Alister McGrath has a book about the Christian life entitled The Journey. That’s a helpful image. Too often I’ve heard the Christian life described more like a destination; you make a decision to trust Jesus Christ for salvation, which ensures that you have a place in heaven, and that’s pretty-much the end of what you need to do. If you’re the kind of person who goes in for that kind of thing, you may cultivate a life of prayer and discipleship, but it’s not really necessary. Your place in heaven is assured, since you’ve accepted the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.
The problem with this view is that it’s completely alien to the New Testament. In the New Testament, turning to Jesus Christ is the beginning of a lifelong journey. When we accept the free gift, what we’ve done is enter the path of discipleship, which we’re committed to following for the rest of our lives. Turning to Jesus Christ for salvation is the beginning of the journey. One of the classic books describing this journey of discipleship is The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan.
Christian, the main character in the book, starts out with a horrible burden on his back (which represents sin). He starts running up the hill of salvation, but he’s hardly able to make it because of the burden he’s carrying. Then, when he approaches the cross, the burden rolls off his back and falls into a tomb. He’s been traveling for awhile, but he hasn’t yet reached his destination. He’s on the path, and his burden has been removed. But there’s still a long way to go.
A little before this, a man named Pliable begins traveling with him. Christian tells him that he’s leaving the City of Destruction and traveling to the Celestial City, and Pliable decides to go along. But right away they both fall into the Slough of Despond, a place where those who are convicted of sin become filled with fears and doubts. And as they’re wallowing in the mire, Pliable begins to question the wisdom of the journey: “At this Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect ‘twixt this and our journey’s end? May I get out again with my life, you shall possess the brave country alone for me. And with that he gave a desperate struggle or two, and got out of the mire on that side of the slough which was next to his own house: so away he went, and Christian saw him no more” (p. 7). Pliable, like many others in the history of the Church, turns back as soon as he encounters difficulties along the way.
James, in these early verses of chapter 1, is deliberately ambiguous in the word he uses for temptation. The word he’s using in verses 12-18 is the same one he used in verse 3, when he was talking about trials. The word means either trial or temptation. In the early part of the chapter, James is clearly thinking about trials and difficulties. And in verse 13, he’s clearly talking about temptations to evil. But in verse 12, it’s not so clear, and the translations are divided on whether this verse is talking about the blessing of persevering under trials, or the blessing of resisting temptation. James allows the discussion to slide from one use of the word to the other, but he’s not clear on where the transition actually takes place.
Why does he do this? Because there’s a strong connection between trials and temptations. Trials weaken us and expose us to temptation. That’s what happened with Pliable. He was determined to make the journey, but he became discouraged by the difficulties he encountered along the way, so he turned back. When we’ve been beaten down by trials and difficulties, we’re more susceptible to temptation. So James allows these two ideas to flow together, with no clear separation between them. Verse 12 can either be connected with the earlier verses in the chapter, saying that those who endure trials are blessed (as the NIV translates), or it can be connected with the following verses, saying that those who resist temptation are blessed (as the NRSV has it).
James says it’s a good thing to keep going and resist temptation. Those who resist are blessed. Those who say “no” to temptation are better off than those who give in. They’ve done something they won’t regret in the long run. The advertising industry tells us just the opposite: “indulge yourself;” “you deserve it.” They don’t say these things because they want us to become better people, or because they think we’ve been too hard on ourselves and need to take a break. They tell us these things because they want us to spend money on their products. James says it’s a good thing to resist; those who resist are blessed.
A.W. Tozer has a good description of this: “To want a thing, or feel that we want it, and then to turn from it because we see that it is contrary to the will of God, is to win a great battle on a field larger than Gettysburg or Bunker Hill. To bring our desires to the cross and allow them to be nailed there with Christ is a good and a beautiful thing. To be tempted and yet to glorify God in the midst of it is to honor Him where it counts. This is more pleasing to God than any amount of sheltered and untempted piety could ever be. To fight and to win in the name of Christ is always better than to have known no conflict” (“The Sanctification of Our Desires,” in The Root of the Righteous, pp. 117-18). It’s a good and beautiful thing to persevere in resisting temptation. It’s a thing that pleases God and that brings honor to Him.
And yet, this doesn’t just happen. We don’t persevere in resisting temptation by “going with the flow,” doing whatever we feel like doing at the moment. Like everything else in the Christian life, we learn to resist temptation by training ourselves. We try our best to resist, but eventually we fail. So we think, “next time I’ll have to try harder.” But, of course, this gets us nowhere. Trying harder doesn’t help. Imagine what would happen if I decided to become a ski jumper. I could read books on ski jumping; I could buy all the necessary equipment and then travel to a place that has a ramp. But the fact is that I’ve never been on skis in my life. I don’t even know how to ski on a gentle slope. Unless I went through the necessary training, I’d be likely to kill myself on the first try. It’s not a matter of trying hard, but of training wisely. It’s the same in other areas. If you want to play classical piano, you don’t just listen to a recording and then try with all your might to play what you’ve just listened to. You go through a period of training, which will lead you through a series of steps, and then, eventually, you’ll be able to play. You don’t just keep trying harder. You equip yourself through training.
It’s the same in the Christian life. We don’t persevere in resisting temptation by trying harder each time we fail. We learn to keep going through temptation by training ourselves. And James gives us some ways of training ourselves in these verses, some things which will help us learn to say “no” to temptation.
The first thing he says is to recognize the source of temptation. James is thinking about temptation to evil, but he has in mind those who’ve been weakened by trials and difficulties and are tempted to find relief in sin. When that happens, God is not trying to trip you; he’s not the one who is tempting you to give up. If you become confused and begin thinking that God is tempting you, the next logical step will be to turn away from Him. One thing that happens when we’re facing temptation is that we’re often in a sort of fog. We can’t see clearly. We’re confused and have lost our bearings. When that begins to happen, we need to step back and remind ourselves that this confusion, this feeling that it’s not worth it continuing to resist, is not from God. God does not ever tempt us to evil.
Where does the temptation come from? From our evil desires: “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” James isn’t denying the presence of our spiritual enemies in temptation. He’s saying that temptation finds a foothold in our evil desires. The problem is not with God. The problem is in ourselves. The temptation comes to us and we find ourselves wanting to give in. Our own desires begin leading us away. We can’t say, as Flip Wilson used to say, “the devil made me do it.” The devil may tempt us, but he can’t make us do anything. Here’s how these verses read in The Message: “The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust.” Those evil spiritual forces that want to destroy us find a willing ally in our own evil desires. We need to begin by taking responsibility for ourselves, confessing that we often give in to temptation because that’s what we really want to do.
The next thing James says is that we need to understand where temptation is leading. Notice that there’s more here than just praying “Lord, help me.” We need to pray, but sometimes just repeating this kind of prayer actually strengthens the force of the temptation. We’re praying over and over, but at the same time we’re obsessing about this thing we want to do. James wants us to seek help from God, but part of seeking help from God is stepping back and reminding ourselves of some things. One of the ways God helps us is by reminding us of the truth: 1) this temptation is not from God; 2) this temptation has the ultimate purpose of leading me away from God completely.
Why does Satan tempt us? Do you think he’s going to all that trouble for the mere pleasure of seeing us commit certain acts of sin? No. He wants us to turn completely away from God. His purpose in tempting us is to lead us into destruction. He wants to destroy us absolutely. The whole point of temptation is to bring us to death. In The Screwtape Letters, Uncle Screwtape, who is advising his demon nephew in how to destroy his human victim, shows very little interest in any specific sins. In one of the letters, he says: “Nothing matters at all except the tendency of a given state of mind, in given circumstances, to move a particular patient at a particular moment nearer to the Enemy or nearer to us” (C.S. Lewis, pp. 87-88).
James has a very graphic picture of the process in these verses. It begins with evil desire. The temptation finds a foothold in our desires; we’re “dragged away and enticed” by our own evil desires. “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” The purpose of temptation is to destroy us, to harden our hearts by a series of steps that lead us further and further away from God. The apostle Paul says the same thing with a different image in Galatians 6: “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit” (vv. 7-8).
The third thing James says is that we need to know God. We need to know who He is, what He is like. The first step in temptation is very often to make us doubt the character of God. If we’re in doubt about God’s goodness, we’ll be more likely to turn away from Him. That was Satan’s strategy with Eve. He came to her in the garden and said, “God knows that when you eat [the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). He convinced her that God was trying to deprive them of a good thing, so she gave in to the temptation.
So James assures us that God is the source of all good. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” He wants us to remember what God is like, so we won’t be drawn away from Him by doubting His character. He is the source of all good things. And He doesn’t change; He doesn’t go back and forth, good one day and cruel the next, depending on His mood. I’ve worked for bosses who were like that. They loved being in charge, lording it over those under their power. They could be very gracious at times, even kind. But you never knew when their mood might change, then they’d become cruel and vindictive. God is not like that. His goodness is unchanging. He is gracious and kind to us, not because He’s in a good mood today, but because He is good. He is always good. He’s proven His goodness by giving us life. Listen to these verses in The Message: “So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.”
Those who resist temptation ultimately resist because they love God. Their perseverance is an active demonstration of their love. That’s the point at the end of verse 12: “Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.” Jesus says the same thing in John 14: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.... Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.”
As we respond to Him in obedient love, Jesus promises that He will come to us and make Himself known to us. We’ll know Him, the source of all goodness. And as we grow to know Him more truly as He is, we’ll be strengthened to resist temptation. If we see clearly who He is and what He’s done for us, we will love Him. And if we love Him, we will want to bring every area of our life into obedience. But it doesn’t happen all at once. We need to train ourselves in a life of obedience, which involves: 1) recognizing the source of temptation, and taking responsibility for our evil inclinations; 2) understanding that temptation is meant to destroy us; and 3) growing to know God more truly as He is. As we bring ourselves back to these things over and over again, we’ll be growing in obedience, and at the end of our lives, when we reach the end of our journey, we won’t be full of shame and regret. “Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.”
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
How to Think About Material Wealth, James 1:9-11
I talked once with a woman who was part of a ministry team witnessing on the streets of Amsterdam, Holland. She was standing on a street corner, sharing the gospel with a prostitute, when a man walked up to her and said, “how much is it going to cost.” She replied, “it’s going to cost you your life.” As he stood there with his mouth open, thinking maybe she was going to kill him, she added, “Jesus wants your whole life.” That wasn’t what he had in mind, so he made a very quick exit. But her answer was a good one; when we come to Jesus Christ, He calls us to lay down our lives. Our lives belong to Him, and He has the right to do with them what He wills. We’ve been bought with a price; from now on everything we have and everything we are belongs to Him.
We saw, in our last sermon, that James is concerned with how his readers think, how they look at their lives in this world. Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in our outlook toward trials and difficulties; we’re to look at trials in terms of what they’re accomplishing rather than how they feel, and are to “count it pure joy” when we encounter trials of all sorts. In verses 9-11, James is continuing this same general approach. He’s concerned here with how we think about material wealth, and the same general principle applies here: Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in the way we value the things of this world.
The singer-songwriter Ken Medema has a song called “Flying Upside Down.” It begins with these words: “All your life you have been learnin’/ Every kinda way to get ahead/ You’ve got to build yourself a future/ Those are the words your daddy said/ Now there is another calling/ It’s tellin’ you to change your mind/ Tells you finding leads to losing/ Tells you losing lets you find.” He’s paraphrasing Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:39: “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give it up for me, you will find it” (NLT). Medema goes on: “The bottom line of your survival/ is you better take care of number one/ You don’t want to hurt somebody/ but you’re gonna do what must be done/ There’s a message on the wire/ And you’ve ignored it in the past/ It says the least will be the greatest/ it says the first will be the last/ Yeah the first will be the last/ Turn it over/ turn it round/ Raise the humble and free the bound/ Down is up and up is down/ This world looks different to ya/ When you’re flying upside down.”
Following Jesus leads us to live in ways that don’t make sense to the world. As we seek to live in obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves valuing things that the world thinks are worthless, ordering our lives according to priorities that are exactly opposite those of the world. Donald Kraybill, who works at Elizabethtown College, wrote a book on the Kingdom of God entitled The Upside Down Kingdom. Here’s something he says in the book: “The Gospels portray the kingdom of God as inverted or upside down in comparison with both ancient Palestine and modern ways.... Kingdom players follow new rules. They listen to another coach. Kingdom values challenge patterns of social life taken for granted in modern culture. Kingdom habits don’t mesh smoothly with dominant cultural trends. They may, in fact, look foolish” (p. 19). James knows the dominant cultural trends, and he wants his readers to realize that following Jesus turns those things upside down. Submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ changes the way we think about our lives in this world.
The first thing James says is that the poor, rather than envying the rich, have reason to boast: “The brother who is poor may be glad because God has called him to the true riches” (J.B. Phillips). The temptation is always for the poor to envy the rich. Politicians capitalize on this. They know that it’s easy to get support for anything that penalizes the rich. So, when they want to raise taxes, they’ll often put it in terms of making the rich pay their fair share, because they know this is a popular idea. They’re capitalizing on the sin of envy, and they end up doing harm by encouraging people to cultivate a destructive vice. Envy may be good for winning votes, but it destroys our souls.
James is saying to his readers, “if you envy the rich, you really don’t understand what’s going on. God has given you reason to boast.” He’s telling them, “you need to stop listening to what the world is telling you is important; the world has everything backwards.” In chapter one, James introduces a number of subjects that he comes back to and develops later on. In chapter two, he says this about the poor: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” (2:5). It’s not that poverty in itself is a virtue. He’s not praising all the poor here; he’s speaking to “the brother in humble circumstances.” He’s speaking to believers who are poor. And he’s saying to them, “God has given you great riches in Himself; He’s made you heirs of His kingdom.” Contrary to all appearances, they have an exalted position in the Church.
Francis Bernardone was born into a prosperous family. His father was a cloth merchant, who naturally expected his son to work at the same trade. But Francis experienced a powerful conversion when he was in his early twenties, and committed his life to radical discipleship. This brought him into conflict with his father, who couldn’t understand the choices he was making. He was doing things that didn’t make sense economically. After a series of incidents, they were both summoned before the bishop. Here’s how one biographer describes the scene: “He stood up before them all and said, ‘Up to this time I have called Pierre Bernardone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me.’ And he rent off all his garments except one; and they saw that that was a hair shirt. He piled the garments in a heap on the floor and tossed the money on top of them. Then he turned to the bishop, and received his blessing, like one who turns his back on society.... He went out half-naked in his hair shirt into the winter woods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees; a man without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song” (G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi, p. 48).
Francis made what looked like a very imprudent financial decision. He had it made, in many ways, if he had been willing to follow in his father’s footsteps. But God had taken hold of his life and was calling him to lay all that aside. We know him today as St. Francis of Assisi, but to the people of the town of Assisi on that day, no doubt he looked like an unbalanced fanatic, maybe even a fool. For the next twenty-one years, he lived a life of voluntary poverty in identification with Jesus, who was born in a stable and died on a common criminal’s cross. Here’s what he said about himself and his followers: “If we had any possessions we should be forced to have arms to protect them, since possessions are a cause of disputes and strife, and in many ways we should be hindered from loving God and our neighbor. Therefore, in this life, we wish to have no temporal possessions” (quoted by John Michael Talbot, The Lessons of St. Francis, p. 20). “Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up.” Why? Because God has given us great riches in Himself. If we envy the rich, we don’t understand what’s going on. We don’t understand the riches we have in Christ.
But not all believers are poor, and not all are called to embrace a life of voluntary poverty, like St. Francis of Assisi. So James goes on to say that the rich, rather than being puffed up with pride, have reason to be humbled. Although in the eyes of the society they may be highly esteemed because of their wealth, in the church they have no special status. They’ve been brought down to size. They’ve seen themselves as poor in spirit, sinners in need of God’s mercy. They’ve been humbled by realizing the truth about themselves.
Why is James concerned about the rich being humbled? Because their wealth exposes them to temptation and spiritual danger. Unless they’re humbled before God, their wealth is likely to destroy them spiritually. He wants them to boast in their low position, in the fact that their wealth is of no eternal value and is insignificant to their status in the Church. Rather than boasting in their wealth and prestige, he wants them to boast in their weakness and spiritual poverty as a protection against the temptation to pride.
