The True Story of the Whole World: A Freestyle Addendum

Photo courtesy of James Garland, Unsplash

Today’s post provides an addendum to the first missiological snapshot taken from the vantage point of the true story of the whole world.

This freestyle exercise is as much for me as it is for you.

Rahab’s Faith

I spent most of my morning reading the first ten chapters of Joshua. I was reminded that Rahab who was a prostitute became an unlikely but vital ally to the nation of Israel. She risked her life and her family’s by hiding two of Joshua’s spies from the enemy. Why? Because she believed what she had heard about Israel’s God.

For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan…. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath (Joshua 2:10–11).

I was struck by the specificity with which she describes Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and recalled the parting of the Red Sea. She had heard about the capture of the two Amorite kings and with reverence and awe acknowledged the greatness of the Lord their God.

The Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

Rahab’s faith saved her and her family from certain death.

I noticed as I read that God parted the water of the river Jordan and commanded the waters to “stand in one heap” and the whole nation of Israel in crossed over on dry ground. Why? So that all the peoples of the earth may know.

For the Lord you God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever (Joshua 4:23–24).

Rahab knew.

Then, Joshua and his army defeat Jericho with, of all things, blaring trumpets and loud shouting. Rahab and her family were the only survivors (Joshua 6:22–25).

Out of Sorts

Reading the Bible today reminded me that I follow the God who displays his glory through unlikely people, who commands the waters, and who calls his own to walk by faith in uncanny and even inconceivable ways. Why? So that we may know that he is God.

Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? (Jeremiah 23:23–24)

These passages have encouraged me today as I have wrestled with the nonsensical things in the world and some uncertainty in my own life.

I feel a bit out of sorts.

But, honestly, it is passages like these that remind me that I follow, we follow, the God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. He is not far off but is close at hand.

We might feel alone, hidden, forgotten, but we are not.

Deep Roots

My reading this afternoon included Craig Bartholomew’s Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction. He reminds us that “a spirituality with deep roots will be indispensable” in the often difficult journey of life and underscores the necessity of “living deeply into Christ.” The theology of Craig Bartholomew and Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) has informed much of my own theology and urges me onward.

Kuyper is often noted for this hearty declaration…

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!

It is essential that we remember that the God of all the earth, the God of the true story of the whole world is sovereign over both the grand and minute details of our lives, and this most certainly informs our response.

If everything that is, exists for the sake of God, then it follows that the whole creation must give glory to God. The sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, the birds of the air, the whole of nature around us…. Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand…he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God.

As I have wrestled with stuff this week, I find myself coming back again and again to the at once challenging and comforting fact that the God we love and follow is the Lord over the heavens and the earth—even in the places that make no sense.

I needed today, how about you?

Endnotes:

Craig Bartholomew, Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017), 9.

Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 41–42.