The Word of God pursues us even in our despairing times

I want to take you back momentarily to Haggai 1:1 because that is the place where the Word of God was first mentioned. We usually neglect these little introductory remarks: in the second year of Darius, the king, in the sixth month on the first day of the month, the word of Yahweh came by Haggai, the prophet, to the leaders of Judah. The word of Yahweh came by Haggai, the prophet—that is often the way the Bible speaks about the Word of God coming—the word of God came by such and such a prophet: that, in other words, the word of God pursued them. What was the date? It was August, about 520 BC. What were the conditions? They weren't very good. You see, from the exiles who had been taken captive to Babylon only 50,000 came back to the land of Judah when they were permitted to return. That was about 20 years before Haggai prophesied. Many Jews stayed in Babylon. There were no economic advantages at all to coming back to this desolate land. It was a life primarily with a good deal of hardship, just eking out a living. And it was not only that, but there was external hostility from the tribes and the peoples around them. It was that kind of situation. If you painted a canvas about the situation, it would be in drab browns and dull grays, and you would have a general impression of what life was like in Judah in August 540 BC. It was not very attractive. People were in pinched, binding, despairing circumstances. And in that situation the Word of God came. I find it rather comforting that not only in the brightest of conditions and the best of circumstances because things are going the way I like them to go, but rather in my pinched circumstances, my despairing times, the Word of God comes then as well; the Word of Yahweh came by Haggai, the prophet. The Word of God pursues us even into our cramped and despairing times.

We do not have a prophet like Haggai who is directly receiving the Word of God to pass on to us. But we do have the words of the prophets and of the apostles in the sacred Scriptures, and the same holds true - these are the Words of God, we confess. But that Word does come in a powerful way. Sometimes in our individual lives and in the life of a congregation it comes home to us with special power. And how grateful we ought to be that the Word of God pursues us. That was the testimony of Elizabeth Elliot, the widow of Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries murdered by Auca natives in Ecuador in 1956. On one occasion, when I was in a small group at a friend's home with some college students, Elizabeth Elliot was there. One college student asked her what its was that held her up and sustained her? What was it that kept her going in the wake of the murder of her husband, when you were left alone down there, isolated and by yourself? I will never forget Elizabeth Elliot's first words: certainly the Scriptures. It was in that desolation and in that isolation and in that sorrow that the Word of God came. It pursued her even then.

It was the same for Martyn Lloyd Jones, the British pastor and preacher of the twentieth century. On one occasion back in 1949, Lloyd Jones was going through a time of spiritual agony and mental depression. He left for a long holiday and vacation from his pastoral charge, and the Lord graciously granted a good measure of relief. But when he had returned to pastor at the Westminster chapel in London, in the eleventh year, he had a recurrence again then of that agony and that distress. And as he looked toward that first September Sunday when he would be back in his pulpit, he felt utterly unprepared to preach. In addition to the mental condition of his despair of mind in which he was, Saturday came and he still did not have anything that he could think of to preach; nothing would work. And then in the midst of that distress, there came to his mind almost out of the blue as it were, those words from Titus 1:2: God, who cannot lie. He said, I was absolutely overwhelmed and in tears. I was given my sermon there and then! You see, again the Word of God pursued him, not in the ideal kind of circumstances but in the midst of his distress. In the midst of very pinched and binding times the Word of God pursues us. That is precisely what the Scriptures of the apostles and the prophets are meant to do. That is what Paul said in Romans 15:4: these things in the Old Testament are written for our instruction, so that by the endurance and the encouragement that the Scriptures give, we may have hope. The Word of God pursues us.¹

Dale Ralph Davis