Sunday, December 29, 2013

Facing the Future with God our Shepherd, Jeremiah 31:10-14 (New Year's Sermon)

Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA

The Old Testament quotation in our gospel reading, “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more” (Matthew 2:18), is from Jeremiah 31. In Jeremiah, these words are surrounded by words of hope. The very next verse says “Thus says the Lord: keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord… there is hope for your future.” We’re going to look, this morning, at the passage immediately preceding the words quoted by Matthew. As we celebrate the birth of Christ and prepare to begin a new year, these words give us hope for the future.

I’ve been thinking this week about “The Sad Café,” a song by the Eagles. The song is looking back on the restaurant where they hung out in the early days, when they were idealistic and excited about life, before everything started to go sour. “O it seemed like a holy place, protected by amazing grace. We would sing right out loud the things we could not say. We thought we could change this world with words like love and freedom. We were part of the lonely crowd inside the sad café.” They thought they could change the world. But now they’ve grown wiser and more cynical. Life isn’t like they thought it would be. It hasn’t turned out the way they expected. “Now I look at the years gone by and wonder at the powers that be. I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free. Maybe the time has drawn the faces I recall, but things in this world change very slowly, if they ever change at all. No use in asking why, it just turned out that way.” So they sing about how things were in the past, when they were full of youthful idealism, before they woke up to the harshness of reality.

This is a common theme: the idealism of youth crushed by the difficulties of life. There are many songs and poems that look back on a golden age of the past, when things were less complicated than they are now, when we thought we could make a real change in the world, when life seemed exciting and exhilarating, full of possibilities. And this sort of thing can also happen in our Christian lives. “God used to bless me, but something has happened and everything is going wrong in my life. Things just aren’t the way they used to be.” Or, “I used to be much more zealous. I spent time each day in God’s Word and in prayer, and I reveled in times of worship and fellowship, but now my life has become so complicated that I just don’t have time. I’ve dried up spiritually, and I wish I could go back.” Or, “I used to have great hopes for what I could accomplish for God’s kingdom, but people are so indifferent and cold. Nothing I do or say seems to make much difference. There really doesn’t seem to be much point in the things I do.” Or, “I accepted Jesus as my savior when I was 13 years old. Right now I have to make a living and support my family, and I know I’m not growing spiritually. I don’t feel good about the direction my life is going, but I don’t have time to cultivate a relationship with God.”

Over time, if we’re not careful, our spiritual lives can become focused on the past, when things seemed better, less complicated, more exciting. The people of Jeremiah’s time had every reason to focus on the past. They had a golden age to look back upon, when they were ruled by godly men, when God was at work among them, when even the surrounding nations could look at them and say, “the Living God is truly in their midst.” Things were better in the past. The nation has been in an extended period of spiritual decline. They’ve grown indifferent and have ignored the warnings of the prophets. They’ve been so determined in their idolatry that they’ve become worse than many of the surrounding nations. Now they’ve reached the point where judgment is inevitable. Soon the nation will be taken captive and deported to Babylon, 700 miles away.

But, rather than focusing on the past, Jeremiah tells them that God has good things planned for their future. Their immediate future is not the end of the story. They need to cultivate a longer-term perspective. There’s more going on than they can see at the moment. God isn’t finished with them yet, as He said two chapters earlier: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this land. For I know the plans I have for you... plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:10-11). God has good things planned for His people. They don’t need to live in the past.

Jeremiah is speaking to people who’ve been beaten down by life. They’re reaping the fruit of their own rebellion, it’s true. God is punishing them for their sins. But we need to consider how they got to this point. They didn’t just wake up one day and decide to walk away from the living God. They drifted away from Him in the midst of all the complications and pressures of life. At this point they’re living in darkness and confusion, and they’re angry at Jeremiah for all the horrible things he’s been saying about them. They want their lives to work out and they’re willing to try anything. But the things they’re trying lead them further and further from God.

Listen to the second part of verse 12: “They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more.” Their present condition is at the end of the verse: they’re sorrowing. Several other translations are more graphic than the NIV. The NRSV says “they shall never languish again.” Or this, in The Message: “Their lives will be like a well-watered garden, never again left to dry up.” They’re languishing. They’ve dried up. Life hasn’t been all they expected. Everything has gone wrong and they just don’t have the energy to keep trying any more. They’re like a garden that hasn’t been watered. The environment of this fallen world is destroying them; they’re being beaten by life.

There’s a character like this in the novel, The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler. Sarah and Macon had a twelve-year-old son who was murdered during a convenience store robbery. Before this, Sarah had been full of life. She enjoyed being around people, entertaining friends in their home, getting to know new acquaintances. She was outgoing and friendly. But now, everything has changed. She keeps to herself and has become a recluse. She doesn’t trust anyone any more. Here’s what she says: “Macon,... ever since Ethan died I’ve had to admit that people are basically bad. Evil, Macon. So evil that they would take a twelve-year-old boy and shoot him through the skull for no reason. I read a paper now and I despair; I’ve given up watching the news on TV. There’s so much wickedness, children setting other children on fire and grown men throwing babies out second-story windows, rape and torture and terrorism, old people beaten and robbed, men in our very own government willing to blow up the world, indifference and greed and instant anger on every street corner.... There are times when I haven’t been sure I could – I don’t want to sound melodramatic but – Macon, I haven’t been sure I could live in this kind of a world anymore” (pp. 133-34). The world hasn’t changed. The reports on the news are the same kinds of things as before, but she’s been personally touched by evil, and it’s changed her whole perception of the world. She can no longer look at life the way she used to. She’s been beaten down by life in this fallen world.

