Jeremiah 31:31-34
Reformation Sunday
Shiloh Lutheran Church
In July, 1505, a young man named Martin Luther was traveling on the outskirts of a Saxon village when he got caught in a thunderstorm. A bolt of lightening struck nearby, knocking him to the ground, and he was so shaken he cried out in terror, "St. Anne help me! I will become a monk." He became an Augustinian monk, and poured his whole heart into the work of saving his soul. One biographer says, "He laid upon himself vigils and prayers in excess of those stipulated by the rule. He cast off the blankets permitted him and well-nigh froze himself to death. At times he was proud of his sanctity and would say, ‘I have done nothing wrong today.' Then misgivings would arise. ‘Have you fasted enough? Are you poor enough?'" (Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, p. 34).
He was working with all his might to please God and to save his soul, but no matter what he did, no matter how hard he worked, he could never be sure it was enough. But that wasn't the worst of it; he realized that the greatest commandment is to love God, but all his efforts had only made him see God as a demanding, stern taskmaster. He said, "I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!" (quoted by Bainton, p. 44). The more he tried to save his soul through diligent monastic discipline, the further he was from his goal. In the midst of seeking to please God, he discovered that, in fact, he hated God. He resented all that God was asking of him.
Here's what he was discovering: the Fall has rendered us dead in sin, incapable of restoring ourselves to a right relationship with God and the harder we try by observing the Law, doing all the right things, the further we find ourselves from God. The Gospel is not about working to save our souls, seeking God and finding Him, or learning to live in a way that pleases Him. It's about God seeking us and making a way for us to return, supplying everything we need to live in a restored relationship with Him.
The problem is that we want our efforts to count for something. We'd like to think that we can at least receive some credit, that God will recognize all our hard work and that this will somehow weigh in the balance in our favor. But the truth is that we contribute nothing toward a restored relationship with God. Jeremiah lists some of the things that characterize Israel's spiritual efforts. "They broke my covenant," (v. 32). They broke His covenant, even though He "was a husband to them." They committed spiritual adultery. They were guilty of wickedness and sin (v. 34) and were in need of forgiveness. Romans 3 takes this same theme and applies it to all of us: "There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one. Their throats are open graves; they use their tongues to deceive. Then venom of vipers is under their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes" (vv. 10-18). We want to respond, "oh come on, Paul, you've gotten carried away. Surely it's not that bad." But the problem with this is that these are not Paul's words; all he's done here is bring together a series of quotations from the Psalms and Isaiah.
What we bring to the gospel, our whole contribution, is emptiness, neediness, sin and guilt. As we read earlier in the service, "Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For ‘no human being will be justified in his sight' by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:19-20). We are alienated from God. We are "dead in trespasses and sins" and are powerless to do anything about it. This is what Martin Luther discovered: the harder he tried, the worse things became. He was incapable of restoring himself to a right relationship with God.
It's a pretty depressing picture, but thankfully that's not the whole story. The next point is that God responds to our neediness by supplying everything needed for our restoration and healing. He says to Jeremiah, "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" (v. 34). The problem with trying to save ourselves through obedience to the law is that we're not starting from a place of neutrality. We're not starting with a zero balance. If we were, all we'd have to do is start earning points. But we already have a negative balance, and that balance is so large that we couldn't pay it off even if we had all eternity to do so.
The Old Covenant, the Law, shows us our guilt. "They broke my covenant." The gospel provides a way for us to be forgiven: "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith" (Romans 3:22-25). God, through the sacrifice of Christ, wipes away all our guilt and forgives all our sins. All our guilt is canceled out as a free gift through Jesus Christ.
But it doesn't stop there. The gospel is not only about forgiveness. The bumper sticker "Christians are not perfect, only forgiven" is wrong. It's certainly true that Christians are not perfect, but they are not only forgiven. The gospel wipes away our guilt and, at the same time, renews us to live in a restored relationship with God. The new covenant is a different kind of covenant: "not like the covenant I made with their forefathers" (v. 32). They broke that covenant and failed to keep it. All it accomplished was to reveal their guilt and lostness.
Here's what the new covenant is like: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts" (v. 33). In the gospel, we become new creatures, declared not guilty and enabled to live in growing obedience, regenerated and given a new nature. "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). God, through His Spirit, makes us new creatures. We find, in embracing the gospel, that we've entered a new world: "What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!" (2 Corinthians 5:17, NLT).
I worked with a guy named Steve on the U.S.S. Piedmont. He was so hostile to Christianity that he would sometimes hound me with questions, badgering me to answer, then when I'd finally respond (which I tried to avoid doing) he'd yell at me about how Christians try to shove the gospel down people's throats. I usually didn't want to talk to him, but he'd seek me out and wouldn't let it go. After I got out of the Navy, friends told me he had become a Christian, and I was able to spend some time with him when I visited the ship 6 months later. Everything about him was different. It wasn't just that he had changed his mind and come to agree with us in areas where he formerly disagreed; even his face was transformed. He was a different person. It was still Steve, but there was something different about him; there was something more to his life than there had been before. A Christian is not someone who has adopted a new philosophy and is trying to follow it. A Christian is a new creation through the work of the Holy Spirit.
