The Cry That Brings Deliverance: Part 1
February 2024 Newsletter
Dear Friends,
Last year, my friend Matthew Lilley approached me with a totally unexpected question: "Do you want to start a publishing company?"
After much prayer and many conversations, it's an honor to be part of the launch of Presence Pioneers Media.
It's our belief that we are in the midst of a historically unprecedented, global prayer and worship movement. Our goal with Presence Pioneers is to serve that movement with good news, encouragement, and Biblical teaching and theology that will fuel prayer and strengthen presence based communities. We also want to amplify the voices of those God is raising up to encourage future generations. We'll be doing that in a variety of ways, including book publishing, weekly podcasts, musical releases, and monthly teaching emails.
For this month's email, I wanted to share the first in a three part teaching on an important Biblical pattern that I call, “The Cry”.
The Cry is a major part of God's "ways". It's a pattern of divine activity that repeats over and over again. Understanding how God operates in partership with His people makes all of us better and more willing partners with Him!
I hope this teaching will help you recognize this pattern throughout the Scriptures, in History, and in your own life. Ultimately, I pray it will help you understand your role the ultimate “Cry that Brings Deliverance” before the return of the Lord.
Maranatha,
Jonathan Friz
Did you miss the latest Episodes of the Presence Pioneers Podcast? Click now to listen in.
The Cry That Brings Deliverance: Part 1
by Jonathan Friz
As evil continues to mature and grow stronger globally, and Christians around the globe face increasing pressures, God is using the pressure of growing evil from outside coupled with the Spirit’s inner work to elicit an unprecedented response from the global church.
The result is going to be a Cry for Deliverance that God will not ignore and that will culminate in the return of the Lord. Is it possible that our Cry could actually be part of the Lord’s Return? As we will see Biblically, the Cry of God’s people is always at work when God brings a great deliverance.
The Way God Brings Deliverance
One thing we know about God is that He loves to bring deliverance to His people. We see this pattern repeated throughout Scripture at the Exodus, throughout Israel’s History, and ultimately at the Cross. But How does God bring great deliverance? What means does He use?
Deliverance in Scripture always comes in response to something called “The Cry”.
Exodus 2:23-25: Now it came about in the course of many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel groaned[sighed, moaned] because of their bondage [labor], and they cried out, and their cry for help ascended to God. So God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and God saw the sons of Israel and God knew them.
“The Cry” brings about a response from God that has four aspects (v24-25):
1. So God heard their groaning
2. And God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
3. God saw the sons of Israel
4. And God knew them (Yada)
As we will see in part two of this teaching, The Cry first reported in Exodus 2:23-25 is presented as the initiatory act in God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt.
Ouch!!!
The Cry is something that seems very bad: it comes forth because of “oppression” and “injustice” and “suffering”. Keep in mind that this is not theoretical suffering; it is very real to the sons of Israel who are daily experiencing the rigors of slavery and even having their children murdered.
The Cry has an involuntary component. It happens to you because of suffering and affliction. However, it also has a voluntary component. Human beings can can resist or partner with the Cry.
Where does the Cry come from?
A Cry that moves God to respond can come from many different sources including many that we would not imagine possible from a modern, western perspective.
Here is a partial list of Biblical examples of a Cry that moved God to respond and act:
o Individuals (Gen 21:17—Ishmael)
o Righteous people (Hezekiah, Hannah, David)
o Unrighteous people (Ahab)
o Nations (Exodus)
o Blood (Gen. 4:10)
o Sin (Genesis 18:21)
o The Land/Earth (Lev. 18:24-25, Gen 4:10)
o The whole Creation (Rom. 8)
The Cry is one concept: It’s a call for help to God in the midst of suffering injustice, pain, or affliction. It’s a sound God hears—it provokes a righteous response from Him.
While the concept is the same, the Bible uses many different words to describe this same reality.
A few examples of words that speak to the Cry are: mourning, desire, lamentation, groan, childbirth metaphor, patient waiting, fasting, suffering, eager expectation, hope, labor, intercession, prayer, humility, help, wait for the Lord, silence, pour out the heart, bitterness.
“The Cry” moves God to intervene: It makes him “hear”, “remember”, “see”, and “know” us.
In God’s economy, the Cry is what moves Him to bring deliverance, glorify His name, and advance His Covenant over time. This in no way contradicts his sovereignty, but rather the two are in agreement!