Two things can help them keep their wealth in perspective. First, their riches are precarious and uncertain. The translations and commentators are slightly divided about the end of verse 10. The NRSV has “the rich will disappear like a flower of the field.” The majority of translations I consulted are similar. But in a few the phrase refers, not to the rich person, but to his wealth: “Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it” (The Message). Or the Jerusalem Bible: “because riches last no longer than the flowers in the grass.” Among commentators, John Calvin supports this idea that the phrase refers to the precariousness of riches, not of the rich person. Either translation is possible, but I lean slightly toward this second option. James seems to be saying, in verse 10, “don’t boast about your riches, because they won’t last.”
Whether or not he has this in mind in verse 10, James understood that material wealth is precarious and uncertain. That was Jesus’ point in the Sermon on the Mount (and James often seems to have the Sermon on the Mount in the back of his mind as he’s writing): “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19). Treasures on earth are subject to corruption and loss. They’re subject to powers that are beyond our control. When the OM ship Doulos was in South America in the late 70's, they had a dramatic experience of this. Over one weekend they had very strong book sales; on Sunday night they had the equivalent of $30,000 or so onboard the ship. But the economy crashed, and by the time they got to the bank, the value of the local currency had dropped by more than 50 per cent. In a matter of hours, they had lost more than $15,000. Material wealth is precarious and uncertain. It’s subject to powers that are beyond our control. Even if we acquire great wealth, we could be reduced to poverty by the end of our lives.
The other thing that helps us keep wealth in perspective is knowing that our lives are precarious and uncertain. That’s James’ main point in verse 11: “Well, that’s a picture of the ‘prosperous life.’ At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing” (The Message). Our lives are quickly passing by, and we can’t take our earthly treasures with us. Jesus makes the same point in Luke 12: “‘Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.’ Then he told them this story: ‘The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: “What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.” Then he said, “Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of our life.” Just then God showed up and said, “Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods – who gets it?” (Luke 12:15-20, The Message). Knowing these two things: that our wealth is uncertain and can be lost at any time, and that our lives are quickly passing by, can help us keep material possessions in the proper perspective. Rather than being puffed up with pride, we have reason to humble ourselves before God, before whom we will one day, maybe one day very soon, give an account.
The third thing isn’t stated explicitly in verses 9-11. James is building on what he said in verse 2: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy.” God is present in your life and is doing things that you can’t see. The same thing is true with our material possessions. The really important thing is not how much you have, but faithfulness to God who is the source of all good things and who will call us to account, not for how much we’ve made, but for how we’ve made use of the resources He’s entrusted to us. So, in the light of this, cultivate an attitude of contentment with His provision.
That’s Paul’s point near the end of Philippians: “Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am” (Philippians 4:11-13, The Message). He can do that, not because he’s resigned himself to accept the things he can’t change. He can do this “in the One who makes me who I am,” in Christ. This contentment is something Paul has learned, something he’s cultivated as he’s grown in obedience to Christ.
As we saw in the last sermon, James wants us to experience a transformation in our outlook. He wants us to have a longer-term perspective on our lives in this world. He’s reminding us of something we tend to forget. He has these verses from Isaiah in mind as he’s writing: “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8). Our lives are passing by very quickly. Our material possessions are unstable and can be lost in an instant. In the long run, none of it means much. What matters is obedience to God; what matters is that we learn to give thanks to Him in every situation, knowing that He is purifying us and preparing us to live with Him in eternity. If you’re poor, know that God has given you great riches. If you’re wealthy, humble yourself before God, acknowledging your spiritual poverty, coming to Him with empty hands. Either way, cultivate an attitude of contentment and gratitude for God’s gracious care and provision. During this Lenten season we’re celebrating the fact that Jesus, though He was rich, became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9). So, as James says in verse 2, “consider it pure joy” whether He’s provided you, at this point in your life, with little or with much.
We saw, in our last sermon, that James is concerned with how his readers think, how they look at their lives in this world. Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in our outlook toward trials and difficulties; we’re to look at trials in terms of what they’re accomplishing rather than how they feel, and are to “count it pure joy” when we encounter trials of all sorts. In verses 9-11, James is continuing this same general approach. He’s concerned here with how we think about material wealth, and the same general principle applies here: Christian discipleship leads to a complete reversal in the way we value the things of this world.
The singer-songwriter Ken Medema has a song called “Flying Upside Down.” It begins with these words: “All your life you have been learnin’/ Every kinda way to get ahead/ You’ve got to build yourself a future/ Those are the words your daddy said/ Now there is another calling/ It’s tellin’ you to change your mind/ Tells you finding leads to losing/ Tells you losing lets you find.” He’s paraphrasing Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:39: “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give it up for me, you will find it” (NLT). Medema goes on: “The bottom line of your survival/ is you better take care of number one/ You don’t want to hurt somebody/ but you’re gonna do what must be done/ There’s a message on the wire/ And you’ve ignored it in the past/ It says the least will be the greatest/ it says the first will be the last/ Yeah the first will be the last/ Turn it over/ turn it round/ Raise the humble and free the bound/ Down is up and up is down/ This world looks different to ya/ When you’re flying upside down.”
Following Jesus leads us to live in ways that don’t make sense to the world. As we seek to live in obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves valuing things that the world thinks are worthless, ordering our lives according to priorities that are exactly opposite those of the world. Donald Kraybill, who works at Elizabethtown College, wrote a book on the Kingdom of God entitled The Upside Down Kingdom. Here’s something he says in the book: “The Gospels portray the kingdom of God as inverted or upside down in comparison with both ancient Palestine and modern ways.... Kingdom players follow new rules. They listen to another coach. Kingdom values challenge patterns of social life taken for granted in modern culture. Kingdom habits don’t mesh smoothly with dominant cultural trends. They may, in fact, look foolish” (p. 19). James knows the dominant cultural trends, and he wants his readers to realize that following Jesus turns those things upside down. Submitting to the lordship of Jesus Christ changes the way we think about our lives in this world.
The first thing James says is that the poor, rather than envying the rich, have reason to boast: “The brother who is poor may be glad because God has called him to the true riches” (J.B. Phillips). The temptation is always for the poor to envy the rich. Politicians capitalize on this. They know that it’s easy to get support for anything that penalizes the rich. So, when they want to raise taxes, they’ll often put it in terms of making the rich pay their fair share, because they know this is a popular idea. They’re capitalizing on the sin of envy, and they end up doing harm by encouraging people to cultivate a destructive vice. Envy may be good for winning votes, but it destroys our souls.
James is saying to his readers, “if you envy the rich, you really don’t understand what’s going on. God has given you reason to boast.” He’s telling them, “you need to stop listening to what the world is telling you is important; the world has everything backwards.” In chapter one, James introduces a number of subjects that he comes back to and develops later on. In chapter two, he says this about the poor: “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” (2:5). It’s not that poverty in itself is a virtue. He’s not praising all the poor here; he’s speaking to “the brother in humble circumstances.” He’s speaking to believers who are poor. And he’s saying to them, “God has given you great riches in Himself; He’s made you heirs of His kingdom.” Contrary to all appearances, they have an exalted position in the Church.
Francis Bernardone was born into a prosperous family. His father was a cloth merchant, who naturally expected his son to work at the same trade. But Francis experienced a powerful conversion when he was in his early twenties, and committed his life to radical discipleship. This brought him into conflict with his father, who couldn’t understand the choices he was making. He was doing things that didn’t make sense economically. After a series of incidents, they were both summoned before the bishop. Here’s how one biographer describes the scene: “He stood up before them all and said, ‘Up to this time I have called Pierre Bernardone father, but now I am the servant of God. Not only the money but everything that can be called his I will restore to my father, even the very clothes he has given me.’ And he rent off all his garments except one; and they saw that that was a hair shirt. He piled the garments in a heap on the floor and tossed the money on top of them. Then he turned to the bishop, and received his blessing, like one who turns his back on society.... He went out half-naked in his hair shirt into the winter woods, walking the frozen ground between the frosty trees; a man without a father. He was penniless, he was parentless, he was to all appearances without a trade or a plan or a hope in the world; and as he went under the frosty trees, he burst suddenly into song” (G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi, p. 48).
Francis made what looked like a very imprudent financial decision. He had it made, in many ways, if he had been willing to follow in his father’s footsteps. But God had taken hold of his life and was calling him to lay all that aside. We know him today as St. Francis of Assisi, but to the people of the town of Assisi on that day, no doubt he looked like an unbalanced fanatic, maybe even a fool. For the next twenty-one years, he lived a life of voluntary poverty in identification with Jesus, who was born in a stable and died on a common criminal’s cross. Here’s what he said about himself and his followers: “If we had any possessions we should be forced to have arms to protect them, since possessions are a cause of disputes and strife, and in many ways we should be hindered from loving God and our neighbor. Therefore, in this life, we wish to have no temporal possessions” (quoted by John Michael Talbot, The Lessons of St. Francis, p. 20). “Let the believer who is lowly boast in being raised up.” Why? Because God has given us great riches in Himself. If we envy the rich, we don’t understand what’s going on. We don’t understand the riches we have in Christ.
But not all believers are poor, and not all are called to embrace a life of voluntary poverty, like St. Francis of Assisi. So James goes on to say that the rich, rather than being puffed up with pride, have reason to be humbled. Although in the eyes of the society they may be highly esteemed because of their wealth, in the church they have no special status. They’ve been brought down to size. They’ve seen themselves as poor in spirit, sinners in need of God’s mercy. They’ve been humbled by realizing the truth about themselves.
Why is James concerned about the rich being humbled? Because their wealth exposes them to temptation and spiritual danger. Unless they’re humbled before God, their wealth is likely to destroy them spiritually. He wants them to boast in their low position, in the fact that their wealth is of no eternal value and is insignificant to their status in the Church. Rather than boasting in their wealth and prestige, he wants them to boast in their weakness and spiritual poverty as a protection against the temptation to pride.
Two things can help them keep their wealth in perspective. First, their riches are precarious and uncertain. The translations and commentators are slightly divided about the end of verse 10. The NRSV has “the rich will disappear like a flower of the field.” The majority of translations I consulted are similar. But in a few the phrase refers, not to the rich person, but to his wealth: “Prosperity is as short-lived as a wildflower, so don’t ever count on it” (The Message). Or the Jerusalem Bible: “because riches last no longer than the flowers in the grass.” Among commentators, John Calvin supports this idea that the phrase refers to the precariousness of riches, not of the rich person. Either translation is possible, but I lean slightly toward this second option. James seems to be saying, in verse 10, “don’t boast about your riches, because they won’t last.”
Whether or not he has this in mind in verse 10, James understood that material wealth is precarious and uncertain. That was Jesus’ point in the Sermon on the Mount (and James often seems to have the Sermon on the Mount in the back of his mind as he’s writing): “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19). Treasures on earth are subject to corruption and loss. They’re subject to powers that are beyond our control. When the OM ship Doulos was in South America in the late 70's, they had a dramatic experience of this. Over one weekend they had very strong book sales; on Sunday night they had the equivalent of $30,000 or so onboard the ship. But the economy crashed, and by the time they got to the bank, the value of the local currency had dropped by more than 50 per cent. In a matter of hours, they had lost more than $15,000. Material wealth is precarious and uncertain. It’s subject to powers that are beyond our control. Even if we acquire great wealth, we could be reduced to poverty by the end of our lives.
The other thing that helps us keep wealth in perspective is knowing that our lives are precarious and uncertain. That’s James’ main point in verse 11: “Well, that’s a picture of the ‘prosperous life.’ At the very moment everyone is looking on in admiration, it fades away to nothing” (The Message). Our lives are quickly passing by, and we can’t take our earthly treasures with us. Jesus makes the same point in Luke 12: “‘Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.’ Then he told them this story: ‘The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: “What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.” Then he said, “Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of our life.” Just then God showed up and said, “Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods – who gets it?” (Luke 12:15-20, The Message). Knowing these two things: that our wealth is uncertain and can be lost at any time, and that our lives are quickly passing by, can help us keep material possessions in the proper perspective. Rather than being puffed up with pride, we have reason to humble ourselves before God, before whom we will one day, maybe one day very soon, give an account.
The third thing isn’t stated explicitly in verses 9-11. James is building on what he said in verse 2: “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy.” God is present in your life and is doing things that you can’t see. The same thing is true with our material possessions. The really important thing is not how much you have, but faithfulness to God who is the source of all good things and who will call us to account, not for how much we’ve made, but for how we’ve made use of the resources He’s entrusted to us. So, in the light of this, cultivate an attitude of contentment with His provision.
That’s Paul’s point near the end of Philippians: “Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am” (Philippians 4:11-13, The Message). He can do that, not because he’s resigned himself to accept the things he can’t change. He can do this “in the One who makes me who I am,” in Christ. This contentment is something Paul has learned, something he’s cultivated as he’s grown in obedience to Christ.
As we saw in the last sermon, James wants us to experience a transformation in our outlook. He wants us to have a longer-term perspective on our lives in this world. He’s reminding us of something we tend to forget. He has these verses from Isaiah in mind as he’s writing: “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8). Our lives are passing by very quickly. Our material possessions are unstable and can be lost in an instant. In the long run, none of it means much. What matters is obedience to God; what matters is that we learn to give thanks to Him in every situation, knowing that He is purifying us and preparing us to live with Him in eternity. If you’re poor, know that God has given you great riches. If you’re wealthy, humble yourself before God, acknowledging your spiritual poverty, coming to Him with empty hands. Either way, cultivate an attitude of contentment and gratitude for God’s gracious care and provision. During this Lenten season we’re celebrating the fact that Jesus, though He was rich, became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9). So, as James says in verse 2, “consider it pure joy” whether He’s provided you, at this point in your life, with little or with much.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
How to Think About Trials, James 1:1-8
When I was a young Christian, I often struggled with my lack of effectiveness in witnessing to others. I was living onboard a ship in the U.S. Navy, and all my friends knew I was a Christian; I had personally shared the gospel with many of them, but very few had shown any real interest. I had been taught that successful “soul winning” was a necessary part of Christian discipleship, and I was worried about my lack of visible fruit.
So I started looking for ways to improve my witnessing. One of the tools I used began with these words: “did you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” I read about many people who made use of this booklet and who had led dozens, or even hundreds, of people to make a commitment to the Lord. So I tried it for awhile. But I could never get comfortable with it. What if someone comes to faith through this booklet, then experiences horrible things? Is it right to say to people, “God... has a wonderful plan for your life”? What they’ll understand by these words is that God is going to make everything turn out well: God is going to make you happy, and prosperous, and successful. Whatever we may mean by these words, it’s really not fair to say to someone who has no understanding of Christian discipleship, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Once they begin to experience it, they may not think His plan is so wonderful.
The world is full of people who are embittered against God because things haven’t turned out well in their lives. They committed their lives to Jesus Christ and sought to follow Him, but then things had gone wrong. God didn’t take care of them. He hadn’t delivered on His promise to give them an “abundant life.” They say things like, “I thought God would watch out for me, and He hasn’t.” Or, “what is the good of following Jesus if bad things happen to me, just like everyone else?” “How can you claim that God is good when He allows His people to experience such horrible things?”
For Christians in the first century, things often went very badly. They were following a man who had been condemned and crucified by the Romans and who had been hated by the Jewish religious leaders. They experienced the literal fulfillment of Jesus’ words: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:20). James is writing to people like this. This letter is called one of the “catholic epistles,” because it’s not addressed to any particular church. It’s simply addressed to “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations,” not the twelve tribes of Israel, but the Church, which Peter describes as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9).
James is writing to the Church, a body of people who live in this world as strangers and aliens. And he assumes that suffering is a prominent part of their lives. That’s the thing he begins with, right after the greeting: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” He assumes that they will experience trials; he doesn’t promise anything different. He knows they’re going to suffer, but he wants them to look at suffering differently than they’ve been in the habit of doing. He wants them to reevaluate their attitude toward trials and difficulties. He wants them to begin looking at these things in the light of what they’re accomplishing, rather than how they make them feel. He wants them to take a longer-range view of their lives.
The first thing he says is in verses 2&3: Because the outcome is going to be good, consider it pure joy when you encounter trials. Notice that he’s not saying, “you need to feel good about all the things that happen to you.” He’s saying “you need to think differently about your life.” “Consider it pure joy.” He’s calling them to a completely different way of looking at things.
Why should they consider it pure joy? Because the things that are happening to them will prove the genuineness of their faith and will develop perseverance: “You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.” God is going to do good things in their lives through these experiences. They wouldn’t choose for things to go this way. Jesus recoiled from going to the cross; it wasn’t what He wanted to experience. But He said to the Father, “let your will, not mine, be done.” We can’t feel happy about suffering (and if we do there’s something wrong with us). But we can rejoice that our loving Father is using these things to transform us into the image of Jesus and to prepare us for the life of eternity. God isn’t just making us into better people. He’s purifying us, so that we’ll be able to live in His presence and see Him face to face.
