Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA
When I was five-years old, my family lived in Santa Rosa, California. We had nice sidewalks, and I remember riding my tricycle around the block, mostly standing on the back platform with one foot and pushing myself with the other. One day my mom came out to tell me it was time for a nap, and since I wasn’t ready to go inside I took off around the block. She didn’t chase after me, so I thought I was home free. But when I passed our house to start my second lap, she was waiting behind a hedge and grabbed me by the ears and escorted me inside. I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was; I had three older siblings, and my mom knew there was no need to waste energy running after me.
Being a responsible parent involves not giving too much freedom to a five-year old. But one of the difficulties of being a parent is knowing when to give up that kind of control. My mom did a good job of handing control over to me as I got older, but I’ve seen a lot of parents who haven’t been willing to do that. I used to attend church with a guy who was intent on protecting his kids from the influence of the world, even after they reached adulthood. He refused to have a computer or internet access in his home, and he pulled his kids out of any classes in the Christian home school co-op when he wasn’t comfortable with the reading assignments. He’s not intellectually curious, which is OK. But he’s also not comfortable allowing his kids to be intellectually curious. He inhabits a very small, restricted world and he wants his kids to do the same. But maintaining this involves exercising lots of control over the choices his children make as adults. I’ve seen a similar tendency among Christians who want to help others in need but, at the same time, are concerned that their help isn’t misused somehow. I vaguely remember a story about Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri in Switzerland saying that helping others involves some risk that we’ll be taken advantage of or that people will use our help in the wrong way. But he decided that it’s better to err on the side of taking that risk than on the side of dehumanizing people and robbing them of their dignity by trying to control how they make use of the help we provide.
The problem is that when we’re dealing with adults there’s always the possibility that they will do things we don’t agree with and don’t approve of. And when we help others, we give up control over the choices they make afterward. We are called to help others, whether as parents or as fellow human beings, but we’re not called to exercise control over them. In this parable we see a man parenting two very different sons and yet treating them both with dignity, grace and mercy. He gives them the freedom to not follow his plans and wishes, and then he shows patience, mercy and grace when they misuse their freedom.
The first thing to notice in this parable is that the father gives his younger son the freedom to ruin his life. The son approaches him and says, “Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.” The father is under no obligation to give in to this request; his son is saying, “I want my inheritance right now. I don’t want to wait until you die.” The father is taking too long to die, and the son wants to get on with his life. But his father give him his share (which would be 1/3 of the property, since the oldest brother received a double portion.
Then the son sells all the property and leaves for a distant country. He shows some degree of shamelessness in asking for his inheritance, but he’s still not willing to live the way he wants to in the presence of his family. So he leaves for a distant county. We often see the same kind of thing when people join the military or go off to college. They end up doing things they wouldn’t do when they felt the social constraints of being near family members.
So he does all the things he wanted to do when he was living at home. There’s no reason to think he was miserable the whole time. No doubt he had a lot of fun and enjoyed himself. But in the end, he ran out of money and was reduced to poverty. Then, having spent his whole inheritance, he had to hire himself out to make a living, and the only job he could find was feeding pigs (a very degrading job for a Jew, since pigs are unclean animals). But his job didn’t provide enough to really live on and he found himself wanting to eat the food he’s been giving to the pigs.
Getting what we want is often the worst thing that can happen to us. A song from The Eagles has this line, “What can you do when your dreams come true And it's not quite like you planned?” Things often don’t turn out in reality the way we imagine them. The younger son’s dreams have come true and it’s ruined his life. At this point, he has no hope for the future. He selfishly asked for his inheritance early and then wasted everything his father had worked for. His inheritance is gone and he has no reason to hope for anything more in the future. He’d probably made friends when he was freely spending money, but they’re all gone now. None of them are offering to help him in his poverty and hunger. He’s alone and poor in a distant country.
The second thing in this parable is that when the younger son returns – having ruined his life and hoping only to find work for his father as a hired servant – his father welcomes him back into the family. Up till now the son has been in survival mode, just trying to stay alive in this bad situation. There’s no evidence till now of real repentance. But Jesus says he “came to himself.” In being alienated from his father he has not really been himself, and he hasn’t been able to see things clearly. He’s been blinded up till now, but he comes to himself and realizes that he doesn’t need to remain where he is.
He sees his unworthiness and the foolishness of the choices he’s made. He realizes that he’s squandered everything that was given to him, and yet he knows that servants in his father’s home are better-off than he is, so he decides to return and ask to be admitted as a servant. John Newton’s great hymn “Amazing Grace” says “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” The younger son has been blind, but he comes to himself and is awakened to the truth of his condition and sees that he would be better-off as a servant in his father’s house than to remain where he is.
So he makes his way back home with a prepared speech: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” But his father sees him from a long way off – it seems that he’s been waiting and watching all this time – and runs to him, embraces and kisses him. So the son launches into his speech, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But that’s as far as he gets. His father isn’t even listening to what he says. Before he can ask to be treated as a hired servant, his father says, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.” All of these things mean that he is being readmitted as a full member of the family. None of these things would have been given to a paid servant.
And then he calls for a celebration, “bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” This son had ruined his life and had lost everything and yet his father received him with joy and welcomed him back into the family. But then the older brother returns from working in the fields and hears the commotion. So he asks a servant what is going on, and when he learns the truth he refuses to even enter the house.
The third thing to notice in this parable is that the father responds with patience and grace even to the jealousy of the older son. This son doesn’t come out looking very good in the story. Listen to how it reads in The Message: “The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!”
He’s been dutifully serving all these years, but there’s no joy in it. Have you ever known people like that? They’re concerned to maintain correct behavior, but there’s something lacking. There’s no joy in it. It’s not very attractive. He’s been building up resentment and anger and it all comes out at this point. He doesn’t even identify the younger son as his brother; it’s “this son of yours.” He points out that the younger brother has wasted the father’s property on prostitutes, but we’ve never actually been told that this is the case. It may be true, but it also may be true that this is how the older brother imagines things. Maybe this is what he would have done if he overcame his grim commitment to doing his duty. But in reality this man knows nothing of what his brother has gone through; he knows nothing of his brother’s genuine repentance. He’s like the Pharisees, whose grumbling led Jesus to tell this parable.
But the father responds to him also with grace and reminds him that the younger son is his brother. Here it is in The Message: “Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours – but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!” “All I have is yours,” because when he divided up the inheritance the older son would have received his double portion, 2/3 of the property, and that has not been spent.
He reminds the older son of who he is; he’s not just a son who hasn’t gotten everything he wants, and this should not be the thing that defines him. He’s the older brother of a man who has been lost to the family until now and has been through an extremely difficult experience. Yes, it’s through his own fault, but he’s returned in genuine repentance and this man needs to acknowledge him as a brother, a part of the family. So the father reminds him of who he is and reminds him of the importance of his relationship with his younger brother.
The point of this parable is to correct the Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling because Jesus associated with sinners. Their perspective on God is primarily legal, and they see themselves as people who are in God’s favor because of their legal observance. They’re like the older brother; there’s no joy in their obedience and they can’t even recognize it when they see others repenting or their sins. A.W. Tozer said, “Nothing twists and deforms the soul more than low or unworthy conception of God” (“God is Easy to Live With,” in The Root of the Righteous, p. 13). They have a low, unworthy conception of God which is twisting and deforming their souls, but even so Jesus, in this parable, offers them grace to return in repentance to a loving and merciful Father.
Tozer goes on to say, “Much Christianity since the days of Christ’s flesh has… been grim and severe. And the cause has been the same – an unworthy or an inadequate view of God. Instinctively we try to be like our God, and if He is conceived to be stern and exacting, so will we ourselves be” (p. 14). Both the younger son before he left and the older son as he remained home had an unworthy view of their father. The Pharisees and scribes have an unworthy view of God, which is why Jesus tells this parable. Tozer says this about God: “God is the sum of all patience and the essence of kindly good will. We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything and loves us still” (p. 16). During this Lenten season, let’s remind ourselves often that God is like the patient, loving father in this parable and let’s cast ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Joseph, His Brothers, and God, Genesis 45:3-15
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
State College, PA
One Sunday after worship, in the church I pastored near Philadelphia, I found a note on my desk from a church member. Donna and her husband attended most Sundays but I really didn’t know either of them well (except I knew that she loved our black lab). The note told me that she had received a very frightening diagnosis that week and asked for prayer. So that week a few of us from church went to her home and prayed with her. Then, in the following months I saw her regularly, first in her home and later in the hospital.
