveals Himself

He identifies (again) the things that are hindering our united waiting:

• • There are evils in the church to which no human wisdom is equal
  • Ritualism, rationalism, formalism, and worldliness are robbing the church of its power
  • Culture, money and pleasure are threatening our spiritual life
  • Infidelity, iniquity, and wretchedness appear more powerful than we can cope with.

But he tells us that promises of God and the power of the Holy Spirit are more than enough to meet these challenges if we will but wait on Him for them. What does united waiting on God look like for God’s people? The same as it does with an individual. It would mean developing and having:

• • A deeper conviction that God must and will do all
  • A more humble and abiding entrance into our deep helplessness
  • Entire and unceasing dependence upon Him.
  • A more living consciousness that the essential thing is, giving God His place of honor and of power;
  • A confident expectation that God will, by His Spirit, give the secret of His acceptance and presence and at the right time, a revelation of His saving power

What would be the aim of this united waiting on Him

• • It would bring everyone there under a deep sense of God’s presence
  • It would mean that everyone would leave with a sure knowledge that they have met with God Himself
  • They would leave knowing that they have left everything in His hands and that now is a time of waiting

What can leadership do to usher us into God’s presence:

“The godly minister has no more difficult, no more solemn, no more blessed task, than to lead his people out to meet God, and, before ever he preaches, to bring each one into contact with Him.”

Waiting before God, and  waiting on God, are the one condition of God showing His presence.

He pictures it working as follows:

A company of believers gathered with the one purpose, helping each other by little intervals of silence, to wait on God alone, opening the heart for whatever God may have of new discoveries of evil, of His will, of new openings in work or methods of work, would soon have reason to say, ‘ Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, He shall save us: this is the Lord ; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.’ ‘My soul, wait thou only upon God!’

Make us at our church such a people who wait on You in a united fashion.

Day 19 WAITING ON GOD: As a God of Judgement

‘Yea, in the way of Thy judgments, O Lord, have we waited for Thee: . . . for when Thy judgments are on the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.’—Isa. 26:8,9.

‘The Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for Him.’—Isa. 30:18.

Summary of the Meditation

Andrew begins by showing how God is a God of both mercy and judgment – exhibited by the Exodus; the flood; the expelling of the Canaanites and others. Judgement punishes sin; mercy saves the sinner. His point is that as we wait on God, His holy presence will stir up and discover hidden sin, bring us very low as we see the sinful nature within, our heart’s true opposition to God’s ways and our inability to walk in them.  He tells us not to be surprised as we begin to wait on Him because we will only discover more of our otherness from God.  “Wait on God, in the faith that His tender mercy is working out in you His redemption in the midst of judgment: wait for Him, He will be gracious to thee.”

There is a second and more solemn thought he brings up. As we experience the judgements of God, we are to realize that there are thousands of our brethren who will face this judgment. Are we not to warn them?

He doesn’t explicitly pick up on how we learn righteousness when God’s judgments are on the earth.

Finally, the meditation would read in a very different way if we took the Hebrew definition for the word judgments מִשְׁפָט mishpat as “the act of deciding a case” or the “process, procedure, and litigation before judges.”  We should be waiting on the completion of the trial when the case is decided – justice poured out. Murray takes the traditional approach to God’s judgements – his revealing of and punishment for our sins. But “waiting for His judgements” is more accurately seen as Isaiah waiting for God to bring justice. That casts a different light on the text for this morning.

Lord, I am waiting on You to set all things right. For bringing justice to this world. I long for justice in the wrongs done to me by my friends. I know that I wait with others for justice – especially in the persecuted church. May this waiting open my eyes to You and Your ways.

Day 20 WAITING ON GOD: Who waits on us

‘And therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you; and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for Him.’—Isa. 30:18

Summary of the Meditation

God waits for us more than we wait for Him. Let that sink down into our very marrow. Andrew claims that:

The vision of Him waiting on us, will give new impulse and inspiration to our waiting upon Him. It will give an unspeakable confidence that our waiting cannot be in vain. If He waits for us, then we may be sure that we are more than welcome; that He rejoices to find those He has been seeking for.

And what does God’s waiting look like? Murray says the best comparison is that of a Father waiting for his child to come to him; to come back home. “He waits with all of the longings of a father’s heart.” And how does that help us? Murray tells us:

“Yes, connect every exercise, every breath of the life of waiting, with faith’s vision of your God waiting for you.”

