The Sixth Step — People Like an Eagle Flying in the Open Sky
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.
The eagle, called the king of the sky, can live for about seventy years. After forty years of hunting, when its beak and talons have grown dull and it can hunt no longer, it flies off to a rocky mountain where there are no other eagles. There it rubs its old beak and talons against the stone until they are all torn away. Without beak or talons, the eagle can neither eat nor fly for a while; yet, knowing that a new beak and new talons will grow, it endures and waits. When its talons, beak, and feathers have grown back, it will soar once more into the high, open sky and live another thirty years as king of the sky. Because it endured until the new beak and feathers grew, it can fly higher still. Such endurance is what God wants to see in his people.
To be born again as God’s people, we must have the wisdom and resolve to cast off lies and hypocrisy, bad habits and moods, without hesitation; only then can we have an eagle’s faith. You can do well at your strengths even without anyone’s praise. But because you cannot see your weaknesses for yourself, it is a blessing to have someone beside you who will counsel you where you fall short. People, however, want to hear praise, which is why they dislike the counsel and rebuke of their brothers and sisters in the faith — and that attitude, too, is pride. Because they think they are doing well, they will not listen to such counsel, nor will they turn back.
An eagle can fly because, until the eaglet could fly on its own, its mother trained it again and again, dropping it from the high nest toward the ground and catching it. If the young cannot fly, that alone means death; the mother therefore trains it desperately. Throwing a little eaglet from a height is no easy decision for her, but because it is the way to save her young, she repeats the training. The eaglet does not understand the heart of the mother who pushes it from the nest, and would have thought she was trying to kill it. As it falls and its terror reaches its height, the mother swoops in like an arrow and catches it, then drops it again; as this goes on, the eaglet at last understands that its mother pushes it away out of love. When the eaglet becomes a mother itself, it will find itself doing just as its mother did — dropping the young it loves toward the ground and going down ahead to catch them. The eagle that has come through such hard training and now soars serenely through the high, open sky is truly a victor.
If we too have the faith of an eagle soaring in the open sky, then however high the world’s waves may rise, they will be no trouble at all. So we must understand the labor of God, who keeps throwing us into hardship and catching us again to make us strong like the eagle. Those who have resolutely cast off the beak and talons they used for the world, and have been given the new beak and talons God provides, possess a power the world cannot give. Now we must show God a reborn faith that takes the sharp beak and talons he has given as weapons and fights Satan without fear.
The eagle knew that a new beak and talons would grow, but tearing away parts of its own body that it had treasured like life itself cannot have been easy. The pain was likely beyond words. Yet mature faith understands that life lies in tearing away a beak and talons that are no longer of use.
It is no easy thing for God’s people to overcome human instinct, because even though we know God will help us, living by faith demands great courage and endurance. The only way to fulfill the task God has given us is to win the fight against ourselves. If we overcome the world’s temptations, our pride, and our human righteousness, we can receive God’s high commendation.
Only those who have conquered human fear can fly high and see far. I hope, then, that you will have an eagle’s faith that soars powerfully through the open sky. Those whose faith is as wise as the eagle can receive God’s inheritance as a blessing and take up their calling for the salvation of souls.
Exodus 14:15-16
15Yahweh said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Speak to the children of Israel, that they go forward. 16Lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go into the middle of the sea on dry ground.
God chose Moses as the leader who would free Israel, enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years. To train Moses into a strong leader, God placed him in the care of Pharaoh’s daughter and made him live as a prince, so that he would learn the culture and thinking of Egypt thoroughly. Then, when Moses fled into the wilderness, God set him to live as a shepherd tending the flock of Jethro, the priest of Midian, and so caused him to understand how precious life is and how lacking he himself was. Moses lived forty years as a prince with nothing in the world to fear, and it took him forty years in the wilderness to realize how weak a creature he was. Through the eighty years it took Moses to grow into a leader, as prince and as shepherd, God never rested for a single moment; to keep his promise to Abraham, he worked until he set Moses before Pharaoh. As a shepherd, Moses learned how worthless the power he once held had been, and how helpless he himself was. When he realized that he had become a prince only because God had guided the papyrus basket to Pharaoh’s daughter, he understood that he could lose all of it whenever God willed. Knowing now that it had all been empty glory, he looked back on how proud he had been before God and repented of those foolish years. Once he grasped that leading the people to Canaan was God’s will, he laid aside his own righteousness and obeyed the word in every circumstance. Look at the miracles he worked in Egypt and his acts of bold faith, and you will see how necessary the training of the wilderness is.
