forming the future

We are building for the future. Both the more immediate future in our land and in our world: and also that great future which is promised us in Christ.

What that more immediate future is going to bring and hold - who knows? But we're building for it, and working towards it.

I was meeting again this morning with the young man from our fellowship who's been called to be the pastor of a church up north. There are all sorts of issues he wants to work through and get clear in his mind before he starts that work.

He's glad of a 'wall' to bounce things off: and I'm happy to help him consider the issues there are.

It's a long-term work of the Lord to which the man is called. God takes his time and is in no rush. HIs work is thorough and careful and most of the time it is bit by bit by bit. I'm glad to play a small part in that work in helping this man in advance of the work that he'll do.

"The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others." [2 Tim.2.2]

There's that sort of strand to the work that I'm called to by God. Entrusting to other reliable men the things that I've been taught myself by godly, gracious, thoroughly reliable men.

It was straight from seeing this man to the lunch-time service. The end of the road for Nabal who had shown such thorough disrespect in the face of the kindness of David. He meets his end at the hands of the Lord.

The story is an object lesson in 'entrusting ourselves to the One who judges justly' [see 1 Pet.2.23]: as Jesus did. 'Vengeance is mine,' says the Lord. He makes a far better job of the thing than we would ever do. It's always best to leave it to him.

One of the ladies present at the service came up at the end and shared with me the story of her daughter through these recent months. Her employer had treated her badly, a Nabal sort of man I fear he was. To cut a long story short, the man has got his 'come-uppance', and she has been wonderfully (and in some ways, very manifestly) vindicated by the Lord.

"'No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,' declares the Lord." [Isaiah 54.17]

Leave it to him to sort these things out. He does a good job. Entrust yourself to him: he always judges justly.

Of course, in the story of David and Abigail, there's a sobering end to the tale. Nabal dies. David takes Abigail as his wife. That's his second wife. Indeed, in truth his third wife.

In the flush of delight at the grace God has shown him through this lady's intervention, keeping him from taking revenge himself on the curtly Nabal, David lowers his guard at a different point in his life. Women.

Everyone else was indluging in this sort of way. More than one woman.

But the ultimate downfall of Israel had its ultimate origin here. The seeds of the country's collapse were sown at this moment of time.

You can draw straight lines between David's taking another wife here and his taking another man's wife later on. You can draw straight lines between that affair with Bathsheba, and the pattern with women adopted by David's son, Solomon, born to him by Bathsheba ('if Dad could behave like this, then why shouldn't I?'). You can draw straight lines between Solomon's countless women and the seeping into Israel's life of the worship of other gods.

David, of course, wasn't really thinking of the far-off future fate of this his land, when taking to himself a second wife. But the devil surely was.

Scary.

Entrusting ourselves to the love of the righteous Judge is one thing. It needs to be matched by our submitting ourselves to the lordship of His Son.

We are to be as wise as the serpent himself in the seeds that we sow in the present, through our godly, patient, self-denying living day by day.

We're affecting the future, one way or another. May it be for the good of our people. May it be for the glory of God.