The third thing is that in restoring us to Himself, God begins healing our relationships with one another. The gospel is not just about the salvation of individuals, "Christ died for me." Notice the plural pronouns: "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people" (v. 33). In being reconciled to God we become united to His people, the Church. He speaks about making a new covenant with "the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." By the time Jeremiah is writing, these two kingdoms have long been divided; no one is now living who remembers a time when the kingdom was one. The northern kingdom has been deported to Assyria and will never return. But the new covenant looks forward to restoration and healing. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts [these people who have been enemies for longer than anyone can remember]. I will be their God and they will be my people."
We can see this in Ephesians, where Paul is describing what God is doing through the gospel: "With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth" (1:8-10). God is not only saving individual souls. He's at work restoring the whole created order that has been out of sync since the Fall. Shortly after the Fall, Cain murdered his brother; after that, humans became so proud and self-important that God confused their languages and scattered them across the face of the earth. The prevailing tendency in this world has been toward alienation, separation.
James describes the problem: "Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?" Is it just a matter of simple, honest disagreement, different personalities and ways of going about things? No. "Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts" (4:1-2). The Fall has driven a wedge between us. We are all seeking our own way and inevitably end up in conflict. All we have to do is listen to the evening news to hear more evidence of this than we want to know about. G. K. Chesterton said original sin is the only part of Christian theology that can really be proved (Orthodoxy, chapter 2). How can it be proved? Just by looking around at things going on in the world, and by looking honestly into our own hearts. The Fall has alienated us, separated us from God and from one another. And what God is doing in the gospel is undoing all this. He is restoring His creation, gathering up all the broken parts, making us all one in Himself. And the first step in this healing process is that He makes us part of His Church.
A few years ago I was discussing with my former bishop a pastor who was on the point of retiring and he said, "I think he'd be great in a twenty-something church." In his view each church should target different groups and tailor their programs to market whichever group they're interested in. He was in the process of moving his whole region in this direction, and his argument was that it works. People like spending time with those who have similar interests, so it makes sense to organize the ministry of the Church in this way. But this misses the point of what God is doing; He is breaking down all those barriers. He wants us to learn to live together with others who are different, and who think differently. He has called us together as part of the same body. This approach to the church is at odds with what God is doing in His work of redemption: "And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth" (Ephesians 1:10, NLT). We don't have the right to organize the Church in a way that is moving in the opposite direction just because we think it will be more effective in the short term.
The gospel is about God seeking us and making a way for us to return, supplying everything we need to live in a restored relationship with Him, and not only us, but everything that has been ruined and defaced by the Fall. God is doing a work of restoration and He has graciously included us in what He is doing. What Luther discovered, much to his delight and surprise, was that God was the One doing the seeking. Thirty years after his vow to become a monk, Luther wrote: "Only Christians possess this victorious knowledge given from above. These two terms, grace and peace, constitute Christianity. Grace involves the remission of sins, peace, and a happy conscience. Sin is not canceled by lawful living, for no person is able to live up to the Law. The Law reveals guilt, fills the conscience with terror, and drives men to despair. Much less is sin taken away by man-invented endeavors. The fact is, the more a person seeks credit for himself by his own efforts, the deeper he goes into debt" (Commentary on Galatians, Kindle Locations 118-121, Kindle Edition). He was speaking from experience, and he went on to say: "I must listen to the Gospel. It tells me, not what I must do, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for me" (Ibid. Kindle Locations 579-580 Kindle Edition). Early in his life he had been obsessed with what he needed to do, but then he made the delightful and surprising discovery that God had made a way for him to step back and relax, to receive the free gift, and then spend the rest of his life on this earth learning to live in the freedom purchased by the sacrifice of Christ.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Should Christians Pray the Vengeance Psalms?
It was just a passing comment between songs: “I hope you all pray the Psalms.” This was the first time I'd heard John Michael Talbot in concert and I didn’t know what he was talking about. It sounded like a good idea, though, so I tried it, although I floundered a lot at the beginning; most of the Psalms didn't fit my mood at the time I was praying, so what was I to do with them? I have to admit that for the first year or so, my praying of the Psalms was pretty sporadic.
It's usually difficult to tell, at the beginning, whether a new spiritual practice is going to help, especially when it doesn't immediately connect with a felt need. Eugene Peterson has wise counsel in this area: “Believers must be aware that most of the time discipline feels dull and dead. We’re impatient if we have to wait a long time for something, especially in America. If we don’t find instant zest in a discipline, we make a negative snap judgement about it. But often what we describe as deadness, dullness, or boredom is simply our own slow waking up. We just have to live through that. Simple desire for more in our Christian lives is sufficient evidence that the life is there. Be patient and wait. It’s the Spirit’s work. We simply put ourselves in the way of the Spirit so he can work in us” (Living the Message, p. 295).
Historically, the Psalms have had a high priority in the Church. I was interested, around this time, to learn that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a short book entitled Psalms: Prayer Book of the Bible. Here's how he describes the importance of the Psalms for prayer: “In the ancient church it was not unusual to memorize ‘the entire David.’ In one of the eastern churches this was a prerequisite for the pastoral office. The church father St. Jerome says that one heard the Psalms being sung in the fields and gardens in his time. The Psalter impregnated the life of early Christianity. Yet more important than all of this is the fact that Jesus died on the cross with the words of the Psalter on his lips. Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power” (p. 26).