After many weeks in the hospital, she told me that she had never been baptized. She had grown up in the church, but this denomination only saw baptism as a public testimony and nothing more; so it had never seemed terribly important. But now she found herself wanting to be baptized, so we had a baptismal service in her hospital room. That night, knowing that she had been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, she went to sleep and never regained consciousness; she was kept on life support for some time at her husband’s insistence, but really this was the end for her; once the life support was removed, her heart stopped. But knowing that she had been baptized enabled her to stop fighting and let go.
When she first received the news of her cancer diagnosis she was terrified. But God was with her and was preparing her for the end of her life. God was present with her in ways she didn’t expect, in ways she never would have chosen for herself. This is the thing we can see clearly in the story of Joseph: God is at work in ways we can’t see, even in the midst of difficult and overwhelming experiences, things we would never choose to go through.
The first thing we can see in this passage is that Joseph shows mercy and grace to those who have wronged him. Joseph had plenty of reason to take vengeance on his brothers and was in a position to do anything he wanted to them. But he didn’t.
His brothers had hated him growing up, first because he was his father’s favorite (and his father made no attempt to disguise this). Genesis 37:4 says “when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.” Then, to make matters worse, Joseph had a series of dreams in which the other members of his family bowed down to him (and for some reason he thought it was a good idea to report these dreams to them). His brothers respond, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” And the author says “So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words” (37:8).
He was the favorite, and his father sent him into the fields to check on them and bring a report back to their father. But when his brothers saw him coming they conspired to kill him. They said, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams” (37:19-20). So they grab him, take away the special robe his father gave him and throw him into a well. Later a band of Ishmaelites comes by and they decide to sell him to them as a slave and then dip his robe in blood to convince their father that he has been killed.
Joseph is taken to Egypt, where a rich man named Potiphar buys him. And the author says “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man” (39:2). He ends up running the household until Potiphar’s wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce him and then lies about it, telling her husband that he tried to rape her. So, even though the Lord is with him, Joseph is thrown into prison, where the author reports again, “But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer” (39:21).
This story doesn’t sound like the kind of thing we expect when we hear that God is with someone. Joseph certainly wouldn’t have chosen for his life to go in this way. But later, through his ability to interpret dreams, he ends up being taken out of prison and becomes second only to Pharaoh, and in our passage his brothers have come to him for help, not yet having any idea who he really is. And then, when he makes himself known to them they are, with very good reason, terrified. It’s been years now since they sold him into slavery, and they have no reason to expect anything other than vengeance.
How could Joseph forgive his brothers after all they’ve done to him? If he, in all the intervening years, had been cultivating a spirit of resentment and hopes for vengeance, this is what he would be reaping now. Instead, he’s been cultivating an awareness of God’s presence and blessing in his life despite all the things that have happened to him. So when the moment arrives when he could take vengeance, he does just the opposite and shows them mercy. Caesarius of Arles, writing in the early 6th century, says this: “When he saw his brothers, or rather enemies in his brothers, he gave evidence of the affection of his love by his pious grief when he wanted to be recognized by them…. He did not recall that pit into which he had been thrown to be murdered; he did not think of himself, a brother, sold for a price. Instead, by returning good for evil, even then he fulfilled the precepts of the apostles that were not yet given. Therefore, by considering the sweetness of true charity, blessed Joseph, with God’s help, was eager to repel from his heart the poison of envy with which he knew his brothers had been struck” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament volume 2, p. 292).
The second thing in this passage is that Joseph recognizes the importance of the community of faith, the people of Israel. He’s not only thinking of himself and his own plans and priorities. His concern about the community of faith affects the way orders his life and makes decisions. He recognizes that God is using him in his present position to preserve his people. He says “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors” (v. 7).
It’s easy, in a story like this where we’re only given an outline of events, to think things were easier for Joseph than they were, to think that his godliness and awareness of God’s presence in his life somehow kept him from feeling the pain we’d expect if these things happened to us. But we’re given a few glimpses that help us see he has not had an easy time, that he hasn’t just sailed through, smiling and rejoicing in God’s constant care. When his brothers are talking among themselves, before he makes himself known to them, they say “Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen” (42:21). They saw his anguish; he pleaded with them not to do what they were doing.
While he’s in prison he tells a fellow prisoner “I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon” 40:15). Then, even after he’s been released from prison and is second in power to Pharaoh, he names his first child Manasseh, “’For’, he said, ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’” (41:51). His second child he names Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (41:52). Joseph has experienced overwhelming loss and sorrow in the years since his brothers sold him into slavery, and even now as one of the most powerful people in the world he sees Egypt as the land of his affliction.
But even so, through all these years of suffering, he’s been cultivating an awareness of God’s priorities and of His love for His people. That’s why, in this moment with his brothers he is able to say “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth.”
The third thing here is that Joseph knows that God is at work even when he can’t see it. “So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (v. 8). Those dreams Joseph had been given when he was young, still living with his family in Canaan, were fulfilled despite years when it looked like the exact opposite was happening. His brothers had said, “let us see what becomes of his dreams,” but they were powerless to prevent God’s purposes from being fulfilled. John Calvin says this, commenting on these verses: “This is a remarkable passage, in which we are taught that the right course of events is never so disturbed by the depravity and wickedness of men, but that God can direct them to a good end” (Commentary, vol. 1, p. 377).
This is commonly called the doctrine of providence, the idea that God is sovereignly working out His purposes in the world despite the intentions of His creatures. Paul has a clear statement of God’s providence in Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Not that all things are good, but that God, our great King, is able to so overrule and work in all things that He is able to bring good even out of evil things. Joseph’s brothers were guilty of a great crime in selling him into slavery, and yet Joseph is able to see God overruling their evil intentions and bringing good out of what they did to him. Joseph is able to forgive them, but they are still guilty before God unless they turn to Him in repentance, crying out for mercy.
I once heard George Verwer, the founder of the mission Anne and I worked with in the late 70’s and early 80’s, preaching about God’s providence. He said he had been reading The Mystery of Providence by the 17th century Puritan John Flavel when he tried to enter the train station and found the door was locked. His response was “oh great, some jerk isn’t doing his job and now I have to walk all the way around the station and I’ll probably miss my train.” So he started walking and encountered a young man who saw a book he was carrying and said “hey, I know that book.” Well, the book he saw happened to be one written by George himself and it turned out that they ended up having a very good and profitable conversation. But they wouldn’t have had that conversation if some jerk hadn’t forgotten to unlock the door; God was at work providing that young man with a conversation that he needed at that point. But George pointed out that his first reaction was to completely forget what he had been reading in John Flavel’s book. Joseph had been cultivating an awareness of God’s providence, and because of this was able to say to his brothers, “do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life…. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”
So how can we respond to all this? First, know that God calls us to show mercy and grace to those who’ve wronged us. We see Jesus doing this even as He’s being crucified, when he says “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.” We see the same thing with Stephen when he is being stoned. Knowing all that God has done in forgiving us, we’re called to forgive others in the same way. This doesn’t come naturally and we can’t do it by an effort of our will. But what we can do is be aware of what kinds of seeds we’re sowing, what we are cultivating. If we cultivate resentment and bitterness, we won’t be able to forgive when the time comes. I knew a man several years ago who exemplified this. He was angry at life. He had been obsessed with Elvis and then Elvis had died. Later he had been obsessed with Dale Earnhart, who was killed in a racecar accident. I actually heard him say once, “they took Elvis and now they’ve taken Dale away from me.” I didn’t ask who “they” were, but during the time I knew him he was shriveled and turned in on himself. The things he had been cultivating had diminished him as a person; if he had been in Joseph’s place I don’t think forgiveness would have even occurred to him. He’d been sowing bad seeds all his life and was reaping the fruits of them. We need to be aware of what we’re cultivating in our lives.
