The Waiting Father AND The Waiting Church

 The Waiting Father

AND

The Waiting Church

 

September 10, 2022

Larry R Evans

 

When you think of “waiting” what comes to mind for you? For a pregnant mother, no doubt what comes to mind is the anticipated birth of the baby she will have carried for nine months. For a teenager, it might be the day he or she gets a driver’s license.  When I think about waiting, I remember when I was a child and the days leading up to Christmas. Then when Christmas Eve came my siblings, and I would longingly look out the window and stare at the long driveway leading to our house. We knew that Dad would eventually be driving down that dusty farm road and when he did,  . . . we would celebrate by opening our presents.  Waiting is part of life; at times it is filled with joy and sometimes it can come with a sense of crushing agony.  How we wait is often determined by what we are waiting for. 

 

In Luke 15 we find a father waiting for the return of a son whom He deeply loves but who abandoned him, the home, and all that had been prepared for him.  The experience is often called the story about the prodigal son.  The Bible's real theme for this story is “the waiting Father.”

 

In Revelation 22 we find God’s people anxiously waiting for the return of Jesus.  We find Jesus saying, “Yes, I am coming soon” (Rev. 22:20). The Greek tense does not say that Jesus “will” come but rather that the coming is already in process. John, the Revelator’s response is Maranatha— “Amen, Come, Lord Jesus.” This request for the Lord to come is followed by the last words of the book of Revelation, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen” (v.21).

 

Isn’t it interesting that the book of the Bible known for judgment and plagues begins in chapter 1 verse 4 and closes with a focus on salvation and grace (Rev. 22:21). From the beginning to the end, we find both the Father and His Church “waiting” but always in the context of God’s love and His people’s love for each other. They are waiting for a special reunion.  To sustain us in our waiting we are assured of God’s grace.

 

How the Waiting Began

 

“Home,” Robert Frost famously said, “is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in” (“The Death of the Hired Man”).  The younger brother in Luke 15 knows that being accepted back home could not be assumed.  Why? His sins have created a barrier and he doesn’t know how to bridge the gap that he, himself, created. The prodigal is representative of each one of us.  We are like the exiles described throughout the Old Testament.

 

We learn early in the book of Genesis how this feeling of being exiled came about. We are told in the Bible’s first book that we were created to live in the garden of God. We were created to live in that world—a world free from parting from those whom we love, free from decay and disease. That was our original home, the place for which we were made.

 

The Bible tells the rest of the story too.  We see in the story of the Prodigal Son and the Waiting Father, that we wanted to live without God’s interference, so we turned away from the home and the Father. All eyes turn to the Father who is waiting – waiting for the return of the son whom He loves. 

 

The message of the Bible is that the human race is a band of exiles trying to come home. Despite all the accomplishments we humans may have accomplished, something is missing.  What causes the lack of satisfaction – at least two things come to mind.

 

First, there is a sense of brokenness within us. Apart from the Father, we are not complete and that suggests we need a radical change in our very nature. Secondly, there is brokenness all around us. We see disease and natural disasters. We live in a world in which everything decays and dies. This world, as it exists, is not the home we long for.  Deep inside us is the longing for the real home and hence we find ourselves “waiting.” Equally important is knowing that God is also waiting. We are assured that the waiting is about to end.  We can learn more about this waiting by looking at both “The Father Who Waits” and “The Church that Waits.”

 

The Father Who Waits

 

“The tears of God,” as one philosopher put it, “are the meaning of history.”  Our Savior was a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:5). This is more than mere emotionalism or shallow sentimentality – it is a reminder that He cares and that He carries our burdens.

 

Three times that we know of, Jesus wept: when his friend Lazarus died (John 11:35) when he looked out over the doomed city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and when he faced his own ordeal of suffering—when He willingly submitted with reverence His life for ours (Hebrews 5:7-9). Each is near the end of His life and each reveals what matters most to our loving God. He truly is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15). His tears are a reminder that He loves sinners and cares for every soul.

 

Reflecting on these three difficult moments of Jesus, a poet wrote, 

I asked the Lord to give me love - 
His love for souls in sin;
Instead, He gave me weeping eyes,
A broken heart within.
 
I asked Him why He gave me tears,
He took me back in time
To when my Savior lived on earth,
When He was in His prime.
 I saw Him go to where His friend
Was lying in a grave;
The sisters and their friends were grieved -
What love to them He gave.
 
You see my Savior standing there
Was also grieved that day,
He wept great heaving tears with sobs
Till those who saw could say:
 
"Behold we see now how He loved."
His tears revealed His heart
His love was evident through tears -
I saw God's point in part.
 
And then He took me to the day 
The people hailed their King
While Jesus enters to their cheers
The children run and sing.
 
But when He saw Jerusalem
Stretched out before His eye,
His soul was moved with grief for them;
It moved His heart to cry.
 
Oh, as I read those solemn words
I feel that they are sweet
For in them I behold His love
So perfect and complete.
 
To one more place He took me now,
At midnight I beheld
The Son of God bowed down with grief
In deepest sorrow held.
 
I heard His weeping, strong and deep,
But through it I discerned
He prayed for me - it melted me,
His love for me I learned.
 
With tearful joy, I thanked the Lord
For answering my prayer,
For giving me His love for souls -
His tears, His heart, His care.

                        --Christina Joy Hommes

 

It seems something is missing in our waiting if we don’t also see the tears of Jesus. The Apostle Paul seems to have understood this when he wrote in Romans 15:4-6

 

For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It seems that the waiting we are experiencing is the kind of waiting that both we and God share. Paul reminds us that we must have the kind of waiting that comes from “patience and consolation.” Other translations interpret patience and consolation as “endurance and encouragement.”   Indeed, with a faith anchored in God and His ultimate plan our waiting is a hopeful waiting.