I've come to the conclusion that it’s more important to get started and keep at it than to spend a lot of time at the beginning figuring out how all the Psalms fit into prayer. Questions come up as we’re going along, and these can be sorted out with the help of a few resources. But it's more urgent to establish a consistent habit than to work out a rational explanation for what we're doing.
Often the biggest hurdle is learning how to deal with the Psalms of Vengeance. How can we pray these as followers of Jesus Christ? Many prayer psalters, including the Liturgy of the Hours, either omit these Psalms altogether or remove the most offensive sections. Christians often find them to be an embarrassment. What are we to do with these Psalms?
It's easy enough to simply skip over them in our prayers, writing them off as inconsistent with the further revelation we have in Jesus Christ. Many Christians, understandably, take this approach. But maybe these Psalms have something to offer us that we won't find elsewhere. As Eugene Peterson points out, "The Psalmists are angry people” (Answering God: the Psalms as Tools for Prayer, p. 101). They are angry, but their anger has driven them to God, not away from Him.
Are the angry cries of the psalmists an Old Testament relic, something that belongs to an earlier stage of revelation? As tempting as this might seem, this longing for vengeance is not confined to the Old Testament, as is clear in Paul's words to the Romans: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). He doesn't instruct Christians to repress the desire for vengeance, but to leave it in God's hands. If this sort of thing is only for those at a more primitive stage of spiritual development, what are we to make of these words in Revelation:“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. The called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (6:9-10).
It's true that Jesus calls us to pray for our enemies and forgive those who sin against us, but the danger is that we may end up deceiving ourselves, and accepting a counterfeit, by moving too quickly to forgiveness without recognizing and facing what is really in our hearts. The question is how to get from where we are to where we know we should be. And this begins with a recognition of the truth about ourselves: “The articulation of vengeance leads us to a new awareness about ourselves. That is, the yearning for vengeance belongs to any serious understanding of the human personality.... The capacity for hatred belongs to the mystery of personhood. The Psalms are the rhetorical practice in fullest measure of what is in us. John Calvin describes the Psalms as ‘An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul.' And so they are. They tell us about us. The Psalms provide space for full linguistic freedom in which nothing is censored or precluded” (Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 58).
The vengeance Psalms provide a context for facing the worst in our hearts. As much as we want to be like Jesus in asking forgiveness for those who hate us, we can't get there without acknowledging what we really feel. Peterson recommends a way through, rather than around these Psalms: “For those who are troubled about the psalms of vengeance, there is a way beyond them. But that way is not easy or ‘natural.’ It is not the way of careless religious goodwill. It is not the way of moral indifference or flippancy. It is, rather, the way of crucifixion, of accepting the rage and grief and terror of evil in ourselves in order to be liberated for compassion toward others.... My hunch is that there is a way beyond the psalms of vengeance, but it is a way through them and not around them. And that is so because of what in fact goes on with us. Willy nilly, we are vengeful creatures. Thus these harsh psalms must be fully embraced as our own. Our rage and indignation must be fully owned and fully expressed. Then (and only then) can our rage and indignation be yielded to the mercy of God. In taking this route through the Psalms, we take the route God has gone. We are not permitted a cheaper, easier, more ‘enlightened’ way” (p. 68). The Psalms are part of God's Word and are safe -- all of them -- as a school for prayer, training us to bring the full range of our emotions into God's presence where they can be transformed. It's our hearts, not the Psalms, that need cleansing.
It's usually difficult to tell, at the beginning, whether a new spiritual practice is going to help, especially when it doesn't immediately connect with a felt need. Eugene Peterson has wise counsel in this area: “Believers must be aware that most of the time discipline feels dull and dead. We’re impatient if we have to wait a long time for something, especially in America. If we don’t find instant zest in a discipline, we make a negative snap judgement about it. But often what we describe as deadness, dullness, or boredom is simply our own slow waking up. We just have to live through that. Simple desire for more in our Christian lives is sufficient evidence that the life is there. Be patient and wait. It’s the Spirit’s work. We simply put ourselves in the way of the Spirit so he can work in us” (Living the Message, p. 295).
Historically, the Psalms have had a high priority in the Church. I was interested, around this time, to learn that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a short book entitled Psalms: Prayer Book of the Bible. Here's how he describes the importance of the Psalms for prayer: “In the ancient church it was not unusual to memorize ‘the entire David.’ In one of the eastern churches this was a prerequisite for the pastoral office. The church father St. Jerome says that one heard the Psalms being sung in the fields and gardens in his time. The Psalter impregnated the life of early Christianity. Yet more important than all of this is the fact that Jesus died on the cross with the words of the Psalter on his lips. Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power” (p. 26).
I've come to the conclusion that it’s more important to get started and keep at it than to spend a lot of time at the beginning figuring out how all the Psalms fit into prayer. Questions come up as we’re going along, and these can be sorted out with the help of a few resources. But it's more urgent to establish a consistent habit than to work out a rational explanation for what we're doing.
Often the biggest hurdle is learning how to deal with the Psalms of Vengeance. How can we pray these as followers of Jesus Christ? Many prayer psalters, including the Liturgy of the Hours, either omit these Psalms altogether or remove the most offensive sections. Christians often find them to be an embarrassment. What are we to do with these Psalms?
