The Arm of Flesh
July 2, 2024 | 3:41 pm
This June we have been learning about the Transforming Grace of God in our lives. Grace is the unmerited favor of God upon our lives where we receive what we do not deserve. Ephesians 2:7 reminds us that we have been saved by grace through faith. This means that salvation is an act of grace that we have connected to through faith in Jesus Christ and must be maintained by grace.
In the last few days, we have seen young people, namely Generation Zs (born in 1996 to 2012), demonstrate on the streets of Nairobi due to the highly contested 2024-2025 Finance bill that was tabled in our national assembly for debate and approval. As I watched them in wonder courageously move on the streets against the armed police with tear gas and water cannons, I remembered the youthful strength that is quite temporary. Isaiah 40:30 says that the young men grow weary and stumble and fall because theirs is the arm of flesh which fails.
In Galatians 3, Apostle Paul rebukes the church for stopping to believe in God. They started well when they heard the gospel and trusted in the saving grace of Christ, yet over time, they placed conditional rules and regulations to salvation. This reflects people who ceased believing in God’s grace and started to depend on the arm of flesh and they ended up frustrating the grace of God upon their lives.
Frustrating the grace of God is refusing to fully trust the grace of God and begin feeling that it is by works that we can make it. Paul equated this sin to witchcraft (Galatians 3:1). This happens when we fail to depend fully on God and begin to engage in other means for help and salvation.
Faith without works is indeed dead, but when these works begin to take precedence over Christ’s work on Calvary, we have begun frustrating the grace of God upon our lives. Whatever is born of grace, must be maintained by grace (Colossians 2:6-7). We cannot begin in grace and only pick it up whenever convenient. We must stay in grace if we do not want to frustrate it.
Paul warns against quenching the Spirit of God in our lives. We begin in the Spirit, but at some point, begin to trust and use other means to enable us. As a nation, we prayed that God would give us a good government. The leaders have a responsibility to do the right and must do the right. As Gen Zs push for reforms, we must be careful not to trust them to save us. The Lord can use them but they cannot be our help. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
We must not be caught flat-footed trusting that these demonstrations will bring the change that we dearly crave. We must not trust the arm of flesh. We must continue to trust in the Lord, lest we be found frustrating the grace of God upon us and we engage in the sin of idolatry and witchcraft.
Ed Welch wrote a book entitled “When People Are Big and God Is Small.” In this book, he says that every time we fail to trust and obey God, we set ourselves up as superior to Him, claiming that we know more and that our way is better than His. Where is your trust today? Whom are you leaning on?
Psalm 20:7 (ESV)
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
The word of God has numerous instances of what happens to those who trust in themselves. Eve led Adam to sin. Lot almost lost his family. Naomi lost her whole family. King Saul lost the kingdom. King Jeroboam led Israel to sin. King Hezekiah warned Judah against trusting in the arm of flesh in 2 Chronicles 32:8: “With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” And the people gained confidence from what Hezekiah the king of Judah said.
Do you find yourself beginning something with God and then letting go? Do you find yourself seeking help from other things other than God? We need to trust God for people. I trust God for my husband. I trust God for my children. I trust God for the work of my hands.
We trust God for the peace and prosperity of our nation so that we do not frustrate the grace of God by trusting in ourselves. The arm of flesh can easily fail but our God remains immovable, unstoppable, unshakable and unchanging. He alone can be trusted.
Anne
Pastor