Apples of Gold
Radio Script for December 22, 2008
“Don’t Lean On a Splintered Reed”
Hello, I’m Doug Apple…with Apples of Gold.
It was the 4th of July right before I got my driver’s license.
We had a bunch of people over and soon a hot game of volleyball broke out.
At some point someone launched a “homer.” The ball sailed high into a tree – and didn’t come down.
I quickly scrambled up the tree to get the ball, no problem.
Now I had been a tree climber all my life. I knew all the tricks of the trees.
I came down to a large limb, too large to wrap my arms around. There was a smaller limb growing out of it, so my plan was to swing down from the larger limb, grab the base of the smaller limb, and drop down from there.
As I swung down, however, the smaller limb snapped right off. And it happened at the most inopportune time, with my legs in the air and my back toward the ground.
I landed flat on my back, which knocked the wind out of me.
That’s not a pleasant thing, but I’d been there before. Just catch your breath and everything will be fine.
But I wasn’t catching my breath. And my brain was fuzzy. I couldn’t even sit up.
What I didn’t realize was that when I fell, I put my arms back to catch myself – and my right arm snapped underneath me.
In the end it was nothing serious, just a broken arm. But you know what? I still feel it today – just an occasional discomfort right at the spot of the break.
And it all goes back to my decision to rely on something that was too small and too weak to be relied upon – that smaller limb.
So why did I do it? Because I had done it before with no problems. My experience up to that point was that, as long as you grabbed it at the base, a smaller limb could be relied upon.
Why do we so often have to learn our lessons the hard way?
King Hezekiah didn’t seem like such a person. Second Kings 18 says, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord…”
Verse 5 says he “…trusted in the Lord…”
Verse 6 says, “He held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow Him…”
Verse 7 says, “And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook.”
And one thing he undertook was to rebel against the king of Assyria. God’s chosen people would not kowtow to those pagans.
In the 14th year of his reign, however, Assyrian soldiers captured some of their cities.
Now the key here is how Hezekiah responded. Up until then he had been relying on the Lord. But now look at verse 14.
“So Hezekiah king of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria… “I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand…”
And what he demanded was a bunch of silver and gold. So Hezekiah gave him all the silver from the temple of the Lord and from his own palace.
And for the gold he again plundered the Lord’s temple.
So instead of relying on the Lord, Hezekiah relied on silver and gold.
But, as you can imagine, that didn’t stop the Assyrians. They decided to come for Jerusalem as well.
At one point the king of Assyria sent a message to Hezekiah saying, “On whom are you depending…? Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man’s hand and wounds him if he leans on it!”
So Hezekiah relied on silver and gold, but it failed him. Then the Assyrians said he was relying on Egypt, and I love that illustration. “Egypt is like a splintered reed. If you lean on it, it will pierce your hand.”
That’s a great illustration of what happens when we lean on anything but the Lord. It’s unreliable. If we lean too much it will pierce our hand.
It might be silver and gold. It might be our network of allies, our friends and family. But in the end there is only sure thing to lean on.
King Hezekiah finally rediscovered it. He called upon the Lord, and through Isaiah the prophet the Lord predicted a mighty deliverance for His people. And I love what 2 Kings 19:31 says, “The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”
And now the question comes to us all. What are we relying on? Is it our silver and gold? Is it our network of allies?
The truth is, all of these will fail. They cannot be relied upon. Lean too hard and, like a splintered reed, it will pierce your hand.
Instead, we do like Hezekiah did originally. We do what is right in the eyes of the Lord. We trust in the Lord. We hold fast to Him and do not cease to follow Him.
Then I think, like Hezekiah, the Lord will be with us and make us successful.
And I believe it will be like 2 Kings 19:31.
“The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.”
Comments?
E-mail me: dougapple@wave94.com.
May God bless you today! With Apples of Gold…I’m Doug Apple.
© 2008 The Arrow’s Tip
To subscribe to your own daily “Apples of Gold” e-mail, write dougapple@wave94.com.
If you want to be removed from this e-mail list, simply click reply and type UNSUBSCRIBE on the subject line.
If you want to catch “Apples of Gold” in its original audio format, go to www.wave94.com
To search through the large archive of past articles, go here: http://www.wave94.com/modules.php?name=Stories_Archive
If you have trouble reaching me at my main e-mail address, try this one: douglas_apple@msn.com
(Proverbs 25:11 – “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”)
Why “The Arrow’s Tip”? Each morning, after diligently seeking the Lord, I write Apples of Gold. Then before I release it to the public I pray one final prayer, “Lord, send forth your arrows.” I envision Apples of Gold as arrows, tips dipped in the river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God (Rev. 22:1), sailing toward the hearts and minds of men and women around the world.
Doug Apple
General Manager - Wave 94
Christian Radio for Tallahassee
PO Box 4105
Tallahassee, FL 32315
(850) 926-8000
-vi-
No comments:
Post a Comment