It's easy enough to simply skip over them in our prayers, writing them off as inconsistent with the further revelation we have in Jesus Christ. Many Christians, understandably, take this approach. But maybe these Psalms have something to offer us that we won't find elsewhere. As Eugene Peterson points out, "The Psalmists are angry people” (Answering God: the Psalms as Tools for Prayer, p. 101). They are angry, but their anger has driven them to God, not away from Him.
Are the angry cries of the psalmists an Old Testament relic, something that belongs to an earlier stage of revelation? As tempting as this might seem, this longing for vengeance is not confined to the Old Testament, as is clear in Paul's words to the Romans: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). He doesn't instruct Christians to repress the desire for vengeance, but to leave it in God's hands. If this sort of thing is only for those at a more primitive stage of spiritual development, what are we to make of these words in Revelation:“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. The called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (6:9-10).
It's true that Jesus calls us to pray for our enemies and forgive those who sin against us, but the danger is that we may end up deceiving ourselves, and accepting a counterfeit, by moving too quickly to forgiveness without recognizing and facing what is really in our hearts. The question is how to get from where we are to where we know we should be. And this begins with a recognition of the truth about ourselves: “The articulation of vengeance leads us to a new awareness about ourselves. That is, the yearning for vengeance belongs to any serious understanding of the human personality.... The capacity for hatred belongs to the mystery of personhood. The Psalms are the rhetorical practice in fullest measure of what is in us. John Calvin describes the Psalms as ‘An Anatomy of all Parts of the Soul.' And so they are. They tell us about us. The Psalms provide space for full linguistic freedom in which nothing is censored or precluded” (Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms, p. 58).
The vengeance Psalms provide a context for facing the worst in our hearts. As much as we want to be like Jesus in asking forgiveness for those who hate us, we can't get there without acknowledging what we really feel. Peterson recommends a way through, rather than around these Psalms: “For those who are troubled about the psalms of vengeance, there is a way beyond them. But that way is not easy or ‘natural.’ It is not the way of careless religious goodwill. It is not the way of moral indifference or flippancy. It is, rather, the way of crucifixion, of accepting the rage and grief and terror of evil in ourselves in order to be liberated for compassion toward others.... My hunch is that there is a way beyond the psalms of vengeance, but it is a way through them and not around them. And that is so because of what in fact goes on with us. Willy nilly, we are vengeful creatures. Thus these harsh psalms must be fully embraced as our own. Our rage and indignation must be fully owned and fully expressed. Then (and only then) can our rage and indignation be yielded to the mercy of God. In taking this route through the Psalms, we take the route God has gone. We are not permitted a cheaper, easier, more ‘enlightened’ way” (p. 68). The Psalms are part of God's Word and are safe -- all of them -- as a school for prayer, training us to bring the full range of our emotions into God's presence where they can be transformed. It's our hearts, not the Psalms, that need cleansing.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Pressing On to Know Christ (sermon)
Pressing On to Know Christ
During my first meeting with the Candidacy Committee, when I was seeking to become a Lutheran pastor, I was listing the things I like about Lutheranism, and someone asked me if I saw any weaknesses or problems in the Lutheran Church. I responded that as Lutheranism has developed there has been a tendency to so emphasize justification by faith that other dimensions of the Christian life are neglected. Even the bishop admitted to me that Lutherans, himself included, get nervous when anyone talks about discipleship, because they’re worried that this will lead to legalism, that it will undermine the doctrine of justification by faith alone. They worry that a call to discipleship will drown out the good news of the Gospel.
It’s not that they’re too aware of the legal dimension of our salvation, the truth that God, in Christ, has declared us not guilty. We can never be too aware of this; one of the great enemies of the Christian life is false, persistent guilt, guilt that we just can’t get away from. Not being confident of our acceptance in Christ cripples us, hinders us in our relationship with God. It’s not that Lutheranism over-emphasizes the legal dimension of salvation; it’s that Lutheranism has tended to focus exclusively on this and has neglected other aspects of salvation.
Justification is not an end in itself. God doesn’t remove our guilt so that we can then say to ourselves, "well, now, I’ve gotten that over with and I can get on with my life." No, the whole point of justification is to restore us to a right relationship with God, so that we can spend the rest of our lives seeking to know Him better. We can see that clearly in these words from the apostle Paul. For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. His overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ.
He begins, in verses 1-6, by saying that fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ is such a priority for him that outward advantages no longer matter. He tells them to beware of the Judaizers, those who were going through the churches urging Gentile believers to be circumcised and to obey the Law of Moses. Here’s how it reads in The Message: "Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances...." These Judaizers are only interested in appearances. They think it’s enough to just get everything right on the outside, that what God really wants is exact observance of every religious ceremony. A few years ago I was in a church where the minister rattled off the liturgy so quickly it made me tired just listening to him. It was almost like being at an auction. I think if I had been able to talk to him afterward he’d have responded that it’s enough just to say the words and go through the right ceremonies.
Paul himself had once been like that. He had done everything right. He was, he says, "circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting Christians; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law book" (The Message). He had once seen himself as one of God’s favorite people, because he was so meticulous in observing the Law. But then he met Jesus face to face on the Damascus road, and suddenly he saw that his whole life was going in the wrong direction. He saw that all his religiosity was worthless. He was making a good appearance, but he didn’t know God.