Next, God wants us to recognize the importance of the community of faith. We live in a very individualistic society, and this kind of thinking doesn’t come natural. We read instructions in the New Testament as if they were written to us individually, but most of the things written in the Epistles are written in the second-person plural, addressed to groups of believers. We need to remind ourselves that God is at work in the Church preparing a bride for His Son.
And lastly, we need to cultivate an awareness that God is at work in ways we can’t see, that He is even doing things we could never imagine. The things that happened in Joseph’s life were horrible, and when he was going through them there’s no way he could have seen how it would all turn out. We need to remind ourselves of this often, that God is doing things we can’t see and that His purposes are good.
All these things, showing mercy and grace to those who’ve wronged us, recognizing the importance of the community of faith, and knowing that God is at work in ways we can’t see, flow from a living encounter with Jesus Christ. In Him we find mercy for our failures and grace to grow and become the people He has called us to be. And in the presence of Jesus, we’re enabled to believe and trust that He is working in all things to fulfil His purposes.
One Sunday after worship, in the church I pastored near Philadelphia, I found a note on my desk from a church member. Donna and her husband attended most Sundays but I really didn’t know either of them well (except I knew that she loved our black lab). The note told me that she had received a very frightening diagnosis that week and asked for prayer. So that week a few of us from church went to her home and prayed with her. Then, in the following months I saw her regularly, first in her home and later in the hospital.
After many weeks in the hospital, she told me that she had never been baptized. She had grown up in the church, but this denomination only saw baptism as a public testimony and nothing more; so it had never seemed terribly important. But now she found herself wanting to be baptized, so we had a baptismal service in her hospital room. That night, knowing that she had been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, she went to sleep and never regained consciousness; she was kept on life support for some time at her husband’s insistence, but really this was the end for her; once the life support was removed, her heart stopped. But knowing that she had been baptized enabled her to stop fighting and let go.
When she first received the news of her cancer diagnosis she was terrified. But God was with her and was preparing her for the end of her life. God was present with her in ways she didn’t expect, in ways she never would have chosen for herself. This is the thing we can see clearly in the story of Joseph: God is at work in ways we can’t see, even in the midst of difficult and overwhelming experiences, things we would never choose to go through.
The first thing we can see in this passage is that Joseph shows mercy and grace to those who have wronged him. Joseph had plenty of reason to take vengeance on his brothers and was in a position to do anything he wanted to them. But he didn’t.
His brothers had hated him growing up, first because he was his father’s favorite (and his father made no attempt to disguise this). Genesis 37:4 says “when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.” Then, to make matters worse, Joseph had a series of dreams in which the other members of his family bowed down to him (and for some reason he thought it was a good idea to report these dreams to them). His brothers respond, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” And the author says “So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words” (37:8).
He was the favorite, and his father sent him into the fields to check on them and bring a report back to their father. But when his brothers saw him coming they conspired to kill him. They said, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams” (37:19-20). So they grab him, take away the special robe his father gave him and throw him into a well. Later a band of Ishmaelites comes by and they decide to sell him to them as a slave and then dip his robe in blood to convince their father that he has been killed.
Joseph is taken to Egypt, where a rich man named Potiphar buys him. And the author says “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man” (39:2). He ends up running the household until Potiphar’s wife tries unsuccessfully to seduce him and then lies about it, telling her husband that he tried to rape her. So, even though the Lord is with him, Joseph is thrown into prison, where the author reports again, “But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love; he gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer” (39:21).
This story doesn’t sound like the kind of thing we expect when we hear that God is with someone. Joseph certainly wouldn’t have chosen for his life to go in this way. But later, through his ability to interpret dreams, he ends up being taken out of prison and becomes second only to Pharaoh, and in our passage his brothers have come to him for help, not yet having any idea who he really is. And then, when he makes himself known to them they are, with very good reason, terrified. It’s been years now since they sold him into slavery, and they have no reason to expect anything other than vengeance.
How could Joseph forgive his brothers after all they’ve done to him? If he, in all the intervening years, had been cultivating a spirit of resentment and hopes for vengeance, this is what he would be reaping now. Instead, he’s been cultivating an awareness of God’s presence and blessing in his life despite all the things that have happened to him. So when the moment arrives when he could take vengeance, he does just the opposite and shows them mercy. Caesarius of Arles, writing in the early 6th century, says this: “When he saw his brothers, or rather enemies in his brothers, he gave evidence of the affection of his love by his pious grief when he wanted to be recognized by them…. He did not recall that pit into which he had been thrown to be murdered; he did not think of himself, a brother, sold for a price. Instead, by returning good for evil, even then he fulfilled the precepts of the apostles that were not yet given. Therefore, by considering the sweetness of true charity, blessed Joseph, with God’s help, was eager to repel from his heart the poison of envy with which he knew his brothers had been struck” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament volume 2, p. 292).
The second thing in this passage is that Joseph recognizes the importance of the community of faith, the people of Israel. He’s not only thinking of himself and his own plans and priorities. His concern about the community of faith affects the way orders his life and makes decisions. He recognizes that God is using him in his present position to preserve his people. He says “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors” (v. 7).
It’s easy, in a story like this where we’re only given an outline of events, to think things were easier for Joseph than they were, to think that his godliness and awareness of God’s presence in his life somehow kept him from feeling the pain we’d expect if these things happened to us. But we’re given a few glimpses that help us see he has not had an easy time, that he hasn’t just sailed through, smiling and rejoicing in God’s constant care. When his brothers are talking among themselves, before he makes himself known to them, they say “Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen” (42:21). They saw his anguish; he pleaded with them not to do what they were doing.
While he’s in prison he tells a fellow prisoner “I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon” 40:15). Then, even after he’s been released from prison and is second in power to Pharaoh, he names his first child Manasseh, “’For’, he said, ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’” (41:51). His second child he names Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (41:52). Joseph has experienced overwhelming loss and sorrow in the years since his brothers sold him into slavery, and even now as one of the most powerful people in the world he sees Egypt as the land of his affliction.
But even so, through all these years of suffering, he’s been cultivating an awareness of God’s priorities and of His love for His people. That’s why, in this moment with his brothers he is able to say “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth.”
The third thing here is that Joseph knows that God is at work even when he can’t see it. “So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (v. 8). Those dreams Joseph had been given when he was young, still living with his family in Canaan, were fulfilled despite years when it looked like the exact opposite was happening. His brothers had said, “let us see what becomes of his dreams,” but they were powerless to prevent God’s purposes from being fulfilled. John Calvin says this, commenting on these verses: “This is a remarkable passage, in which we are taught that the right course of events is never so disturbed by the depravity and wickedness of men, but that God can direct them to a good end” (Commentary, vol. 1, p. 377).
This is commonly called the doctrine of providence, the idea that God is sovereignly working out His purposes in the world despite the intentions of His creatures. Paul has a clear statement of God’s providence in Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Not that all things are good, but that God, our great King, is able to so overrule and work in all things that He is able to bring good even out of evil things. Joseph’s brothers were guilty of a great crime in selling him into slavery, and yet Joseph is able to see God overruling their evil intentions and bringing good out of what they did to him. Joseph is able to forgive them, but they are still guilty before God unless they turn to Him in repentance, crying out for mercy.