Frederick Buechner, a theologian, once said, 

I am not the Almighty God, but if I were, maybe I would in mercy either heal the unutterable pain of the world or in marching kick the world to pieces in its pain.

To which Philip Yancey reminds us, 

God did neither. Rather, God sent Jesus, joining our world with all of its unutterable pain to set in motion a slower, less dramatic solution—one that crucially involves us. (What Good Is God? In Search of a Faith That Matters, pp. 30-31.)

The hopeful assurance that we find in God is seen in Romans 5:6,

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. . . . But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

 

The word “commendeth” is translated in other places as “demonstrated” (NASB).  God’s love is clear and to prove it “Christ died for us.” And while pain and suffering continue, they are reminders that this world is not our final home! We have a “Father” who not only waits but is eagerly working to bring us home and what a homecoming that will be!

 

The Church That Waits

 

Paul reminds us that the kind of hope that endures challenges is the kind that often grows through hardships. (Romans 5:3-6)

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

We said earlier that “How we wait is often determined by what we are waiting for.”  However, Paul reveals the real motivation behind our waiting, our hoping, is the realization that “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts” (Romans 5:5). Who God is, what He has done, and is doing now, stabilizes our faith. 

True or False?  An enduring faith is satisfied by getting what we want. (Why or why not?)

 

A case in point was the life in the concentration camp described by Viktor Frankl.

Despite all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. . . . 

“my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. 

. . . The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.” (Man’s Search for Meaning, p.36,37)

 

QUESTION: What can we learn from Frankl’s experience that would help us during this waiting period for the Lord to come?

 

QUESTION: After all that Saul had done to David, what kept David from killing Saul when he had a chance?  

 

QUESTION: Do the above two questions have anything in common?

 

QUESTION: Why did David refuse to kill Saul? To whom was his allegiance? (1 Samuel 26:9,10)

But David said to Abishai, “Don’t destroy him! Who can lay a hand on the LORD’s anointed and be guiltless? As surely as the LORD lives,” he said, “the LORD himself will strike him, or his time will come and he will die, or he will go into battle and perish. 

QUESTION: Does David’s experience have any lessons for us regarding instant gratification?  What are they?

 

The marshmallow test:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_oy9614HQ

 

What makes temptation so difficult?

 

QUESTION: Are there certain times or conditions when waiting is especially difficult? What can we learn from the experience of Elijah?

 

Elijah had just experienced major success on top of Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18). The fire had come out of heaven, all the people had acknowledged the true God and the false prophets had been put to death. The story does end here, however.  How does it end?

 

Two messengers were sent to Elijah. The first was sent by Jezebel with death threats (1 Kings 19:2).  The second messenger came with the word of the Lord saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

 

QUESTION: How did Elijah respond to the first messenger?

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. (1 Kings 19:3)

QUESTION: How did Elijah respond to the Lord?

He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”(1 Kings 19:10)

QUESTION: What was Elijah’s defense? Why wasn’t that enough?

 

Success in one situation is not a guarantee of success in others. Elijah was worn down doing even good things. A crisis can wear down the best resolve.  Note the following insight,

Much depends on the unceasing activity of those who are true and loyal, and for this reason Satan puts forth every possible effort to thwart the divine purpose to be wrought out through the obedient. He causes some to lose sight of their high and holy mission, and to become satisfied with the pleasures of this life.... Others he causes to flee in discouragement from duty, because of opposition or persecution. (EGW, Conflict and Courage, p.214)

QUESTION: Of what was God reminding Elijah when He asked, “What are you doing here?”

To every child of God whose voice the enemy of souls has succeeded in silencing, the question is addressed, “What doest thou here?” I commissioned you to go into all the world and preach the gospel, to prepare a people for the day of God. Why are you here? (Ibid)

QUESTION: How did God respond to Elijah’s self-absorption? How was God’s “still voice” meant to be helpful to despondent Elijah? (1 Kings 19:11-12)

There are those who work all day and far into the night to do what seems to them must be done. The Lord looks pityingly upon these weary, heavy-laden burden bearers and says to them: “Come unto Me, ... and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28. (7T 243) 

Concluding Challenge

The Orange Revolution & the Unlikely Heroes

 

In 2004, as the Soviet empire was collapsing, the country of Ukraine was inching toward democracy. At this time the Ukrainian reformer Victor Yushchenko dared to challenge the entrenched party. During this time Yushchenko nearly died from a mysterious case of dioxin poisoning.  Despite advice and his own weakened body now disfigured permanently by the poison, he remained in the race.  On election day the exit polls show him with a very comfortable lead.  Nevertheless, the corrupt government managed to reverse the results. 

 

That evening the state-run television station reported, “Ladies and gentlemen, we announce that the challenger Victor Yushchenko has been decisively defeated.”  However, government authorities had not considered one feature of Ukrainian television.  There was an interpreter for the deaf! On the small inset on the television screen, a brave woman raised by deaf parents signed a different message.

 

Using sign language she said, “I am addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine.  Don’t believe what the authorities say. They are lying and I am ashamed to translate these likes. Yushchenko is our President!”  No one in the studio understood her radical sign-language message. Inspired by the interpreter, the deaf people led the Orange Revolution. Over the next few weeks, as many as a million people wearing orange flooded the capital city of Kiev to demand new elections. The government finally buckled under the pressure and consented to a new election. This time Yushchenko emerged as the undisputed winner. (See What Good Is God? by Philip Yancey, pp. 174-175)

 

Waiting does not mean being idle. God’s ways are not our ways, but He does call His people to a living-faith based on His Word.  Soon, the waiting Father and the waiting Church will no longer wait. Together we will celebrate not as exiles, but as those who have been welcomed back home!