What Jeremiah offers in this situation is a vision for a different future. Yes, it’s true that things have been better in the past, but the past, even at its best, was only a dim foretaste of the future God has in store for His people. Although Jeremiah doesn’t use the word here, what he’s giving them is a vision of shalom, the Old Testament word for “peace.” This word, shalom, is one of the richest words in the Old Testament. It points to the idea of wholeness and completeness, the wholeness that results from God’s presence among His people. Shalom “is the result of God’s activity in covenant.... Shalom describes the state of fulfillment which is the result of God’s presence” (Theological Wordbook of the OT, vol. 2, p. 931). It’s the opposite of drying up and languishing. What he’s giving them in these verses, without using the word, is a vision of shalom: “They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again” (NRSV). He’s giving them a vision of a different future.

Where is this experience of shalom going to come from? It’s going to come from the Lord. They’ve been looking in all the wrong places. They’ve been going after the Baals in a sense of desperation, trying to make things turn out better. They’ve been looking at the past, wishing they could go back to the way things used to be. They’ve been trying to do everything possible to improve their lives. But it’s all come to nothing, because they’re looking in the wrong places. They’ve turned away from the Living God, the only source of true shalom, and have turned to counterfeits, which lead them to one dead end after another.

It’s clear that they can’t accomplish it themselves by any amount of effort: “For the Lord will ransom Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they.” They are going to be overcome by their enemies, and they won’t have the strength to rescue themselves. Their enemies are too strong for them. Part of their problem is that they haven’t realized the desperateness of their condition. They’ve thought they could find a solution to their problems, that if they only tried a little harder or found just the right technique they’d be able to make things turn out right. The truth is that their only hope is in the Lord. He’s the only one who can bring shalom, who can rescue them from the hand of their enemies.

But if God is able to bring about this sort of change, why doesn’t He just do it? Why does He allow us to languish, like a dried up garden? Why has He allowed Israel to decline so far that the only remedy is to send them into captivity? Why does He allow bad things to happen in our lives? Why does He give us so much freedom, allowing us to destroy ourselves in turning away from Him, the source of all good? How do we reconcile God’s infinite power with the reality of pain and suffering and injustice in this world? If He’s so powerful, if He’s able to bring about shalom, why doesn’t He just do it right now? There are some answers we can give, which help to clarify things to some extent, but ultimately we are still left with an element of mystery. We don’t know why God has seen fit to order the world in this way. Job is never given a satisfactory answer to the question of why he experienced such horrible things. He is simply confronted with the reality that God is God, and he is not. He’s humbled, but not given an explanation. Paul discusses the problem of God’s sovereignty at some length in Romans 9-11, and at the end of chapter 11, when we might have expected some sort of explanation, he instead cries out in worship: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen” (vv. 33-36). We need to beware of allowing our present experience of sorrow to undermine our assurance of God’s power over the future. One day we will see all these things more clearly, and one day God will set all things right and will eliminate suffering. In this present world He chooses not to do so. We may not be able to fully explain why, but we know Him, and we know that He is good and wise, and that all power belongs to Him. We belong to the One who has power to accomplish His purposes, the One who’s given us a vision of a different future, a vision of a future where our mourning is turned into gladness, where God will give us comfort and joy instead of sorrow.

As we come to the end of 2013, we don’t know what this coming year has for us. Some of us may have a great year, the kind of year we’ll later look back on as one of the high points in our lives. But some of us may experience the kind of loss and pain that destroys people. We live in a fallen world, and God hasn’t seen fit to shield His people from the suffering that is part of life in this world. We don’t know what is in store for us in the coming year. God hasn’t promised us an easy time of it. Jesus and the apostles experienced trials and sorrow and difficulties, and they instructed us to expect the same. Jesus said: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Jesus is the one who has overcome the world. He is the source of shalom. He is the one who will bring about the kind of life Jeremiah describes in these verses. He is the source of our future hope. He is the one who can sustain our hope, even in this world where many peoples’ experience fits John Mellencamp’s description: “life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone.” Jesus has overcome this dark, hopeless world.

What is your source of hope as you begin a new year? Are you just a naturally optimistic person, who is sure that everything will turn out right? Life could beat that out of you this year if you have nothing more than a natural bent toward optimism. Sarah, in The Accidental Tourist, was a naturally optimistic person who found that life is not what she expected, that there is real evil in the world. But Macon, her husband, who is a natural pessimist, is not any better off. He doesn’t expect things to turn out well. Sarah says to him: “‘Everything that might touch you or upset you or disrupt you, you’ve given up without a murmur and done without, said you never really wanted it anyhow’.... ‘I know you mourned [Ethan] but there’s something so what-do-you-call, so muffled about the way you experience things, I mean love or grief or anything; it’s like you’re trying to slip through life unchanged’.... ‘Sarah, I’m not muffled. I... endure. I’m trying to endure. I’m standing fast, I’m holding steady.’ ‘If you really think that,’ Sarah said, ‘then you’re fooling yourself. You’re not holding steady; you’re ossified. You’re encased. You’re like something in a capsule. You’re a dried-up kernel of a man that nothing real penetrates’” (pp. 135-36). He’s a pessimist. Maybe he has a more realistic view of the world than she had, but he’s not any better off. He’s shriveled up in his own protective shell.

What’s the problem? We weren’t created to live in a world like this. Shalom, the kind of world Jeremiah describes, is what we were created for, and it’s what our hearts long for. When we live in the past, we tend to reconstruct the experience in our memory so that it feels like, at least then, we were living in shalom. Back then, life seemed to fit us better than it does now. We look back longingly on the way things used to be. When we accept the world as it is, when we become pessimists, like Macon, we dehumanize ourselves. We become less than what God has created us to be. It’s not as painful that way, but we’re diminished in the process. And blind optimism just sets us up for disillusionment. It doesn’t enable us to live in this world as it really is.

