God Is Bigger Than the Boxes We Put Him In, Part 1

Part 1 of 2. Go to Part 2

It is comforting to believe we have God figured out.

We discover a biblical principle, find a few verses to support it, and begin to understand how God works. Before long, someone develops a teaching around it. The teaching becomes familiar, then widely accepted, and eventually we can scarcely imagine anyone questioning it.

Everything fits nicely.

Until, of course, we encounter a passage of Scripture that refuses to cooperate.

And then what?

We can reconsider our understanding. Or we can find some ingenious way to explain the troublesome passage without disturbing the theological framework we’ve spent years constructing.

I suspect most of us have done the latter at one time or another.

The difficulty is that a perfectly sound biblical principle can gradually become something Scripture never intended it to be. We begin with an observation about how God works and end with a declaration about how He must work.

And occasionally, about what He cannot do.

That is quite a leap.

Let me illustrate with a teaching that, on the surface, seems perfectly reasonable: the importance of meekness in receiving revelation from God.

When a Biblical Principle Becomes a Formula

Psalm 25:9 (KJV) tells us:

“The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.”

There is nothing difficult about that statement. God values meekness. A person willing to receive instruction is far more likely to benefit from it than someone convinced he already knows everything.

James 1:21 likewise instructs believers to receive the Word with meekness.

I would hardly dispute the importance of either passage.

But suppose someone takes that principle a little further and teaches that before God can give someone revelation, that individual must first become meek.

Perhaps you’ve heard some version of this.

The reasoning is easy enough to follow. God teaches the meek. Therefore, if someone wishes to receive revelation from God, he must first satisfy the condition of meekness.

It has a certain tidy appeal. First comes meekness; then comes revelation. A spiritual sequence, almost mathematical in its precision.

Psalm 25:9 speaks of God guiding the humble in what is right and teaching them His ways. The Hebrew verbs describe instruction and direction, particularly in how one ought to live. But this is not the same as saying that God communicates only with the humble. Divine communication can also take the form of warnings, rebukes, correction, or the disclosure of future events. These may involve instruction, but they serve different purposes. The psalm describes those who are receptive to God’s guidance; it does not establish a universal condition for every occasion on which God chooses to speak.

Interestingly, the preceding verse says:

Psalm 25:8 (KJV):

“Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.”

The psalmist celebrates God’s goodness in teaching sinners and His guidance of the meek. Both statements are true. Neither attempts to catalogue every circumstance in which God might communicate with a human being.

Perhaps the better question is whether the rest of Scripture supports the restriction we’ve placed on Him.

And here the biblical record becomes interesting.

Pharaoh’s Dreams Weren’t Caused by Bad Hummus

Consider Pharaoh in Genesis 41.

The Egyptian ruler had two dreams. In one, seven healthy cows were devoured by seven sickly cows. In the other, seven good ears of grain were swallowed by seven thin ears.

The dreams troubled Pharaoh, as well they might. His magicians and wise men could offer no satisfactory interpretation.

Eventually Joseph was summoned from prison.

Before explaining anything, Joseph made clear where the answer would come from.

Genesis 41:16 (KJV):

“It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.”

Then, in verse 25, Joseph explained:

“The dream of Pharaoh is one: God hath shewed Pharaoh what he is about to do.”

Think about those words for a moment.

The dreams weren’t the unfortunate result of something Pharaoh had eaten the night before. Joseph explicitly identified their source. God had communicated something to the Egyptian king about events that were going to affect an entire region.

Now, here is what interests me.

Was Pharaoh meek?

Was he a believer in the God of Israel? Had he undergone some spiritual preparation that qualified him to receive these dreams? Was God’s spirit upon him?

Genesis doesn’t tell us.

And that matters.

We shouldn’t assume Pharaoh was incapable of humility merely because he was an Egyptian ruler. But we have no grounds for inventing a spiritual qualification that the writer never mentions.

The narrative directs our attention elsewhere.

God was revealing seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. Joseph would interpret the dreams, Pharaoh would appoint him to oversee Egypt’s preparations, and the resulting food reserves would preserve countless lives, including the family through whom God’s promises to Abraham were unfolding.