If you’re like me, you probably grew up with a view of God where prayer did not make a lot of sense.
God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Why would my speaking to Him affect God in any way? Why would he need me to say magic words in order to act or do something? Clearly, He can do whatever He wants.
While it’s true that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, this perspective on God’s sovereignty overlooks the pathways God uses to expresses that power, knowledge, and goodness. The Cry is one of those pathways. He’s committed to working according to His own ways.
As it turns out, God is not much for unilateral action, preferring to express His power, knowledge, and goodness through partnership. As the Scripture says, “God’s ways are not our ways.” Since He doesn’t seem inclined to change, it behooves us to learn His ways, especially as we seem to be an integral part of the plan!
Learning to see this Biblical Pattern
Once you start to notice this pattern in Scripture, you can’t un-see it—it’s everywhere!
Entire books of the Bible are built around the Cry.
Example 1: The Pattern of Judges:
1) Judges 3:7: Sin: Israel Does Evil
2) Judges 3:8: Oppression: God sells them (gives them over) to their enemies
3) Judges 3:9: The Cry: Israel cries out to the Lord because of the oppression
4) Judges 3:9: Deliverance: God sends a deliverer
5) Judges 3:12: Peace: There is a season of Peace
The pattern first seen here in Judges 3:7 repeats 12 times in the Book of Judges. The entire book of Judges is structured around a theology of the Cry!
Example 2: The Pattern of 2 Chronicles chapters 10-36
2 Chronicles is another Old Testament Book built around the theology of the Cry. The famous 2 Chronicles 7:14 is the paradigmatic verse: “If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Through chapters 10-36, we see this pattern replaying over and over.
1) Sometimes Israel’s sin leads to affliction (12:1-7) …Sometimes they are righteous and innocent but persecuted (20:1-13)
2) Affliction, Oppression, Invasion come against Israel
3) The Cry: The people do the 2 Chronicles 7:14 thing…they humble themselves (fast), pray, seek God’s face, and turn from wicked ways
4) Deliverance
5) Peace
The entire pattern repeats itself throughout the book of 2 Chronicles chapters 10-36. Each story is different, illustrating the variation possible within this basic pattern.
The Cry: Post-Biblical Examples
Lest we think that God’s ways have changed, we have notable examples of how God continues to respond to the Cry in more modern history.
Example 3: Slavery in the USA
1) Oppression and Slavery inflicted on Slaves
2) A Cry went up from the slaves themselves and from righteous men and women who stood with them as intercessors
3) God brought a great deliverance at great cost to those who oppressed them (the south) and those who were complicit (the north)
4) There was a season of peace with freedom enshrined for former slaves in the 13th-15th Amendments
The slaves understood themselves to be like Israel enslaved in Egypt. Far from a “stretch”, this was similar to Lincoln’s own understanding of what was happening. Before the end of the Civil War, he had a dream that led to the passage of the 13thamendment (outlawing slavery). The dream clearly signified that for the United States to have rest, slavery would have to be eradicated forever.
You can see how Lincoln is thinking Biblically about slavery in his Second Inaugural Address, just weeks before He was murdered on Good Friday in 1865:
“…The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Example 4: The Establishment of Israel
One of the more powerful and undeniable examples of the Cry in modern history is the Holocaust and the foundation of the modern state of Israel. Consider the pattern as it compares to Exodus, Judges, and 2 Chronicles:
1) The Sons of Israel were oppressed increasingly by an anti-christ type leader who blamed them for societal ills, rounded them up, enslaved them, and killed them systematically and in large numbers
2) This Holocaust created a “Great Cry” for freedom and deliverance that was based in unimaginable suffering.
3) God brought a great deliverance at great cost to the German people. He not only delivered the Jewish people from the Holocaust, but Germany was greatly judged and punished.
4) Out of the Cry of the Holocaust, God gathered the nations together (the United Nations) to reconstitute Israel as a nation nearly 1900 years after the destruction of Jerusalem and the 2nd Temple, fulfilling a seemingly impossible Biblical promise.
I hope you’re starting to see the pattern of The Cry more clearly both in the Scriptures, and even in more modern, historical events. Perhaps as you meditate on this concept, there are events in your own life that follow this pattern.
In future emails, we’ll take a deep-dive into “The Cry” in the book of Exodus and explore why this concept is also central to the Return of the Lord.