But these aren’t our only choices. As God’s people, we can face the coming year knowing that He, our Shepherd, is with us, and that He has better things in store for us than anything this world can offer. Living in the light of eternity, in confidence that God is preparing a place of shalom for us, will equip us to face the truth about life in this fallen world. Listen to these words from C.S. Lewis: “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves, who set out on foot to convert the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark on earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffectual in this one. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in.’ Aim at earth and you will get neither” (quoted in Patches of Godlight, by Jan Karon).

Throughout Advent we’ve been preparing ourselves to celebrate Jesus’ birth, and now in the Christmas season we’re celebrating His appearing. Why did He come? He came to deliver us from ruin. We were lost people, living without God in a world that is headed toward destruction. He came to deliver us from that. He has paid in full the penalty for our sin and rebellion and has opened the way for us to return to God. He is preparing a future of shalom for us: “For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him. They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd: their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.” All this because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” and then died on the cross, rose again on the third day and is now seated at the right hand of the Father interceding for us, preparing a place where we can live in shalom for eternity. Living in the light of that future hope, we experience genuine spiritual joy in this fallen world as He gives us foretastes of shalom. As Peter said to people who were suffering persecution for their faith: “even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9). Whatever else you resolve in beginning this new year, resolve to cultivate an increased awareness of our future hope, to learn to live in the light of God’s promised shalom.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

A Less-than-Perfect Outcome, Nehemiah 13:1-31

Chapter 13 of Nehemiah, in many ways, is a letdown. It’s not what we’ve been hoping for. The nation has come through a difficult time. They’d been living in disgrace, in the midst of hostile enemies, with the rubble of the broken walls of Jerusalem surrounding them. Under Nehemiah’s leadership they’ve rebuilt the walls in record time. They’ve experienced revival in their midst and have committed themselves to concrete acts of obedience. They’ve come together in worship to celebrate all the great things God has done for them. In many ways, it would be more satisfying if the book ended with chapter 12. We want the story to end well, and chapter 13 makes a mess of things. We want the story to end with the nation living “victoriously ever after.”

We often hope for the same sort of thing in our spiritual lives. We pray for an experience that will push us over the edge, beyond the realm of struggle and difficulty. And there are always voices out there promising this sort of thing. One author recommends an experience that will, in one transforming moment, bring us to a place of rest: “This is the spiritual rest Paul longed for in Romans 7. It is a rest where the sinful nature no longer opposes your spiritual desires. The inner antagonism to the will of God is cleansed away. It is a blessed state of soul rest, a rest of faith, a knowable experience and life of inner spiritual leisure. It brings poise and calmness of soul and the undisturbed filling presence of the Holy Spirit.... The great spiritual struggles of your soul with the will of God are now past.... All sinful resistance, all stubborn self-will as opposed to God’s will--all is cleansed away. Your soul is at rest, delighting in the unfolding will of God” (Wesley Duewel, God’s Great Salvation, pp. 230-31). You still live in this fallen world, but your struggles with sin are over. “Your soul is at rest, delighting in the unfolding will of God.” In terms of the book of Nehemiah, once you reach chapter 12, it’s pretty smooth sailing for the rest of your life.

In my early Christian life I was very enthusiastic about C.T. Studd, the missionary pioneer who worked in China, India and Africa. Studd was converted to Christ while he was in college, and he responded by giving away a large inheritance and going to the mission field. He made incredible sacrifices and persevered against overwhelming difficulties. In the biography I read when I was a young Christian, Studd sounds like someone who’s had this experience, whose spiritual struggles are a thing of the past, whose whole Christian life is a series of glorious victories.

His mission, the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (or WEC), went through a very difficult time late in Studd’s life. The mission was plagued with disunity, dissatisfaction with his leadership, and morale in general was very low. Then, during a series of prayer meetings, the missionaries surrendered themselves completely to God and experienced revival. Here’s how Norman Grubb, C.T. Studd’s biographer and son-in-law, describes the result: “The blessing spread to the remotest station. From that time to this there has been no check on the field to the unity, love, joy in sacrifice, zeal for the souls of the people, which has laid hold of the Crusaders in the Heart of Africa. Not a murmur is heard, however short funds may be, but only expressions of praise and trust in God. It is hard to get anyone to go on furlough unless health really demands it; and when any do come, as soon as they arrive home, their first question is not, ‘How long can I rest?’ but ‘How can I help with the work here?’ and ‘How soon can I go back?’ Married couples put their work before their homes; one bridal couple, a few days after their marriage, even offered to separate and be on different stations for the time being, owing to shortage of workers” (Norman Grubb, C.T. Studd, p. 216).

That’s the kind of conclusion we hope for. Struggle in the beginning, followed by a time of crisis, then permanent victory: “All sinful resistance, all stubborn self-will as opposed to God’s will--all is cleansed away. Your soul is at rest, delighting in the unfolding will of God.” It’s the kind of conclusion we hope for in Nehemiah, so chapter 13 comes as a disappointment, a letdown. But the authors of Scripture are more honest and realistic than many Christian authors. There’s more to the story of C.T. Studd’s missionary experience. His zeal bordered on fanaticism, and he became increasingly difficult to work with over the years. He worked 18 hour days, with no days off, and expected others to do the same. If any resisted, Studd accused them of lukewarmess and compromise. He had a very low view of the African Christians, and his relationships with other missionaries steadily deteriorated in his later years. Near the end of his life, he discovered that a shot of morphine helped him to continue functioning at the same pace, despite his declining health. So, rather than live at a slower pace, he became a morphine addict. By the time of his death the mission was in shambles, and if he had lived longer it probably wouldn’t have survived his leadership (see Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, pp. 263-68).