But wait! How can He be waiting for me when I have been waiting so long for Him? Murray tells us:

“you ask, how is it, if He waits to be gracious, that even after I come and wait upon Him, He does not give the help I seek, but waits on longer and longer?”

Two answers:

• • God is a wise husbandman, ‘who waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and has long patience for it.’ He cannot gather the fruit until it is ripe. He knows when we are ready. … God waited four thousand years, until the fullness of time, before He sent His Son: our times are in His hands: He will avenge His elect speedily: He will make haste for our help, and not delay one hour too long.
  • God is more than the blessing; and our being kept waiting on Him is the only way for us to learn to find our life and joy in Himself.

Murray describes us as ladies-in-waiting for the Queen. What a privilege! What joy in serving the sovereign!

Finally, how blessed it is when the waiting God meets with His waiting servant!

So brothers and sisters: “let waiting be our work, as it is His.”

Papa, I need to recognize that You have been waiting on me for a long time. In what ways are you  waiting on me today?

Day 21 WAITING ON GOD: The Almighty One

They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with eagle wings; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.’—Isa. 40: 31.

Summary of the Meditation

Murray starts with a great insight.

Waiting always partakes of the character of our thoughts of the one on whom we wait.

In other words, what we think about God will shape the way we wait. Is God a cruel taskmaster? We will wait for the other shoe to drop. Do we think of Him as capricious? Then we will wait not knowing what to expect this time. And so on. But oh what a God we wait on. Faithful, true and merciful.

This is the fertile ground out of which springs this much quoted verse from Isaiah.  God is the Almighty and Everlasting one. And because Isaiah saw God in this way, he saw how waiting on Him will produce strength and endurance.

Where does the eagle soar? In the highest heavens. We are meant to live in the heavenlies. Seated with God. “You are born of God. You have the eagles’ wings. You may not have known it: you may not have used them; but God can and will teach you to use them.”

We are taught to use our eagle wings in the same way an eaglet learns.

He stirs up your nest. He disappoints your hopes. He brings down your confidence. He makes you fear and tremble, as all your strength fails, and you feel utterly weary and helpless. And all the while He is spreading His strong wings for you to rest your weakness on, and offering His everlasting Creator-strength to work in you. And all He asks is that you should sink down in your weariness and wait on Him; and allow Him in His Jehovah-strength to carry you as you ride upon the wings of His Omnipotence.

Papa, Everlasting and Almighty one. Stir up my nest until I learn to wait on You. Reveal my disappointed hopes. Where am I confident in myself? Lord, what would it look like today for me to ride upon Your wings?

Day 22 WAITING ON GOD: It’s Certainty of Blessing

‘Thou shalt know that I am the Lord; for they shall not be ashamed that wait for Me.’ —Isa. 49:23.

‘Blessed are all they that wait for Him.’ —Isa. 30:18.

Summary of the Meditation

Murray chides and challenges us with the fact that we are so slow of learning “that this blessed waiting must and can be as the very breath of our life, a continuous resting in God’s presence and His love, an unceasing yielding of ourselves for Him to perfect His work in us.” And with that slowness is also fear – fear that it may not be true.  “Let us listen to God’s answer, until every fear is banished, and we send back to heaven the words God speaks, Yes, Lord, we believe what You say: ‘All they that wait for Me shall not be ashamed.’ ‘Blessed are all they that wait for Him.’”

Both of these passages in Isaiah point to a time in history when God’s people were in dire straits and there was no possible way out. Do we believe God’s word to them for our situation. No disappointment is possible!  If all we had was a vague sense that God was going to deliver us, we would despair. But we have God’s promises. And we need to “wait before Him, until He Himself reveals to us what His promises mean, and in the promises reveals Himself in His hidden glory!” Let’s not let the depth of the meaning of these promises pass us by. And God Himself comes with all of these promises. In the midst of our deepest trouble, a simple word directly from God can calm the storm. “Peace! Be still my son [or daughter].” That is enough to stop the raging sea within.

What place does waiting have in our personal life? The measure of its faith or power is not because we have beautiful visions of what God can do or even that we speak eloquently of it. “No; it is what we really know of God in our personal experience, conquering the enemies within, reigning and ruling, revealing Himself in His Holiness and Power in our inmost being.”  And the blessing is present even while we wait. Because what we have is Him even while we wait for the fulfillment of what we are waiting for.