There is a great deal happening here, and very little of it depends on our assumptions about Pharaoh’s spiritual condition.

There is another detail worth considering.

Pharaoh received the dreams, yet he didn’t understand them.

Apparently, receiving a communication from God and understanding what it means are two different matters. Pharaoh had one; Joseph provided the other.

That alone should make us cautious about treating every instance of divine communication as though it followed an identical spiritual process.

And Pharaoh is hardly an isolated example.

Laban Received a Warning He Hadn’t Asked For

Jacob’s father-in-law, Laban, does not emerge from Genesis as a particularly admirable character.

His dealings with Jacob involved deception, manipulation, and a ready willingness to adjust arrangements whenever it suited him.

When Jacob finally left with his family, Laban pursued him.

Before he could confront Jacob, however, God intervened.

Genesis 31:24 (KJV):

“And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said unto him, Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad.”

God came to Laban in a dream.

We are not told that Laban had repented of his earlier conduct. There is no account of him seeking God’s guidance or cultivating the meekness necessary to receive a divine message.

Indeed, the circumstances suggest he was quite determined to have things his own way.

Yet God spoke to him.

Why?

The surrounding narrative points toward God’s concern for Jacob and the protection of the family through whom His promises were being fulfilled.

Laban’s spiritual maturity, whatever it may have been, isn’t the focus of the account.

God wanted to restrain him, and He did.

Laban even acknowledged the encounter when he confronted Jacob.

Now, someone might object that this was a warning rather than the kind of revelation a believer receives when seeking God’s guidance.

Fair enough. Those are different circumstances, and we ought to recognize the distinction.

But that concession raises a question of its own. If God can communicate with someone without first establishing the spiritual conditions we’ve proposed, perhaps our original rule was too broad.

We might need to distinguish between the disposition of someone who desires to learn God’s ways and God’s freedom to address someone for reasons of His own.

The latter appears repeatedly throughout Scripture.

Nebuchadnezzar Had a Humility Problem

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar provides an especially striking example.

In Daniel 2, he received a dream concerning a great image representing successive kingdoms. Daniel was eventually brought before him to explain its meaning.

Daniel 2:28 (KJV):

“But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.”

Daniel leaves little uncertainty about the source of the dream.

Later, in Daniel 4, the king received another dream. This one concerned his own downfall.

Nebuchadnezzar was a proud man. He was impressed with his power, his kingdom, and, most of all, himself. His eventual humiliation was intended to teach him that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men.

But consider the order of events.

God revealed the warning before Nebuchadnezzar learned the lesson.

The dream was part of the means by which God confronted his pride.

Had someone insisted beforehand that God could communicate only with a person who had already become meek, this account would have presented an awkward difficulty.

One wonders how the proposed formula would have worked in that situation. Nebuchadnezzar needed to become humble before God could warn him that he needed to become humble?

There is a problem somewhere in that reasoning.

Belshazzar Had Not Humbled His Heart

Daniel 5 takes us a step further.

Belshazzar was holding a feast, drinking from vessels taken from God’s temple and praising gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood, and stone.

During the festivities, the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote a message on the palace wall.

Understandably, the atmosphere changed.

Daniel was summoned to interpret the writing. Before doing so, he confronted Belshazzar with his conduct and reminded him of what had happened to Nebuchadnezzar.

Then came this remarkable statement:

Daniel 5:22 (KJV):

“And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this.”

Belshazzar had not humbled his heart.

Daniel says so explicitly.

And yet the writing on the wall was a message from God. Verse 24 attributes it to Him.

Here we have a man whose pride is condemned in the very account that records God communicating judgment to him.

Certainly, a message announcing judgment is different from instruction given to a receptive student. We should never erase those differences merely to make our case easier.

Still, the point stands.

Belshazzar’s failure to humble himself did not prevent God from communicating with him.

If we’ve been teaching that meekness is an absolute prerequisite for any communication from God, what are we to do with this passage?

We could invent an exception, I suppose.

But after enough exceptions, perhaps it is the rule that deserves another look.

Saul Wasn’t Exactly Seeking Spiritual Instruction

Then there is Saul.