It’s important that Nehemiah includes chapter 13. False expectations can be devastating. If we expect an experience that will take us out of the realm of struggle, we’ll usually be affected in one of two ways, depending on our personality: either we’ll be plunged into despair because the experience never comes (we may assume the fault is ours, or we may blame God and turn away from Him because He hasn’t come through); or we’ll deceive ourselves into thinking that we’ve received the experience. These are the most common effects of teachings that promise an experience that will take us out of the realm of struggle: self-deception, or depression and despair. Nehemiah 13 is important, because it reminds us that as long as we are living in this fallen world, our victories and successes will be temporary; we’re not going to be truly safe from attack until we’re in the Lord’s presence. Nehemiah 13 can help deliver us from a false, superficial triumphalism.

The first thing to notice in this chapter is that victory in the past does not insure victory in the future. The Israelites fall into sin in three general areas in this chapter: they neglect the house of God; they desecrate the Sabbath; and they begin intermarrying with unbelieving nations. These are all areas they’ve been guilty of in the past. In fact, these are the kinds of sins that got them into trouble in the first place; these are the kinds of sins that caused God to send them into captivity in Babylon. Nehemiah makes this point in rebuking them about the Sabbath: “Didn’t your forefathers do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity upon us and upon this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath” (v. 18). When we achieve a great victory in one area, we’ll often be tempted to become lax. We’ve learned that lesson, so now it’s time to go on to something else. But when we become lax, we’re setting ourselves up for defeat. Victory in the past does not insure victory in the future; if we become careless, there’s every likelihood that we’ll fall into the same sins that have defeated us in the past.

The second thing to notice is that strong emotions and sorrow over our sins do not insure victory in the future. In chapter 8, the people were filled with godly sorrow after listening to the reading of the Word. In chapter 9, they came into God’s presence, crying out for mercy. These are not people who are content with their sins. They’re not looking for a way to get away with persisting in sin. They’re grieved at the thought of violating the commands of their gracious and merciful God. And yet, in chapter 13 we see that they’ve fallen into sin anyway. No matter how grieved we are at our sinfulness, our feelings are eventually going to go away. It’s right to be grieved at our sins. Godly sorrow drives us into God’s presence, crying for mercy. But strong emotions won’t enable us to persevere in resisting sin in the future.

The third thing to notice is that strong resolutions do not insure victory in the future. One of the sins they’ve been guilty of in the past is neglecting the worship of the Temple. They’d gotten so caught up in their own lives that they’d neglected God’s house, and when they became aware of the problem, they made arrangements to remedy the situation. And they made this resolution: “we will not neglect the house of our God” (10:39). And yet, that’s the very thing that has happened in chapter 13. A large room has been given to Tobiah, which displaces much of the equipment for worship and also leaves no place for the collection of the tithes. So the Levites, who help lead worship in the Temple, find themselves without financial support and go back to their land. One step at a time, the worship of the Temple falls into decline. They’ve forgotten their resolutions.

They’ve experienced much from God. He’s come to their rescue and given them a great victory. Even their enemies have to acknowledge that God is among them. But as time passes, they lose their sense of urgency. They grow complacent and simply drift back into their old habits: they neglect corporate worship; they fall into the habit of desecrating the Sabbath; and they begin to intermarry with unbelieving nations. All the great victories they’ve experienced, all their godly sorrow, all their resolutions, have not prevented them from falling into the same sins that had gotten them into trouble in the first place.

What has gone wrong? Two things stand out, as I look at this chapter. The first is that once the crisis has passed, there’s a temptation to become complacent and to let down our guard. During the crisis, we keep a tight rein on our hearts, but once the crisis is over, we want to go back to a more normal life. We don’t want to spend so much time and effort on our relationship with God. We want to relax and take a break. But that’s exactly the thing we can’t afford to do. We take a rest in God’s presence, not from His presence. The whole point of the Sabbath was rest and spiritual refreshment, not rest from God’s presence, but rest and refreshment in His presence.

John Flavel, a 17th Century preacher, wrote a book called Keeping the Heart. His concern is that unless we keep a close watch on our hearts, we’ll tend to drift away from the Lord. Here’s how he defines keeping the heart: “By keeping the heart, understand the diligent and constant use of all holy means to preserve the soul from sin, and maintain its sweet and free communion with God” (p. 6). And then, near the end of the book, he says this: “You must learn to wield the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God) familiarly, if you would defend your heart and conquer your enemies. You must call yourself frequently to an account; examine yourself in the presence of the all seeing God; bring your conscience, as it were, to the bar of judgement.... You must exercise the utmost vigilance to discover and check the first symptoms of departure from God, the least decline of spirituality, or the least indisposition to meditation by yourself, and holy conversation and fellowship with others. These things you must undertake, in the strength of Christ, with invincible resolution in the outset. And if you thus engage in this great work, be assured you shall not spend your strength for naught; comforts which you never felt or thought of will flow in upon you from every side” (pp. 107-108). If we want to survive over the long term, after the time of crisis has passed, we need to exercise vigilance in keeping our hearts.

The second thing that’s gone wrong in Israel is that they’ve been lacking in spiritual leadership. Nehemiah has been away for some time, and it’s after his return that he begins to put things back in order: “But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king” (v. 6). It’s startling, in Scripture, to see how quickly God’s people get into trouble when there’s a lack of godly leadership. We need to pray for our leaders, especially that they will be faithful in walking with God and cultivating His presence. Our leaders don’t have to do everything well; they’re not called to meet all our “felt needs.” What matters is that they know God and seek with all their hearts to do His will. And, in addition to praying for our leaders, we need to be diligent in seeking out leaders who will help us stay on track spiritually. We’re all in need of spiritual leadership, and it’s worth expending some effort in seeking out help.