It’s important to notice that Paul frames this whole section, from 3:1 to 4:4, with the words "rejoice in the Lord." Gordon Fee points out that "for Paul, ‘joy’ is primarily a verb, something we do rather than how we feel. The verb itself means to verbalize with praise and singing" (p. 131). To rejoice means to verbalize with praise and singing. It doesn’t mean to feel a certain way. It means to say, in God’s presence, "I will rejoice in the Lord and sing His praise." The focus of this praise and singing is the Lord. Paul had, at one time, been focused on himself and his religious attainments. But then he met Jesus face to face and everything changed. Rejoice in the Lord. Exalt Him in word and in song. Forget yourself--put no confidence in the flesh--and rejoice in Him.
Paul had more reason than most to put confidence in the flesh, but when he met Jesus he counted all this as loss. He goes on, in verses 7-11, to say that he considers everything worthless compared to knowing Christ. The name "Christ" appears 5 times in these verses. Paul is not saying that everything is worthless in itself. It’s worthless in comparison with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. He’s exalting the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than devaluing everything else. I’ve sometimes seen people get this backwards. They worry that maybe they love family members--spouse, children, parents--too much. They want to put Christ first, the way Paul does here, but they try to do that by loving other people less. They try to put Jesus first by denying the value of His gifts. That’s not what Paul is doing. He has seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and in comparison with Him, everything that he’s lost for the sake of Jesus means less to him than a pile of rubbish.
The emphasis, for Paul, is not on all the things he’s lost. The emphasis is on the fact that he knows Christ. Martyn Lloyd Jones was trained as a medical doctor and had exceptional gifts in that area. At the age of 23 he became Chief Clinical Assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the King’s Physician, and was well on his way to a successful career in medicine. But four years later he left his medical career behind to pastor a struggling church in South Wales. This created a public sensation in London and his story was all over the news. Many people thought he was making a foolish choice, and others praised him for the great sacrifice he was making to serve the church. But he later said this: "I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honor God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel" (from the dust jacket on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939, by Iain H. Murray). He didn’t like hearing people make a fuss about how much he had sacrificed, because he really didn’t see it that way at all. That’s how Paul is; following Christ has meant losing many other things, but the gain in knowing Christ is so great that it’s not a sacrifice at all. He doesn’t grieve over the things he’s lost any more than we grieve when the trash truck drives away with our week’s worth of garbage.
In verses 12-16, Paul describes how intensely he longs to be all Jesus wants him to be. He longs to be perfectly transformed into the image of Jesus, because he wants to be pleasing to Him. Everything he does is centered around his relationship with Jesus Christ. This comes out clearly in The Message: "I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward--to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back." He’s not seeking to establish his own righteousness; he’s not following a moralistic program for self-improvement. He’s seeking the Lord with all his might, and through this fellowship with the Lord he’s being transformed. His goal is to know God, and in knowing God he is transformed more and more into His image.
The author of Hebrews says God "rewards those who earnestly seek him" (11:6). This is a consistent theme in Scripture. "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42:1-2). "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). God said to the Israelites who had been taken into captivity in Babylon: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). God is pleased when His people seek him earnestly.
In chapter 4, Paul says that he has learned to be content in all circumstances. But in chapter 3 he’s not content. He’s not content with where he is spiritually. A.W. Tozer, who was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor in the mid-20th century, said this: "Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency. The man who believes he has arrived will not go any farther.... Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days, and its presence is a sign and a prophecy. For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts" (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. What are you desiring lately? What are you hungering and thirsting for? Are your desires moving you closer to God, or further away from Him?
I’ve known many people who wish they were more spiritual. They’ll say things like, "Oh, I wish I had the discipline to spend more time with God." Or, "I wish I would spend more time in God’s Word." They see others growing spiritually, and they admire from a distance: "I wish I was more like that." But the truth is that we can spend a lifetime wishing for this sort of thing, and it will do us no good. Proverbs 13:4 describes these people: "The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied." A sluggard, a slothful person, wishes things were different, but he won’t apply diligence and self-discipline. He craves, but he gets nothing.
Paul presses on "to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [him]." He strains toward what is ahead, and presses on toward the goal. But he also forgets what is behind. He doesn’t dwell nostalgically on the things he left behind to follow Jesus. He doesn’t daydream about what a great Pharisee he could have become if things had gone otherwise. But he also doesn’t spend time dwelling on his past failures. Several years ago I heard an excellent sermon on "Triumphing Over the Past." Here’s how the sermon began: "I doubt that there is any more debilitating problem for Christian people than the problem of regrets. We feel subject to the guilt of something that we have done or haven’t done: the past, with skeletons in closets, with fears that seem to haunt us, things about the past that cripple us. As a result, we constantly find ourselves drawn back like iron filings drawn to a magnet.... People turn around and say, ‘If only I had done that ten years ago, I would’ve been so much better.’" (Robert M. Norris, Preaching Today, Tape No. 65).
Regrets about the past can keep us from seeking God in the present. We think, "If only I had gotten started sooner, I’d be so much better off by now." Or the memory of some past sin plagues us and cripples our attempts to get on track spiritually. Or we begin with a program of regular devotions, but after awhile we get distracted or something happens so that we neglect our devotions for a week or two. And then we think to ourselves, "I’ve failed; I can’t maintain a consistent devotional life; what’s the use of starting again?" Paul would say, in all these cases, along with the author of Hebrews: "Now that we know what we have--Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God--let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all–all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help" (Heb. 4:14, 16, The Message). Walk right up to him and get what he’s so ready to give: mercy for the past, and help for the present. And then, like Paul, we lay aside the past and keep going forward, no matter how many times we fail along the way. C.S. Lewis said, very wisely: "No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence" (The Business of Heaven, p. 17).
