God’s Servants

Just as the ancient kings chose to often do their work through their servants, sending messages and gifts by them, so the Lord chooses to use His servants to do His work: to bring His messages, gifts, glad tidings, warnings, terms, and commands. However, many people demand that God would “come down” and show Himself. And man thinks that he can dismiss God because of the way He chooses to work—through His servants.

Yet the truth is that God is enthroned in heaven and it is exactly through His servants, His Word, and Holy Spirit that He chooses to work. Demanding that God work differently completely blinds us to the full and abundant means through which God does choose to work. In our minds it seems reasonable to doubt God’s Word, power, and very existence all because He does not attend to things in bodily form or speak in an audible voice. In reality, God is enthroned in full authority, commanding all things into conformity to His will (Eph 1:11), and those who refuse to receive God in these things will only find themselves destroyed by their rebellion, unbelief, and arrogance.

God is “gentle and lowly in heart” (Matt 11:29), but we must understand that God is no man of straw. He absolutely reigns and commands all of mankind into obedience to Him, and He never backs down nor apologizes for this. This means that only through humility—which is submission and obedience to God—will we come to find the very things we are searching for from God. There is absolutely 100% reason to look for faith, understanding, and great meaning and joy in God, but it is only the meek who inherit such things (Matt 5:5,8). Those who sit back demanding God to work in the ways they expect God to work are the proud and arrogant that will not find Him, nor the things of Him. This is because they demand from a sinful heart. “There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evil men.” (Job 35:12) This is the design of God; humility and pride hinge entirely upon how we respond to God’s design or how we kick against it (Acts 26:14).

God has designed for us to know Him through His Word, prayer, and the messengers of His Word. Yet today people want to discredit the very means by which God chooses to work by calling them products of man’s mind and heart—mere human words. They fail to bow to God, obeying Him as He commands, submitting to His design, and thereby being saved. God’s design is that those who obey Him are those who find Him. Yet they think they do not find Him because He doesn’t exist, when actually they fail to find Him because they fail to be humble and seek Him as God instructs. Rather, man wants to play games with God (Matt 11:16-19), always with some excuse as to why they won’t believe or obey Him. He’s too much of this and not enough of that, or too little of that and not enough of this. This is the corruption within man. Man wants to run around in his own ideas about what is spiritual, moral, truthful, good, and right, and he expects God to subject Himself to the base wickedness within him. If God refuses, which He does, then man sees God as his enemy and His ways as burdensome.

Man wants to sit outside of the things of God, demanding that He give some “sign” or proof of His authority. This is nothing new, for it is exactly what Christ Himself dealt with in His day (Matt 12:39). Man fails to realize that the problem is never God, the problem is always the sin within us of unbelief. “‘If you are the Christ, tell us.’ But he said to them, ‘If I tell you, you will not believe.’” (Luke 22:67) Rather, we must obey the authority of God firstly.

The kings of old sent their servants to give their messages, terms, gifts, or glad tidings, and this wasn't seen as strange, nor did it make these things any less from the king. If human kings had the right to do such things, how much more the Eternal God? This is how God chooses to work, speaking through His Word, carried forward by the hands of His servants. We have no right to this unbelief of God’s Word merely because of how He chooses to reveal and declare it.

God’s messengers may be imperfect. Sadly, this can be very true. But God’s Word itself is never imperfect, and this is what we must distinguish: which are the commandments of man and which are the commandments of God. While we may dismiss the first we are doomed if we dismiss the latter.

We fail to realize that when God does come down it will be in His final judgement—on that great and terrible day of the Lord. God’s coming down, His stepping from His throne to descend to this earth, is the most significant act of God—being so glorious, so great, arrayed in such a single act. And it is what all of mankind is waiting for (Rev 11:17-18, Isaiah 64:1). It is not wrong to want this, certainly this is the true cry of any believer—we are all looking for Christ’s return. But it is evil to use this as a means to deny obedience and submission to God before He comes down. This will be to the utter ruin of such people. We must realize the distinction of this right desire in contrast with a person demanding God obey his arrogant and unbelieving dictates.

Besides this, God has already come down (John 1:14). This alone should be enough to settle us—Christ has come and He is coming again! If we would be faithful to God, then we would find all that we need within these great truths.

The LORD is God, seated in the highest heavens, this is where He reigns. And yet this God stoops down to us and says, “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2) Why would we ever think to harden our hearts against such a God as this? Rather, let us learn to take the lowly road before Him, submitting to His Word and the ways in which He chooses to speak. Let us listen for what is spoken by His authority and obey it. “Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek 33:11)