God's Hidden Shaft
By Dennis Pollock
In Isaiah we read these words:
The LORD has called Me from the womb;
From the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name.
And He has made My mouth like a sharp sword;
In the shadow of His hand He has hidden Me,
And made Me a polished shaft;
In His quiver He has hidden Me.” (Isaiah 49:1-2)
I have long been fascinated with these two verses. I believe it has a threefold application. It refers to Israel, it refers to Jesus, and it can have an application in the life of every Christian. Twice, it refers to the idea of being hidden while the Lord was creating an instrument for His use. Two instruments are mentioned: a sharp sword and a polished shaft, meaning an arrow.
We learn that God likes to prepare His instruments privately. He makes His swords "in the shadow of His hand," and fashions His arrows while hiding them in His quiver. In the following verse we read: "And He said to me, ‘You are My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’" So clearly this has reference to the nation of Israel. In their early years, they were a group of despised slaves.
But in His perfect time, God sent His servant Moses to Egypt to liberate the Israelites, and on that exodus night, a nation of millions of people walked out of Egypt. Today, who does not know of the nation of Israel? Although they are far from being a large nation, they are unquestionably one of the most influential and renowned nations in the world.
Jesus – God's "Hidden Shaft"
And then think about our Lord Jesus. Was He a hidden shaft, a hidden arrow in the quiver of God? Of course, He was. Where was Jesus while in His twenties? How famous was He at the age of twenty-two or twenty-seven? He was not at all famous. As far as we know, He was living at home, working as a carpenter, and studying the Scriptures in His spare time. And all the while, God the Father was working, shaping, polishing, and preparing His hidden arrow for a ministry such as the world had never known. And at the age of thirty, God brought out His perfect arrow from the quiver, put it to His bow, and sent it forth to bring salvation to the world and destruction to the forces of darkness. Now all of Israel would see what had previously been hidden in darkness, and the Bible says, "Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in deserted places, and they came to Him from every direction." (Mark 1:45). In another place we read: "He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden." Jesus, the Son of God, and God's polished, razor-sharp arrow was now out of the quiver, and everyone knew His name.
Every Minister
In a much smaller way, this process of being shaped and polished in a hidden place, and then brought out to public ministry applies to every Christian called to preach or teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. After his dramatic conversion to Christ, the apostle Paul spent time in the desert region of Arabia, and many scholars believe it was here that Jesus revealed the message of grace that he would later preach and become known for. The great British evangelist George Whitefield spent significant time in his early days in Christ, reading the Bible while on his knees, praying over every verse, and seeking God's wisdom. The time would come when Whitefield would preach all over England, Ireland, Scotland, and America, and those truths and insights he gained while still young and unknown would form the heart of his incomparable preaching and teaching in his later years when fame and exhaustive labors would not allow him such in-depth study ever again.
In my life and in my own small way I experienced something similar. At the age of 25, I sort of fell into ministry and became a pastor of a very small flock in a small town in Missouri. For the first couple of years, I taught school as well as pastored, but the church grew to the point where they could support me full-time. I was thrilled. We had rented a building on the main street of town, and inside that building, I had a tiny little office. Every day I would go down to our "church" (which was really a storefront building), go into my office, and… well, there just wasn't a whole lot to do! The church was small, perhaps 55 people in those early days, and sometimes I would go through the entire day with no phone calls and no one even stopping by. It was an isolated way of life.
There were no personal computers, there was no Internet to surf, and no YouTube videos to watch. And I did not want to waste my time by doing nothing. So, I read the Bible – a lot! I spent quite a bit of time in prayer, I read Christian books, lots and lots of Christian books. I loved to read about some of the great evangelists and revivalists of church history, people like John Wesley, George Whitefield, D. L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Charles Finney, and others. I listened to many sermons of current preachers on cassette tapes – there were no CDs in those days, and mp3s were a long way off.
Each year I would read through the Old Testament at least once, often twice, and one year I read it through three times. I would read through the New Testament probably five or six times each year. I also memorized the Scriptures. I would fill up a page of notebook paper, front and back, at the beginning of the week, and by the end of the week, I would have that page memorized. When the new week rolled around, I would learn another page of Scriptures, probably around twenty-five per week. I stayed busy, happy in my little office, drinking in the truths of Jesus Christ and the Scriptures.
Preaching and Teaching
I also learned how to preach. In most Bible colleges they insist that you take a course called homiletics, which teaches you how to preach, but I only had just a few months of Bible school and never took a course on homiletics. I just wrote out some notes on a particular Bible topic and on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings, I preached from the notes. Sometimes things went well, and I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit and received a lot of positive feedback, and sometimes not so well and I felt almost nothing. But over the seven years I spent at that church, I learned how to preach and teach.
Very few people in that town of around 4,000 people knew anything about our church or me. On Sundays, I would preach to between 50 to 70 people, and on Tuesday evenings I would teach a Bible lesson to between 15 to 35 people. It was not big or glamorous, but I took my responsibilities seriously. When the service felt anointed and blessed, I rejoiced; when it felt dry and cold I was depressed. During my years serving that little church in that small town it felt like I was a hidden man.
Brought from the Hidden Place
The day came when God moved me on from there. Since then, I have preached in many cities in the U.S. as an evangelist and a teacher, and I have preached and taught at conferences in Africa, India, Mexico, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines. Through YouTube, I teach people in more nations than I could count or know. But the training I received in those early days while studying, reading, praying, and memorizing Scriptures has equipped me for everything that has happened since. It was there, while in the darkness, in the hidden place, that God shone the light of His truth on my life. I couldn't begin to tell you all the insights and truths I learned in those days, but I will tell you the biggest one.
It was in that season that I discovered that effective Christian service comes because of abiding in Jesus and preaching and teaching Jesus, keeping Him central in every aspect of ministry. In my desperation to be useful to God, I prayed repeatedly, "Use me, Lord. Use me." And one day the Lord burned John 15 into my soul, where Jesus commands us: "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." (John 15:5). That was my "Aha moment," that chapter and that verse gave me the foundation of fruitful ministry. From that time on, my foremost goal has been simply to abide in Jesus and trust Him to direct me where He will. And I discovered that whether Sunday School teacher or international evangelist, whether pastor, writer, singer, or YouTube Bible teacher, our number one priority must always be to lift Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.
Every Christian is a minister, in one way or another. And every Christian/minister needs some type of a season of preparation. It will not look the same for us. Moses' preparation involved quiet times of shepherding sheep in the wilderness. David's season involved leading 600 men while avoiding Saul. Peter and John had the best training of all, following Jesus as He walked the roads of Israel, teaching the ways and word of God. Your preparation may simply be a few years where you read the Bible more than usual and spend time drinking in the Scriptural truths about Jesus until they become "bone of your bones and flesh of your flesh." But whatever your early days of training and preparation look like, give yourself fully to it. Your special times with God and Christ in His word and prayer will pay big dividends in your later days. And people will be blessed because you took time to attend Jesus' special school of discipleship.
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