I once heard George Verwer, the founder of the mission Anne and I worked with in the late 70’s and early 80’s, preaching about God’s providence. He said he had been reading The Mystery of Providence by the 17th century Puritan John Flavel when he tried to enter the train station and found the door was locked. His response was “oh great, some jerk isn’t doing his job and now I have to walk all the way around the station and I’ll probably miss my train.” So he started walking and encountered a young man who saw a book he was carrying and said “hey, I know that book.” Well, the book he saw happened to be one written by George himself and it turned out that they ended up having a very good and profitable conversation. But they wouldn’t have had that conversation if some jerk hadn’t forgotten to unlock the door; God was at work providing that young man with a conversation that he needed at that point. But George pointed out that his first reaction was to completely forget what he had been reading in John Flavel’s book. Joseph had been cultivating an awareness of God’s providence, and because of this was able to say to his brothers, “do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life…. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”
So how can we respond to all this? First, know that God calls us to show mercy and grace to those who’ve wronged us. We see Jesus doing this even as He’s being crucified, when he says “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.” We see the same thing with Stephen when he is being stoned. Knowing all that God has done in forgiving us, we’re called to forgive others in the same way. This doesn’t come naturally and we can’t do it by an effort of our will. But what we can do is be aware of what kinds of seeds we’re sowing, what we are cultivating. If we cultivate resentment and bitterness, we won’t be able to forgive when the time comes. I knew a man several years ago who exemplified this. He was angry at life. He had been obsessed with Elvis and then Elvis had died. Later he had been obsessed with Dale Earnhart, who was killed in a racecar accident. I actually heard him say once, “they took Elvis and now they’ve taken Dale away from me.” I didn’t ask who “they” were, but during the time I knew him he was shriveled and turned in on himself. The things he had been cultivating had diminished him as a person; if he had been in Joseph’s place I don’t think forgiveness would have even occurred to him. He’d been sowing bad seeds all his life and was reaping the fruits of them. We need to be aware of what we’re cultivating in our lives.
Next, God wants us to recognize the importance of the community of faith. We live in a very individualistic society, and this kind of thinking doesn’t come natural. We read instructions in the New Testament as if they were written to us individually, but most of the things written in the Epistles are written in the second-person plural, addressed to groups of believers. We need to remind ourselves that God is at work in the Church preparing a bride for His Son.
And lastly, we need to cultivate an awareness that God is at work in ways we can’t see, that He is even doing things we could never imagine. The things that happened in Joseph’s life were horrible, and when he was going through them there’s no way he could have seen how it would all turn out. We need to remind ourselves of this often, that God is doing things we can’t see and that His purposes are good.
All these things, showing mercy and grace to those who’ve wronged us, recognizing the importance of the community of faith, and knowing that God is at work in ways we can’t see, flow from a living encounter with Jesus Christ. In Him we find mercy for our failures and grace to grow and become the people He has called us to be. And in the presence of Jesus, we’re enabled to believe and trust that He is working in all things to fulfil His purposes.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
The Word Became Flesh, John 1:1-18
Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA
In the summer of 1985, I took the Graduate Record Exams, the graduate school equivalent of the SAT’s. I was only taking the general exam, so I was there for half a day, but some people had subject exams in the afternoon also. I like studying and thinking about ideas, but taking the GRE’s was a thoroughly hateful experience. During the break, a guy standing next to me (who was also taking a test in the afternoon) said, “I can’t believe I paid so much money to be so miserable for the whole day.” I did reasonably well (except for the math), but I hated it and was glad to have it over with. I was glad to be able to put it behind me. I think some people feel that way about Christmas by this time. Especially if you don’t set some time aside to seek the Lord during Advent, the pressure of the season can be overwhelming. By now you may be sick of Christmas music and ready to pack everything in the attic until next year.
Really, though, on the Church calendar the Christmas season only began yesterday. In stores, the Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving (or maybe even Halloween), and it all leads up to Christmas day; after that, it’s over. In the Church, we’ve been observing Advent, a time of preparation for Christmas. Advent is not part of the Christmas season; it’s a time of preparation for the Christmas season in the same way that Lent is a preparation for the Easter season. The Christmas season goes from Christmas day until Epiphany, which is on January 6th. The point of this is that we have some time to celebrate the Incarnation. If Christmas day goes by in a blur, the season isn’t over. You may be sick and tired of “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” and I don’t blame you if you’re ready to give him a rest. But don’t let your weariness with our cultural celebrations rob you of an opportunity to meditate on the Incarnation. That’s the thing John is writing about in this prologue to his gospel: Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; the promise of Immanuel, “God with us,” has been fulfilled. God has “raised up for us a mighty Savior.”
The first thing John wants us to know is that this Savior God has raised up for us is fully divine (vv. 1-5). Notice that He doesn’t start out, “in the beginning the Word came to be.” He says, “In the beginning was the Word;” the New English Bible translates it in this way: “When all things began, the Word already was.” He wants us to know that there has never been a time when the Word did not exist. He also wants us to know that the Word is a distinct Person: “the Word was with God.” In the beginning, when creation began, God and the Word were there together. And he wants us to know that the Word is fully divine: “The Word was God.” This Word of God, which he introduces in verse 1, is eternal and divine, and is a distinct person within the being of God.
Do you ever wonder why there’s so much bother about theology? Does it all really matter? Isn’t it enough to simply believe the gospel and seek to live in obedience to God? We need to know that theology hasn’t arisen in a vacuum. Theology didn’t come about because some people in the Church didn’t have enough to keep them busy (an accusation that I’ve heard, from time to time). It was developed in response to false teachings. Arius was an influential Church leader in the fourth century who argued, with great intellectual ability and persuasiveness, against the deity of Jesus Christ. He believed the Word was a created being, that there was a time when He did not exist. He rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three distinct persons within the One God. Only God the Father, in his view, has existed from eternity. He was committed to the unity of God, and the doctrine of the Trinity seemed inconsistent with that, so he rejected it. It didn’t make any sense to him.
The Church responded by gathering in councils which discussed the subject then formulated creeds, definitive statements to safeguard the teaching of Scripture. These creeds don’t explain how God can be One God and Three Persons at the same time. They don’t try to give us a philosophical justification for the teaching of Scripture. They give us parameters, or boundaries. They allow room for mystery, and they set forth, in an orderly way, what Scripture says. They leave room for mystery, since there’s much in Scripture that’s beyond our understanding, but they also protect us from error. They’ve grown out of much study, discussion and prayer; and they’re the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work in guiding His people into all truth. Here’s the beginning of the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the Father, By whom all things were made: Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man....” It doesn’t explain; it simply states in an ordered way the New Testament teaching about the unity and diversity in the nature of God.
That’s the first thing John makes clear in these verses: the Savior, whose birth we are celebrating right now, is God. He so carefully piles one idea on top of another that there’s no way we can miss it. The only way to miss the truth of these verses is to be indoctrinated in false teachings, like those of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the only way to sustain that kind of falsehood is to close our eyes to many of the things that are said in Scripture. The Jehovah’s Witnesses try to solve the problem by a faulty translation of verse 1. They translate it: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a god.” We don’t need to go into a discussion of why this is a wrong translation. It is a faulty translation of the Greek text, but completely apart from any consideration of Greek grammar, this is an impossible understanding of what John is saying. How can the Word be a created being (which is what they’re trying to support by this translation) when John says that “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made”? He says it both positively and negatively to make sure there’s no misunderstanding. He can’t be a created being and the Creator of all things at the same time.
But, having established his first point, John also wants us to know that our Savior is fully human. He makes this clear in verses 10-18, especially verse 14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Good News Bible translates very simply and clearly: “The Word became a human being and lived among us.”
In the early centuries of the Church, there were teachers who went too far on one side or the other. There were those who taught that Jesus was God, but that He didn’t really become human in the fullest sense. That teaching was called Docetism, from the Greek word for “seem,“ meaning that Jesus only seemed to be human. There were all sorts of variations on this, but the basic teaching was to so emphasize Jesus divinity that they denied (or sometimes simply neglected) His humanity. This is the opposite extreme from Arianism, which saw Him as a created being and denied His full divinity.