We need to know that true spiritual joy is compatible with deep sorrow. Both can be present at the same time. Peter’s outlook, in his first letter, is very similar to that of James. He’s writing to encourage Christians who are being persecuted: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. [This is what they’ve received from God – but listen to what he says next:] In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith–of much greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:3-7). They greatly rejoice, and they’re suffering grief in all kinds of trials. They’re rejoicing in the Lord in the midst of sorrow.
James wants his readers to take a longer-term view of things. The trials they’re facing don’t feel good at present. And he’s not trying to talk them into feeling better. These things are painful. But they’re also temporary. They’re passing by, and God is going to do good things in their lives as they continue walking with Him. He’s going to do things that will spill over into the life of eternity, so that Paul can say: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). As we encounter trials, we need to know this: these trials are temporary, and God is going to do such things that one day, when we’re looking back on all that’s happened, we’ll be able to say it was all worth it.
The second thing he says is in verse 4: because this takes time – and there are no short-cuts – don’t try to rush the process. You only learn perseverance by persevering. And perseverance accomplishes its work slowly. Listen to this verse in The Message: “So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” We in America may be in a hurry, but God isn’t. So part of Christian discipleship is submitting to His schedule, rather than insisting on ours.
The spiritual director I had when we lived in Collegeville gave me this quote: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.... We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stage of instability – and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make them tomorrow.... Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin). We can’t be today what we will be after a lifetime of walking with God. Right now we’re in the middle of the process.
God is doing things that we can’t see. We may feel like we’re floundering, like there’s no discernible evidence of progress. Just keep going, and rest in the certainty that God is at work. He’s not in a hurry, and He works in ways that we can’t discern, using methods that we wouldn’t choose for ourselves. Our own judgement in this area is not trustworthy (which is why it’s so often helpful to meet with someone who can help us see what God is doing). God is carrying on His work, even though we may feel, at present, “in suspense and incomplete.” Rushing ahead, trying to find a shortcut, will lead to deformity. It’s only by perseverance that we become “mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” So, whatever else is happening, keep going forward in obedience, trusting in the “slow work of God.”
The third thing he says is in verses 5-8: because this is not our natural way of looking at things, because this goes so much against the grain of our natural mind set, we need to cry out to God and ask Him for wisdom. The ability to “consider it pure joy... whenever you face trials of many kinds” is beyond us. It’s not the sort of thing that we can just talk ourselves into. This is more than an exercise in positive thinking, and it’s more than a stoic acceptance of the things we can’t change. James is calling us to a completely different way of looking at our lives.
When we find that we’re powerless to look at our trials in the way James is describing, we need to cry out to God for wisdom. And God will answer, because He “gives generously to all without finding fault.” God is a God who delights in generosity. The temptation is to say to ourselves, “a good God wouldn’t permit these kinds of things to happen, so maybe there isn’t a God after all, or maybe He isn’t good and kind.” And when we do this, we’re putting ourselves outside the realm of God’s help. Or when we waver back and forth, demanding that God prove Himself by taking away the trials we’re enduring, we’re not coming to Him in faith. We’re saying, “I’ll trust you as long as you do what I’m asking.” We’re really not looking to be transformed in the way James describes: “Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who ‘worry their prayers’ are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open” (The Message).
The ability to look at our trials in the way James is describing is not within us. We don’t have the resources within ourselves to effect this kind of change in perspective. We need the wisdom that comes from God, so we can’t afford to cut ourselves off from Him by doubting His goodness and generosity. The author of Proverbs says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (9:10). When we find ourselves facing trials and difficulties, we need the wisdom that finds its origins in the “fear of the Lord.”
The thing we’re celebrating during this Lenten season is that God isn’t asking us to do something He hasn’t done Himself. He’s not sitting up in heaven, looking impassively on our sufferings, saying “oh, come on, just get over it. It’s not such a big deal; the whole thing will be over soon.” He knows what it is to suffer. One theologian says this about the Incarnation: “If God really became one of us, then God bears all the pain and suffering that human nature knows. That means that God is able to relate to us as human beings. God has trodden the road of pain, suffering and death before us as one of us” (Alister McGrath, Christian Spirituality, p. 60). God knows what it is to suffer, and He delights in giving wisdom to those who come to Him in faith.
Our problem is that we don’t see the whole picture. That’s why James begins in this way. We need a transformation in our outlook. We need, like the prodigal son, to come to our senses. And the thing that will bring us to our senses is fellowship with Jesus, our suffering Lord and Savior. “Good Friday brings us to our senses. Our senses come to us as we sense that in this life and in this death is our life and our death. The truth about the crucified Lord is the truth about ourselves.... The beginning of wisdom is to come to our senses and know the fearful truth about ourselves, that we have wandered and wasted our days in a distant country far from home. We know ourselves most truly in knowing Christ, for in him is our true self.... His cross is the way home to the waiting Father. ‘If you would come to your senses,’ he says, ‘come, follow me’” (Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, p. 4). In Him, and in fellowship with Him, we see what we need to know about suffering as Christians. Does God have a “wonderful plan” for our lives? Yes, but in this life it often doesn’t feel that way. Jesus’ “cross is the way home to the waiting Father.” And through our sharing in the sufferings of Christ, God is purifying us and preparing us for the life of heaven, where we will see Him face to face. Therefore, because we know this is true, “Consider it pure joy... whenever you face trials of many kinds.”
So I started looking for ways to improve my witnessing. One of the tools I used began with these words: “did you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” I read about many people who made use of this booklet and who had led dozens, or even hundreds, of people to make a commitment to the Lord. So I tried it for awhile. But I could never get comfortable with it. What if someone comes to faith through this booklet, then experiences horrible things? Is it right to say to people, “God... has a wonderful plan for your life”? What they’ll understand by these words is that God is going to make everything turn out well: God is going to make you happy, and prosperous, and successful. Whatever we may mean by these words, it’s really not fair to say to someone who has no understanding of Christian discipleship, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Once they begin to experience it, they may not think His plan is so wonderful.
The world is full of people who are embittered against God because things haven’t turned out well in their lives. They committed their lives to Jesus Christ and sought to follow Him, but then things had gone wrong. God didn’t take care of them. He hadn’t delivered on His promise to give them an “abundant life.” They say things like, “I thought God would watch out for me, and He hasn’t.” Or, “what is the good of following Jesus if bad things happen to me, just like everyone else?” “How can you claim that God is good when He allows His people to experience such horrible things?”
For Christians in the first century, things often went very badly. They were following a man who had been condemned and crucified by the Romans and who had been hated by the Jewish religious leaders. They experienced the literal fulfillment of Jesus’ words: “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:20). James is writing to people like this. This letter is called one of the “catholic epistles,” because it’s not addressed to any particular church. It’s simply addressed to “the twelve tribes scattered among the nations,” not the twelve tribes of Israel, but the Church, which Peter describes as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9).
James is writing to the Church, a body of people who live in this world as strangers and aliens. And he assumes that suffering is a prominent part of their lives. That’s the thing he begins with, right after the greeting: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” He assumes that they will experience trials; he doesn’t promise anything different. He knows they’re going to suffer, but he wants them to look at suffering differently than they’ve been in the habit of doing. He wants them to reevaluate their attitude toward trials and difficulties. He wants them to begin looking at these things in the light of what they’re accomplishing, rather than how they make them feel. He wants them to take a longer-range view of their lives.
The first thing he says is in verses 2&3: Because the outcome is going to be good, consider it pure joy when you encounter trials. Notice that he’s not saying, “you need to feel good about all the things that happen to you.” He’s saying “you need to think differently about your life.” “Consider it pure joy.” He’s calling them to a completely different way of looking at things.
Why should they consider it pure joy? Because the things that are happening to them will prove the genuineness of their faith and will develop perseverance: “You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.” God is going to do good things in their lives through these experiences. They wouldn’t choose for things to go this way. Jesus recoiled from going to the cross; it wasn’t what He wanted to experience. But He said to the Father, “let your will, not mine, be done.” We can’t feel happy about suffering (and if we do there’s something wrong with us). But we can rejoice that our loving Father is using these things to transform us into the image of Jesus and to prepare us for the life of eternity. God isn’t just making us into better people. He’s purifying us, so that we’ll be able to live in His presence and see Him face to face.
We need to know that true spiritual joy is compatible with deep sorrow. Both can be present at the same time. Peter’s outlook, in his first letter, is very similar to that of James. He’s writing to encourage Christians who are being persecuted: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. [This is what they’ve received from God – but listen to what he says next:] In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith–of much greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire–may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:3-7). They greatly rejoice, and they’re suffering grief in all kinds of trials. They’re rejoicing in the Lord in the midst of sorrow.
James wants his readers to take a longer-term view of things. The trials they’re facing don’t feel good at present. And he’s not trying to talk them into feeling better. These things are painful. But they’re also temporary. They’re passing by, and God is going to do good things in their lives as they continue walking with Him. He’s going to do things that will spill over into the life of eternity, so that Paul can say: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). As we encounter trials, we need to know this: these trials are temporary, and God is going to do such things that one day, when we’re looking back on all that’s happened, we’ll be able to say it was all worth it.
The second thing he says is in verse 4: because this takes time – and there are no short-cuts – don’t try to rush the process. You only learn perseverance by persevering. And perseverance accomplishes its work slowly. Listen to this verse in The Message: “So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” We in America may be in a hurry, but God isn’t. So part of Christian discipleship is submitting to His schedule, rather than insisting on ours.
The spiritual director I had when we lived in Collegeville gave me this quote: “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.... We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stage of instability – and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you. Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make them tomorrow.... Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin). We can’t be today what we will be after a lifetime of walking with God. Right now we’re in the middle of the process.
God is doing things that we can’t see. We may feel like we’re floundering, like there’s no discernible evidence of progress. Just keep going, and rest in the certainty that God is at work. He’s not in a hurry, and He works in ways that we can’t discern, using methods that we wouldn’t choose for ourselves. Our own judgement in this area is not trustworthy (which is why it’s so often helpful to meet with someone who can help us see what God is doing). God is carrying on His work, even though we may feel, at present, “in suspense and incomplete.” Rushing ahead, trying to find a shortcut, will lead to deformity. It’s only by perseverance that we become “mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” So, whatever else is happening, keep going forward in obedience, trusting in the “slow work of God.”
The third thing he says is in verses 5-8: because this is not our natural way of looking at things, because this goes so much against the grain of our natural mind set, we need to cry out to God and ask Him for wisdom. The ability to “consider it pure joy... whenever you face trials of many kinds” is beyond us. It’s not the sort of thing that we can just talk ourselves into. This is more than an exercise in positive thinking, and it’s more than a stoic acceptance of the things we can’t change. James is calling us to a completely different way of looking at our lives.
When we find that we’re powerless to look at our trials in the way James is describing, we need to cry out to God for wisdom. And God will answer, because He “gives generously to all without finding fault.” God is a God who delights in generosity. The temptation is to say to ourselves, “a good God wouldn’t permit these kinds of things to happen, so maybe there isn’t a God after all, or maybe He isn’t good and kind.” And when we do this, we’re putting ourselves outside the realm of God’s help. Or when we waver back and forth, demanding that God prove Himself by taking away the trials we’re enduring, we’re not coming to Him in faith. We’re saying, “I’ll trust you as long as you do what I’m asking.” We’re really not looking to be transformed in the way James describes: “Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who ‘worry their prayers’ are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open” (The Message).
The ability to look at our trials in the way James is describing is not within us. We don’t have the resources within ourselves to effect this kind of change in perspective. We need the wisdom that comes from God, so we can’t afford to cut ourselves off from Him by doubting His goodness and generosity. The author of Proverbs says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (9:10). When we find ourselves facing trials and difficulties, we need the wisdom that finds its origins in the “fear of the Lord.”
The thing we’re celebrating during this Lenten season is that God isn’t asking us to do something He hasn’t done Himself. He’s not sitting up in heaven, looking impassively on our sufferings, saying “oh, come on, just get over it. It’s not such a big deal; the whole thing will be over soon.” He knows what it is to suffer. One theologian says this about the Incarnation: “If God really became one of us, then God bears all the pain and suffering that human nature knows. That means that God is able to relate to us as human beings. God has trodden the road of pain, suffering and death before us as one of us” (Alister McGrath, Christian Spirituality, p. 60). God knows what it is to suffer, and He delights in giving wisdom to those who come to Him in faith.
Our problem is that we don’t see the whole picture. That’s why James begins in this way. We need a transformation in our outlook. We need, like the prodigal son, to come to our senses. And the thing that will bring us to our senses is fellowship with Jesus, our suffering Lord and Savior. “Good Friday brings us to our senses. Our senses come to us as we sense that in this life and in this death is our life and our death. The truth about the crucified Lord is the truth about ourselves.... The beginning of wisdom is to come to our senses and know the fearful truth about ourselves, that we have wandered and wasted our days in a distant country far from home. We know ourselves most truly in knowing Christ, for in him is our true self.... His cross is the way home to the waiting Father. ‘If you would come to your senses,’ he says, ‘come, follow me’” (Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon, p. 4). In Him, and in fellowship with Him, we see what we need to know about suffering as Christians. Does God have a “wonderful plan” for our lives? Yes, but in this life it often doesn’t feel that way. Jesus’ “cross is the way home to the waiting Father.” And through our sharing in the sufferings of Christ, God is purifying us and preparing us for the life of heaven, where we will see Him face to face. Therefore, because we know this is true, “Consider it pure joy... whenever you face trials of many kinds.”
Thursday, February 21, 2013
God Told Me, Proverbs 1:1-7
I often hear people say the words, “God told me....” Some people say this all the time, about all sorts of things. A former pastor of mine once complained about how flippantly some people use these words. He had recently interviewed three applicants for a staff position, and all three said God had told them they would get the job. A man once came to Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, and said to him: “God told me I am to preach in your church this Sunday.” Spurgeon’s response was: “It’s strange He didn’t tell me that,” (and, as you might expect, the man did not preach in Spurgeon’s church).
On the other hand, many people struggle to have any sense of God’s leading. A number of years ago I read about a woman who was living in a Christian community “seeking God’s will for her life.” This was the whole reason she was there; seeking God’s will for her life was the main thing she was engaged in. It was, at least for awhile, her vocation. For many, knowing God’s will is full of mystery; it is the sort of thing that can only be known by going to live in a Christian community, by giving all our time and energy to the pursuit of God’s plan for our lives.
It’s important that we know how to discern God’s will. We pray in the Lord’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When we pray in this way, we are expressing the concern that God’s will be done in our lives. Confessing that Jesus is Lord implies that we are willing to submit to Him. So, if the Lordship of Jesus Christ means anything at all, it is imperative that we have some knowledge of how to know God’s will. And since most of us don’t have the luxury of going to live in a Christian community, we need to know how to discern God’s will in the midst of our day-to-day lives.
The main thing I want to stress is this: God, when He leads us, deals with us as creatures who are able to understand and respond to His instructions. He doesn’t treat us like robots, sending a new signal every time He wants us to do something. He has given us the gift of understanding, and He leads us in ways that are consistent with this.
It’s important to understand that most of God’s will for our lives is revealed clearly in Scripture. Most of God’s will has to do with what He wants us to be, rather than what He wants us to do. God’s concern is that we be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. The book of Proverbs is about this kind of guidance. Eugene Peterson, in The Message, translates the beginning of Proverbs in this way: “These are the wise sayings of Solomon, David’s son, Israel’s king -- Written down so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going; A manual for living, for learning what’s right and just and fair; To teach the inexperienced the ropes and give our young people a grasp on reality. There’s something here also for seasoned men and women, still a thing or two for the experienced to learn -- Fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate, the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women” (The Message: The Wisdom Books, p. 283). The whole focus of the book of Proverbs is wisdom; but wisdom in the Old Testament is not primarily an intellectual thing (as it was with the Greeks; in Greek thinking, an interest in wisdom led to philosophy); in the Old Testament, wisdom has to do with how we order our lives in this world in obedience to God’s commands. It has to do with living in the fear of God and under His lordship. In the introduction to Proverbs, Peterson says this: “Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God” (p. 282). Wisdom is living according to God’s revealed will. So, to learn God’s will for our lives, we don’t need to go live in a monastery or a Christian community; we need to prayerfully read and study God’s word and apply it to our lives.
