The Third Step — Believers with a Faith of Sharp Low Hills

1He brought me back to the door of the house; and behold, waters flowed out from under the threshold of the house eastward, for the front of the house faced toward the east. The waters came down from underneath, from the right side of the house, on the south of the altar. 2Then he brought me out by the way of the gate northward, and led me around by the way outside to the outer gate, by the way of the gate that looks toward the east. Behold, waters ran out on the right side. 3When the man went out eastward with the line in his hand, he measured one thousand cubits, and he caused me to pass through the waters, waters that were to the ankles. 4Again he measured one thousand, and caused me to pass through the waters, waters that were to the knees. Again he measured one thousand, and caused me to pass through waters that were to the waist. 5Afterward he measured one thousand; and it was a river that I could not pass through; for the waters had risen, waters to swim in, a river that could not be walked through.

Anyone living a life of faith can sway to the left or the right or lose heart, so a time of looking at yourself is needed. You began without knowing what faith was, and about the time you start to feel you know a little, you meet the third step, where the sharp low hills are. Great care is needed on this step, because you can show the pride of lifting yourself up and judging others. You thought that simply attending church would of course get you to heaven, and the more you learn the Word the more you see that living by it is not easy, and you can be shaken. This third step is the stage where you have to train yourself in giving yourself up, so doubts about the life of faith come and you agonize, missing the days when you lived freely. When they meet this third step people divide into those who hope for heaven and overcome it themselves and those who go back to the world, so you must learn the Bible thoroughly.

Whether faith grows or stops is decided here, and someone who cannot leap over the third step can attend church for years and still not grow, like standing water. Someone who does leap over the third step, on the other hand, comes to an assurance about God and holds a hope of heaven, an assurance of salvation, and joy. The faith of the sharp low hills is the stage where you know the Word well enough, have been given an office and begun to serve, so it is a dangerous step where a smug feeling that you know something about God, and pride, can arise.

Some believers, according to their character, take counsel from someone ahead of them and grow at a bound; others stumble on the pride of thinking they have grown. This is where the mistake of criticizing another believer’s faith is most likely. So a pastor must build up believers on the third step with the Word so that they do not stumble, and must help them hold a humble faith. Believers who devote themselves to the death and do not even register that they are working are the humble ones, and they will receive a reward from God.

The apostle Paul, whose faith went to martyrdom, confessed that he was the chief of sinners; look at that, and you see what the posture of a believer who takes living by faith as a matter of course looks like.

Genesis 37:6-7

6He said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: 7for behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and behold, your sheaves came around, and bowed down to my sheaf.”

Jacob’s son Joseph carried the precious calling of saving Israel later on, but when his faith was not yet mature he made great mistakes. God cuts and shapes whatever a person lacks and then uses them. Whether the refining — being put through the fire — ends quickly or the suffering lasts a long time depends on who grasps God’s will quickly and lets go of human righteousness and obeys.

Rather than grasping why God had given him the dream, Joseph boasted that his whole family had bowed to him. God had shown a revelation of the whole family being saved through Joseph, but Joseph was young spiritually and did not grasp it. Jacob had always favored Joseph, so his brothers hated him, and Joseph did not measure their hearts at all. When you are weak spiritually, as Joseph was, you do not understand even when God tells you a great purpose, and you boast instead and wound people. Had Joseph been mature he would have carried himself more wisely, and he would not have had to go the long way around through suffering brought on by his brothers’ envy and jealousy.

The calling Joseph received from God was to prepare a way of escape, against the seven years of famine to come, so that his whole family could live. Of course God also planned, taking this as his occasion, to make Israel through the four hundred years of slavery he had promised Abraham, and then to bring them out of Egypt. Young Joseph’s vessel was too small to grasp a work that great and take it on as his calling, so God used his brothers’ hatred to send him to Egypt. To hold the people of Israel in Joseph’s small vessel, a refining that would first make Joseph a large vessel was needed. Just as a potter must put in more care and more time to make a large vessel, more training was needed until Joseph grew.

For Joseph, who had lived comfortably, that refining was terribly painful, and God led him according to the plan he had fixed. Happily, Joseph passed through the time of suffering living a life of faith, and came to grasp why God had led him along the narrow road. And he came to know that even the brothers who sold him to the Ishmaelites had been tools used in God’s plan.

Had Joseph not obeyed, the exodus would have been brought about through someone else, and he would not have saved his family from a severe famine. Looking at Joseph’s suffering, we can see that there is always a reason for any suffering. And just as there is suffering that makes a vessel fit for God’s will, there is also suffering that comes from one’s own sin, so living clean always matters.

On the third step, rather than being thankful to the pastor or to the believers ahead in faith who have taught the Word until now, people show the proud thought that they know the Word too. God calls up angels to help you, and he also works through people and circumstances. If a brother in faith has helped your faith you must treasure him and be thankful; and if people are pulling you toward the world there must be a resolve of faith to cut them off firmly. Without spiritual discernment you cannot tell a person of faith who is helping you from a person who is hindering your faith, which is why you can stumble.