Why is this important? Why do we need to hold both of these truths in tension? For one thing, we only know God as He reveals Himself, and this is what He has revealed. We need to humble ourselves before God’s self-revelation. It shouldn’t surprise us that there are things about God that are beyond our grasp. The fact that we can’t explain it all, that there are large areas of mystery, isn’t really a problem. Rather than saying, “I can’t understand all this; it must not be very important,” or “this doesn’t make sense; it must be false,” God calls us to bow before Him in wonder and awe, being humbled by the mysteries that confront us in the gospel. The proper response to mystery is worship. Here’s an example of awe-inspired worship before the wonder of God’s self-revelation:
God reveals His presence:
Let us now adore Him,
And with awe appear before Him.
God is in His temple:
All within keep silence,
Prostrate lie with deepest reverence.
Him alone
God we own,
Him our God and Saviour:
Praise His Name for ever!
(Gerhard Tersteegen, quoted by A.W. Tozer,
The Christian Book of Mystical Verse, p. 60).
The proper response to the mysteries revealed in this first chapter of John’s gospel is to fall on our faces in worship. There’s much here that we can’t grasp, that we’ll never fully grasp in this life. But we’re not called to unravel the mysteries of God. We’re called to humble ourselves and bow before Him in worship.
But it’s not all mystery. There’s much we can’t grasp, but the main function of the doctrine of the Incarnation is not to conceal things behind a shroud of mystery. In the Incarnation we see God revealed; we learn things about Him that we could never know otherwise. Verse 18 says: “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” The word translated “made him known,” is an interesting one to use here. It means “to explain.” When Cornelius received a vision telling him to send for Peter, he called some of his servants and “He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa” (Acts 10:8). The same word is in Acts 15. In the Council at Jerusalem, those assembled heard “Paul and Barnabas telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them” (Acts 15:12). A few chapters later, when Paul arrived in Jerusalem he “reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.” The word is exegeomai, which our word “exegesis” is taken from. What Jesus does, as the Incarnate Word of God, is show us what God is like. Exegesis is studying Scripture to understand what is there, trying to grasp its meaning (rather than putting our own ideas into it). Jesus exegetes the Eternal God for us. He explains Him for us. He gives us a picture of what God is like.
That’s the point the author of Hebrews is making in the first chapter of his letter: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (1:1-3). Jesus, being fully divine and fully human, is able to make God known to us in ways we never could have grasped otherwise. John wants us to know that this person he’s describing is absolutely unique. There is no one else like Him, nor will there ever be. He’s not just an outstanding religious teacher. He’s the eternal Second Person of the Trinity, who of His own gracious will has become a man, so that we, who have never seen God, can know Him.
There’s been much controversy, over the centuries, about Christian art and whether it’s proper to use pictures as an aid to meditation and prayer. Those who argue against this kind of art appeal to the Old Testament prohibition against images: “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Exodus 20:4). They argue that any devotional use of images violates this commandment. John of Damascus, who lived in the eighth century (when this topic was being hotly debated), agreed that this command forbids any attempt to create a visual image of the invisible God. For example, one of the most famous scenes from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, by Michelangelo, is the creation of Adam. God is painted as an old man with a grey beard, sitting on top of a cloud; He’s reaching down pointing his finger, and on the ground is the newly-created Adam. I suspect John of Damascus would have said that Michelangelo, who was a genuine believer, shouldn’t have done this, that portraying the invisible God in a visible form is a violation of the commandment.
But that’s not all he said. He also argued that the Incarnation has made a significant change in this area. It’s still wrong to try to draw or paint the invisible and infinite God, but since God has appeared in the flesh, some images are acceptable: “In former times God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take his abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter” (quoted by Solrunn Nes, The Mystical Language of Icons, p. 15). Paintings from the earthly ministry of Jesus can be helpful to us in meditating on Scripture. We don’t worship these things; that would be idolatry. We use them to help us visualize what it might have been like to be in the presence of God Incarnate, and to remind ourselves that Jesus didn’t shed His humanity at the Ascension. The One who is seated at the right hand of God the Father, representing us as our Advocate, is still human. God has been revealed in human form. In the Incarnation we see things about God that we never would have seen otherwise. Christian art can help us grasp this more fully and can be a great help in focusing our minds for meditation and prayer.
Why does John begin his gospel in this way? Why does he begin with theology, rather than giving us something we can immediately apply to our lives? I’ve often heard people say, “I’m not interested in all that stuff; just tell me what I’m supposed to do.” But John’s primary concern is not to tell us how to live in this world. He’s not writing to help us get out of debt, or become better employees (or employers), and he’s also not writing to satisfy our curiosity about what kinds of things Jesus did as a young boy. John’s primary concern is with our relationship with God. Walking with God has implications for how we order our lives in this world, but the starting point is always with God Himself. We need to know Him and what He has done to provide for our salvation. And to know the truth about God’s salvation, there are certain things we need to know about Jesus, our Savior. We need to know that He is God, and that He is man at the same time. We need to know that when we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. God doesn’t seem to be interested in making respectable people out of us. We may flounder all our lives in many areas. What He wants to do is make godly people of us. John says many things in this book which will help us in this direction, but we need to know these things he says in the opening verses, otherwise we won’t possibly understand the things that Jesus says and does.
The point of this Christmas season is to remind us of the Incarnation. The Word has become flesh and has lived among us. But it’s not just a nice story that we think about for awhile and then put away until it comes around again next year. This isn’t one of the things that we store in the attic. It’s also not just a truth that we review this time of year to make sure we’ve got it all right. Jesus Christ, whose birth we are celebrating, is our life. The point of this season is to take a fresh look at Him so that we will continue cultivating His fellowship throughout the year. If we’ve grown lukewarm, this is a time to renew our commitment to seek Him. Listen to these words by John of the Cross: “We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides. For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God” (quoted in The Liturgy of the Hours, vol. 1, p. 1246). The point of this Christmas season is to remember, and give thanks for, the Incarnation. And then, having seen what an unspeakable gift God has given us, we begin anew to “dig deeply in Christ,” for “in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God.”
State College, PA
In the summer of 1985, I took the Graduate Record Exams, the graduate school equivalent of the SAT’s. I was only taking the general exam, so I was there for half a day, but some people had subject exams in the afternoon also. I like studying and thinking about ideas, but taking the GRE’s was a thoroughly hateful experience. During the break, a guy standing next to me (who was also taking a test in the afternoon) said, “I can’t believe I paid so much money to be so miserable for the whole day.” I did reasonably well (except for the math), but I hated it and was glad to have it over with. I was glad to be able to put it behind me. I think some people feel that way about Christmas by this time. Especially if you don’t set some time aside to seek the Lord during Advent, the pressure of the season can be overwhelming. By now you may be sick of Christmas music and ready to pack everything in the attic until next year.
Really, though, on the Church calendar the Christmas season only began yesterday. In stores, the Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving (or maybe even Halloween), and it all leads up to Christmas day; after that, it’s over. In the Church, we’ve been observing Advent, a time of preparation for Christmas. Advent is not part of the Christmas season; it’s a time of preparation for the Christmas season in the same way that Lent is a preparation for the Easter season. The Christmas season goes from Christmas day until Epiphany, which is on January 6th. The point of this is that we have some time to celebrate the Incarnation. If Christmas day goes by in a blur, the season isn’t over. You may be sick and tired of “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” and I don’t blame you if you’re ready to give him a rest. But don’t let your weariness with our cultural celebrations rob you of an opportunity to meditate on the Incarnation. That’s the thing John is writing about in this prologue to his gospel: Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; the promise of Immanuel, “God with us,” has been fulfilled. God has “raised up for us a mighty Savior.”
The first thing John wants us to know is that this Savior God has raised up for us is fully divine (vv. 1-5). Notice that He doesn’t start out, “in the beginning the Word came to be.” He says, “In the beginning was the Word;” the New English Bible translates it in this way: “When all things began, the Word already was.” He wants us to know that there has never been a time when the Word did not exist. He also wants us to know that the Word is a distinct Person: “the Word was with God.” In the beginning, when creation began, God and the Word were there together. And he wants us to know that the Word is fully divine: “The Word was God.” This Word of God, which he introduces in verse 1, is eternal and divine, and is a distinct person within the being of God.