But, having said that, there are still those times when God’s Word doesn’t give us any clear direction. Reading the Bible is not going to tell us which vocation to choose, or which home to buy. It won’t tell us which major to choose in college, or whether we should skip college altogether. When we have to choose between two equally good things, reading the Bible won’t tell us which is the right choice. So how do we discern God’s will in these situations?
This is an area where it’s easy for us to get into trouble. In Scripture, we see God sometimes leading His people in a supernatural way. When they were wandering in the desert, He led the people of Israel with a pillar of cloud and fire; we see Him speaking to the prophets through dreams and visions or speaking in an audible voice. It’s easy to start thinking that if we are really spiritual, God will lead us in this way as well. The problem is that this sort of leading is the exception, rather than the rule. This is not only true for us; this sort of guidance was exceptional in Biblical times as well. When Israel crossed over into the Promised Land, they were no longer led by the pillar of cloud and fire. The prophets had to make most of their daily decisions without the benefit of special revelations. Even for the apostles, the more direct forms of guidance seem to have been given at important turning points in their ministries. God has created us with the ability to think, to exercise wisdom, to make rational choices, to seek advice from others, and He normally leads us in ways that are consistent with these things. He normally calls us to make decisions without the benefit of miraculous guidance.
Many have gotten into difficulties by trusting too much in inward impressions. They have assumed that guidance is “essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word,” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 212). The history of the church is littered with illustrations of what happens when we put too much confidence in these sorts of impressions. J.I. Packer tells of one woman who would begin her day by consecrating it to God, and then would not stir out of bed until prompted to do so by the Holy Spirit. As she dressed herself, she would pray over each article of clothing, asking the Lord whether she should put it on or not. As a result, often she would leave the house with only one shoe, or with stockings but no shoes, and so on (pp. 213-14). From our vantage point, this is clearly ridiculous, even comical, but it’s important to realize that she went wrong by seeking a level of guidance that God does not choose to give. How do people get caught in this sort of thing? I think it usually begins with a genuine desire to know God, but we get sidetracked. We start demanding that God act according to our expectations, and we slip into a subtle form of idolatry. If we insist on having something that God doesn’t choose to give us, we are setting ourselves up to accept a counterfeit.
Not all the examples are as ridiculous as this. George Whitefield was a friend of John Wesley, an exceptionally powerful preacher and one of the greatest evangelists of all time. He was a godly man, with a deep personal relationship with God. He was well-educated and knowledgeable in the Scriptures. He was also humble and aware of his own weaknesses. Early in his ministry, he put a lot of confidence in inward impressions, which he thought were from the direct prompting of the Holy Spirit. This emphasis was prominent in his published journals, and other ministers even warned him about it. When Whitefield’s wife gave birth to a son, he publicly announced his impression that this son would grow up “to be a preacher of the everlasting Gospel.” He wrote: “...in the company of thousands I solemnly gave him up to God.... and all went away big with hopes of the child’s being hereafter to be employed in the work of God....” A few months later, the child died, and Whitefield wrote: “...though disappointed of a living preacher by the death of my son, yet I hope what happened..., hath taught me such lessons, as, if duly improved, may render his mistaken parent more cautious, more sober-minded... and consequently more useful in his future labours to the church of God.” From this time on he was much more cautious in this area (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 2, pp. 166-69). This calls us to humility; if George Whitefield could be misled in this way, it is the height of presumption to think we are immune.
So, how does God normally lead us? If He doesn’t lead us primarily by inward impressions, how do we go about discerning God’s will. We discern God’s will primarily by applying the wisdom He teaches us in His word, this wisdom that is “written down so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going” (Proverbs 1). We discern God’s will as creatures who’ve been entrusted with the gift of understanding. Here are 6 general principles that I’ve found helpful.[1]
1) We need to be willing to think. J.I. Packer says: “It is false piety, super-supernaturalism of an unhealthy and pernicious sort, that demands inward impressions that have no rational base, and declines to heed the constant biblical summons to `consider’.” The Bible addresses us as rational beings and urges us to think. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord” (Isa. 1:18). In Romans 6 and 7, Paul repeatedly asks, “Do you not know?” In Romans 11:25, he says “I do not want you to be ignorant of this....” God doesn’t bypass our minds in His dealings with us. Look at Psalm 32:8-9: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” The thing he notes about these animals is that they have no understanding. They need to be specifically led each step of the way. They need to be controlled. God doesn’t deal with us in this way. He has created us with minds, and He calls us to use them. If we, in the name of spirituality, refuse to do so, we are headed for disaster. If we want to know God’s will, we need to be willing to think about the choice that is before us.
2) We must be willing to think ahead, and consider the long-term consequences of our choices. Deut. 32:28-29 says: “They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!” Jesus said “Do not worry about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34). He didn’t say “Don’t think about the future.” It is wise to ask how this decision will fit into our long-term plans. Is it taking us in the direction we want our lives to go? Will this choice we’re considering hinder us from following the Lord in the future? Is it consistent with His calling in our lives?
3) We must be willing to take advice. When Paul says in Galatians 1:16, “I did not consult any man,” he is not disparaging the idea of taking advice. He’s talking there about his call to be a Christian and an apostle. Look at Proverbs 12:15: “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.” Or 13:10: “Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.” Unwillingness to take advice is a mark of pride, not spirituality. Even if we, in the end, are unable to take the advice we receive, involving others is an important part of the process. The act of sifting through the suggestions you receive will often help clarify the issues. Annie and I have a number of people we go to when we are in the process of making a decision, and frequently they are able to see things that we have missed. We are part of a body, and God often uses other members of the body to help us discern His will.
One caution in this area: if we are not careful, we will tend to gravitate toward those who are likely to tell us what we want to hear. In 1Kings 12, Solomon has just died and his son, Rehoboam, has become king. The people come to him with this request: “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you” (v. 4). Rehoboam asks them to come back in three days, and goes to the elders, those with more experience, for advice. They urge him to give in to the people: “They replied, `If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants’” (v. 7). But he’s just become king, and he wants to throw his weight around a little. Who do these people think they are, anyway? He’s king, and he wants them to feel the weight of his power. So he rejects the advice of the elders and turns to his friends for counsel. They tell him what he is wanting to hear: “Tell these people who have said to you, `Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter’ -- tell them, `My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions’” (vv. 10-11). This is the beginning of the divided kingdom; the ten tribes to the north rebel against Rehoboam, and he barely escapes with his life. When we go to others for advice, we need to be careful that what we’re seeking is God’s will, and not just an affirmation of what we’ve already decided to do. Our hearts are deceitful and will lead us astray. This leads to the next point.
4) We need to be suspicious of ourselves. Merely feeling that something is God’s will is not enough. We need to ask ourselves why we feel this to be God’s will. Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Rather than being anxious to trust in feelings and impressions, we should be skeptical of them, knowing the deceitfulness of our own hearts. At times our feelings reflect nothing more than the influence of a good night’s sleep or an enjoyable meal. J.I. Packer says, and I believe he’s right: “We can never distrust ourselves too much.”
5) We need to beware of putting too much confidence in the wrong people. We should not only distrust ourselves, we should also have a healthy skepticism about following others. Those who get caught up in false cults have, at some point, begun following their leaders blindly. They refuse to recognize their responsibility to “test all things,” even in the context of religious leadership. We seek advice from others, but we don’t follow them blindly.
6) We must be willing to wait. “God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not His way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 217). Many of you are probably familiar with Oswald Chambers’ daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. In one of the readings, he says this: “Never run before God’s guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt--don’t” (January 4th reading). A large part of knowing God’s will is waiting on His time.
So, to put all this together, when we are in the process of making a decision the wisest course is to wait on God, to cry out to Him for direction, and begin actively seeking His will. Think prayerfully about the pros and cons of the alternatives, weigh the long-term consequences, and go to some mature Christians to get their perspective. Be willing to wait on the Lord’s time, for He may not lead as quickly as you think He should. But, as you wait on Him, you will begin to get a sense of where He is leading.
As you prayerfully wait on the Lord, look for two things: an increasing weight in favor of one of the alternatives; and an increasing conviction in your heart that this is the Lord’s direction. Feelings and convictions are not to be ignored; they just need to be weighed together with these other things. When Annie and I get to this point in a decision, we usually begin making tentative steps in that direction, and as we begin stepping out, we pray for the Lord to either confirm this as His will, or to make it clear that we are on the wrong track. As we have followed this course of seeking His will, He has always been faithful and has made it abundantly clear what He wants us to do. He has often made us wait much longer than we’ve wanted to wait, but He has never failed to make His will known in the end.
But there still remains the question about those times when God leads His people in more direct ways. Does He still do this today? I believe He does, but we need to realize that this is the exception rather than the norm. It was exceptional, as I said earlier, even for the apostles and prophets. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher, preached a series of sermons on Spiritual Depression, and he shared later that the Lord had led him to this series in an exceptional way. He described it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, where the Lord met with him powerfully and impressed upon him the whole series, including the order in which the sermons were to be preached. These sermons are available still in the book Spiritual Depression. There seems to be an increase in this sort of guidance during times of revival, but there is also an increase in the counterfeits at the same time. I have four suggestions in this area, but I want to stress that, even in this more direct type of guidance, God deals with us as creatures who can understand and respond (either in obedience or disobedience) to His will.
1) Because guidance by dreams, visions, an audible voice or a strong impression on the mind is not the norm, we should not expect to be guided in these ways. There are times when God, in His sovereign wisdom, grants such things to His people, but the giving of these things is under His control. We cannot produce such things by the exercise of faith, and we certainly cannot claim them. God often does such things for a specific purpose and for a limited period of time. One of the leaders of the Welsh revival, about 150 years ago, was a man named David Morgan. By all accounts he was a quite ordinary preacher; he was a good man, but his gifts were not exceptional in any way. But he began longing for revival, and something happened. He reports: “I went to bed [one] night just David Morgan as usual. I woke up the next morning feeling like a lion, feeling that I was filled with the power of the Holy Ghost.” For the next two years, he preached with exceptional power, and large numbers of people came to Christ. Everywhere he went, there were tremendous results. About two years later, he says, “I went to bed one night still feeling like a lion, filled with this strange power that I had enjoyed for the two years. I woke up the next morning and found that I had become David Morgan once more.” He lived for another 15 years and again exercised a very ordinary ministry (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, pp. 322-323). God, in His sovereign wisdom, did something exceptional for a limited period of time; but when that time was over, He withdrew the power. It’s the same with these more extraordinary types of guidance. God may work in this way for a limited period of time. He may even grant a person one experience of this type, and then never do it again. The timing and duration of these things is not within our power.
2) Being led in these ways is not a mark of spirituality. God sometimes does exceptional things in the lives of immature Christians, to assure them of His presence in their lives. When I was a new Christian, I felt strongly burdened to witness to a friend of mine. It was late in the evening, probably 10pm or so, and I was sure he would be out at one of the local bars, so I went looking for him. He wasn’t in any of the places I looked, and when I was about to give up, the Lord spoke to me very clearly and said: “Wait here, and I’ll bring him to you.” I pulled over, and within a minute or so, he drove by, and I was able to wave him over. He didn’t become a Christian, but I was able to witness to him, and I was also assured of the reality of God’s presence in my life. But it had nothing to do with my spirituality at the time. I was a brand new Christian and had hardly begun to grow spiritually. It was a gift of grace, given for my encouragement in the faith. A friend of mine, who was away from the Lord, was laying in his bed one night, and a voice came through his bedroom window: “Jack, you’d better straighten up your life.” This so arrested and convicted him that he recommitted his life to Christ. In the Muslim world, where there is such strong opposition to the Gospel, God often uses dreams to bring people to Himself. So, if the Lord speaks to you or leads you in a more direct way, don’t assume that it is because you are more spiritual than others. It may be just the opposite. It may be that He can’t get your attention in any other way, or it may be that the Lord is establishing a strong foundation so that you will be able to mature and that He will withdraw these things when He’s accomplished His purpose.
3) When God spoke directly to His people in Scripture, they knew beyond a doubt that it was Him. He is God, and He is able to make Himself known to us in ways that exclude the possibility of doubt. The apostles at Pentecost knew with a certainty beyond explanation that God was present in their midst. Ezekiel, when he saw heaven opened, knew that he was in the presence of God. God is able to speak clearly to us. So, if you have an impression on your mind, don’t bother asking whether it’s from God. If you don’t know, you can be confident that God is not speaking to you. God calls us to respond to Him in faith, and we can’t exercise faith in something that may or may not be from God. If you’re not sure, don’t act. When God speaks, He speaks clearly enough for us to know that He is speaking. To quote Oswald Chambers again: “Never run before God’s guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt--don’t”
4) These things need to be tested, in the same way that other aspects of revival need to be tested. God’s Word exhorts us to “test the spirits.” If you are being led in a miraculous way, ask yourself how this experience is affecting your relationship with God. How is it affecting your relationship with Christians who are not having similar experiences? Is Jesus Christ being exalted by this experience, and are you being humbled by it, or are you being puffed up with pride? Is your reverence toward Scripture growing through this experience? Be brutally honest with yourself. Remember that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 12:14). Those who get caught in his traps don’t get caught because they’re stupid. They get caught because he presents an attractive-looking bait. If we are concerned with spiritual things, he will deceive us with something that seems very spiritual. So many have been led astray in this area that it is unwise and presumptuous to not test the spirits.
The most important thing, the really essential thing, in this area of guidance is that we desire to do God’s will above our own, that we desire with all our hearts to please Him, that we are willing to lay aside our own desires in order to please Him. Listen to Psalm 73:23-26. The psalmist has been in difficulty, but the Lord has brought him to a place of renewed faith, and he concludes: “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” He looked back and saw that God had been with him during a time of darkness and rebellion; God had faithfully led him out of his own doubts. Our hope is in God, our confidence is in Him, and if you can say with the Psalmist, “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever,” you can also be confident that He will guide you with His counsel and afterward take you into glory. There will be times when you will flounder, and wonder where God is and why He’s taking so long to reveal His will. But when He receives you into His eternal kingdom, you will be able to look back and see that He led you faithfully all the way. In the words of the hymn “All the Way my Savior Leads Me”: “When my spirit, clothed immortal, wings its flight to realms of day, this my song through endless ages, Jesus led my all the way.”
[1]These guidelines have been adapted from “Thou Our Guide,” by J.I. Packer, in his book Knowing God.
On the other hand, many people struggle to have any sense of God’s leading. A number of years ago I read about a woman who was living in a Christian community “seeking God’s will for her life.” This was the whole reason she was there; seeking God’s will for her life was the main thing she was engaged in. It was, at least for awhile, her vocation. For many, knowing God’s will is full of mystery; it is the sort of thing that can only be known by going to live in a Christian community, by giving all our time and energy to the pursuit of God’s plan for our lives.
It’s important that we know how to discern God’s will. We pray in the Lord’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When we pray in this way, we are expressing the concern that God’s will be done in our lives. Confessing that Jesus is Lord implies that we are willing to submit to Him. So, if the Lordship of Jesus Christ means anything at all, it is imperative that we have some knowledge of how to know God’s will. And since most of us don’t have the luxury of going to live in a Christian community, we need to know how to discern God’s will in the midst of our day-to-day lives.
The main thing I want to stress is this: God, when He leads us, deals with us as creatures who are able to understand and respond to His instructions. He doesn’t treat us like robots, sending a new signal every time He wants us to do something. He has given us the gift of understanding, and He leads us in ways that are consistent with this.
It’s important to understand that most of God’s will for our lives is revealed clearly in Scripture. Most of God’s will has to do with what He wants us to be, rather than what He wants us to do. God’s concern is that we be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. The book of Proverbs is about this kind of guidance. Eugene Peterson, in The Message, translates the beginning of Proverbs in this way: “These are the wise sayings of Solomon, David’s son, Israel’s king -- Written down so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going; A manual for living, for learning what’s right and just and fair; To teach the inexperienced the ropes and give our young people a grasp on reality. There’s something here also for seasoned men and women, still a thing or two for the experienced to learn -- Fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate, the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women” (The Message: The Wisdom Books, p. 283). The whole focus of the book of Proverbs is wisdom; but wisdom in the Old Testament is not primarily an intellectual thing (as it was with the Greeks; in Greek thinking, an interest in wisdom led to philosophy); in the Old Testament, wisdom has to do with how we order our lives in this world in obedience to God’s commands. It has to do with living in the fear of God and under His lordship. In the introduction to Proverbs, Peterson says this: “Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God” (p. 282). Wisdom is living according to God’s revealed will. So, to learn God’s will for our lives, we don’t need to go live in a monastery or a Christian community; we need to prayerfully read and study God’s word and apply it to our lives.