For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. He hasn’t yet been made perfect--that will come when he is in the Lord’s presence--but his overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ and to live in a way that pleases Him. He’s not content with anything less. How do we, in our highly intrusive and distracting culture, develop this kind of passion to know Christ? Here, briefly, are a few suggestions before I close.
1) Realize that discipline and hunger for God belong together. Paul stresses both in this passage. If you, at this point in your life, have little hunger to know God better, don’t wait for something to happen. Take yourself in hand and begin setting aside time each day to spend with God, in His word and in prayer. There have been times in my spiritual life when I’ve almost been carried along by an intense desire to spend time in the Lord’s presence, but generally those times don’t just happen. And they don’t continue indefinitely; they tend to come and go. They happen when I’ve been diligent in seeking God. God calls us to seek Him by faith, and then He sometimes helps and refreshes us with His Spirit. Hunger for God usually comes to us when we seek God by faith, whether we feel like it or not. Make it a priority to spend time in His presence, and be grateful when you sense the Spirit drawing you to seek Him.
2) In setting aside time to spend in God’s Word and in prayer, remind yourself often that your purpose is to cultivate a relationship. There are two opposite dangers in this area. On the one hand, it’s tempting to approach our devotional times legalistically, as if we were fulfilling a legal requirement. As long as we fulfil the requirement, everything is fine. This is the danger of "formalism," of just going through the motions without any concern for cultivating a real relationship with the Living God. At the other extreme, we’re tempted to think our devotional times are a failure if we don’t feel some sense of exhilaration each time. If you’re persevering in your devotional life during a dry period, you’re not guilty of formalism. Think about the relationships you have with people in this world. There are times when you’re aware of how great it is to be together, times when you’re conscious of how much you value the privilege of being with that person. But there are also times when you really don’t feel much. You continue to show love and concern for one another, and you continue spending time together, but the feelings just come and go over time. Prayer is like that. Our purpose is to know God by spending time with Him, and when we spend time with Him sometimes we feel refreshed and renewed, and other times we don’t feel much of anything. It’s as we persevere in seeking Him over a lifetime that we cultivate a strong relationship. The purpose is not to make sure we "have devotions," so that we can cross it off our to-do list, and the purpose is not to have our hearts warmed so that we feel refreshed and ready for another day. Our purpose is to cultivate a relationship with God throughout the course of our lives here in this world.
3) Remember that Paul frames this whole section with the phrase "rejoice in the Lord." Be intentional about including this element of rejoicing in the time you spend with God. Some devotional approaches reduce everything to Bible study. We’re not just seeking to learn more information about God’s Word. We’re seeking to know Him, and part of the process is intentionally giving thanks and rejoicing in Him: "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs" (Psalm 100:1-2). Spend regular time giving thanks and praising God for who He is and what He has done. I recommend including some singing, both hymns and praise songs, as a way of rejoicing in the Lord.
4) Develop the habit of turning to God at specific times throughout the day. Our goal is to walk with God all the time, to invite Him into every area of our lives. Our personal devotions can help tune our hearts and realign our priorities. But we don’t want that to be the only time we spend with God. It’s often helpful to memorize a few short phrases that we can use to just pause briefly and turn our hearts to the Lord. This really doesn’t require much time or effort, but if you persevere with it you’ll increasingly see the Lord’s presence in the details of your life.
When the nation of Israel was at its worst spiritually, when they seemed beyond hope, the prophet Hosea issued a call to repentance which included these words: "Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring" (Hosea 6:3, NLT). Let’s press on to know Him, like Paul did, laying aside the past and seeking Him with all our hearts. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of the dawn. He rewards those who diligently seek Him.
Philippians 3:1-16
Shiloh Lutheran Church
16th Sunday After Pentecost
During my first meeting with the Candidacy Committee, when I was seeking to become a Lutheran pastor, I was listing the things I like about Lutheranism, and someone asked me if I saw any weaknesses or problems in the Lutheran Church. I responded that as Lutheranism has developed there has been a tendency to so emphasize justification by faith that other dimensions of the Christian life are neglected. Even the bishop admitted to me that Lutherans, himself included, get nervous when anyone talks about discipleship, because they’re worried that this will lead to legalism, that it will undermine the doctrine of justification by faith alone. They worry that a call to discipleship will drown out the good news of the Gospel.
It’s not that they’re too aware of the legal dimension of our salvation, the truth that God, in Christ, has declared us not guilty. We can never be too aware of this; one of the great enemies of the Christian life is false, persistent guilt, guilt that we just can’t get away from. Not being confident of our acceptance in Christ cripples us, hinders us in our relationship with God. It’s not that Lutheranism over-emphasizes the legal dimension of salvation; it’s that Lutheranism has tended to focus exclusively on this and has neglected other aspects of salvation.