Do you ever wonder why there’s so much bother about theology? Does it all really matter? Isn’t it enough to simply believe the gospel and seek to live in obedience to God? We need to know that theology hasn’t arisen in a vacuum. Theology didn’t come about because some people in the Church didn’t have enough to keep them busy (an accusation that I’ve heard, from time to time). It was developed in response to false teachings. Arius was an influential Church leader in the fourth century who argued, with great intellectual ability and persuasiveness, against the deity of Jesus Christ. He believed the Word was a created being, that there was a time when He did not exist. He rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three distinct persons within the One God. Only God the Father, in his view, has existed from eternity. He was committed to the unity of God, and the doctrine of the Trinity seemed inconsistent with that, so he rejected it. It didn’t make any sense to him.
The Church responded by gathering in councils which discussed the subject then formulated creeds, definitive statements to safeguard the teaching of Scripture. These creeds don’t explain how God can be One God and Three Persons at the same time. They don’t try to give us a philosophical justification for the teaching of Scripture. They give us parameters, or boundaries. They allow room for mystery, and they set forth, in an orderly way, what Scripture says. They leave room for mystery, since there’s much in Scripture that’s beyond our understanding, but they also protect us from error. They’ve grown out of much study, discussion and prayer; and they’re the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s work in guiding His people into all truth. Here’s the beginning of the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the Father, By whom all things were made: Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man....” It doesn’t explain; it simply states in an ordered way the New Testament teaching about the unity and diversity in the nature of God.
That’s the first thing John makes clear in these verses: the Savior, whose birth we are celebrating right now, is God. He so carefully piles one idea on top of another that there’s no way we can miss it. The only way to miss the truth of these verses is to be indoctrinated in false teachings, like those of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the only way to sustain that kind of falsehood is to close our eyes to many of the things that are said in Scripture. The Jehovah’s Witnesses try to solve the problem by a faulty translation of verse 1. They translate it: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a god.” We don’t need to go into a discussion of why this is a wrong translation. It is a faulty translation of the Greek text, but completely apart from any consideration of Greek grammar, this is an impossible understanding of what John is saying. How can the Word be a created being (which is what they’re trying to support by this translation) when John says that “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made”? He says it both positively and negatively to make sure there’s no misunderstanding. He can’t be a created being and the Creator of all things at the same time.
But, having established his first point, John also wants us to know that our Savior is fully human. He makes this clear in verses 10-18, especially verse 14: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Good News Bible translates very simply and clearly: “The Word became a human being and lived among us.”
In the early centuries of the Church, there were teachers who went too far on one side or the other. There were those who taught that Jesus was God, but that He didn’t really become human in the fullest sense. That teaching was called Docetism, from the Greek word for “seem,“ meaning that Jesus only seemed to be human. There were all sorts of variations on this, but the basic teaching was to so emphasize Jesus divinity that they denied (or sometimes simply neglected) His humanity. This is the opposite extreme from Arianism, which saw Him as a created being and denied His full divinity.
Why is this important? Why do we need to hold both of these truths in tension? For one thing, we only know God as He reveals Himself, and this is what He has revealed. We need to humble ourselves before God’s self-revelation. It shouldn’t surprise us that there are things about God that are beyond our grasp. The fact that we can’t explain it all, that there are large areas of mystery, isn’t really a problem. Rather than saying, “I can’t understand all this; it must not be very important,” or “this doesn’t make sense; it must be false,” God calls us to bow before Him in wonder and awe, being humbled by the mysteries that confront us in the gospel. The proper response to mystery is worship. Here’s an example of awe-inspired worship before the wonder of God’s self-revelation:
God reveals His presence:
Let us now adore Him,
And with awe appear before Him.
God is in His temple:
All within keep silence,
Prostrate lie with deepest reverence.
Him alone
God we own,
Him our God and Saviour:
Praise His Name for ever!
(Gerhard Tersteegen, quoted by A.W. Tozer,
The Christian Book of Mystical Verse, p. 60).
The proper response to the mysteries revealed in this first chapter of John’s gospel is to fall on our faces in worship. There’s much here that we can’t grasp, that we’ll never fully grasp in this life. But we’re not called to unravel the mysteries of God. We’re called to humble ourselves and bow before Him in worship.
But it’s not all mystery. There’s much we can’t grasp, but the main function of the doctrine of the Incarnation is not to conceal things behind a shroud of mystery. In the Incarnation we see God revealed; we learn things about Him that we could never know otherwise. Verse 18 says: “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” The word translated “made him known,” is an interesting one to use here. It means “to explain.” When Cornelius received a vision telling him to send for Peter, he called some of his servants and “He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa” (Acts 10:8). The same word is in Acts 15. In the Council at Jerusalem, those assembled heard “Paul and Barnabas telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them” (Acts 15:12). A few chapters later, when Paul arrived in Jerusalem he “reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.” The word is exegeomai, which our word “exegesis” is taken from. What Jesus does, as the Incarnate Word of God, is show us what God is like. Exegesis is studying Scripture to understand what is there, trying to grasp its meaning (rather than putting our own ideas into it). Jesus exegetes the Eternal God for us. He explains Him for us. He gives us a picture of what God is like.
That’s the point the author of Hebrews is making in the first chapter of his letter: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (1:1-3). Jesus, being fully divine and fully human, is able to make God known to us in ways we never could have grasped otherwise. John wants us to know that this person he’s describing is absolutely unique. There is no one else like Him, nor will there ever be. He’s not just an outstanding religious teacher. He’s the eternal Second Person of the Trinity, who of His own gracious will has become a man, so that we, who have never seen God, can know Him.
There’s been much controversy, over the centuries, about Christian art and whether it’s proper to use pictures as an aid to meditation and prayer. Those who argue against this kind of art appeal to the Old Testament prohibition against images: “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Exodus 20:4). They argue that any devotional use of images violates this commandment. John of Damascus, who lived in the eighth century (when this topic was being hotly debated), agreed that this command forbids any attempt to create a visual image of the invisible God. For example, one of the most famous scenes from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, by Michelangelo, is the creation of Adam. God is painted as an old man with a grey beard, sitting on top of a cloud; He’s reaching down pointing his finger, and on the ground is the newly-created Adam. I suspect John of Damascus would have said that Michelangelo, who was a genuine believer, shouldn’t have done this, that portraying the invisible God in a visible form is a violation of the commandment.
But that’s not all he said. He also argued that the Incarnation has made a significant change in this area. It’s still wrong to try to draw or paint the invisible and infinite God, but since God has appeared in the flesh, some images are acceptable: “In former times God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take his abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter” (quoted by Solrunn Nes, The Mystical Language of Icons, p. 15). Paintings from the earthly ministry of Jesus can be helpful to us in meditating on Scripture. We don’t worship these things; that would be idolatry. We use them to help us visualize what it might have been like to be in the presence of God Incarnate, and to remind ourselves that Jesus didn’t shed His humanity at the Ascension. The One who is seated at the right hand of God the Father, representing us as our Advocate, is still human. God has been revealed in human form. In the Incarnation we see things about God that we never would have seen otherwise. Christian art can help us grasp this more fully and can be a great help in focusing our minds for meditation and prayer.
Why does John begin his gospel in this way? Why does he begin with theology, rather than giving us something we can immediately apply to our lives? I’ve often heard people say, “I’m not interested in all that stuff; just tell me what I’m supposed to do.” But John’s primary concern is not to tell us how to live in this world. He’s not writing to help us get out of debt, or become better employees (or employers), and he’s also not writing to satisfy our curiosity about what kinds of things Jesus did as a young boy. John’s primary concern is with our relationship with God. Walking with God has implications for how we order our lives in this world, but the starting point is always with God Himself. We need to know Him and what He has done to provide for our salvation. And to know the truth about God’s salvation, there are certain things we need to know about Jesus, our Savior. We need to know that He is God, and that He is man at the same time. We need to know that when we look at Jesus, we see what God is like. God doesn’t seem to be interested in making respectable people out of us. We may flounder all our lives in many areas. What He wants to do is make godly people of us. John says many things in this book which will help us in this direction, but we need to know these things he says in the opening verses, otherwise we won’t possibly understand the things that Jesus says and does.