But, having said that, there are still those times when God’s Word doesn’t give us any clear direction. Reading the Bible is not going to tell us which vocation to choose, or which home to buy. It won’t tell us which major to choose in college, or whether we should skip college altogether. When we have to choose between two equally good things, reading the Bible won’t tell us which is the right choice. So how do we discern God’s will in these situations?
This is an area where it’s easy for us to get into trouble. In Scripture, we see God sometimes leading His people in a supernatural way. When they were wandering in the desert, He led the people of Israel with a pillar of cloud and fire; we see Him speaking to the prophets through dreams and visions or speaking in an audible voice. It’s easy to start thinking that if we are really spiritual, God will lead us in this way as well. The problem is that this sort of leading is the exception, rather than the rule. This is not only true for us; this sort of guidance was exceptional in Biblical times as well. When Israel crossed over into the Promised Land, they were no longer led by the pillar of cloud and fire. The prophets had to make most of their daily decisions without the benefit of special revelations. Even for the apostles, the more direct forms of guidance seem to have been given at important turning points in their ministries. God has created us with the ability to think, to exercise wisdom, to make rational choices, to seek advice from others, and He normally leads us in ways that are consistent with these things. He normally calls us to make decisions without the benefit of miraculous guidance.
Many have gotten into difficulties by trusting too much in inward impressions. They have assumed that guidance is “essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word,” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 212). The history of the church is littered with illustrations of what happens when we put too much confidence in these sorts of impressions. J.I. Packer tells of one woman who would begin her day by consecrating it to God, and then would not stir out of bed until prompted to do so by the Holy Spirit. As she dressed herself, she would pray over each article of clothing, asking the Lord whether she should put it on or not. As a result, often she would leave the house with only one shoe, or with stockings but no shoes, and so on (pp. 213-14). From our vantage point, this is clearly ridiculous, even comical, but it’s important to realize that she went wrong by seeking a level of guidance that God does not choose to give. How do people get caught in this sort of thing? I think it usually begins with a genuine desire to know God, but we get sidetracked. We start demanding that God act according to our expectations, and we slip into a subtle form of idolatry. If we insist on having something that God doesn’t choose to give us, we are setting ourselves up to accept a counterfeit.
Not all the examples are as ridiculous as this. George Whitefield was a friend of John Wesley, an exceptionally powerful preacher and one of the greatest evangelists of all time. He was a godly man, with a deep personal relationship with God. He was well-educated and knowledgeable in the Scriptures. He was also humble and aware of his own weaknesses. Early in his ministry, he put a lot of confidence in inward impressions, which he thought were from the direct prompting of the Holy Spirit. This emphasis was prominent in his published journals, and other ministers even warned him about it. When Whitefield’s wife gave birth to a son, he publicly announced his impression that this son would grow up “to be a preacher of the everlasting Gospel.” He wrote: “...in the company of thousands I solemnly gave him up to God.... and all went away big with hopes of the child’s being hereafter to be employed in the work of God....” A few months later, the child died, and Whitefield wrote: “...though disappointed of a living preacher by the death of my son, yet I hope what happened..., hath taught me such lessons, as, if duly improved, may render his mistaken parent more cautious, more sober-minded... and consequently more useful in his future labours to the church of God.” From this time on he was much more cautious in this area (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 2, pp. 166-69). This calls us to humility; if George Whitefield could be misled in this way, it is the height of presumption to think we are immune.
So, how does God normally lead us? If He doesn’t lead us primarily by inward impressions, how do we go about discerning God’s will. We discern God’s will primarily by applying the wisdom He teaches us in His word, this wisdom that is “written down so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going” (Proverbs 1). We discern God’s will as creatures who’ve been entrusted with the gift of understanding. Here are 6 general principles that I’ve found helpful.[1]
1) We need to be willing to think. J.I. Packer says: “It is false piety, super-supernaturalism of an unhealthy and pernicious sort, that demands inward impressions that have no rational base, and declines to heed the constant biblical summons to `consider’.” The Bible addresses us as rational beings and urges us to think. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord” (Isa. 1:18). In Romans 6 and 7, Paul repeatedly asks, “Do you not know?” In Romans 11:25, he says “I do not want you to be ignorant of this....” God doesn’t bypass our minds in His dealings with us. Look at Psalm 32:8-9: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.” The thing he notes about these animals is that they have no understanding. They need to be specifically led each step of the way. They need to be controlled. God doesn’t deal with us in this way. He has created us with minds, and He calls us to use them. If we, in the name of spirituality, refuse to do so, we are headed for disaster. If we want to know God’s will, we need to be willing to think about the choice that is before us.
2) We must be willing to think ahead, and consider the long-term consequences of our choices. Deut. 32:28-29 says: “They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be!” Jesus said “Do not worry about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34). He didn’t say “Don’t think about the future.” It is wise to ask how this decision will fit into our long-term plans. Is it taking us in the direction we want our lives to go? Will this choice we’re considering hinder us from following the Lord in the future? Is it consistent with His calling in our lives?
3) We must be willing to take advice. When Paul says in Galatians 1:16, “I did not consult any man,” he is not disparaging the idea of taking advice. He’s talking there about his call to be a Christian and an apostle. Look at Proverbs 12:15: “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.” Or 13:10: “Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.” Unwillingness to take advice is a mark of pride, not spirituality. Even if we, in the end, are unable to take the advice we receive, involving others is an important part of the process. The act of sifting through the suggestions you receive will often help clarify the issues. Annie and I have a number of people we go to when we are in the process of making a decision, and frequently they are able to see things that we have missed. We are part of a body, and God often uses other members of the body to help us discern His will.
One caution in this area: if we are not careful, we will tend to gravitate toward those who are likely to tell us what we want to hear. In 1Kings 12, Solomon has just died and his son, Rehoboam, has become king. The people come to him with this request: “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you” (v. 4). Rehoboam asks them to come back in three days, and goes to the elders, those with more experience, for advice. They urge him to give in to the people: “They replied, `If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants’” (v. 7). But he’s just become king, and he wants to throw his weight around a little. Who do these people think they are, anyway? He’s king, and he wants them to feel the weight of his power. So he rejects the advice of the elders and turns to his friends for counsel. They tell him what he is wanting to hear: “Tell these people who have said to you, `Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter’ -- tell them, `My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions’” (vv. 10-11). This is the beginning of the divided kingdom; the ten tribes to the north rebel against Rehoboam, and he barely escapes with his life. When we go to others for advice, we need to be careful that what we’re seeking is God’s will, and not just an affirmation of what we’ve already decided to do. Our hearts are deceitful and will lead us astray. This leads to the next point.
4) We need to be suspicious of ourselves. Merely feeling that something is God’s will is not enough. We need to ask ourselves why we feel this to be God’s will. Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Rather than being anxious to trust in feelings and impressions, we should be skeptical of them, knowing the deceitfulness of our own hearts. At times our feelings reflect nothing more than the influence of a good night’s sleep or an enjoyable meal. J.I. Packer says, and I believe he’s right: “We can never distrust ourselves too much.”
5) We need to beware of putting too much confidence in the wrong people. We should not only distrust ourselves, we should also have a healthy skepticism about following others. Those who get caught up in false cults have, at some point, begun following their leaders blindly. They refuse to recognize their responsibility to “test all things,” even in the context of religious leadership. We seek advice from others, but we don’t follow them blindly.
6) We must be willing to wait. “God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not His way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 217). Many of you are probably familiar with Oswald Chambers’ daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. In one of the readings, he says this: “Never run before God’s guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt--don’t” (January 4th reading). A large part of knowing God’s will is waiting on His time.
So, to put all this together, when we are in the process of making a decision the wisest course is to wait on God, to cry out to Him for direction, and begin actively seeking His will. Think prayerfully about the pros and cons of the alternatives, weigh the long-term consequences, and go to some mature Christians to get their perspective. Be willing to wait on the Lord’s time, for He may not lead as quickly as you think He should. But, as you wait on Him, you will begin to get a sense of where He is leading.
As you prayerfully wait on the Lord, look for two things: an increasing weight in favor of one of the alternatives; and an increasing conviction in your heart that this is the Lord’s direction. Feelings and convictions are not to be ignored; they just need to be weighed together with these other things. When Annie and I get to this point in a decision, we usually begin making tentative steps in that direction, and as we begin stepping out, we pray for the Lord to either confirm this as His will, or to make it clear that we are on the wrong track. As we have followed this course of seeking His will, He has always been faithful and has made it abundantly clear what He wants us to do. He has often made us wait much longer than we’ve wanted to wait, but He has never failed to make His will known in the end.
But there still remains the question about those times when God leads His people in more direct ways. Does He still do this today? I believe He does, but we need to realize that this is the exception rather than the norm. It was exceptional, as I said earlier, even for the apostles and prophets. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher, preached a series of sermons on Spiritual Depression, and he shared later that the Lord had led him to this series in an exceptional way. He described it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, where the Lord met with him powerfully and impressed upon him the whole series, including the order in which the sermons were to be preached. These sermons are available still in the book Spiritual Depression. There seems to be an increase in this sort of guidance during times of revival, but there is also an increase in the counterfeits at the same time. I have four suggestions in this area, but I want to stress that, even in this more direct type of guidance, God deals with us as creatures who can understand and respond (either in obedience or disobedience) to His will.
1) Because guidance by dreams, visions, an audible voice or a strong impression on the mind is not the norm, we should not expect to be guided in these ways. There are times when God, in His sovereign wisdom, grants such things to His people, but the giving of these things is under His control. We cannot produce such things by the exercise of faith, and we certainly cannot claim them. God often does such things for a specific purpose and for a limited period of time. One of the leaders of the Welsh revival, about 150 years ago, was a man named David Morgan. By all accounts he was a quite ordinary preacher; he was a good man, but his gifts were not exceptional in any way. But he began longing for revival, and something happened. He reports: “I went to bed [one] night just David Morgan as usual. I woke up the next morning feeling like a lion, feeling that I was filled with the power of the Holy Ghost.” For the next two years, he preached with exceptional power, and large numbers of people came to Christ. Everywhere he went, there were tremendous results. About two years later, he says, “I went to bed one night still feeling like a lion, filled with this strange power that I had enjoyed for the two years. I woke up the next morning and found that I had become David Morgan once more.” He lived for another 15 years and again exercised a very ordinary ministry (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, pp. 322-323). God, in His sovereign wisdom, did something exceptional for a limited period of time; but when that time was over, He withdrew the power. It’s the same with these more extraordinary types of guidance. God may work in this way for a limited period of time. He may even grant a person one experience of this type, and then never do it again. The timing and duration of these things is not within our power.
2) Being led in these ways is not a mark of spirituality. God sometimes does exceptional things in the lives of immature Christians, to assure them of His presence in their lives. When I was a new Christian, I felt strongly burdened to witness to a friend of mine. It was late in the evening, probably 10pm or so, and I was sure he would be out at one of the local bars, so I went looking for him. He wasn’t in any of the places I looked, and when I was about to give up, the Lord spoke to me very clearly and said: “Wait here, and I’ll bring him to you.” I pulled over, and within a minute or so, he drove by, and I was able to wave him over. He didn’t become a Christian, but I was able to witness to him, and I was also assured of the reality of God’s presence in my life. But it had nothing to do with my spirituality at the time. I was a brand new Christian and had hardly begun to grow spiritually. It was a gift of grace, given for my encouragement in the faith. A friend of mine, who was away from the Lord, was laying in his bed one night, and a voice came through his bedroom window: “Jack, you’d better straighten up your life.” This so arrested and convicted him that he recommitted his life to Christ. In the Muslim world, where there is such strong opposition to the Gospel, God often uses dreams to bring people to Himself. So, if the Lord speaks to you or leads you in a more direct way, don’t assume that it is because you are more spiritual than others. It may be just the opposite. It may be that He can’t get your attention in any other way, or it may be that the Lord is establishing a strong foundation so that you will be able to mature and that He will withdraw these things when He’s accomplished His purpose.
3) When God spoke directly to His people in Scripture, they knew beyond a doubt that it was Him. He is God, and He is able to make Himself known to us in ways that exclude the possibility of doubt. The apostles at Pentecost knew with a certainty beyond explanation that God was present in their midst. Ezekiel, when he saw heaven opened, knew that he was in the presence of God. God is able to speak clearly to us. So, if you have an impression on your mind, don’t bother asking whether it’s from God. If you don’t know, you can be confident that God is not speaking to you. God calls us to respond to Him in faith, and we can’t exercise faith in something that may or may not be from God. If you’re not sure, don’t act. When God speaks, He speaks clearly enough for us to know that He is speaking. To quote Oswald Chambers again: “Never run before God’s guidance. If there is the slightest doubt, then He is not guiding. Whenever there is doubt--don’t”
4) These things need to be tested, in the same way that other aspects of revival need to be tested. God’s Word exhorts us to “test the spirits.” If you are being led in a miraculous way, ask yourself how this experience is affecting your relationship with God. How is it affecting your relationship with Christians who are not having similar experiences? Is Jesus Christ being exalted by this experience, and are you being humbled by it, or are you being puffed up with pride? Is your reverence toward Scripture growing through this experience? Be brutally honest with yourself. Remember that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 12:14). Those who get caught in his traps don’t get caught because they’re stupid. They get caught because he presents an attractive-looking bait. If we are concerned with spiritual things, he will deceive us with something that seems very spiritual. So many have been led astray in this area that it is unwise and presumptuous to not test the spirits.
The most important thing, the really essential thing, in this area of guidance is that we desire to do God’s will above our own, that we desire with all our hearts to please Him, that we are willing to lay aside our own desires in order to please Him. Listen to Psalm 73:23-26. The psalmist has been in difficulty, but the Lord has brought him to a place of renewed faith, and he concludes: “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” He looked back and saw that God had been with him during a time of darkness and rebellion; God had faithfully led him out of his own doubts. Our hope is in God, our confidence is in Him, and if you can say with the Psalmist, “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever,” you can also be confident that He will guide you with His counsel and afterward take you into glory. There will be times when you will flounder, and wonder where God is and why He’s taking so long to reveal His will. But when He receives you into His eternal kingdom, you will be able to look back and see that He led you faithfully all the way. In the words of the hymn “All the Way my Savior Leads Me”: “When my spirit, clothed immortal, wings its flight to realms of day, this my song through endless ages, Jesus led my all the way.”
[1]These guidelines have been adapted from “Thou Our Guide,” by J.I. Packer, in his book Knowing God.
Praying for Revival, Exodus 33
In the spring of 1974, when I was still an unbeliever, some friends took me to an Assembly of God Church called the Christian Life Center. At that point in my life I knew nothing of the Gospel message, and I can’t say I even had any confidence in God’s existence. But when I walked into that church I knew with a certainty I couldn’t explain that God was there. The worship service hadn’t started; no one was doing anything to manipulate my emotions, but I walked in as an unbeliever and immediately knew that God existed and that He was present in that place. This is the thing Moses is concerned about in verse 16: “How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This is the thing that sets God’s people apart from all others: that God is among us.
We see this in the New Testament. For example, Ephesians 3:16: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” When we become Christians, it’s not just that we change our minds about the truth or that we change our behavior. We are brought into fellowship with God; God dwells among us. “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves...” (Col. 1:13). Jesus promised to be present when two or three are gathered in His name. John says, in his first letter, that we have fellowship with both the Father and the Son.
And yet, when we look at the Church, this is not always clear. There are times when the Church seems overwhelmed by the spirit of the world. The Church is never perfect, and yet there are times when the Church is so far from the New Testament standard that we would be embarrassed to claim that God is among us. At such times, people are likely to say “you can’t be serious,” and we’d have nothing to say in reply. There are times when the light of the Spirit in the Church seems almost to have gone out. But then something happens. God pours out His Spirit; He begins to demonstrate, in unmistakable ways, that His people belong to Him and that He is among them. People may continue to mock, but their mockery is of a different sort, and many of those who come to mock have the experience I had of being arrested by the certainty of God’s presence. Something like this happened in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1735, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. It began in the church, but then began to impact the whole town. He says, reporting on it later: “This work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following, anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in his sanctuary, God’s day was a delight, and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in God’s service, every one earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the word was preached; some weeping with sorrow; and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbours” (Works, vol. 1, p. 348). A town full of the presence of God; remarkable tokens of grace in each house.