Nehemiah 13 may be a letdown; after all the hard work in the early chapters, we’ve hoped for something more permanent. Chapter 12 would have made a good conclusion. But it’s a good thing for us to have this chapter. It reminds us that as long as we’re in this fallen world, our victories and successes will be temporary. As long as we’re still living in this fallen world, we will not be safe. This chapter reminds us that no matter what we’ve experienced in the past, we need to persevere in seeking God. There is no safe place in this world. But Nehemiah 13 is not the end of the story. The victory in Nehemiah is incomplete and temporary, because we look forward to that day when we, with all of God’s people, will be gathered in His presence. On that day: “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:16-17). All outcomes in this world are less-than-perfect, but our citizenship is not of this world.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Ordered Celebration, Nehemiah 11:1-12:47

I became a Christian in the mid-70's in an Assembly of God church, and for a few years most of my fellowship was in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. The Pentecostal churches had been around since the beginning of the 20th century, but the Charismatic movement was relatively new and was often hostile toward older, more traditional, churches. I remember, for awhile, believing that God was doing a new thing among us, that He was sick and tired of the superficiality and lukewarmness of the traditional churches and was raising up a new people for the last days. We would have been comfortable with this promotional blurb from one church’s website: “We’re casual and relaxed. Don’t look for pews, hymns, and stained glass windows - you won’t find them. You will find a dynamic worship band, compelling dramas, and exciting multimedia. We speak in a language and operate in a format that everyday people understand.... Don’t expect church as you have known it!” They’re saying: “We’re not like other churches. We’re the real thing.”

We believed worship should be informal and spontaneous. Eugene Peterson says this about the church he attended when he was growing up: “I was reared in a tradition that scorned written and read prayers. Book prayers. Dead prayers. Reading a prayer would have been like meeting an old friend on the street, quickly leafing through a book to find an appropriate greeting suitable for the meeting and then reading, ‘Hello, old friend; it is good to see you again. How have you been? Remember me to your family. Well, I must be on my way now. Good-bye.’ And then, closing the book and going on down the street without once looking my friend in the eye. Ludicrous. The very nature of prayer required that it be spontaneous and from the heart” (Living the Message, p. 338). Rather than diligent preparation and planning for worship on Sunday morning, we believed pastors and worship leaders should just pray and trust in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

I remember being very impressed with this description of C.T. Studd, the founder of the mission, Worldwide Evangelization Crusade: “He never needed more preparation for his meetings than those early hours [in prayer]. He didn’t prepare. He talked with God, and God talked with him, and made His Word live to him. He saw Jesus. He saw men and women going in their millions to hell. And he always said that that is all the preparation a man needs for preaching the Gospel, if it be a dozen times the same day. ‘Don’t go into the study to prepare a sermon,’ he once said. ‘That is all nonsense. Go into your study to go to God and get so fiery that your tongue is like a burning coal and you’ve got to speak” (Norman Grubb, C.T. Studd, pp. 221-22). Pray, seek God, and trust Him to give you the right words to speak. God leads spontaneously and informally. Anything else is evidence that we’ve drifted away from the purity of the faith and are trusting in ourselves; that’s what I thought as a young Christian.

But I began to have doubts. For one thing, I read about other people in the history of the Church, and I learned that many committed, zealous, obviously Spirit-filled Christians did things that I had associated with spiritual deadness and compromise: they used written prayers and liturgy, and they studied diligently in preparation for preaching. And then, as I continued reading Scripture, I noticed these same things in the worship of the Bible: written prayers, liturgy, and an emphasis on diligent preparation.

This passage in Nehemiah is a good example. The walls have been completed, and the nation has gone through a period of spiritual renewal. At the beginning of chapter 11, the leaders attend to the necessity of making sure there are enough people living in Jerusalem, then, in chapter 12, they have a formal ceremony to dedicate the walls and give thanks to God. God has been gracious to them. Not too long ago they were living in disgrace, with the walls in ruin and hostile people all around them. But now, with God’s help, the walls have been completed. Even their enemies see that God is among them. He’s done great things and they want to give thanks. And they do this, not with an informal praise service, but with a highly structured, formal ceremony.

The first thing to notice is that this celebration is rooted in the past. They’re celebrating a new thing that God has done among them, but their forms of worship have been inherited from the past. The genealogies in these two chapters emphasize their continuity with the past. God is renewing His work among them, but what He’s doing is not, strictly speaking, a new thing. He’s fulfilling His promises to His people in the past. The Israelites of Nehemiah’s day are benefitting from God’s promises made to His people many centuries ago.

They’re using musical instruments “prescribed by David” (12:36). And they’re following a structure inherited from the past: “They performed the service of their God and the service of purification, as did also the singers and gatekeepers, according to the commands of David and his son Solomon. For long ago, in the days of David and Asaph, there had been directors for the singers and for the songs of praise and thanksgiving to God.” Their celebration is strongly rooted in the past.

Christian worship, like the worship of Israel, is inherently traditional. We’re worshiping God for things He’s done in the past, using words that we’ve inherited from the Church of the past (even if we’re not fully aware of this). God’s work of redemption didn’t begin last year, and it didn’t begin with us. We’re benefitting from God’s promises to His people in past centuries. We’re benefitting from sacrifices God’s people have made to preserve the purity of God’s Word. We’ve received an immense wealth from those who took the time to write hymns and prayers and books of instruction on various aspects of the Christian life. When we cultivate hostility toward the historic Church, we’re showing our ignorance and ingratitude. To be completely cut off from the past is to depart from Christianity. We’re not obligated to do everything just the way it’s been done in the past; the point is that we need to acknowledge our debt of gratitude to those who’ve gone before us in the Church. We will be worshiping with them in eternity, and even in this life everything we do is built on their efforts.

The second thing is that their celebration has a definite order and structure. They’re not just “winging it,” doing whatever they feel led to do at the moment. They begin with ceremonial purification: “When the priests and Levites had purified themselves ceremonially, they purified the people, the gates and the wall.” This is followed by a large choral procession on the walls, with two choirs leading the worshipers in opposite directions, ending finally in the Temple. The normal practice was for these choirs to sing antiphonally; verse 24 describes this process: one group “stood opposite them to give praise and thanksgiving, one section responding to the other, as prescribed by David the man of God.” The picture here is of a highly structured, planned out ceremony.