God set Joseph, who was carrying his calling well, as prime minister of Egypt. Once he had passed through suffering hard enough to kill him, God gave him worldly power and honor and money and had him save Israel. For believers, living by faith always comes first, and it is when they show that faith that an astonishing blessing they never expected comes.

John 13:20

20Most certainly I tell you, he who receives whomever I send, receives me; and he who receives me, receives him who sent me.”

To put this word simply: whoever lives by God’s will becomes, in the end, a special being whom God protects. A believer who preaches the gospel holds God’s particular interest and holds the word of power, and so we are told to treat them as preciously as we would treat Jesus. This is exactly why the world can only be destroyed. A world that persecutes the precious believers who preach the gospel of Christ is sinning against God, and for that sin it can only be destroyed. Persecuting a believer is evidence of not having received Christ, so there is no way to escape God’s judgment. Persecuting the church and its believers is persecuting God, so anyone at all must refrain from opposing the church.

Jesus commended those on his right hand, saying that when he was hungry they gave him food, when he was sick they cared for him, when he was thirsty they gave him drink. And so he gave them the astonishing blessing of inheriting the kingdom the Father had prepared for them from the foundation of the world. When they asked in surprise when they had ever devoted themselves to the Lord, he said that what they did to one of the least of these his brothers, they did to him. They had helped a poor brother out of pity, and God does not forget that love; he repays it instead with an eternal reward. That a brother in trouble is beside you now is God giving you an opportunity, so that you may receive a reward.

If you do not grasp this heart of God’s, you will mock a poor person by saying they were not blessed because they sinned, and you will say heartbreaking things to a sick person, that they fell ill because they did not pray. This is the mistake people on the third step make most often. Because their faith is not set straight, they commit the sin of criticizing other people’s weak faith in order to display their own righteousness. When this feeling comes, you should think that the church grew because someone else served while you were not devoting yourself, and that you could live your life of faith well because someone else was loyal at a time when you took no interest. Held by the thought that you were the one who devoted yourself, you cannot see other believers being loyal, so you grow proud. But look at yourself before judging others and you can become humble.

Luke 16:14-15

14The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they scoffed at him. 15He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts. For that which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

People differ in how far they take the Word in, and in character. There are people who hear the Word and go the way of the world, and there are people who buffet themselves into submission and work at walking the narrow road of truth. There is a limit to how far a pastor can help a believer’s faith. Teaching God’s law and his will can be done, but living by the Word has to be done by the person’s own will, so blaming others and complaining when faith does not grow is not right. Once you have been taught the Word, the responsibility for faith not growing is your own.

The Pharisees showed their pride toward Jesus plainly. They were people who did not recognize Jesus, who is life, and so they even sneered at the Jesus who rebuked them. If, like the Pharisees, you cannot bear even to hear counsel from the Word because it differs from your own thinking, you will never experience God’s grace. If you read a brother’s intention rightly when he counsels you and take it in, God will see that heart as humility and bless it.

People who boast of their faith on the sharp low hills mostly say that they too have served until it hurt, that they too have given beyond their strength, that they prayed and fasted hard and have wisdom besides. But think a little further: who was that devotion for, and who was that loyalty for?

Being loyal to the Jesus who gave his own life to save sinners deceived by Satan and fallen into death is a matter of course. And there is nothing to boast to God about in having devoted the money entrusted to us so that we might carry the calling of a good steward. If you boast of having merely kept your faith by the grace God gave, you are a fool with no wisdom.

The purpose of a church teaching the Bible is to help people leave a faith that seeks blessing and serve God for themselves. Work at keeping your faith yourself and you become a worker who labors for the saving of more souls with the Word you have grasped.

But sadly, when people are told to live freely within the truth, you see them live something close to license, as though they had been devoting themselves under duress. Being free within the truth does not mean living comfortably now with no responsibility and no duty; it means that a spiritual battle begins, in which you take on responsibility and duty yourself, like an adult, and buffet yourself into submission. And still many churchgoers hold a faith that bargains with God for the world’s blessing, a faith that seeks blessing.

Believers misunderstand God because of a wrong faith. It is the faith that says: devote yourself hard and he gives blessing; give a tenth and he pours out until there is no room to store it; never miss a Sunday and your children are blessed; work hard at church business and you escape God’s punishment. For these reasons they never forgot to give, and set going to church as the first priority in everything and attended without missing. A great many believers really do hold this wrong faith, that only by doing so will God recognize their faith and bless them to overflowing.

But a life of faith like this is only idol worship, the same as people of the world who put up a talisman and feel safe. Even so, believers must hold a faith in which they give, keep the Lord’s Day and devote themselves because they love God. When people are told that a faith that seeks blessing is not what God wants and carries no reward, you can see them go slack all at once, like a kite cut loose from a taut string it had been straining against.