Justification is not an end in itself. God doesn’t remove our guilt so that we can then say to ourselves, "well, now, I’ve gotten that over with and I can get on with my life." No, the whole point of justification is to restore us to a right relationship with God, so that we can spend the rest of our lives seeking to know Him better. We can see that clearly in these words from the apostle Paul. For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. His overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ.
He begins, in verses 1-6, by saying that fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ is such a priority for him that outward advantages no longer matter. He tells them to beware of the Judaizers, those who were going through the churches urging Gentile believers to be circumcised and to obey the Law of Moses. Here’s how it reads in The Message: "Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances...." These Judaizers are only interested in appearances. They think it’s enough to just get everything right on the outside, that what God really wants is exact observance of every religious ceremony. A few years ago I was in a church where the minister rattled off the liturgy so quickly it made me tired just listening to him. It was almost like being at an auction. I think if I had been able to talk to him afterward he’d have responded that it’s enough just to say the words and go through the right ceremonies.
Paul himself had once been like that. He had done everything right. He was, he says, "circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting Christians; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law book" (The Message). He had once seen himself as one of God’s favorite people, because he was so meticulous in observing the Law. But then he met Jesus face to face on the Damascus road, and suddenly he saw that his whole life was going in the wrong direction. He saw that all his religiosity was worthless. He was making a good appearance, but he didn’t know God.
It’s important to notice that Paul frames this whole section, from 3:1 to 4:4, with the words "rejoice in the Lord." Gordon Fee points out that "for Paul, ‘joy’ is primarily a verb, something we do rather than how we feel. The verb itself means to verbalize with praise and singing" (p. 131). To rejoice means to verbalize with praise and singing. It doesn’t mean to feel a certain way. It means to say, in God’s presence, "I will rejoice in the Lord and sing His praise." The focus of this praise and singing is the Lord. Paul had, at one time, been focused on himself and his religious attainments. But then he met Jesus face to face and everything changed. Rejoice in the Lord. Exalt Him in word and in song. Forget yourself--put no confidence in the flesh--and rejoice in Him.
Paul had more reason than most to put confidence in the flesh, but when he met Jesus he counted all this as loss. He goes on, in verses 7-11, to say that he considers everything worthless compared to knowing Christ. The name "Christ" appears 5 times in these verses. Paul is not saying that everything is worthless in itself. It’s worthless in comparison with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. He’s exalting the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than devaluing everything else. I’ve sometimes seen people get this backwards. They worry that maybe they love family members--spouse, children, parents--too much. They want to put Christ first, the way Paul does here, but they try to do that by loving other people less. They try to put Jesus first by denying the value of His gifts. That’s not what Paul is doing. He has seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and in comparison with Him, everything that he’s lost for the sake of Jesus means less to him than a pile of rubbish.
The emphasis, for Paul, is not on all the things he’s lost. The emphasis is on the fact that he knows Christ. Martyn Lloyd Jones was trained as a medical doctor and had exceptional gifts in that area. At the age of 23 he became Chief Clinical Assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the King’s Physician, and was well on his way to a successful career in medicine. But four years later he left his medical career behind to pastor a struggling church in South Wales. This created a public sensation in London and his story was all over the news. Many people thought he was making a foolish choice, and others praised him for the great sacrifice he was making to serve the church. But he later said this: "I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honor God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel" (from the dust jacket on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939, by Iain H. Murray). He didn’t like hearing people make a fuss about how much he had sacrificed, because he really didn’t see it that way at all. That’s how Paul is; following Christ has meant losing many other things, but the gain in knowing Christ is so great that it’s not a sacrifice at all. He doesn’t grieve over the things he’s lost any more than we grieve when the trash truck drives away with our week’s worth of garbage.
In verses 12-16, Paul describes how intensely he longs to be all Jesus wants him to be. He longs to be perfectly transformed into the image of Jesus, because he wants to be pleasing to Him. Everything he does is centered around his relationship with Jesus Christ. This comes out clearly in The Message: "I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward--to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back." He’s not seeking to establish his own righteousness; he’s not following a moralistic program for self-improvement. He’s seeking the Lord with all his might, and through this fellowship with the Lord he’s being transformed. His goal is to know God, and in knowing God he is transformed more and more into His image.
The author of Hebrews says God "rewards those who earnestly seek him" (11:6). This is a consistent theme in Scripture. "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42:1-2). "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). God said to the Israelites who had been taken into captivity in Babylon: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). God is pleased when His people seek him earnestly.
In chapter 4, Paul says that he has learned to be content in all circumstances. But in chapter 3 he’s not content. He’s not content with where he is spiritually. A.W. Tozer, who was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor in the mid-20th century, said this: "Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency. The man who believes he has arrived will not go any farther.... Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days, and its presence is a sign and a prophecy. For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts" (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. What are you desiring lately? What are you hungering and thirsting for? Are your desires moving you closer to God, or further away from Him?
I’ve known many people who wish they were more spiritual. They’ll say things like, "Oh, I wish I had the discipline to spend more time with God." Or, "I wish I would spend more time in God’s Word." They see others growing spiritually, and they admire from a distance: "I wish I was more like that." But the truth is that we can spend a lifetime wishing for this sort of thing, and it will do us no good. Proverbs 13:4 describes these people: "The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied." A sluggard, a slothful person, wishes things were different, but he won’t apply diligence and self-discipline. He craves, but he gets nothing.