“the Everlasting God meets, in the greatness and the tenderness of His love, each waiting child, to shine in his heart ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ Read these words again, until your heart learns to know what God waits to do”

Father, help me to reflect upon our history together. You have conquered enemies within and have ruled and reigned in my life. You have revealed Yourself in my inmost being. Thank you that You come with all of Your promises.

Day 23 WAITING ON GOD: For Unlooked for Things

‘For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him.’—Isa. 64:4.

From of old no one has heard
or perceived by the ear,
no eye has seen a God besides you,
who acts for those who wait for him. ESV

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”— 1 Corinthians 2:9

From of old we have not heard, neither have our eyes seen a God beside thee, and thy works which thou wilt perform to them that wait for mercy. Brenton’s LXX

Summary of the Meditation

Murray highlights the difference between the RV and AV translations. The RV (and ESV)  – no one has seen a God that works; The AV (and Paul in 1^st Corinthians) – no one has seen the work God will do. Although he chooses the AV to concentrate on, he tells us that they both tell us that if we wait, things (God – RV/ESV or God’s hand – AV) will be revealed to us that we cannot conceive. (Notice that the LXX has both!).

My bigger question (since I think the work of God and God Himself are pretty inseparable and so the difference makes no difference) why does Paul use love Him vs waits for Him? This amazing revelation comes to those who wait – or those who love Him. Andrew doesn’t address this at all. I think it might be saying – to wait on Him is to love Him.

Murray concentrates this meditation on that God alone knows what He can do for His waiting people.  He points us to the preceding verses in Isaiah as to how desperate the situation was. And God knows we need this kind of revelation in the church. Murray says – look at the church. We do His work using our wisdom; we demonstrate little of the Spirit’s power in what we do; we don’t manifest the unity that will draw people to Himself; how little we demonstrate the holiness God calls for; and how little the world sees of men and women in Christ and Christ in them.

How can we reverse this sad state in the church and in our hearts. You guessed it. Waiting on God. And what should we wait for?  “We must desire and believe, we must ask and expect, that God will do unlooked-for things. We must set our faith on a God of whom men do not know what He has prepared for them that wait for Him. The wonder-doing God, who can surpass all our expectations, must be the God of our confidence.” And if we take Paul’s version of this quote, these things have been revealed by the Spirit.

Lord, I know my vision of what you can do and what you will do and what you have done is very limited. Reveal to me your heart.

Day 24 WAITING ON GOD: To Know His Goodness.

‘The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him.’ — Lam. 3: 25

Summary of the Meditation

Murray tells us that our first entry into waiting on God is usually waiting for him to bless us with some answer to prayer. But, he says:

God graciously uses our need and desire for help to educate us for something higher than we were thinking of. We were seeking gifts; He, the Giver, longs to give Himself and to satisfy the soul with His goodness. It is just for this reason that He often withholds the gifts, and that the time of waiting is made so long. He is all the time seeking to win the heart of His child for Himself. He wishes that we should not only say, when He bestows the gift, How good is God! but that long ere it comes, and even if it never comes, we should all the time be experiencing: ‘It is good that a man should quietly wait’: ‘The Lord is good to them that wait for Him.’

He encourages us to make waiting on God a habit, a disposition, second-nature, the very breath of our soul, the very root of our life with God.  Our knowledge, understanding and experience of God’s goodness will grow as we grow in our waiting on God.

Lord, it is hard for me to imagine me growing in knowledge and understanding of Your goodness. You by very definition are good. But I can see growing in my experience of Your goodness and growing in my waiting on You. I will watch to see how the others grow beyond what I imagine as I pursue growth in waiting on You.

Day 25 WAITING ON GOD: Quietly.

‘It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.’— Lam 3:26

Summary of the Meditation

‘TAKE heed, and be quiet: fear not, neither be faint-hearted.’  (Isaiah 7:4)

‘In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’ (Isaiah 30:15)

‘The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him’ (Hab. 2: 20).

‘Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God.’ (Zeph. 1: 7).

‘Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord; for He is raised up out of His holy habitation’ (Zech. 2: 13).

Murray tells us that these scriptures show us the “deep connection between quietness and faith, and show us what a deep need there is of quietness, as an element of true waiting upon God.”