The point of this Christmas season is to remind us of the Incarnation. The Word has become flesh and has lived among us. But it’s not just a nice story that we think about for awhile and then put away until it comes around again next year. This isn’t one of the things that we store in the attic. It’s also not just a truth that we review this time of year to make sure we’ve got it all right. Jesus Christ, whose birth we are celebrating, is our life. The point of this season is to take a fresh look at Him so that we will continue cultivating His fellowship throughout the year. If we’ve grown lukewarm, this is a time to renew our commitment to seek Him. Listen to these words by John of the Cross: “We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides. For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God” (quoted in The Liturgy of the Hours, vol. 1, p. 1246). The point of this Christmas season is to remember, and give thanks for, the Incarnation. And then, having seen what an unspeakable gift God has given us, we begin anew to “dig deeply in Christ,” for “in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God.”
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Speaking in God's Presence, James 5:12-20
Early in our marriage, Anne and I met a couple who, at first, seemed fairly like-minded with us. They were interested in folk music and played the mountain dulcimer, which I was learning to do. It seemed like we would enjoy spending time with them. They invited us to their place for dinner, and early in the evenng made a point of telling us that they believed in speaking what was on their minds, that they saw this as part of having integrity. But as the evening went on it became clear that they were just rude and inconsiderate. They spoke what was on their minds, but they didn’t think about how their words might affect others. They felt compelled to say what they were thinking, but they neglected to speak with kindness and grace.
Throughout this letter, James has been concerned about the way we use the gift of speech. In chapter one, he says: “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (v. 19). In chapter two, he condemns empty, pious words: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (vv. 15-16). Most of chapter three is occupied with the misuse of the tongue: “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so” (v. 10). Chapter four begins with the problem of conflicts and disputes in the church, and James says: “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters” (v. 11). And the chapter ends with a warning against presumptuous speech: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money. Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring” (vv. 13-14). This problem of how we use the gift of speech has been a major theme in James, and it’s significant that these final verses are centered around the way we speak in God’s presence. If we find ourselves convicted by the things James says about speech, the place to begin is by giving attention to our prayer lives.
The first thing we can see in these verses is that the context for a life of prayer is the Church. We come into God’s presence, not primarily as individuals but as members of the body of Christ. It’s difficult for us to see this, living in such an individualistic culture, but most of the exhortations in the New Testament epistles are addressed to churches, not individuals. Even our language obscures this, because there’s no second person plural pronoun (in the south, the word “y’all” is an attempt to remedy this lack). So when Paul says in Ephesians 4: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” we instinctively read the word “you” in the singular: Paul is talking to me, an individual who’s chosen to follow Jesus Christ. But the word in Greek is plural; he’s calling the church as a body to lead a life worthy of the calling they’ve received. It addresses us individually because God has graciously called us to be part of the Church.
Notice the strong emphasis on the corporate body in these verses in James: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick?” The people in these different life situations are identified first as part of the church. If any are sick, they’re to “call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” Their need is to be brought into the church body and the church (with the elders acting as representatives of the body) is to bring the situation before God in prayer and anointing. Illness tends to isolate us, cut us off from one another; by giving us this instruction, James is seeking to preserve the oneness of the body. A few verses later he says this: “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” Sin isolates us, so we confess our sins and receive forgiveness and cleansing. The point is that prayer takes place in the context of the church body. We come into God’s presence in prayer, not primarily as individuals but as those who’ve been called into the body of Christ. God is preparing the Church as a bride for His Son, and He’s graciously included us.
I’ve often heard this advice about prayer: “just talk to God and tell Him how you feel,” but I’ve never found this very helpful. One thing that happened when I followed this advice is that my prayer revolved around myself and my own concerns. Eugene Peterson expresses the same concern and says books of written prayers helped him break out of this self-centered cycle of prayer: “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” (Living the Message, p. 338). Written prayers put us in touch with the historic Church; they train us in a more adequate language for prayer and praise, and they guide us out of our small worlds and into the larger world of God’s kingdom.
When I was a pastor I visited a man in the hospital who had had one problem after another and it looked like he was nearing the end of his life. At one point he said to me, “I don’t even know what to pray any more.” I suggested using the Psalms for prayer and he responded with disgust, “I thought we were supposed to pray from our hearts!” For him, praying from our hearts meant praying spontaneously whatever pops into our minds at the moment, and I don’t think I succeeded in persuading him otherwise. But for most of Christian history the Church has not seen it this way.
The most important prayer book is the one contained in Scripture, the Book of Psalms. When we make use of the Psalms in prayer, we’re praying with words that the Church has used since the beginning (following the example of Jesus, who prayed the Psalms). Pray the Psalms; they’ll help you learn to enter God’s presence across the whole range of human experience; they’ll free you to pray more honestly. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the very first words remind us that we’re part of a larger body: “Our Father.” We come into God ‘s presence as members of the body of Christ, and it’s a good thing to pray with words that remind us of this.
The second thing to notice is that the way we speak to God is connected with the way we speak to others. James discussed this earlier in the letter: “With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so” (3:9-10). These closing verses of James begin with verse 12: “Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by any other oath, but let your ‘Yes” be yes and your ‘No’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” He’s not talking here about cursing, but about emphasizing the truth by taking an oath, like when someone says, “I swear to God this is true.” This kind of speech is rooted in dishonesty. We’re saying, “I may not tell the truth most of the time, but you can be sure what I’m saying now is true, because I’ve taken an oath.” James is saying that this kind of basic dishonesty will undermine your relationship with God.
Verses 19-20 encourage us to confront one another: “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” The temptation when we see someone falling into sin is to call our friends and say, “do you know what I just saw? Can you believe a Christian acting like that?” When we do this, it undermines our relationship with God. The way we’re speaking to one another cuts us off from God and destroys our prayer life. James is saying, “don’t gossip about what you’ve seen, but also don’t just ignore the problem. Go to the person and say, ‘it looks to me like you’re wandering from the truth; am I mistaken? If it’s true, I want to help you in any way I can, and I’ll certainly pray for you.’”
In his first letter, Peter gives this warning to husbands: “Husbands... show consideration for your wives in your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker sex, since they too are also heirs of the gracious gift of life – so that nothing may hinder your prayers” (3:7). “Show consideration... so that nothing may hinder your prayers.” If you don’t show consideration, if you don’t pay honor to your wives, your prayers will be hindered. We can undermine our prayer life by the way we speak to other people. So, if you want to cultivate a life of prayer, “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
The third thing to notice is that everything in our lives should be brought into God’s presence in prayer. Prayer isn’t just about spiritual things. In prayer, we invite God’s presence into every area of our lives. “Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick?” (The Message). Don’t just cry out to God when you’re in trouble. When things are going well, give thanks to Him, since He is the source of all good. The idea is not to have a strong time of prayer in the morning to get that obligation out of the way. Time set aside for concentrated prayer tunes our hearts so that we can walk with God throughout the day. He wants us to be aware of Him in all the experiences of our lives, good and bad.
One book that’s been especially helpful to me over the years is called The Sacrament of the Present Moment, by Jean-Pierre de Caussade (an 18th century Jesuit). De Caussade encourages his readers to encounter God in the duties of the present moment. Whatever it is that God has called us to do, the way to know Him is to be attentive to Him and obedient to the duties of our calling. “Divine action cleanses the universe, pervading and flowing over all creatures. Wherever they are it pursues them. It precedes them, accompanies them, follows them” (p. 3). We can get so intent on pursuing God that we forget He is pursuing us. Then, a few pages later: “You are seeking God... and he is everywhere. Everything proclaims him to you, everything reveals him to you, everything brings him to you. He is by your side, over you, around you and in you. Here is his dwelling and yet you still seek him. Ah! You are searching for God, the idea of God in his essential being. You seek perfection and it lies in everything that happens to you – your suffering, your actions, your impulses are the mysteries under which God reveals himself to you” (p. 18).