For God’s people to come to a mature faith, refining is essential, because, painful as the training is, only through such seasons can we rightly see God’s will and have true faith. Every life has its moments of failure and frustration; but by showing God a faith that overcomes them, we can also win his approval and trust. In every life, happiness and misfortune come round again and again like a squirrel’s wheel; but if we use each of them as a tool for our own growth, we will be able to live as people after God’s own heart.
Before I became a pastor, I served as a cell group leader. Because the families in that group were all couples who both worked, it was hard to bring them together. Even though I was their leader, they disliked my taking an interest in their homes, so I had no idea what was really going on with them, and praying for them was not easy. When the pastor asked me to take on that group, I prayed earnestly, before I had even met them, that God would open their hearts. Because their jobs kept them from gathering in one place, I visited each home two or three times a week whenever I had time and taught them the word. As they learned the word they grew in faith, and once they understood it they began to share the gospel on their own and to be faithful in worship.
When the group had grown to seven households, I found myself praising my own zeal. As I prayed, feeling as proud as if I had done some great thing for God, a small vision unfolded before my eyes. I saw seven balloons floating high in the sky, and myself holding their strings, beaming with delight. But the joy did not last. A strong force struck my elbow, and with the jolt every balloon I had been holding flew away. Watching them drift off, I thought what a waste it was, after all my hard work to make them.
Then it seemed I heard these words in my heart: “My beloved daughter, you have worked hard. But you did not win these balloons by your own effort; they are souls I entrusted to you. Right now you grieve only over the balloons drifting away, but have you ever thought about who gave strength to your arm so that they would not fly away? From now on, do not delight in balloons that can fly off at any moment; remember me, who placed them in your hand.” As I heard these words, I saw that my faith had been like a child’s, delighting in balloons that might burst or fly away at any time.
You will have seen how different my faith, which looked only at the balloons, was from the faith of Moses, who led Israel out of Egypt to fulfill God’s word. Moses and I both gave our utmost to the work of God. I too gave my time and my means and did my best to share the word. But when human righteousness got ahead of God’s righteousness, I showed a shameful faith that made my own devotion look great. It is God who lifts you up like an eagle; it is God who governs the wind so that you can fly in the open sky; and it is God who shields you from the attacks of your enemies.
When you leave this world, you will leave behind the life you have lived as a single picture, as the people of faith did. What picture would you like to leave behind? If your children look at the picture of your life and say that they too want to paint so beautiful a picture, there could be no better-lived life than that. You are people whom God has blessed because of Jesus Christ. If you leave behind the picture of life God wants from you, no picture could be more beautiful, and yours will be a life that has received the greatest blessing.
Exodus 14:19-20
19The angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them, and stood behind them. 20It came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud and the darkness, yet gave it light by night: and one didn’t come near the other all night.
The faith of Moses and Joshua was of another order altogether from that of the Israelites, who obeyed only when they saw miracles, because their absolute obedience in believing and following God was a faith no one can have without denying self. We use the word obedience lightly, but unless we put our own righteousness to death moment by moment, we can never obey God’s will. Even as we obey with all our hearts, we should always carry a sense of our own unworthiness, and even as we serve faithfully, we should be ashamed that we cannot repay God’s grace.
While they stayed in the wilderness, Moses saw God protecting Israel with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. What he saw now was the Father’s true love, guarding them before and behind so that the Egyptian soldiers could not come near. Having seen the unfeigned love of almighty God, Moses came to a precious faith that offered up his own life. Moses had suffered Pharaoh’s endless obstruction until then, and he believed that even if great hardships met them on the road to Canaan, God would lead them. He believed this because suffering and refining had matured his faith.
Have you ever met God at work in your life? We can hold fast to our faith because we have a Father who guards us, so that neither a world as meaningless as mist nor the wicked can stand in our way. You too, if you obey the word without complaining whatever your circumstances, can meet the God who works by the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, as Moses did. Training for growth is lonely and wearying, but when the training is over, God will send you fellow workers to join with you in doing good, and he will supply everything you need.
Just as the eagle became king of the birds because it endured, the people of faith passed through seasons of spiritual endurance, and so they could discern the spirits and fulfill their calling. Moses spent forty years in the wilderness and forty as a leader, lonely, looking to God alone; Abraham, at God’s command, left his country, his relatives, and his father’s house, and had to endure a season of refining in order to become a fountain of blessing. God called them in different ways, but the process was the same: cut off from the world, they grew in faith. Though the training they went through was hard and required them to give up the world, in the end they became people of faith and received the protection of God, who walked with them.