Why the deep need and deep connection? Murray says that our nature is so estranged from this infinite being, “that it needs our whole heart and desires set upon Him, even in some little measure to know and receive Him.”

Murray tells us what can keep us from this quiet waiting:

As long as the waiting on God is chiefly regarded as an end towards more effectual prayer, and the obtaining of our petitions, this spirit of perfect quietness will not be obtained. But when it is seen that the waiting on God is itself an unspeakable blessedness, one of the highest forms of fellowship with the Holy One, the adoration of Him in His glory will of necessity humble the soul into a holy stillness, making way for God to speak and reveal Himself.

Let everyone who would learn the art of waiting on God remember the lesson:  ‘Take heed, and be quiet;’ ‘It is good that a man quietly wait.’ Take time to be separate from all friends and all duties, all cares and all joys; time to be still and quiet before God. Take time not only to secure stillness from man and the world, but from self and its energy.  Let the Word and prayer be very precious; but remember, even these may hinder the quiet waiting.

How can we be quiet in the midst of the cacophony of sound around us?  Habit and discipline: “Though at first it may appear difficult to know how thus quietly to wait, with the activities of mind and heart for a time subdued, every effort after it will be rewarded; we shall find that it grows upon us, and the little season of silent worship will bring a peace and a rest that give a blessing not only in prayer, but all the day.”

Lord, the promise seems too great. Just do it and the blessing will flow. Humble my soul into silence before You. Show me today what is keeping me from waiting in silence before you.

Day 26 WAITING ON GOD: In Holy Expectancy.

‘Therefore will I look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.’— Micah 7: 7.

Summary of the Meditation

The essence of this meditation is that we must wait with holy expectancy. My God will hear me. Murray says that: “A holy, joyful expectancy is of the very essence of true waiting.” He starts by summarizing a little book called “Expectation Corner.” That book illustrates the truth from James’ letter: We have not because we ask not – and when we ask, we are not continuously looking for the answer to arrive.

When we have been given a promise of God, we must wait with “confident assurance” that my God will hear me. He digresses from this a bit when he tells us of the great promise that should be central to all prayer petitions: “the one great petition which ought to be the chief thing every heart seeks for itself — that The Life of God in the soul may have full sway; that Christ may be fully formed within; and that we may be filled to all the fullness of God.” This Murray says is what we ought “to seek and dare to expect.”

He closes with a thought about stillness in our waiting. As we unite ourselves in the death of Jesus, we become still – because “there is no stillness like that of the grave.” “As we cease from self, and our soul becomes still to God, God will arise and show Himself.”

Lord, I often wonder how dead to self I really am. How united with You, Jesus I am? Is it really “not I who live but Christ who lives in me?” Father have your way in my heart and soul that I may rest expectantly waiting for the fulfillment of your promises to me.  Especially the promise to be fully formed in me and to be filled to all the fullness of God. Amen.

Day 27 WAITING ON GOD: For Redemption.

‘Simeon was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Ghost was upon him. Anna, a prophetess, . . . spake of Him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.’— Luke 2: 25, 38.

Summary of the Meditation

Murray concentrates this devotion on the waiting on God that was done by believers in the Old Testament. They were waiting for consolation and redemption – what has already been accomplished in Jesus. So he asks – do we still need to wait? Yes he says – for two reasons: “But will not our waiting, who look back to it as come, differ greatly from those who looked forward to it as coming? It will, especially in two aspects. We now wait on God in the full power of the redemption: and we wait for its full revelation.”

1. 1. Waiting in the full power of redemption. We know that the redemption was accomplished and our position secured. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. “Our waiting on God may now be in the wonderful consciousness, wrought and maintained by the Holy Spirit within us, that we are accepted in the Beloved, that the love that rests on Him rests on us, that we are living in that love, in the very nearness and presence and sight of God.”
   2. We are waiting for the full revelation of this redemption. “As we maintain our place in Christ day by day, God waits to reveal Christ in us, in such a way that He is formed in us, that His mind and disposition and likeness acquire form and substance in us, so that by each it can in truth be said, ‘Christ liveth in me.’”

