IN THE DAY CALLED SATURDAY

I am captivated by the artistic simplicity of the statement, “He brought us out . . .  that He might bring us in” found in Deuteronomy 6:23 (ESV). The full verse reads: “And He brought us out from there (Egypt),that He might bring us in and give us the land that He swore to give to our fathers.”

Deuteronomy is a series of farewell addresses given by Moses to the Israelites as he prepared to die and they prepared to enter into the Promised Land. Moses reminds this new generation of the faithfulness of God and details for them the covenant relationship between their nation and the Lord God Almighty. Moses goes on to describe for them the blessings of obedience to God and the destructive nature of disobedience.

Moses’ statement sounds so simple, so victorious and so complete. There is no doubt that the principle is absolutely true but the statement is a condensation of a more elaborate understanding—in other words, it omits a lot. It leaves unspoken the struggle and the uncertainty of the journey that has to be undertaken in order to see the completion of the promise.

Scripture is filled with stories that illustrate this promise:

·       Joseph was brought out of a pit where his brothers had thrown him to become the adopted son of Pharaoh and the savior of his family and his nation.

·       David was taken out of the fields and the lonely life of a shepherd to become the greatest warrior king in the history of the Jewish nation.

·       Daniel was taken from his home in Jerusalem to the courts of Nebuchadnezzar where he rose to prominence as one of the most influential men in the Babylonian empire.

·       Esther was taken from obscurity to become the wife of the Persian King Ahasuerus and became a savior of her people.

What we come to understand in each of these stories and in many others in the Bible is that intense struggles make up the middle ground between the coming out and the coming in, between the start and the finish.

In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey finishes his last chapter by talking about where we are living today. In Yancey’s view, and I repeat it here because it resonates with me, much excitement is generated over the Easter story. The death of our Savior on Good Friday was followed by His resurrection on Easter Sunday. Salvation for us was accomplished through that great act of sacrifice. But for the Church, for the Christ follower of today, Yancey says, and I agree, that we are now living as a Church that looks back to the work of Christ on the cross and forward to His Second Coming. In fact, we are living in the middle, in the day that is never mentioned in the Easter story. We are alive in the “no name Saturday” where we look back to Christ’s work on the cross and forward to the final event. But we are stuck in the intensity of living out the day of fog and uncertainty between two cataclysmic events—in the day called Saturday.

For most of us the Christian life is a struggle; the rewards are real but the struggle is, too. There are battles to be fought, time to be used wisely, failures to be overcome, losses to be grieved for, and wounds to be healed on our journey to the fulfillment of the promise.

Salvation is a gift from God; in an instant we are taken from our old life and, through faith, we are “born again.” Growing in our new life of faith is a fight and some of those who receive Christ by faith never do grow very much. Some simply receive Christ and then, because of the struggle, end up living their spiritual lives just a few feet or a few inches from the starting line of the race.

Besides the struggle of moving from “the coming out” to the “coming in,” there is also the unspoken issue of timing. When you read a promise like Deuteronomy 6:23, it would seem to indicate that it all happens in a tight sequence, but the reality is that that is not so! In our age of instant gratification and microwave concepts of Christian growth, this is not a happily embraced understanding. As I have written in the past, “But you have need of patience after that you have . . .” (Hebrews 10:36)—but I’m going to stop now because I hate it when I preach myself under conviction.