Their assumption would have been that God had led David and other leaders in prescribing the order for worship. If someone had said to them, “why don’t you just trust God to help you know what to do next,” they would have responded, “We do trust God; He’s told us how to structure our worship, and we’re following His instructions.” One question that began to bother me, as a young Christian, was this: “why do we assume that God is more likely to lead at the last minute? Isn’t it possible that He might be leading those who diligently seek His help in planning for worship? Isn’t it also possible that He’s been leading those who’ve written hymns, prayer books, and liturgies throughout the centuries? Why do we think God only leads in spontaneous ways?” If I’m leading worship and preaching next Sunday, shouldn’t I trust God to lead me as I prepare during the week? He’s given me this time; shouldn’t I make use of it? Then, having prepared diligently, I can cry out to Him for help and grace and for His anointing on the service.

The fact is that our worship is going to have a structure. Even the most spontaneously-oriented charismatic worship services I’ve attended had a structure. The question is not whether or not our worship will be structured. The question is where our structure is going to come from. Will it be something we unconsciously drift into, as we rely week by week on the inspiration of the moment? Will we get our structure from the entertainment industry? Or will we listen to the things God has done in the past and aim for a structure that honors our oneness with the historic Church and exalts the God who’s revealed Himself in Scripture? The celebration in Nehemiah 12 has a definite order and structure, and this order is rooted in the work God has been doing among His people throughout many centuries.

The third thing is that the order of worship the leaders are following provides a means for the corporate expression of joy and thanksgiving. There’s a temptation, in free churches, to associate liturgy and order with spiritual deadness. We assume that the Church was highly spontaneous in the beginning, when the Spirit was at work, but then after the people started drifting away from God they developed liturgies. Liturgy, from this perspective, is a direct fruit of spiritual decline. Order and structure are connected with spiritual deadness; live worship is “casual and relaxed.”

But this time of celebration in Nehemiah 12 is anything but dead. The people aren’t just “going through the motions.” They aren’t just rattling the words off the top of their heads while they daydream about all the things they’d rather be doing. Listen to verse 43: “And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.” Rather than becoming a hindrance, the order of worship became a vehicle to express their joy. It enabled them to give thanks in ways they might not have considered on their own. Rather than functioning as a straitjacket, it set them free to express their joy in God’s presence.

Thomas Howard grew up in a prominent Evangelical family; his sister, Elizabeth Elliot, has written a number of influential books. In his book, Evangelical is Not Enough, he describes his experience of worshiping in the Church of England while he was a student. At first, he looked with some disdain at the Anglican Church, but later he had a change of heart. Listen to what he says about his struggle to develop a consistent prayer life: “For many years I had tried, intermittently, to gird up my loins and settle into a faithful manner of daily prayer. But two difficulties always ran my efforts onto the shoals. First, sooner or later I found that I was neglecting them because I did not feel in the mood to pray. And second, when I did address myself to prayer, I found that I ran out of things to say.... Evangelicalism had taught me the importance of prayer and had indeed taught me to pray. It had encouraged me to pray daily. But the impression I had formed was that one was more or less on one’s own here. The Holy Ghost would inspire me, and I would be able to pray” (pp. 69-71). He believed this, and he’d known people who seemed to develop a strong prayer life in this way. But it hadn’t worked for him, despite his best efforts.

Then he discovered the written prayers of Lancelot Andrewes, a 17th Century Anglican bishop who wrote, among other things, a series of daily prayers for each day of the week. So Howard began praying these each day, whether he felt like it or not. He says: “I cannot pretend that Andrewes’s order for private morning prayers has kept me steady from the moment I adopted it. But at least it has steered me away from those two sets of shoals. Like the worship at St. Andrew’s Church and Evening Prayer at the university chapel, it has taught me that one’s coming to God has nothing to do with how one feels. One simply makes the act of prayer. It is analogous to the Jews’ bringing their alms and sacrifices to the temple; you do it because that is what the people of God do. Moreover, in so doing, you discover that, far from being mere drab duty, it orders your life and undergirds it and gives it a rhythm” (p. 70). The order and structure in Nehemiah 12 provided a channel for the expression of their joy and gratitude in worship. The form wasn’t a hindrance; it freed them to worship God joyfully with an exuberance that could be heard far away.

Tradition, order and structure are not hindrances to true worship and celebration. Although Eugene Peterson grew up in a church that was hostile to written prayers, he later on made a discovery: “along the way, I began to come across books of prayers that gave me words to pray when I didn’t seem to have any of my own. I found that books of prayers sometimes primed the pump of prayer when I didn’t feel like praying. And I found that left to myself, I often prayed in a circle, too wrapped up in myself, too much confined to my immediate circumstances and feelings, and that a prayerbook was just the thing to get out of the brambles and underbrush of my ego, back out in the open country of the Kingdom, under the open skies of God. In the process of discovering, to my surprise, alive and praying friends in these books, I realized that all along the prayers that had most influenced me were written (in the Bible), and that the lively and spirited singing we did in church was, for the most part, praying from a book, the hymnbook. My world of prayer expanded” (Living the Message, p. 338).

We’re part of a Church that has been worshiping God for 21 centuries, and when we come together for worship, we join with all those in heaven and on earth that are worshiping in the name of Jesus Christ. We use contemporary elements in our worship, because God is still at work among His people and our worship needs to reflect this. But we also maintain our connection with the past; we have no right to do otherwise. There’s a great wealth of resources in the historic Church, and using them maintains a tangible connection with God’s people who’ve gone before us. God’s work didn’t begin last year, and it didn’t begin with us; we want our worship to reflect this awareness.