He makes a distinction that I have never considered: Our life “in Christ” is in heaven and Christ in us is on earth. I had never thought of it that way. And they are meant to complement each other. He puts it this way:

the more my waiting on God is marked by the living faith that I am in Christ, the more the heart thirsts for and claims the CHRIST IN ME. … And the waiting on God, which began with special needs and prayer, will increasingly be concentrated, as far as our personal life is concerned, on this one thing, Lord, reveal Your redemption fully in me; let Christ live in me.

He lists two other differences between Old Testament waiting and the New:

• • The place we take (seated in the heavenlies)
  • The expectations we entertain

One last point he makes:

Learn from Simeon and Anna one lesson. How utterly impossible it was for them to do anything towards the great redemption — towards the birth of Christ or His death. It was God’s work. They could do nothing but wait.

And so it is impossible for us to make the revelation of Jesus in us a reality. We are helpless and feeble in making the revelation happen. But, he concludes this meditation:

As gloriously as God proved Himself to them the faithful and wonder-working God, He will to us also.

Jesus, teach me more about the distinction between You in me (on earth) and me in You (in heaven). Reveal more to me the distinction between the waiting Anna and Simeon did and my waiting which has the full power of the redemption present here and now. I hear what he says about how our waiting for answers and deliverance becomes transformed into waiting for You – work that in me O Lord.

Day 28 WAITING ON GOD: For the Coming of His Son

‘Be ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.’— Luke 12: 36

‘Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, in His own time, He shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.’— 1 Tim. 6: 14,15( R.V.).

‘Turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.’— 1 Thess. 1: 9, 10.

 Summary of the Meditation

The opening Scripture is from Jesus’ brief exchange about the Master of the house who is coming back from a wedding. So, for Murray [and Jesus], we are to be like those waiting for their Master to return from a celebration and be alert and watch carefully for his return. Murray says that waiting on God in heaven is joined by God with waiting for the return of His Son. “The present life and the coming  glory are inseparably connected.” Learning to wait on God for His power and promise is a preparation for waiting for Jesus’ return. He warns us against the danger of separating them.

It is always easier to be engaged with the religion of the past or the future than to be faithful in the religion of today. As we look to what God has done in the past, or will do in time to come, the personal claim of present duty and present submission to His working may be escaped. … There is such a danger of our being so occupied with the things that are coming more than with Him who is to come; there is such scope in the study of coming events for imagination and reason and human ingenuity, that nothing but deeply humble waiting on God can save us from mistaking the interest and pleasure of intellectual study for the true love of Him and His appearing.

Waiting for Christ Himself is, oh, so different from waiting for things that may come to pass! The latter any Christian can do; the former, God must work in you every day by His Holy Spirit.

He warns against concentrating on one “waiting” for the other. Those that are waiting on God should not neglect waiting for Jesus’ return and those waiting for Jesus’ return should also be waiting on God.

Waiting on God must ever lead to waiting for Christ as the glorious consummation of His work; and waiting for Christ must ever remind us of the duty of waiting upon God, … The hope of that glorious appearing will strengthen you in waiting upon God for what He is to do in you now.

And as I quoted earlier, waiting in the now will prepare you for waiting for His coming. He ends the meditation on a separate topic – the bridal spirit.

Tender love to Him and tender love to each other is the true and only bridal spirit. … It is not when we are most occupied with prophetic subjects, but when in humility and love we are clinging close to our Lord and His brethren, that we are in the bride’s place. Jesus refuses to accept our love except as it is love to His disciples. … Those who love most are the most ready for His coming.

Jesus, this is a new concept: tying waiting on God and waiting for You to return. Reveal more to me about this over the next week. Also, I am challenged by the call to the bridal spirit – where I love Your disciples as much as I love You. Show me how I can do that.

Day 29 WAITING ON GOD: For the Promise of the Father.

‘He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father.’— Acts 1: 4.

Summary of the Meditation

Murray is telling us that just as the first disciples had to wait in Jerusalem until they were endued with power, so we need to wait continually. He shows us how this waiting and subsequent infilling happened several times to the same disciples. So we need to wait for this continual infilling of the Spirit.

In one sense, the fulfillment can never come again as it came at Pentecost. In another sense, and that in as deep reality as with the first disciples, we daily need to wait for the Father to fulfil His promise in us.