Yet unlike us, Jesus Christ came to this earth to atone for sin, and he was utterly rejected by the world and by people and left alone. No one in this world stood as a witness to save Jesus. Only those who grasp the deep purpose of Christ, who atoned for human sin without a single witness, can walk the narrow, hard way of salvation. Because salvation is not the broad way, it will be lonely; but if those who walk that way endure and obey, they will enjoy in God the freedom and peace of an eagle soaring through the open sky.
Hebrews 11:17
17By faith, Abraham, being tested, offered up Isaac. Yes, he who had gladly received the promises was offering up his one and only son,
Isaac, born to Abraham when he was a hundred years old, was a son he loved as his own life. Then one day God called Abraham and commanded him to offer that son, dearer to him than life, as a burnt offering. Because Abraham believed that God is sovereign over all, he took Isaac and set out for Mount Moriah. Yet to offer one’s son as a burnt offering is no easy thing.
How it must have pained God, too, when his Son was nailed to the cross! If, in the midst of God’s great work, you were commanded as Abraham was to offer your son as a burnt offering, what would you do? It is a question worth pondering, at least once, for those who pray that they will live by God’s will every day if only he will solve their problem.
Isaac, walking with his father toward Mount Moriah, was, I imagine, puzzled. So he asked his father where the offering for God was, since they had the fire and the wood. Abraham answered that God himself would provide it, but one can only think how his heart ached.
Reading their question and answer, I have come to think that when Jesus prayed earnestly that this cup might pass from him if it were possible, God’s heart would have been like that of Abraham when Isaac asked his question. Because you know now that Isaac did not die, you may not truly feel the agony of having to put your own son to death with your own hands.
But Abraham did not hesitate, because he knew there is a God who raises the dead, and that there is eternal life and his Kingdom. Just as Abraham was about to strike Isaac, God said, “Don’t lay your hand on the boy,” and, “Because you have not withheld your son, your only son, now I know that you fear me.”
Why did God test Abraham? Did he truly not know that Abraham had a faith that obeyed him in the hope of resurrection? God wanted to bring to light Abraham’s faith, faithful even to death, and whether he loved God more than Isaac.
All who belong to God have faith, but to show that faith in acts of obedience is never easy. Yet unless you show God your true faith in deeds, you will not be able to show him fully the faith you hold as people saved by God’s sovereign choice. When Abraham made his final decision, if I perish, I perish, God recognized his faith. Do you know when the moment comes that God recognizes your faith?
Isaac did not die, because God stopped Abraham; but to Abraham, Isaac was a son already dead. Isaac was now no longer an ordinary son held in Abraham’s arms, but a son under God’s absolute protection. After Abraham had shown his faith in resurrection, he received, through Isaac and according to God’s promise, the blessing of descendants as many as the stars. God’s grace shone all the brighter through Abraham’s deeds of faith.
Honestly, there are times when God’s commands are hard to obey, because human thinking cannot fully understand them. But human knowledge and desire are like a single cloud floating in the sky, a single ship afloat on the sea. How could one scrap of cloud take in the whole wide sky? How could one small ship see all of that vast sea? So it is a very wise choice to entrust your future to God, with whom a thousand years are as one day. To entrust your life to the Master who gave it, and your days to the Creator who made you, is a sign of genuine faith.
What fruit is precious to you? If it is the lusts of the flesh, I hope you will nail them to the cross with Jesus, and if it is the world, that you will cast off this perishing world without regret. If it is your children, may you move them from your own arms into God’s, see them as God’s children, and raise them in prayer, free of greed. When you see them as God’s children and pray for them as persons in their own right, God will take responsibility for your children and protect them.
Because Abraham gave Isaac to God, Isaac lived in peace in God all his life through his father’s faith. Whether your faith is that of a mother eagle or of an eaglet, if you have an eagle’s faith that lives by God’s high will, God will keep you as the apple of his eye.
We are all citizens of a holy nation and saints chosen by the Lord. Even now God walks with us so that we can share the gospel, and he is pouring out abundant grace so that we may enjoy peace and rest. If you turn neither to the right nor to the left but live by the word, God will protect you with his great grace and power.
If you live as people who do not fear the world, do not covet, and are faithful in the life given you, God will be your refuge. If you soar toward God like an eagle, he will hold back the wicked and evil spirits, and so you will be able to live as mature people of God bearing abundant fruit. May you be people who enjoy peace and rest, loved and protected by God.