Our worship, like the worship of ancient Israel, needs to be strongly rooted in the past, in the apostolic tradition, which is embodied most purely in the New Testament, and then, in a secondary way, in the creeds and worship of the early Church. That’s why Scripture readings need to be a major emphasis in worship, and that’s why the pastoral prayers I write are adapted from the prayers of various people in the history of the Church. We’re not on our own; we’re worshiping as part of the body of Christ. God has done great things in His Church throughout the centuries, and He continues to be faithful in fulfilling His promises. Let’s join together in worshiping Him, not because doing so will give us goose bumps, or because we enjoy singing all the songs, but because He is worthy.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

A Concrete Plan for Obedience, Nehemiah 9:38-10:39

I heard a story once about two teachers who applied for the same job. One of them had been teaching in another school district for 20 years and was sure that she deserved the job. The other had just graduated from college, so she really had no classroom experience other than what she got as a student teacher. But, after interviewing both of them, the principle decided to hire the recent graduate. The first woman, the one with teaching experience, was indignant. She stormed into the principal’s office and demanded an explanation: “What do you think you’re doing? I have 20 years of experience!” And the principle replied, “no, you don’t have 20 years of experience; you have one year of teaching experience repeated 19 times.” She hadn’t grown over the past 20 years and had continued making the same mistakes over and over. Her experience wasn’t worth much.

I’ve known many Christians who have a similar problem with repentance. They attend revival meetings or spiritual life conferences and see that something is wrong in their spiritual lives. They become convicted of their lukewarmness, or nominalism, or persistent unfaithfulness and disobedience, so they respond by crying out to God for mercy. They’re very sincere in their prayers for help, and, while they’re in that setting, they genuinely desire to follow Jesus Christ. But then they go home and, because they don’t follow up on their repentance with concrete acts of obedience, they drift back into the same habits as before. This thing that happened to them hasn’t made any discernable difference in their lives. So, the next year they attend another set of revival meetings, or another conference. They think, “maybe it didn’t take last time; I’d better try again.” So they go through the whole thing again, with the same results. Year after year, they go forward at meetings and cry out for mercy and weep, asking God to change their hearts. But it never seems to make any difference.

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is a series of letters written by a senior demon to his nephew, giving advice on how to destroy the soul of his human victim. In one of the letters, the human victim has just had some sort of spiritual experience, so Screwtape gives this advice: “It remains to consider how we can retrieve this disaster. The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel” (pp. 60-61). As long as he doesn’t act on it, his repentance will do him no good. And, as he continues, year after year, thinking and feeling without acting, he’ll become increasingly dull and unable to act, and even unable to feel that there’s something wrong.

In chapter 9 we saw the Israelites crying out for mercy, repenting of their sins. But they’re not content with just feeling sorry for their sins and crying out for mercy. They’re determined to follow up now with a definite plan for obedience. They don’t want to get caught in the endless cycle persistent disobedience followed by shallow, inactive repentance. They recognize that repentance involves more than confession and sorrow over our sins.

Our picture of repentance tends to focus on the moment when we cry out for mercy and express sorrow for our sins. Repentance, from this perspective, is what we’re doing when we go forward in a revival meeting or when we get on our knees and ask God to forgive us and help us get our lives in order. Here’s a better description of repentance: “Repentance marks the starting-point of our journey. The Greek term metanoia... signifies primarily a ‘change of mind’. Correctly understood, repentance is not negative but positive. It means not self-pity or remorse but conversion, the re-centering of our whole life upon the Trinity. It is to look not backward with regret but forward with hope – not downwards at our own shortcomings but upwards at God’s love. It is to see, not what we have failed to be, but what by divine grace we can now become; and it is to act upon what we see. To repent is to open our eyes to the light. In this sense, repentance is not just a single act, an initial step, but a continuing state, an attitude of heart and will that needs to be ceaselessly renewed up to the end of life” (Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, pp. 113-14).

The Israelites realize that they’ve embarked on a journey. Their confession in chapter 9 is not an end in itself; through confession they’ve entered the right path, and now they need to walk on it. Having confessed their sins and cried out for mercy, they now take some concrete steps that will help them grow in obedience.

The first thing is that they recognize their own weakness. They recognize their fickleness and they know that unless they do something to counteract their natural tendencies they’ll fall back into the same sins as soon as their religious fervor dies out (and their religious fervor is going to die out sooner or later, no matter what they do). So they write out a binding agreement, to commit themselves to obedience in a tangible way. They recognize that it’s going to take more than a vague idea of “getting their lives in order” to enable them to live out their repentance. They write it out: “In view of all this, [the things they’ve been saying in God’s presence in the previous chapter] we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.” In a few weeks, when the immediate sense of urgency has passed, this binding agreement will still be there, calling them to obedience.

One of the things they’re counteracting here is the tendency to compartmentalize our faith. A man I knew who worked in the business department of a mission organization told me once about the difficulty of working with his supervisor. He had known this man in church before he came to work as business manager, and when he heard who’d been hired he thought, “it will be great to work for such a wonderful, godly man.” But it hadn’t turned out that way. This business manager, when he arrived on the job, had turned out to be demanding, critical, impossible to please, and difficult to work with. He seemed like a different person from the man he’d known at church. He’d compartmentalized his life. He was gracious and kind to people on Sunday morning, but at work, even doing work that revolved around the preaching of the gospel, he functioned with a different set of assumptions. The Israelites, by writing out this binding agreement, are fighting against this tendency to compartmentalize. They’re saying, “these things need to be translated into our daily lives; here are some concrete steps of obedience we plan to take.”