This is the sort of thing we are praying for when we pray for revival in the Church. Revival is more than a series of evangelistic meetings. Revival is what happens when God, through the sovereign power of His Spirit, breathes new life into the Church. It’s something that lies outside of our own control; we can’t plan for revival. But we can humble ourselves and cry out to God for a fresh visitation from His Spirit. We can’t make it happen. But we can recognize our need and cry out to God, asking Him to breathe new life into the Church.
This is what Moses and the Israelites are doing in Exodus 33. First of all, notice the spiritual condition of the people at this point. Things had seemed to be going well. The nation had been miraculously delivered from Egypt, and Pharaoh and his army had been destroyed. There had been problems: the Israelites had repeatedly grumbled against Moses’ leadership, but they had recently defeated the Amalekites and were on their way to the land of promise. There had been setbacks and disobedience, but now things seemed to be on the right track. But then Moses had gone up into the mountain to receive the law and had been gone for over a month. As the days passed and Moses still didn’t appear, the people asked Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them an idol. They said “Come, make us gods who will go before us” (32:1). Aaron asked for their gold earrings, and when they gave them to him he made them into a calf, and the Israelites cried out: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (32:4). Aaron then built an altar in front of the calf, and the people proceeded to worship it. At that point, Moses returned. (It’s interesting to notice how often we give in just before a trial or temptation is over.) The people had come under God’s judgment and several thousand of them had died. But that wasn’t the end of it. God now says: “Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way” (33:3). God is still sending them into the promised land, and He is sending an angel with them, but He is not going to manifest His presence among them. He is going to give them outward success, but He is not going to be with them.
We need to remind ourselves here that outward success is not necessarily an indication that God is pleased with us. God is telling them to go in and possess the land, and that He will send an angel to help them do it. Outwardly, everything is going to look the same. To an outside observer, it will look like they are functioning as God intended. But something is lacking. One of the subtle dangers churches face is that of assuming that God is blessing because the programs are running well. If you raise a concern about the spiritual health of the church, they’ll respond: “But look at how we’re growing! People are being blessed by our programs. What more do you expect?” These words in Exodus make it clear that it is possible to be successfully doing the things a church is supposed to do, and yet to be in a state of serious spiritual decline. We can be accomplishing great things, but there’s a sense that something is lacking. People walking in may be impressed with our facility or our programs, but they’re not arrested by the reality of God’s presence.
It’s not just that we can produce counterfeits, and so end up with something less than the real thing. We can market the church in ways that make numerical growth more likely, and we can order our programs so that people will feel good about being here. But what is being offered to Israel here is not a counterfeit. What they are being offered here is the real thing, without the full blessing of God’s presence among them. God is sending an angel to miraculously intervene for them, to fulfill His promises. They are going to experience God’s blessing in an outward sense, even though God has withdrawn from them.
But look how the people respond in vv. 4-11. “When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments” (v. 4). They are described as a stiff-necked people, and yet when they hear that God is withdrawing His presence from them, they mourn. When God is going to do a work in reviving His people, He invariably leads them into a deeper conviction of sin, which leads them to mourn, to feel grieved over their sins. We see this pattern in the beatitudes. Jesus begins with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and this is immediately followed by “blessed are those who mourn.” When we see our spiritual poverty, when we see that we are weak, poor, blind and naked before God, and that we can only come to Him with empty hands and cry out to Him for mercy, we naturally are grieved. God’s first work in leading us to revival is not to make us feel good, but to convict us of how far we’ve fallen. God’s first concern is not to make us happy, but to make us holy, and He begins by showing us how unholy we are. And this is a painful experience.
A deep mourning over sin has characterized revivals both in Scripture and in the history of the Church. This is why I had such strong reservations about the revival movement associated several years ago with the Toronto Vineyard. During the first anniversary celebration of the “Toronto Blessing,” a pastor asked Randy Clark, one of the leaders in this movement, why this revival hadn’t placed a strong emphasis on the holiness of God and human sinfulness. Clark’s response was that, in this revival “God decided to throw a party for his people because they ‘already feel so icky about themselves’” (Christian Research Journal, Sept.-Oct. 97, p. 45). Another leader in the movement shares this incident: “‘One night I was preaching on hell’... when suddenly laughter ‘just hit the whole place. The more I told people what hell was like, the more they laughed’” (Ibid., p. 16). It’s not just that I am doubtful about the doctrine of hell being an occasion for hilarity. It’s that this movement seemed to be bypassing something that is necessary to true revival. God is holy, and when He makes Himself known among us, one of the first things we will feel is a renewed sense of our own unholiness.
Look at what happened to Isaiah, for example. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted....” God is surrounded by seraphs, crying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” And when Isaiah sees all this, he cries out: “Woe to me! ... ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (6:1-5). In our longing for revival, let’s not get sidetracked. God’s desire is to make us holy, and the path to holiness begins with a deep recognition of our own sinfulness.
The Israelites mourned, but they didn’t stop there. Verses 7-11 describe the tent where Moses would meet with God. This isn’t the tabernacle, for that hadn’t yet been built. The NIV translates verse 7: “Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting.’ Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.” This word translated “inquire” is most often translated “seek.” Most of the other translations I consulted, including the NASB, the AV and the RSV handle it in this way. The NASB, for example, says this: “And it came about, that everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.” It’s true that many who went out to the tent of meeting were seeking advice, were inquiring about God’s direction in some particular area--I think that’s why the NIV translates it in this way. But I think the other translations make better sense in this context. The people were not only inquiring of the Lord, they were seeking Him. They were mourning over their sins, and they began going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord.
They’ve sinned presumptuously, and now the Lord has withdrawn His presence from them. They’re mourning over this, but they’re not just wallowing in sorrow. It’s possible to mourn in a way that does no good at all, to say, in effect, “I really wish things had gone better in my spiritual life, but now I’ve really missed the boat. It’s a shame that things didn’t go differently.” The Israelites are distressed with their spiritual condition, and they respond by going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord, and by standing beside their own tents and worshiping the Lord as He reveals Himself to Moses. This, by the way, is a good way to tell the difference between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the condemnation of the accuser. When Satan is accusing us, it always tends to cripple us spiritually and makes us feel that we simply cannot enter God’s presence. When the Holy Spirit is convicting us of sin, we feel unworthy, yes, but He also makes us aware of the reality of God’s grace. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, He leads us into God’s presence; His conviction always carries an invitation with it. When Satan is condemning us for our sins, he tries to drive us away from God. The Israelites were guilty and they knew it, but this didn’t drive them away from God; it drove them to seek Him all the more.
Notice also, in verses 12-23, what Moses is praying for. He’s dissatisfied with anything less than the presence of God among them. Throughout this passage we see him hungering and reaching for more of God, both for himself and for the people. In verse 13, he says: “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” Verse 15: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” And verse 18: “Now show me your glory.” No matter how much of God he has, Moses wants more.
Paul was like this. He had learned to be content with his outward situation, as he says in Philippians 4:12: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” But he is just the opposite in his spiritual life. Listen to what he says earlier in the same letter, in Philippians 3:12-14: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
In my early Christian life I floundered for the first couple of years because I didn’t know what to do to grow spiritually. A real turning point for me was the discovery that I could be mentored by reading Christian books. One of the first mentors I found in this way was A.W. Tozer. Tozer was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor for many years, and his life was marked by an exceptional hunger for God. I’ve been told that a person walking into his office unannounced was likely to find him prostrate on the floor in worship. I was dissatisfied with my spiritual life, and I wanted to catch something of the spirit that I could sense in Tozer’s books. Here’s one of the things he said: “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.... 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.... Their longing after God all but consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less ardent Christians look with languid eye and entertain no hope of reaching” (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Moses hungered after God in this way. Like Paul, he had an all-consuming desire to know God. If we want to see revival in our midst, we need to cry out to God for a hunger that will be satisfied with nothing less than God Himself. Moses could have settled for something less. I suspect the thing that most often keeps us from experiencing revival is that we are willing to settle for less. God offered Moses success, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted God.
Notice how God responds to all this. He promises repeatedly to go with them, He gives Moses a greater experience of Himself than he had ever had, and He renews His covenant with the people, which prepares the way for the building of the tabernacle. It’s true that we can’t produce revival. We can’t manipulate God or twist His arm, but we can do those things which God has shown himself willing to bless, those things which have repeatedly led to revival. God was pleased when Moses prayed “show me your glory.” He didn’t give him exactly what he asked for. Moses couldn’t have handled that. But when we humble ourselves before God and cry out to Him, when we long for Him to make Himself known among us, He will respond, although He will do so in His own way and time. It’s a good sign when God’s people begin to stir themselves up to pray in earnest for revival. The commentator Matthew Henry, commenting on this passage, said “When God designs mercy, he stirs up prayer” (Vol. 1, p. 419).
So we see here something of how to pray for revival. The most important thing is a sense of longing for God Himself. The thing that sets us apart from all other groups, the real distinguishing mark of the Church, is that God is among us. If He is stirring you with a renewed hunger to know Him, this can be a prelude to a greater outpouring of His Spirit both in your own life and in the life of the church. If He’s drawing you to Himself, it’s because He wants to make Himself known to you.
We have a spiritual enemy, who is not content with the trouble he’s caused among us in the past. His real goal is to destroy the witness of the Church completely. The church I mentioned earlier, the Christian Life Center, doesn’t exist anymore. They got in over their heads in a building program and things just started unraveling. The beautiful facility they built is now an office complex. I was already gone when this happened, so I don’t know all of the details. But I do know this: God was doing a work there, but that didn’t make them immune to the attacks of Satan. Let’s not be presumptuous. God is at work among us, but we are still very much in need of a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit. We see the early Church, a very short time after Pentecost, in Acts chapter 4, crying out to God for help and receiving a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God had already done a great work among them, but they still cried out to Him in need.
We need also to remember that we are part of a larger body, and that things are not going well in many parts of the Church throughout the world. There are glimmerings of hope here and there; there are encouraging signs that God may be leading the Church toward revival, but it is not accomplished yet and there is much out there that is discouraging. I mentioned finding A.W. Tozer as a spiritual mentor early in my Christian life. Another mentor I found a few years later was the great Welsh preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. A half century ago, he preached a series of sermons on revival, and he said this about the spiritual condition of the Church at that time: “When you contrast the condition of the Church today with what she has been, you cannot but come to the conclusion that for various reasons God is not looking upon us and smiling upon us. There is a sense in which we are desolate. Speaking generally the Church today, throughout the whole world, is an abandoned Church. She is in a desolate condition, and I maintain that that is the thing that we must realize” (Revival, p. 256). I believe this is still true for much of the Church in America today.
The test is not whether or not we are experiencing outward success. Our programs may be running very well. We live in a society that is obsessed with technique. Much good has come out of this desire to find efficient ways of doing things, but there has also been a tendency to become so efficient that we think we can do things on our own. Os Guinness said: “No civilization in history has offered more gifts and therefore has amplified the temptation of living ‘by bread alone’ with such power and variety and to such effect. In today’s convenient, climate-controlled spiritual world created by the managerial and therapeutic revolutions, nothing is easier than living apart from God. Idols are simply the ultimate techniques of human causation and control--without God. God’s sovereign freedom has met its match in ours. We have invented the technology to put God’s Word on hold” (Dining With The Devil, pp. 37-38).
The test is not whether we’re successful, or whether people are impressed with our programs. The test is whether God is among us. When people walk into our churches, are they immediately arrested by the reality of God’s presence? If we find ourselves wanting to stay where we are, feeling satisfied that things are going well enough, that is a very bad sign. Moses had experienced so much of God, and yet he still cried out for more. God is present among us, but we need more of Him. Let’s cry out to Him for a fresh outpouring of His Spirit in our midst. Let’s cry out for “remarkable tokens of His presence,” and continue crying out, knowing that He is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.
We see this in the New Testament. For example, Ephesians 3:16: “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge -- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” When we become Christians, it’s not just that we change our minds about the truth or that we change our behavior. We are brought into fellowship with God; God dwells among us. “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves...” (Col. 1:13). Jesus promised to be present when two or three are gathered in His name. John says, in his first letter, that we have fellowship with both the Father and the Son.
And yet, when we look at the Church, this is not always clear. There are times when the Church seems overwhelmed by the spirit of the world. The Church is never perfect, and yet there are times when the Church is so far from the New Testament standard that we would be embarrassed to claim that God is among us. At such times, people are likely to say “you can’t be serious,” and we’d have nothing to say in reply. There are times when the light of the Spirit in the Church seems almost to have gone out. But then something happens. God pours out His Spirit; He begins to demonstrate, in unmistakable ways, that His people belong to Him and that He is among them. People may continue to mock, but their mockery is of a different sort, and many of those who come to mock have the experience I had of being arrested by the certainty of God’s presence. Something like this happened in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1735, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. It began in the church, but then began to impact the whole town. He says, reporting on it later: “This work of God, as it was carried on, and the number of true saints multiplied, soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following, anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. There were remarkable tokens of God’s presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The goings of God were then seen in his sanctuary, God’s day was a delight, and his tabernacles were amiable. Our public assemblies were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in God’s service, every one earnestly intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the word was preached; some weeping with sorrow; and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbours” (Works, vol. 1, p. 348). A town full of the presence of God; remarkable tokens of grace in each house.
This is the sort of thing we are praying for when we pray for revival in the Church. Revival is more than a series of evangelistic meetings. Revival is what happens when God, through the sovereign power of His Spirit, breathes new life into the Church. It’s something that lies outside of our own control; we can’t plan for revival. But we can humble ourselves and cry out to God for a fresh visitation from His Spirit. We can’t make it happen. But we can recognize our need and cry out to God, asking Him to breathe new life into the Church.
This is what Moses and the Israelites are doing in Exodus 33. First of all, notice the spiritual condition of the people at this point. Things had seemed to be going well. The nation had been miraculously delivered from Egypt, and Pharaoh and his army had been destroyed. There had been problems: the Israelites had repeatedly grumbled against Moses’ leadership, but they had recently defeated the Amalekites and were on their way to the land of promise. There had been setbacks and disobedience, but now things seemed to be on the right track. But then Moses had gone up into the mountain to receive the law and had been gone for over a month. As the days passed and Moses still didn’t appear, the people asked Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them an idol. They said “Come, make us gods who will go before us” (32:1). Aaron asked for their gold earrings, and when they gave them to him he made them into a calf, and the Israelites cried out: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (32:4). Aaron then built an altar in front of the calf, and the people proceeded to worship it. At that point, Moses returned. (It’s interesting to notice how often we give in just before a trial or temptation is over.) The people had come under God’s judgment and several thousand of them had died. But that wasn’t the end of it. God now says: “Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way” (33:3). God is still sending them into the promised land, and He is sending an angel with them, but He is not going to manifest His presence among them. He is going to give them outward success, but He is not going to be with them.
We need to remind ourselves here that outward success is not necessarily an indication that God is pleased with us. God is telling them to go in and possess the land, and that He will send an angel to help them do it. Outwardly, everything is going to look the same. To an outside observer, it will look like they are functioning as God intended. But something is lacking. One of the subtle dangers churches face is that of assuming that God is blessing because the programs are running well. If you raise a concern about the spiritual health of the church, they’ll respond: “But look at how we’re growing! People are being blessed by our programs. What more do you expect?” These words in Exodus make it clear that it is possible to be successfully doing the things a church is supposed to do, and yet to be in a state of serious spiritual decline. We can be accomplishing great things, but there’s a sense that something is lacking. People walking in may be impressed with our facility or our programs, but they’re not arrested by the reality of God’s presence.
It’s not just that we can produce counterfeits, and so end up with something less than the real thing. We can market the church in ways that make numerical growth more likely, and we can order our programs so that people will feel good about being here. But what is being offered to Israel here is not a counterfeit. What they are being offered here is the real thing, without the full blessing of God’s presence among them. God is sending an angel to miraculously intervene for them, to fulfill His promises. They are going to experience God’s blessing in an outward sense, even though God has withdrawn from them.