He also provides us some of his pneumatology – his doctrine of the Holy Spirit:

• • The Holy Spirit is not a person distinct from the Father in the way two persons on earth are distinct.
  • The Father and the Spirit are never without or separate from each other: the Father is always in the Spirit;
  • The Spirit works nothing but as the Father works in Him.
  • Each moment the same Spirit that is in us, is in God too
  • The Spirit in us is not a power at our disposal.
  • Nor is the Spirit an independent power, acting apart from the Father and the Son.
  • The Spirit is the real living presence and the power of the Father working in us
  • The Spirit given at Pentecost was not a something that God parted with in heaven, and sent away out of heaven to earth. God does not, cannot, give away anything in that way.

Finally, he ties this back to waiting: “he who is most full of the Spirit will be the first to wait on God most earnestly, further to fulfil His promise, and still strengthen him mightily by His Spirit in the inner man.”

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit! Any attempt to define one member of the trinity apart from the other creates confusion in my mind. Open my mind and my heart to the incredible beauty of the Trinity.

Day 30 WAITING ON GOD: Continually

‘Therefore turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God continually.’— Hos. 12: 6.

Summary of the Meditation

Just as continuity is critical to life, continuity in our waiting on God is critical to life in the Spirit. We are to learn to wait on Him continually. Murray recognizes that there are special times of waiting, but “the maintenance of the spirit of entire dependence must be continuous.” And thus, for all who want everything there is from God, we must learn to wait continually.

Murray encourages us by saying that this is possible. Whatever your heart is full of will occupy it. “When the heart has learned how entirely powerless it is for one moment to keep itself or bring forth any good, when it has understood how surely and truly God will keep it, when it has, in despair of itself, accepted God’s promise to do for it the impossible, it learns to rest in God, and in the midst of occupations and temptations it can wait continually.”

He encourages us to not worry about starting imperfectly. There will be frequent intermissions and failures. But he encourages us to believe that God is superintending the process. Waiting is not fruitless. Even while we wait in darkness. God is working behind the scenes in them. “Waiting continually will be met and rewarded by God Himself working continually.” And no quid pro quo. Not: “If I wait continually, God will work continually.” No! Since God is working continually in my life, I will wait continually upon Him. “Take time until the vision of your God working continually, without one moment’s intermission, fill your being. Your waiting continually will then come of itself.”

Father, work in me this “waiting as a life style.” Lord, what is the first step I can take to grow in this?

Day 31 WAITING ON GOD: Only

‘My soul, wait thou only upon God;  For my expectation is from Him. He only

is my rock and my salvation.’— Isa. 62: 5,6.

 Summary of the Meditation

How fitting to end this series of meditations with the one word: only. How often we have other preoccupations and distractions? I certainly do. Murray tells us that we won’t find many companions with us on this journey.

On a side note, Murray brings up the topic of the bronze serpent. It is an odd enough story from the book of Numbers where this statue on a pole is erected under God’s instruction for all to look at and be healed from a plague God sent upon His people  (Numbers 21:4-9). Then this statue becomes an idol that the children of Israel are burning incense to and Hezekiah destroys it (2 Kings 18:4). It is here that it is given a name: Nehushtan. All of this is to say that when we are waiting on anything but God alone, we succumb to the temptation to become distracted by good and holy things: the arc; the temple; church and doctrine; means of grace and divine appointments.

Murray’s remedy: Recognize that we are an immortal spirit destined for the privilege of  eternity and union with God. Religious thoughts and reflections; spiritual disciplines and works of service “very often take the place of waiting on God.” Our two great enemies (not sure why the devil is not included as a third) are the world and self. “Beware lest any earthly satisfaction or enjoyment, however innocent it appears, keep you back from saying, ‘I will go to God, my exceeding joy.’”

Father, I feel this even now. I am not waiting on You only!  Murray wants us to beware of “Pleasing self in little things may be strengthening it to assert itself in greater things.” He calls us back to two foundational truths to keep us on track: “They are: your absolute helplessness; and, the absolute sufficiency of thy God.”

He closes this meditation and this book with the following:

No words can tell, no heart conceive, the riches of the glory of this mystery of the Father and of Christ. Our God, in the infinite tenderness and omnipotence of His love, waits to be our Life and Joy. Oh, my soul! let it be no longer needed that I repeat the words, ‘Wait upon God,’ but let all that is in me rise and sing: ‘Truly my soul waits upon God. On Thee do I wait all the day.’

Father, I long to put this into practice. Work these truths deep in me so that all that is in me will rise and sing: “I wait only on You all day long. ” Amen.