The second thing is that they recognize the power of bad habits. They realize their weakness, but they also realize that their conduct in the past is going to work against them. In verses 28-29, they state in general what their intention is: “all these now join their brothers the nobles, and bind themselves with a curse and an oath to follow the Law of God... and to obey carefully all the commands, regulations and decrees of the Lord our Lord.” But they don’t end with this general statement. They need to go further, because up till now they’ve allowed certain kinds of sins to flourish in the community. These bad habits that they’ve cultivated need to be addressed directly or they’ll be likely to slip back into them. So they enumerate these things in the rest of the chapter, verses 30-39. Verses 30&31 address the sins they’re going to stop committing: intermarrying with unbelieving nations and breaking the Sabbath; then, in verses 32-39, they list the things they’re going to start doing to avoid the sin of neglecting the house of God.

Our prayers of confession and repentance need to be translated into reality, and part of the process is thinking about how we’re going to resist the temptation to fall into the same sins we’ve cultivated in the past. Remember what Screwtape said: “Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will.” So we address those areas where we’ve allowed the weeds of sin to grow in our lives.

It begins with the negative: there are certain things that we need to stop doing. We confess our sin and cry out to God for help, then we begin taking steps to eliminate these things from our lives. Some of this is little more than common sense. Avoid those places that tend to draw you into sin; avoid relationships that pull you away from God and into sinful behavior; get rid of anything in your house that is causing you to sin. If cable TV is part of the problem, get rid of it. If the Internet is drawing you into sin, take some concrete steps to eliminate the temptation: move the computer into a public area, or, if necessary, cancel your internet service. Sometimes we need to be severe in eliminating things from our lives that are dragging us into sin. Jesus said: “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29). He’s saying that we’ll often have to go to drastic lengths in our repentance. There’s too much at stake here for us to quibble with God about the things we’re not willing to give up.

But the process is not only negative. We need to eliminate certain things from our lives, but the idea is not to create a vacuum. We say “no” to certain things, to make room for other things that God wants in our lives. For example, if sporting events are causing you to neglect your spiritual life, lay them aside for a while and use the time for prayer instead. If recreation has become an idol in your life, lay some of your activities aside and spend the time helping someone in the church, or visiting people who are sick. If you’ve become captivated by the sin of greed, begin giving more money away as a spiritual discipline and an act of repentance. Turn off the TV a little earlier in the evening, so that you can get out of bed in time for prayer in the morning. The point is that we’re not just eliminating sinful habits; we’re cultivating positive obedience. We begin with the general: “we’re going to begin ordering our lives in obedience to God;” but then we go on to spell out what this means: “we’re going to stop doing these things, and here are some things we’re going to do, some concrete acts of obedience.”

The third thing is that the Israelites here recognize their need for community. By entering into this binding agreement together, they’re recognizing that this isn’t something they’re able to do on their own. We saw, in chapter 9, that their confession is corporate in the largest sense, including the whole community and stretching even into the past. In the same way, they, as a body, are entering into this agreement. This obedience that they’re agreeing to is going to be worked out in the life of the community. None of them have to figure it out on their own. They’re committing themselves to support and encourage one another in cultivating a life of obedience.

We work out the details of our repentance and discipleship in the context of the Church. The author of Hebrews says: “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching” (10:24-25). We support one another and pray for one another and encourage one another to keep going when things are difficult. In the New Testament, the body of Christ is central to our discipleship. We live out our lives as followers of Jesus Christ in the context of the Church, where we find support, encouragement, prayer, and instruction from God’s Word.

When John the Baptist said to the Pharisees and Sadducees, “bear fruit worthy of repentance” (Matthew 3:8), he was thinking of repentance as more than a momentary feeling of remorse. He was thinking of repentance in the way we read earlier: “conversion, the re-centering of our whole life upon the Trinity.... It is to see, not what we have failed to be, but what by divine grace we can now become; and it is to act upon what we see.”

In living out our repentance, we’re conscious of our own weakness and fickleness. We realize that we’ll very quickly turn away if we try to depend on how we feel at the moment. We need to bind ourselves to obedience, like the Israelites did. We decide in advance that we’re going to gather for worship on Sunday morning, and then when we wake up and don’t feel like getting out of bed, we get up anyway. The decision has already been made, so we don’t lay in bed and deliberate about whether or not we’re going to give in to the temptation. We decide in advance that we’re going to cultivate a life of prayer and that we’re going to spend time meditating on God’s Word, and then we order our lives to make prayer and God’s Word a priority. We don’t wait until we feel like it; we make plans to bind ourselves to obedience. We do this because we’re weak, and because we know that unless we make a binding commitment in advance, we won’t follow through.

We’re also aware of the power of our bad habits, so we take account of these in planning for obedience. It’s easy to fall into a trap here. We determine that we’re going to be obedient, and we try with all our might. But we very quickly fail, so we cry out for mercy and then try again. And it doesn’t seem to matter how hard we try or how sincere we are. What we need is not a stronger effort. We need to train ourselves in obedience. We need to have a strategy for cultivating a life of obedience in the areas where we’ve failed in the past. We need a series of small steps that get us from where we are to where God is calling us to be.

And for that, we need the Church. We need the support and prayers of one another. We need fellow believers who will hold us accountable. We need the regular experience of corporate worship and prayer to nurture our faith. And we need the wisdom of the larger Church in developing a strategy for training ourselves in godliness; we can read books on Christian spirituality and prayer, or meet with a spiritual director who is able to give us guidance in cultivating a life of prayer and obedience. Or we can spend time talking to people we know who are serious about following the Lord. We need one another in this process, because we’re weak and fickle, and because it’s difficult to have a clear perspective about our own spiritual condition. We don’t want to repent of the same sins over and over for a lifetime without making any progress toward maturity, so we need to expend some effort and time in coming up with a concrete plan for cultivating a life of obedience. May God strengthen us to do this and to follow through on our plan until that day when we stand in His presence.