But look how the people respond in vv. 4-11. “When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments” (v. 4). They are described as a stiff-necked people, and yet when they hear that God is withdrawing His presence from them, they mourn. When God is going to do a work in reviving His people, He invariably leads them into a deeper conviction of sin, which leads them to mourn, to feel grieved over their sins. We see this pattern in the beatitudes. Jesus begins with “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and this is immediately followed by “blessed are those who mourn.” When we see our spiritual poverty, when we see that we are weak, poor, blind and naked before God, and that we can only come to Him with empty hands and cry out to Him for mercy, we naturally are grieved. God’s first work in leading us to revival is not to make us feel good, but to convict us of how far we’ve fallen. God’s first concern is not to make us happy, but to make us holy, and He begins by showing us how unholy we are. And this is a painful experience.
A deep mourning over sin has characterized revivals both in Scripture and in the history of the Church. This is why I had such strong reservations about the revival movement associated several years ago with the Toronto Vineyard. During the first anniversary celebration of the “Toronto Blessing,” a pastor asked Randy Clark, one of the leaders in this movement, why this revival hadn’t placed a strong emphasis on the holiness of God and human sinfulness. Clark’s response was that, in this revival “God decided to throw a party for his people because they ‘already feel so icky about themselves’” (Christian Research Journal, Sept.-Oct. 97, p. 45). Another leader in the movement shares this incident: “‘One night I was preaching on hell’... when suddenly laughter ‘just hit the whole place. The more I told people what hell was like, the more they laughed’” (Ibid., p. 16). It’s not just that I am doubtful about the doctrine of hell being an occasion for hilarity. It’s that this movement seemed to be bypassing something that is necessary to true revival. God is holy, and when He makes Himself known among us, one of the first things we will feel is a renewed sense of our own unholiness.
Look at what happened to Isaiah, for example. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted....” God is surrounded by seraphs, crying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” And when Isaiah sees all this, he cries out: “Woe to me! ... ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (6:1-5). In our longing for revival, let’s not get sidetracked. God’s desire is to make us holy, and the path to holiness begins with a deep recognition of our own sinfulness.
The Israelites mourned, but they didn’t stop there. Verses 7-11 describe the tent where Moses would meet with God. This isn’t the tabernacle, for that hadn’t yet been built. The NIV translates verse 7: “Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting.’ Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp.” This word translated “inquire” is most often translated “seek.” Most of the other translations I consulted, including the NASB, the AV and the RSV handle it in this way. The NASB, for example, says this: “And it came about, that everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.” It’s true that many who went out to the tent of meeting were seeking advice, were inquiring about God’s direction in some particular area--I think that’s why the NIV translates it in this way. But I think the other translations make better sense in this context. The people were not only inquiring of the Lord, they were seeking Him. They were mourning over their sins, and they began going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord.
They’ve sinned presumptuously, and now the Lord has withdrawn His presence from them. They’re mourning over this, but they’re not just wallowing in sorrow. It’s possible to mourn in a way that does no good at all, to say, in effect, “I really wish things had gone better in my spiritual life, but now I’ve really missed the boat. It’s a shame that things didn’t go differently.” The Israelites are distressed with their spiritual condition, and they respond by going out to the tent of meeting to seek the Lord, and by standing beside their own tents and worshiping the Lord as He reveals Himself to Moses. This, by the way, is a good way to tell the difference between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the condemnation of the accuser. When Satan is accusing us, it always tends to cripple us spiritually and makes us feel that we simply cannot enter God’s presence. When the Holy Spirit is convicting us of sin, we feel unworthy, yes, but He also makes us aware of the reality of God’s grace. When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, He leads us into God’s presence; His conviction always carries an invitation with it. When Satan is condemning us for our sins, he tries to drive us away from God. The Israelites were guilty and they knew it, but this didn’t drive them away from God; it drove them to seek Him all the more.
Notice also, in verses 12-23, what Moses is praying for. He’s dissatisfied with anything less than the presence of God among them. Throughout this passage we see him hungering and reaching for more of God, both for himself and for the people. In verse 13, he says: “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.” Verse 15: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.” And verse 18: “Now show me your glory.” No matter how much of God he has, Moses wants more.
Paul was like this. He had learned to be content with his outward situation, as he says in Philippians 4:12: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” But he is just the opposite in his spiritual life. Listen to what he says earlier in the same letter, in Philippians 3:12-14: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
In my early Christian life I floundered for the first couple of years because I didn’t know what to do to grow spiritually. A real turning point for me was the discovery that I could be mentored by reading Christian books. One of the first mentors I found in this way was A.W. Tozer. Tozer was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor for many years, and his life was marked by an exceptional hunger for God. I’ve been told that a person walking into his office unannounced was likely to find him prostrate on the floor in worship. I was dissatisfied with my spiritual life, and I wanted to catch something of the spirit that I could sense in Tozer’s books. Here’s one of the things he said: “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.... 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.... Their longing after God all but consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights toward which less ardent Christians look with languid eye and entertain no hope of reaching” (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Moses hungered after God in this way. Like Paul, he had an all-consuming desire to know God. If we want to see revival in our midst, we need to cry out to God for a hunger that will be satisfied with nothing less than God Himself. Moses could have settled for something less. I suspect the thing that most often keeps us from experiencing revival is that we are willing to settle for less. God offered Moses success, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted God.
Notice how God responds to all this. He promises repeatedly to go with them, He gives Moses a greater experience of Himself than he had ever had, and He renews His covenant with the people, which prepares the way for the building of the tabernacle. It’s true that we can’t produce revival. We can’t manipulate God or twist His arm, but we can do those things which God has shown himself willing to bless, those things which have repeatedly led to revival. God was pleased when Moses prayed “show me your glory.” He didn’t give him exactly what he asked for. Moses couldn’t have handled that. But when we humble ourselves before God and cry out to Him, when we long for Him to make Himself known among us, He will respond, although He will do so in His own way and time. It’s a good sign when God’s people begin to stir themselves up to pray in earnest for revival. The commentator Matthew Henry, commenting on this passage, said “When God designs mercy, he stirs up prayer” (Vol. 1, p. 419).
So we see here something of how to pray for revival. The most important thing is a sense of longing for God Himself. The thing that sets us apart from all other groups, the real distinguishing mark of the Church, is that God is among us. If He is stirring you with a renewed hunger to know Him, this can be a prelude to a greater outpouring of His Spirit both in your own life and in the life of the church. If He’s drawing you to Himself, it’s because He wants to make Himself known to you.
We have a spiritual enemy, who is not content with the trouble he’s caused among us in the past. His real goal is to destroy the witness of the Church completely. The church I mentioned earlier, the Christian Life Center, doesn’t exist anymore. They got in over their heads in a building program and things just started unraveling. The beautiful facility they built is now an office complex. I was already gone when this happened, so I don’t know all of the details. But I do know this: God was doing a work there, but that didn’t make them immune to the attacks of Satan. Let’s not be presumptuous. God is at work among us, but we are still very much in need of a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit. We see the early Church, a very short time after Pentecost, in Acts chapter 4, crying out to God for help and receiving a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God had already done a great work among them, but they still cried out to Him in need.
We need also to remember that we are part of a larger body, and that things are not going well in many parts of the Church throughout the world. There are glimmerings of hope here and there; there are encouraging signs that God may be leading the Church toward revival, but it is not accomplished yet and there is much out there that is discouraging. I mentioned finding A.W. Tozer as a spiritual mentor early in my Christian life. Another mentor I found a few years later was the great Welsh preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. A half century ago, he preached a series of sermons on revival, and he said this about the spiritual condition of the Church at that time: “When you contrast the condition of the Church today with what she has been, you cannot but come to the conclusion that for various reasons God is not looking upon us and smiling upon us. There is a sense in which we are desolate. Speaking generally the Church today, throughout the whole world, is an abandoned Church. She is in a desolate condition, and I maintain that that is the thing that we must realize” (Revival, p. 256). I believe this is still true for much of the Church in America today.
The test is not whether or not we are experiencing outward success. Our programs may be running very well. We live in a society that is obsessed with technique. Much good has come out of this desire to find efficient ways of doing things, but there has also been a tendency to become so efficient that we think we can do things on our own. Os Guinness said: “No civilization in history has offered more gifts and therefore has amplified the temptation of living ‘by bread alone’ with such power and variety and to such effect. In today’s convenient, climate-controlled spiritual world created by the managerial and therapeutic revolutions, nothing is easier than living apart from God. Idols are simply the ultimate techniques of human causation and control--without God. God’s sovereign freedom has met its match in ours. We have invented the technology to put God’s Word on hold” (Dining With The Devil, pp. 37-38).
The test is not whether we’re successful, or whether people are impressed with our programs. The test is whether God is among us. When people walk into our churches, are they immediately arrested by the reality of God’s presence? If we find ourselves wanting to stay where we are, feeling satisfied that things are going well enough, that is a very bad sign. Moses had experienced so much of God, and yet he still cried out for more. God is present among us, but we need more of Him. Let’s cry out to Him for a fresh outpouring of His Spirit in our midst. Let’s cry out for “remarkable tokens of His presence,” and continue crying out, knowing that He is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Ash Wednesday Meditation, Matthew 5:1-10
Many people who grow up in liturgical churches have bad memories of Lent. One book I consulted said this: “Thinking about Lent is not my favorite thing to do. In fact, I rather hate it. Every year, when the subject comes up, I see myself resist” (Gertrud Mueller Nelson, To Dance With God, p. 129). I didn’t grow up in the church, so I don’t have childhood memories to react against. But for many Christians, observing Lent seems like a bad idea, a step away from the freedom we have in Christ.
I’ve especially noticed two attitudes toward Lent that are counterproductive. On the one hand, for many Christians Lent is a time to engage in morbid introspection. It’s a time when we know we should feel bad about our sins, even though we don’t. Or maybe we do feel bad about our sins, and we spend this season thinking about what wretched, miserable people we are. More often than not, this sort of thing only makes us more self-absorbed, and it does nothing to move us in the direction of godliness. It does nothing to free us from sin.
For others, Lent seems to be little more than a time when we dutifully deprive ourselves of things we really enjoy. The idea of Marti Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is based on this mentality. In this view, the last Tuesday before Lent is a time to indulge ourselves, in preparation for a period of legalistic restraint. Of course, many of those who celebrate Fat Tuesday with great abandon do not deny themselves during Lent, and Fat Tuesday has become for them nothing more than an excuse to party.
It might be helpful to begin with the background of Lent. Many Christians in the early church prepared themselves for baptism by a time of prayer and fasting. And often they wanted to be baptized on Easter, to identify in a special way with Jesus’ burial and resurrection. From this a custom developed of fasting in preparation for Easter (even for those who were not being baptized). The length of time for this fasting varied, but eventually the church settled on 40 days, in imitation of Jesus’ fast in the wilderness, just before He began His public ministry. Two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, also fasted for 40 days, and these two met with Jesus at the Transfiguration. So Christians often meditate on the biblical accounts of the Transfiguration either before or during Lent. For most Christians this has not been a total fast, but a time of self denial, of giving up something that would normally be a part of their diet, or something that would normally be part of their daily routine.
Today is called Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Originally the fast began on a Monday, and continued without interruption until Easter. Eastern Orthodox churches still celebrate in this way. But in the Western church, it was later decided that Sunday was too festive a day for fasting, so the Sundays of Lent were set apart as special days. Eliminating Sundays from the fast brought the total number of days to 36, so the season now begins on a Wednesday, to make up for the lost 4 days. It’s called Ash Wednesday because in liturgical churches the pastor puts ashes, in the form of a cross, on the foreheads of worshipers. In the Old Testament, ashes are a symbol of mourning and repentance. Here’s an example from the book of Jeremiah: “O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth, and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation; for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us” (6:26). So, the symbolism of Ash Wednesday is that we are mourning for our sins in preparation for a fresh realization of the price Jesus paid to redeem us. And not only mourning for our sins, but turning away from them in renewed obedience and devotion to God.
Is it necessary to observe Lent? No, it’s not necessary at all. This is an area where we have freedom. We’re not bound by God’s Law to observe this season. Paul said, in Romans 14: “Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with--even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department.... Or, say one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience. What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake.... none of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to--all the way from life to death and everything in between--not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other” (Romans 14:1-9, The Message). It’s important to know that we are not bound in this area. Many Christians react against the celebration of Lent because, at one time or another, they have been tyrannized by those who don’t see this as an area of freedom.
It’s not necessary to observe Lent, but it can be very helpful. Moses said this to the Israelites: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Deut. 6:4-9). He wants them to be aware of God’s word all the time, to be meditating on it constantly. And he wants them to fill their lives with things that will remind them of God’s word.
There were many things like this in ancient Israel. Places where God had done something special were set apart for worship, and there was usually some sort of monument, as a visual reminder. Many of the Jews of Jesus’ time wore phylacteries, which were strips of parchment with Bible verses on them enclosed in a leather case and strapped to the forehead, just between the eyes. Or some were worn on the left arm, near the elbow. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for making a show out of this by making them large and conspicuous to others, but He didn’t condemn the practice itself. At its best, it was simply a visual reminder. And the nation of Israel went through a yearly cycle of special days, which were set aside to remind them, year after year, of the great things God had done for them. These outward observances weren’t an end in themselves. Moses’ desire was that they “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But these outward reminders could help them to do that.
Part of the difficulty with Lent is that it has too often taken on a morbid focus. It’s easy for this whole season to become a preparation for Good Friday, rather than a preparation for Easter. We can especially get into trouble if we focus too exclusively on the physical sufferings of Jesus. The Moravians got into trouble for awhile in this area. They were one of the greatest missionary-sending churches in history, and they were exemplary in heartfelt, fearless devotion to the Lord. Some of their missionaries discovered, while preaching to Eskimos, that their hearers were very interested in graphic descriptions of the scourging and crucifixion of Christ. This spread quickly throughout the movement, and soon became “the principle element of Moravian preaching, and some of the preachers learned to depict the Saviour’s sufferings in vivid detail and with tear-compelling effect. They spoke of the lash, the thorns, the nails and the sword-thrust with ecstatic emphasis and unhallowed familiarity” (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 1, p. 173). Count Zinzindorf, the leader of the movement, described himself as “a poor sinner washed in the blood of the slaughtered Lamb in which I live, and to swim and bathe in Jesus’ blood is my element.” And some of the people “spoke of themselves as ‘little doves flying about in the atmosphere of the cross’, and ‘little fish swimming in the bed of blood’, or ‘little bees who suck on the wounds of Christ’, ‘who feel at home in the side hole, and crawl in deep’” (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 326). The celebration of Lent has often been marred by this kind of morbidity, by an exclusive focus on the physical sufferings of Christ apart from the triumph of the Resurrection. (I need to mention, in passing, that the Moravians only stayed on this tangent for a short period in their history).
Part of the emphasis of Lent is repentance and self-denial. One of the things we want to get from this season is a renewed appreciation for the price Jesus paid for our salvation. But that’s not all. Lent is a time to renew our focus, a time to turn to God in a new way. It’s a time to concentrate in a more intensive way on the things of God. During the Advent season we were reminded anew of Jesus’ coming, and we cultivated a sense of anticipation that He is coming again. But for the past 9 weeks or so we’ve been in what is called Ordinary Time. Maybe we’ve been busy. Maybe the affairs of this world have been weighing us down and drawing our minds away from the things of God. The beginning of Lent presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to renew our focus. The beatitudes can help give us a more complete picture of what this means.
The heart of the beatitudes is verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” This beatitude is framed by three which describe the kind of people who hunger and thirst for righteousness (verses 3-5), and three which describe how these people interact with others (verses 7-9). Verse 10 describes how the world responds to people who hunger and thirst after righteousness (and verses 11-12 develop this in more detail).
The beatitudes describe people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They hunger and thirst for righteousness because they don’t have any righteousness of their own; they’re “poor in spirit.” They say, with the hymn Rock of Ages, “nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace; foul I to the fountain fly; wash me Savior or I die.” They accept God’s verdict that “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law...” (Romans 3:20), and they come before God with empty hands, acknowledging their spiritual poverty and hungering and thirsting for that righteousness which only comes as a gift of grace.
People who see clearly who they are before God, who acknowledge their sinfulness, mourn, as Isaiah did when he saw the Lord. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.... ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (Isaiah 6:1-5). Isaiah didn’t talk himself into feeling bad about his sins. He saw himself truly in the light of God’s holiness. This is a genuine godly sorrow that leads us to cry for mercy, like the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
Those who have been grieved over their sins in this way will be gentle, or meek. This has to do primarily with our attitude toward ourselves. If we’re meek, we’re not constantly watching out for ourselves; we don’t demand the best all the time. We don’t grasp after our rights, as so many in our society are doing. Abraham demonstrated meekness toward his nephew, Lot. They were both wealthy men, and there was increasing conflict between their hired workers, so they decided to separate. Abraham had every right, in that culture, to choose which part of the land he wanted. But instead he gave Lot the first choice. David showed meekness when he twice refused to kill Saul and grasp the kingship for himself (even though he had God’s assurance that he was called to be king).