That people reveal the wrong thought that they need not give and need not keep the Lord’s Day, once they are told it has nothing to do with worldly blessing, is evidence that they are not God’s children. A person of faith and a person with a faith that seeks blessing look, from the outside, as though they were serving God in the same way. But the faith God sees in those two is entirely different. It will be as different as Cain and Abel, as different as Ishmael and Isaac, as different as Esau and Jacob.

A person who lives by God’s will and gives God what is God’s, and a person who uses God to get blessing because they hear he is an almighty god, can never be the same. You breathe because God kept you; you have a happy home and the ability to work because God became a fence around you. Of course a church must teach its believers to keep the Lord’s Day and to give. Just as children entering school are taught to attend with some compulsion and are taught how to study, a church too needs to teach the basic law. But it cannot be led by compulsion forever. Just as children do better when they study on their own, believers too will grow astonishingly in spirit and in body only when they know God’s law and live by it.

Which of these do you think is a true believer — the one who lives a life of faith in order to be blessed, or the one who keeps faith because he truly loves God? A believer’s life, judging the Word wisely and applying it to life, is a blessing.

1 Timothy 4:7-8

7But refuse profane and old wives’ fables. Exercise yourself toward godliness. 8For bodily exercise has some value, but godliness has value in all things, having the promise of the life which is now, and of that which is to come.

Children entering primary school can settle in well if they follow what the teacher says. In the same way, believers who learn the Word their pastor preaches and show good conduct can hold God’s grace and an assurance of salvation. In the first year of school growth is hardly noticeable, but as the years go up they show a maturity that does what is needed without being told. Grown enough to carry their own work themselves, they can make plans for their lives and live steadily without anyone else’s help.

A church teaches the Bible in order to help people overcome the cunning attack of Satan and live enjoying peace in the Lord. Without spiritual training you fall every time Satan tempts, and that is why you cannot keep the salvation of another soul, nor even your own.

I have told you that God is not one who disciplines you immediately for missing a single Sunday, or takes your property away immediately because you did not give a tenth. Jesus offered his own body once for all as the sacrifice and forgave sin, so God does not take a life on the spot for breaking the law, as in the age of the old covenant. If he judged every sin as in that age, there would not be one person left alive. If, having heard this, you feel no sense of sin about not coming to church and no burden about not giving, then that is all the faith you have. Even so, I cannot threaten you that something bad will happen if you break the Lord’s Day, or that you will lose that much property if you do not give a tenth. If it takes hearing that to make you keep the Lord’s Day and give out of fear, that faith is a lie.

So consider what your own faith is like. Do you give a tenth, however large the sum, and keep the Lord’s Day, when you are threatened with words about sin, about the law, about having no reward? Why do you suppose someone who was zealous for reward turns hard at once and begins bargaining with God for blessing the moment they are told they are free? It is because the faith they have held until now was not offered in thanks for God’s love and grace but lived for their own profit. If God had always come first for you, you would have kept the Lord’s Day whether free or under law, and you would have given precious money beyond your strength, as Barnabas did.

What I want to say to you is that a true believer finds it a joy to attend church because he loves God, and takes giving God what is God’s as a matter of course.

Matthew 24:41

41Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and one will be left.

Two women are grinding at the mill and one is taken and one is left — what happens on that last day is decided through the life of faith we are living now, so we must act in the Spirit and in truth. A master trusts a servant who works faithfully and honestly hands over the produce. In the same way a believer trusted by God will be given more ground, and so will naturally live a blessed life. Believers who know this kept their faith out of love for God, so they will live overcoming a dark world through wisdom. Every church alike evangelizes and worships and sends missionaries and cares for the poor according to Jesus Christ’s great commission, so from the outside they all look as though they believe in God. But though they did the same things, God looks at the heart, which is why one is taken and one receives the curse of being left. Doing God’s work in order to be blessed, or working because a pastor pressed you, is never any help to that believer. And even so, the church tells you to devote yourself, for the sake of your own faith.

A believer must buffet himself into submission daily and train to be lowered, in order to live a godly life. Work at it and one day you will find yourself mature, living by the Word and loyal to God. Holding a faith like this is what it is to be a child of faith who receives a reward from God. God urged us not to be children in wisdom but to be grown up in the Word. Work at going down to the low place yourself and God will set you high without your having to display yourself, so you will receive people’s love and respect.

You too will have had your experience of the sharp low hills. Now may you climb one step further on the ground of that experience of faith. Climb the stairway of faith one step at a time and, without noticing, you will come to understand God’s heart and will evangelize in order to repay that love.

A mature faith is not recognized for owning much; it is recognized when you live holy and humble by the Word. As new wine goes into a new wineskin, may you throw away the old wineskin you have carried until now and fill the new one God gave with reward. A believer thankful for God’s grace can block any attack of Satan’s and will never spill the astonishing grace the Lord has given.

May you live the life of a precious believer who cuts away the sharp places that hinder the growth of faith and goes forward looking to a holy and high place.