By the time we reach 1 Samuel 19, Saul’s relationship with David had deteriorated badly. Saul was pursuing him, intent on apprehending him.

He sent messengers to take David.

But when those messengers encountered a company of prophets, something extraordinary happened.

1 Samuel 19:20 (KJV):

“And the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.”

Saul sent another group.

They prophesied too.

Then a third group. The same result.

Eventually Saul went himself, and the spirit of God came upon him. He also prophesied.

Now, we know that Saul had experienced God’s spirit earlier in his life. But that hardly explains away what is happening here.

On this particular occasion he was pursuing David with hostile intentions. He was not seeking guidance or demonstrating a willingness to submit to God’s instruction.

And yet the text tells us that God’s spirit came upon him.

We aren’t told the content of these prophecies, nor are we given a detailed account of what Saul understood about his experience.

What we do know is that the prophetic activity was attributed to God’s spirit and that Saul’s attempt to seize David was interrupted.

This is important because we sometimes confuse God’s activity as he works in a situation and at times in people with divine approval of the totality of a person’s conduct.

God’s spirit coming upon Saul did not somehow validate Saul’s intentions toward David.

The episode appears to demonstrate, among other things, that Saul could not simply carry out his purposes against David as he pleased.

And once again, God’s action is not explained by the recipient’s exemplary spiritual disposition.

Caiaphas Prophesied While Plotting Against Jesus

Perhaps the most unsettling example comes from the Gospel of John.

In John 11, the religious authorities were discussing the growing influence of Jesus. They feared that if matters continued, the Romans might intervene and threaten their position and nation.

Caiaphas, the high priest, offered what he evidently considered a practical solution.

Better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.

It was a political calculation.

But John adds something important about those words.

John 11:51 (KJV):

“And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation.”

Caiaphas prophesied.

Indeed, John goes on to explain that Jesus would die not only for the nation but also to gather together the children of God who were scattered abroad.

Did Caiaphas understand all that?

The narrative gives us little reason to think so.

John recognized in his words a significance that went well beyond the high priest’s immediate intentions.

And what happened next?

John 11:53 (KJV) tells us:

“Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.”

An extraordinary contrast.

Caiaphas spoke prophetically concerning the death of Jesus and then participated in the decision to bring that death about.

I find this account particularly revealing because it challenges more than one assumption.

We sometimes suppose that a person who speaks prophetically must necessarily understand the full significance of what he says. We may also assume that divine involvement requires a corresponding degree of spiritual maturity or moral approval.

John’s account gives us reason to be careful with both assumptions.

We would be unwise to make his example a general model of how prophecy operates. The circumstances are quite distinctive.

But those distinctive circumstances are part of Scripture too.

We cannot simply set them aside because they complicate a familiar explanation.

Perhaps We’ve Been Asking the Wrong Question

Consider what these accounts have in common.

Pharaoh received dreams disclosing future events. Laban received a warning. Nebuchadnezzar received dreams, one of which confronted his pride. Belshazzar received a written announcement of judgment. Saul prophesied under the influence of God’s spirit while pursuing David. And Caiaphas spoke prophetically while participating in the plot against Jesus.

Their experiences differed considerably, and those differences matter. A dream, a warning, a prophetic utterance, and a message of judgment each need to be understood within their respective contexts.

But across these very different accounts, something becomes difficult to ignore.

The biblical writers do not identify the recipients’ meekness as the prerequisite that made God’s communication possible.

Instead, we repeatedly find God communicating in circumstances that served His larger purposes.

That observation suggests we may have been asking the wrong question.

We ask what spiritual qualification these individuals must have possessed before God could communicate with them.

The narratives invite us to consider why God communicated with them in the first place.

When we begin with a formula, we tend to examine the biblical accounts in search of whatever conditions will make the formula work.

When we begin with the accounts themselves, we may discover that God has been doing things our formula never anticipated.

And surely that ought to teach us something.

Which leaves an obvious question. If meekness is not a condition God must wait for, does it matter at all?

It does, and more than we might think. But it matters in a different place than the formula puts it. That is where we will pick up in Part 2.

Continue to Part 2: Perhaps the Box Is Ours →