Paul presses on "to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [him]." He strains toward what is ahead, and presses on toward the goal. But he also forgets what is behind. He doesn’t dwell nostalgically on the things he left behind to follow Jesus. He doesn’t daydream about what a great Pharisee he could have become if things had gone otherwise. But he also doesn’t spend time dwelling on his past failures. Several years ago I heard an excellent sermon on "Triumphing Over the Past." Here’s how the sermon began: "I doubt that there is any more debilitating problem for Christian people than the problem of regrets. We feel subject to the guilt of something that we have done or haven’t done: the past, with skeletons in closets, with fears that seem to haunt us, things about the past that cripple us. As a result, we constantly find ourselves drawn back like iron filings drawn to a magnet.... People turn around and say, ‘If only I had done that ten years ago, I would’ve been so much better.’" (Robert M. Norris, Preaching Today, Tape No. 65).
Regrets about the past can keep us from seeking God in the present. We think, "If only I had gotten started sooner, I’d be so much better off by now." Or the memory of some past sin plagues us and cripples our attempts to get on track spiritually. Or we begin with a program of regular devotions, but after awhile we get distracted or something happens so that we neglect our devotions for a week or two. And then we think to ourselves, "I’ve failed; I can’t maintain a consistent devotional life; what’s the use of starting again?" Paul would say, in all these cases, along with the author of Hebrews: "Now that we know what we have--Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God--let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all–all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help" (Heb. 4:14, 16, The Message). Walk right up to him and get what he’s so ready to give: mercy for the past, and help for the present. And then, like Paul, we lay aside the past and keep going forward, no matter how many times we fail along the way. C.S. Lewis said, very wisely: "No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence" (The Business of Heaven, p. 17).
For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. He hasn’t yet been made perfect--that will come when he is in the Lord’s presence--but his overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ and to live in a way that pleases Him. He’s not content with anything less. How do we, in our highly intrusive and distracting culture, develop this kind of passion to know Christ? Here, briefly, are a few suggestions before I close.
1) Realize that discipline and hunger for God belong together. Paul stresses both in this passage. If you, at this point in your life, have little hunger to know God better, don’t wait for something to happen. Take yourself in hand and begin setting aside time each day to spend with God, in His word and in prayer. There have been times in my spiritual life when I’ve almost been carried along by an intense desire to spend time in the Lord’s presence, but generally those times don’t just happen. And they don’t continue indefinitely; they tend to come and go. They happen when I’ve been diligent in seeking God. God calls us to seek Him by faith, and then He sometimes helps and refreshes us with His Spirit. Hunger for God usually comes to us when we seek God by faith, whether we feel like it or not. Make it a priority to spend time in His presence, and be grateful when you sense the Spirit drawing you to seek Him.
2) In setting aside time to spend in God’s Word and in prayer, remind yourself often that your purpose is to cultivate a relationship. There are two opposite dangers in this area. On the one hand, it’s tempting to approach our devotional times legalistically, as if we were fulfilling a legal requirement. As long as we fulfil the requirement, everything is fine. This is the danger of "formalism," of just going through the motions without any concern for cultivating a real relationship with the Living God. At the other extreme, we’re tempted to think our devotional times are a failure if we don’t feel some sense of exhilaration each time. If you’re persevering in your devotional life during a dry period, you’re not guilty of formalism. Think about the relationships you have with people in this world. There are times when you’re aware of how great it is to be together, times when you’re conscious of how much you value the privilege of being with that person. But there are also times when you really don’t feel much. You continue to show love and concern for one another, and you continue spending time together, but the feelings just come and go over time. Prayer is like that. Our purpose is to know God by spending time with Him, and when we spend time with Him sometimes we feel refreshed and renewed, and other times we don’t feel much of anything. It’s as we persevere in seeking Him over a lifetime that we cultivate a strong relationship. The purpose is not to make sure we "have devotions," so that we can cross it off our to-do list, and the purpose is not to have our hearts warmed so that we feel refreshed and ready for another day. Our purpose is to cultivate a relationship with God throughout the course of our lives here in this world.
3) Remember that Paul frames this whole section with the phrase "rejoice in the Lord." Be intentional about including this element of rejoicing in the time you spend with God. Some devotional approaches reduce everything to Bible study. We’re not just seeking to learn more information about God’s Word. We’re seeking to know Him, and part of the process is intentionally giving thanks and rejoicing in Him: "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs" (Psalm 100:1-2). Spend regular time giving thanks and praising God for who He is and what He has done. I recommend including some singing, both hymns and praise songs, as a way of rejoicing in the Lord.
4) Develop the habit of turning to God at specific times throughout the day. Our goal is to walk with God all the time, to invite Him into every area of our lives. Our personal devotions can help tune our hearts and realign our priorities. But we don’t want that to be the only time we spend with God. It’s often helpful to memorize a few short phrases that we can use to just pause briefly and turn our hearts to the Lord. This really doesn’t require much time or effort, but if you persevere with it you’ll increasingly see the Lord’s presence in the details of your life.
When the nation of Israel was at its worst spiritually, when they seemed beyond hope, the prophet Hosea issued a call to repentance which included these words: "Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring" (Hosea 6:3, NLT). Let’s press on to know Him, like Paul did, laying aside the past and seeking Him with all our hearts. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of the dawn. He rewards those who diligently seek Him.
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