Terms of Reference

The basis of God’s involvement with His creation.

God is God-centred. This is very different and quite the opposite of being self-centered. It simply means God is the reason why He does all He does. Or, to put it slightly differently, there is a God-reason for everything that God does.

There are times that we feel or think that God does things (for us) because we ask Him to, or because it made sense for Him to do so, and so on.

However, as we study through the scriptures, a pattern starts to emerge. God confronts us early with a fact that at first seems difficult to stomach, but if we think a bit more deeply about it, it becomes one of the most comforting facts in the context of our relationship with Him.

[23] And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God because of the bondage.

[24] And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

[25] And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.

Exodus 2:23-25 (KJV)

I want to take for granted that we are familiar with the backstory leading up to this sequence of events. The children of Israel have come to a crucial point in their stay in Egypt; it had become maximally laborious, and they could not bear it anymore. It was in that season that they turned to God with cries, I believe, of supplication.

And we are told that God heard it. The immediate response of God is what I intend to call to our attention. Scripture says in verse 24: “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”

God heard them. And the first thing it moved Him to do was not come down or send thunder and brimstone, but rather: ‘…He remembered his covenant…’

This is what I mean by terms of reference. They cried, but their cry was only potent insofar as it made Him bring on the scene what He had said before to their fathers in covenant. Though He was responding to their cries, He was doing it from the standpoint of Himself as captured in His words. 

He wasn’t going to act in response to their cries – as important and necessary as they were – but because He had already committed Himself to acting in a certain way.

Simply put, God was going to respond to them because He had said He was going to.

We see this fact all through the scriptures. God is God-centred. This is comforting. It means that we can rest assured that whatever God does, it will be that which pleases Him and brings Him glory. This inevitably means that, whatever God does, we can rest assured that (either in time and/or in eternity) it will turn out for our good unto the praise of His name.

This is one of the great ends of prayer, that God will do as He has said, according to His will and pleasure.

So the next time we engage in prayers or some other exercise of faith, it will be profitable to engage from the framework of the terms of reference. It is to ask: On what basis will God act in this matter? What has He committed Himself to doing?

God heard their groaning. He remembered his covenant. May God help us. Amen.