These all describe a person who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And as we hunger for more of God, as we spend time in His presence, these qualities will increasingly be evident in our lives. These first three qualities primarily describe the condition of our hearts. The three beatitudes following verse 6 have more of an outward focus. Those who recognize their spiritual poverty will be merciful toward others. They recognize the wonder of God’s mercy to them, and this overflows in mercy toward others. Those who mourn over their sinfulness find their hearts purified. This was Isaiah’s experience. After he cried out, an angel flew to him with a live coal which he had taken from the altar. “With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for’” (vv. 6-7). And those who are meek, who aren’t grasping the best for themselves and are seeking to live at peace with others, become peacemakers. The last beatitude, verse 10, reminds us that the kind of spirit described here is completely at odds with the world, and those who exemplify this kind of Christlike spirit have repeatedly found that the world hates them, just as it hated Jesus.
These beatitudes describe people who follow Jesus, who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Lent is a season that’s set aside for renewing our focus, for reorienting ourselves to the things of God. We tend to become lax. We become lethargic spiritually and find that we have little interest in spending time with God. We’re not hungering and thirsting after righteousness. “To hunger” means “to crave ardently, to seek with eager desire.” And to thirst, in this context, means to painfully feel our need of, and to eagerly long for, those things which will refresh, support, and strengthen us spiritually. This all points to an intense desire that results in actions. “People who really desire something with the whole of their being do not sit down, passively waiting for it to come” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones). We often find ourselves, at the beginning of Lent, not hungering and thirsting in this way. And this season presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to seek God with renewed focus.
How can we make use of this season? I suggest that you both eliminate something from and add something to your daily life over the next several weeks. Try fasting, or denying yourself, in some area during Lent. It can be something very simple. Some people give up TV, or a particular show that they enjoy. Others give up a particular kind of food or a hobby that occupies lots of their time. The point of this fast is not to practice rigorous self-denial. The point is that each time you have a desire for this thing, you will be reminded to think about the sacrifice Jesus made for us. This is not a vigorous fast, but it should be something you’ll desire often enough over the next several weeks to serve as a reminder that Jesus sacrificed all to pay the price for our sins. What happens if you forget? Sometimes we forget, and sometimes we suffer from a failure of will. But this is not sin. We’re not under the Law in this; we’re using this season as an opportunity for spiritual renewal. So don’t get too worked up about failure. Make use of the failure by pausing briefly and meditating on Jesus’ perfect life of obedience and His sacrificial death.
I also suggest that you add something to your usual devotional practices. Do something different from what you normally do, to set the season apart. Maybe make use of a different daily devotional book for the days of Lent, or read a book (or part of a book) that will stir your desire to seek God. Or sing hymns and worship songs that lead up to the themes of Holy Week and Easter. Or read prayerfully one of the gospels. If you have time, you may find it helpful to read it out loud, praying over it and asking God to impress these things on your heart and make them real to you. As you come to the sections on Jesus’ suffering and humiliation, remind yourself that it was because of our sins that He did this. He did it because we are spiritually poor and owed a debt that we could never, in all eternity, pay ourselves.
In celebrating Lent, we are not trying to earn God’s favor. We’re remembering what God has done to grant us His favor. We already know about the events of the gospel. We’re familiar with it all, but we need to keep coming back to these things, meditating on them and allowing them to sink more deeply into our hearts and transform our lives. We live by hours, days, and weeks, so we need to find some practical way of doing this, “whether that means we put our minds to these topics whenever the whim takes us or when our routine Bible reading brings us across them, or according to some system which brings us around to them regularly.... Hence, the liturgical year is nothing more (and nothing less) than the Church’s “walking through” the gospel with the Lord. Since it is a plain fact of our humanness that we are rhythmic creatures who must keep coming back to things that are always true, it is especially good for us to do this in the Church” (Thomas Howard, Evangelical is Not Enough, pp. 132-33).
And do all this in the light of God’s grace. Our purpose is to “walk through the gospel” with the Lord, to prayerfully meditate on what it meant for Jesus to do the things He did, and to prepare ourselves to receive anew the angel’s words: “He is risen!” By setting aside each Sunday, breaking your fast in anticipation, you are looking forward to the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. And year after year, as we worship our risen Lord, we are looking forward to that day when we will see Him face to face. May He stir us all with a fresh realization of all He has done for us, and all the riches that are ours in Him. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).
I’ve especially noticed two attitudes toward Lent that are counterproductive. On the one hand, for many Christians Lent is a time to engage in morbid introspection. It’s a time when we know we should feel bad about our sins, even though we don’t. Or maybe we do feel bad about our sins, and we spend this season thinking about what wretched, miserable people we are. More often than not, this sort of thing only makes us more self-absorbed, and it does nothing to move us in the direction of godliness. It does nothing to free us from sin.
For others, Lent seems to be little more than a time when we dutifully deprive ourselves of things we really enjoy. The idea of Marti Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is based on this mentality. In this view, the last Tuesday before Lent is a time to indulge ourselves, in preparation for a period of legalistic restraint. Of course, many of those who celebrate Fat Tuesday with great abandon do not deny themselves during Lent, and Fat Tuesday has become for them nothing more than an excuse to party.
It might be helpful to begin with the background of Lent. Many Christians in the early church prepared themselves for baptism by a time of prayer and fasting. And often they wanted to be baptized on Easter, to identify in a special way with Jesus’ burial and resurrection. From this a custom developed of fasting in preparation for Easter (even for those who were not being baptized). The length of time for this fasting varied, but eventually the church settled on 40 days, in imitation of Jesus’ fast in the wilderness, just before He began His public ministry. Two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, also fasted for 40 days, and these two met with Jesus at the Transfiguration. So Christians often meditate on the biblical accounts of the Transfiguration either before or during Lent. For most Christians this has not been a total fast, but a time of self denial, of giving up something that would normally be a part of their diet, or something that would normally be part of their daily routine.
Today is called Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Originally the fast began on a Monday, and continued without interruption until Easter. Eastern Orthodox churches still celebrate in this way. But in the Western church, it was later decided that Sunday was too festive a day for fasting, so the Sundays of Lent were set apart as special days. Eliminating Sundays from the fast brought the total number of days to 36, so the season now begins on a Wednesday, to make up for the lost 4 days. It’s called Ash Wednesday because in liturgical churches the pastor puts ashes, in the form of a cross, on the foreheads of worshipers. In the Old Testament, ashes are a symbol of mourning and repentance. Here’s an example from the book of Jeremiah: “O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth, and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation; for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us” (6:26). So, the symbolism of Ash Wednesday is that we are mourning for our sins in preparation for a fresh realization of the price Jesus paid to redeem us. And not only mourning for our sins, but turning away from them in renewed obedience and devotion to God.
Is it necessary to observe Lent? No, it’s not necessary at all. This is an area where we have freedom. We’re not bound by God’s Law to observe this season. Paul said, in Romans 14: “Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with--even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department.... Or, say one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience. What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake.... none of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to--all the way from life to death and everything in between--not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other” (Romans 14:1-9, The Message). It’s important to know that we are not bound in this area. Many Christians react against the celebration of Lent because, at one time or another, they have been tyrannized by those who don’t see this as an area of freedom.
It’s not necessary to observe Lent, but it can be very helpful. Moses said this to the Israelites: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates” (Deut. 6:4-9). He wants them to be aware of God’s word all the time, to be meditating on it constantly. And he wants them to fill their lives with things that will remind them of God’s word.
There were many things like this in ancient Israel. Places where God had done something special were set apart for worship, and there was usually some sort of monument, as a visual reminder. Many of the Jews of Jesus’ time wore phylacteries, which were strips of parchment with Bible verses on them enclosed in a leather case and strapped to the forehead, just between the eyes. Or some were worn on the left arm, near the elbow. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for making a show out of this by making them large and conspicuous to others, but He didn’t condemn the practice itself. At its best, it was simply a visual reminder. And the nation of Israel went through a yearly cycle of special days, which were set aside to remind them, year after year, of the great things God had done for them. These outward observances weren’t an end in themselves. Moses’ desire was that they “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” But these outward reminders could help them to do that.
Part of the difficulty with Lent is that it has too often taken on a morbid focus. It’s easy for this whole season to become a preparation for Good Friday, rather than a preparation for Easter. We can especially get into trouble if we focus too exclusively on the physical sufferings of Jesus. The Moravians got into trouble for awhile in this area. They were one of the greatest missionary-sending churches in history, and they were exemplary in heartfelt, fearless devotion to the Lord. Some of their missionaries discovered, while preaching to Eskimos, that their hearers were very interested in graphic descriptions of the scourging and crucifixion of Christ. This spread quickly throughout the movement, and soon became “the principle element of Moravian preaching, and some of the preachers learned to depict the Saviour’s sufferings in vivid detail and with tear-compelling effect. They spoke of the lash, the thorns, the nails and the sword-thrust with ecstatic emphasis and unhallowed familiarity” (Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, vol. 1, p. 173). Count Zinzindorf, the leader of the movement, described himself as “a poor sinner washed in the blood of the slaughtered Lamb in which I live, and to swim and bathe in Jesus’ blood is my element.” And some of the people “spoke of themselves as ‘little doves flying about in the atmosphere of the cross’, and ‘little fish swimming in the bed of blood’, or ‘little bees who suck on the wounds of Christ’, ‘who feel at home in the side hole, and crawl in deep’” (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 326). The celebration of Lent has often been marred by this kind of morbidity, by an exclusive focus on the physical sufferings of Christ apart from the triumph of the Resurrection. (I need to mention, in passing, that the Moravians only stayed on this tangent for a short period in their history).
Part of the emphasis of Lent is repentance and self-denial. One of the things we want to get from this season is a renewed appreciation for the price Jesus paid for our salvation. But that’s not all. Lent is a time to renew our focus, a time to turn to God in a new way. It’s a time to concentrate in a more intensive way on the things of God. During the Advent season we were reminded anew of Jesus’ coming, and we cultivated a sense of anticipation that He is coming again. But for the past 9 weeks or so we’ve been in what is called Ordinary Time. Maybe we’ve been busy. Maybe the affairs of this world have been weighing us down and drawing our minds away from the things of God. The beginning of Lent presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to renew our focus. The beatitudes can help give us a more complete picture of what this means.
The heart of the beatitudes is verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” This beatitude is framed by three which describe the kind of people who hunger and thirst for righteousness (verses 3-5), and three which describe how these people interact with others (verses 7-9). Verse 10 describes how the world responds to people who hunger and thirst after righteousness (and verses 11-12 develop this in more detail).
The beatitudes describe people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They hunger and thirst for righteousness because they don’t have any righteousness of their own; they’re “poor in spirit.” They say, with the hymn Rock of Ages, “nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace; foul I to the fountain fly; wash me Savior or I die.” They accept God’s verdict that “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law...” (Romans 3:20), and they come before God with empty hands, acknowledging their spiritual poverty and hungering and thirsting for that righteousness which only comes as a gift of grace.
People who see clearly who they are before God, who acknowledge their sinfulness, mourn, as Isaiah did when he saw the Lord. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.... ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty’” (Isaiah 6:1-5). Isaiah didn’t talk himself into feeling bad about his sins. He saw himself truly in the light of God’s holiness. This is a genuine godly sorrow that leads us to cry for mercy, like the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me a sinner!”
Those who have been grieved over their sins in this way will be gentle, or meek. This has to do primarily with our attitude toward ourselves. If we’re meek, we’re not constantly watching out for ourselves; we don’t demand the best all the time. We don’t grasp after our rights, as so many in our society are doing. Abraham demonstrated meekness toward his nephew, Lot. They were both wealthy men, and there was increasing conflict between their hired workers, so they decided to separate. Abraham had every right, in that culture, to choose which part of the land he wanted. But instead he gave Lot the first choice. David showed meekness when he twice refused to kill Saul and grasp the kingship for himself (even though he had God’s assurance that he was called to be king).
These all describe a person who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And as we hunger for more of God, as we spend time in His presence, these qualities will increasingly be evident in our lives. These first three qualities primarily describe the condition of our hearts. The three beatitudes following verse 6 have more of an outward focus. Those who recognize their spiritual poverty will be merciful toward others. They recognize the wonder of God’s mercy to them, and this overflows in mercy toward others. Those who mourn over their sinfulness find their hearts purified. This was Isaiah’s experience. After he cried out, an angel flew to him with a live coal which he had taken from the altar. “With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for’” (vv. 6-7). And those who are meek, who aren’t grasping the best for themselves and are seeking to live at peace with others, become peacemakers. The last beatitude, verse 10, reminds us that the kind of spirit described here is completely at odds with the world, and those who exemplify this kind of Christlike spirit have repeatedly found that the world hates them, just as it hated Jesus.
These beatitudes describe people who follow Jesus, who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And Lent is a season that’s set aside for renewing our focus, for reorienting ourselves to the things of God. We tend to become lax. We become lethargic spiritually and find that we have little interest in spending time with God. We’re not hungering and thirsting after righteousness. “To hunger” means “to crave ardently, to seek with eager desire.” And to thirst, in this context, means to painfully feel our need of, and to eagerly long for, those things which will refresh, support, and strengthen us spiritually. This all points to an intense desire that results in actions. “People who really desire something with the whole of their being do not sit down, passively waiting for it to come” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones). We often find ourselves, at the beginning of Lent, not hungering and thirsting in this way. And this season presents us with an opportunity to get back on track, to seek God with renewed focus.
How can we make use of this season? I suggest that you both eliminate something from and add something to your daily life over the next several weeks. Try fasting, or denying yourself, in some area during Lent. It can be something very simple. Some people give up TV, or a particular show that they enjoy. Others give up a particular kind of food or a hobby that occupies lots of their time. The point of this fast is not to practice rigorous self-denial. The point is that each time you have a desire for this thing, you will be reminded to think about the sacrifice Jesus made for us. This is not a vigorous fast, but it should be something you’ll desire often enough over the next several weeks to serve as a reminder that Jesus sacrificed all to pay the price for our sins. What happens if you forget? Sometimes we forget, and sometimes we suffer from a failure of will. But this is not sin. We’re not under the Law in this; we’re using this season as an opportunity for spiritual renewal. So don’t get too worked up about failure. Make use of the failure by pausing briefly and meditating on Jesus’ perfect life of obedience and His sacrificial death.
I also suggest that you add something to your usual devotional practices. Do something different from what you normally do, to set the season apart. Maybe make use of a different daily devotional book for the days of Lent, or read a book (or part of a book) that will stir your desire to seek God. Or sing hymns and worship songs that lead up to the themes of Holy Week and Easter. Or read prayerfully one of the gospels. If you have time, you may find it helpful to read it out loud, praying over it and asking God to impress these things on your heart and make them real to you. As you come to the sections on Jesus’ suffering and humiliation, remind yourself that it was because of our sins that He did this. He did it because we are spiritually poor and owed a debt that we could never, in all eternity, pay ourselves.
In celebrating Lent, we are not trying to earn God’s favor. We’re remembering what God has done to grant us His favor. We already know about the events of the gospel. We’re familiar with it all, but we need to keep coming back to these things, meditating on them and allowing them to sink more deeply into our hearts and transform our lives. We live by hours, days, and weeks, so we need to find some practical way of doing this, “whether that means we put our minds to these topics whenever the whim takes us or when our routine Bible reading brings us across them, or according to some system which brings us around to them regularly.... Hence, the liturgical year is nothing more (and nothing less) than the Church’s “walking through” the gospel with the Lord. Since it is a plain fact of our humanness that we are rhythmic creatures who must keep coming back to things that are always true, it is especially good for us to do this in the Church” (Thomas Howard, Evangelical is Not Enough, pp. 132-33).
And do all this in the light of God’s grace. Our purpose is to “walk through the gospel” with the Lord, to prayerfully meditate on what it meant for Jesus to do the things He did, and to prepare ourselves to receive anew the angel’s words: “He is risen!” By setting aside each Sunday, breaking your fast in anticipation, you are looking forward to the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. And year after year, as we worship our risen Lord, we are looking forward to that day when we will see Him face to face. May He stir us all with a fresh realization of all He has done for us, and all the riches that are ours in Him. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).
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