God us pursuing us; He is all around and within us, but we miss Him because we’re not attentive and because He appears in surprising ways. So here’s de Caussade’s advice: “There remains one single duty. It is to keep one’s gaze fixed on the master one has chosen and to be constantly listening so as to understand and hear and immediately obey his will” (p. 9). Sacraments are tangible things that enable us to connect with God; they’re like doorways into the invisible world. Be attentive to the things God does for you throughout the day, things you’d be likely to take for granted; these things can become sacraments as you turn your heart to God and give thanks. When you encounter difficulties, these things can also be sacraments, when you remember that God is there, ready to help carry you through the experience. If we’re attentive, we’ll find that God is reaching out to us all the time, calling us into His presence. The more we pay attention, the more we’ll find that everything in life proclaims Him to us. James is calling us to turn to God in all the experiences of life: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick?” He’s not giving us a complete list; he’s saying, “whatever is going on in your life, turn your heart to the Lord.”
When we invite God into every area of our lives, we not only come to know Him, we experience His help and intervention in surprising ways. That’s the point of James’ example in verses 17-18: “Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years is did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.” When we hear of people who’ve had a strong prayer life, we very quickly put them on a pedestal and think, “of course, I could never pray like that.” James wants to remind us that Elijah was like us, a weak, frail human being, but prayer connected him with all the resources of God.
Prayer connects us, in all our weakness and failure, with God, who is our Father and is committed to caring for our needs. Spend time in His presence, and recognize that even when you’re praying on your own you are praying as part of the Church. Make use of the great resources that are available in the Church for cultivating a life of prayer. Pray the Psalms, pray through a hymnal, make use of a prayer book. All these things can enlarge and enrich our prayer lives. May God bless our efforts to spend time in His presence and may He make Himself known to us all in deeper ways until we see Him face to face.
Throughout this letter, James has been concerned about the way we use the gift of speech. In chapter one, he says: “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (v. 19). In chapter two, he condemns empty, pious words: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (vv. 15-16). Most of chapter three is occupied with the misuse of the tongue: “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so” (v. 10). Chapter four begins with the problem of conflicts and disputes in the church, and James says: “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters” (v. 11). And the chapter ends with a warning against presumptuous speech: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money. Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring” (vv. 13-14). This problem of how we use the gift of speech has been a major theme in James, and it’s significant that these final verses are centered around the way we speak in God’s presence. If we find ourselves convicted by the things James says about speech, the place to begin is by giving attention to our prayer lives.
The first thing we can see in these verses is that the context for a life of prayer is the Church. We come into God’s presence, not primarily as individuals but as members of the body of Christ. It’s difficult for us to see this, living in such an individualistic culture, but most of the exhortations in the New Testament epistles are addressed to churches, not individuals. Even our language obscures this, because there’s no second person plural pronoun (in the south, the word “y’all” is an attempt to remedy this lack). So when Paul says in Ephesians 4: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” we instinctively read the word “you” in the singular: Paul is talking to me, an individual who’s chosen to follow Jesus Christ. But the word in Greek is plural; he’s calling the church as a body to lead a life worthy of the calling they’ve received. It addresses us individually because God has graciously called us to be part of the Church.
Notice the strong emphasis on the corporate body in these verses in James: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick?” The people in these different life situations are identified first as part of the church. If any are sick, they’re to “call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.” Their need is to be brought into the church body and the church (with the elders acting as representatives of the body) is to bring the situation before God in prayer and anointing. Illness tends to isolate us, cut us off from one another; by giving us this instruction, James is seeking to preserve the oneness of the body. A few verses later he says this: “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.” Sin isolates us, so we confess our sins and receive forgiveness and cleansing. The point is that prayer takes place in the context of the church body. We come into God’s presence in prayer, not primarily as individuals but as those who’ve been called into the body of Christ. God is preparing the Church as a bride for His Son, and He’s graciously included us.
I’ve often heard this advice about prayer: “just talk to God and tell Him how you feel,” but I’ve never found this very helpful. One thing that happened when I followed this advice is that my prayer revolved around myself and my own concerns. Eugene Peterson expresses the same concern and says books of written prayers helped him break out of this self-centered cycle of prayer: “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” (Living the Message, p. 338). Written prayers put us in touch with the historic Church; they train us in a more adequate language for prayer and praise, and they guide us out of our small worlds and into the larger world of God’s kingdom.
When I was a pastor I visited a man in the hospital who had had one problem after another and it looked like he was nearing the end of his life. At one point he said to me, “I don’t even know what to pray any more.” I suggested using the Psalms for prayer and he responded with disgust, “I thought we were supposed to pray from our hearts!” For him, praying from our hearts meant praying spontaneously whatever pops into our minds at the moment, and I don’t think I succeeded in persuading him otherwise. But for most of Christian history the Church has not seen it this way.
The most important prayer book is the one contained in Scripture, the Book of Psalms. When we make use of the Psalms in prayer, we’re praying with words that the Church has used since the beginning (following the example of Jesus, who prayed the Psalms). Pray the Psalms; they’ll help you learn to enter God’s presence across the whole range of human experience; they’ll free you to pray more honestly. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the very first words remind us that we’re part of a larger body: “Our Father.” We come into God ‘s presence as members of the body of Christ, and it’s a good thing to pray with words that remind us of this.
The second thing to notice is that the way we speak to God is connected with the way we speak to others. James discussed this earlier in the letter: “With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so” (3:9-10). These closing verses of James begin with verse 12: “Above all, my beloved, do not swear, either by heaven or by any other oath, but let your ‘Yes” be yes and your ‘No’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” He’s not talking here about cursing, but about emphasizing the truth by taking an oath, like when someone says, “I swear to God this is true.” This kind of speech is rooted in dishonesty. We’re saying, “I may not tell the truth most of the time, but you can be sure what I’m saying now is true, because I’ve taken an oath.” James is saying that this kind of basic dishonesty will undermine your relationship with God.
Verses 19-20 encourage us to confront one another: “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” The temptation when we see someone falling into sin is to call our friends and say, “do you know what I just saw? Can you believe a Christian acting like that?” When we do this, it undermines our relationship with God. The way we’re speaking to one another cuts us off from God and destroys our prayer life. James is saying, “don’t gossip about what you’ve seen, but also don’t just ignore the problem. Go to the person and say, ‘it looks to me like you’re wandering from the truth; am I mistaken? If it’s true, I want to help you in any way I can, and I’ll certainly pray for you.’”
In his first letter, Peter gives this warning to husbands: “Husbands... show consideration for your wives in your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker sex, since they too are also heirs of the gracious gift of life – so that nothing may hinder your prayers” (3:7). “Show consideration... so that nothing may hinder your prayers.” If you don’t show consideration, if you don’t pay honor to your wives, your prayers will be hindered. We can undermine our prayer life by the way we speak to other people. So, if you want to cultivate a life of prayer, “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
The third thing to notice is that everything in our lives should be brought into God’s presence in prayer. Prayer isn’t just about spiritual things. In prayer, we invite God’s presence into every area of our lives. “Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick?” (The Message). Don’t just cry out to God when you’re in trouble. When things are going well, give thanks to Him, since He is the source of all good. The idea is not to have a strong time of prayer in the morning to get that obligation out of the way. Time set aside for concentrated prayer tunes our hearts so that we can walk with God throughout the day. He wants us to be aware of Him in all the experiences of our lives, good and bad.
One book that’s been especially helpful to me over the years is called The Sacrament of the Present Moment, by Jean-Pierre de Caussade (an 18th century Jesuit). De Caussade encourages his readers to encounter God in the duties of the present moment. Whatever it is that God has called us to do, the way to know Him is to be attentive to Him and obedient to the duties of our calling. “Divine action cleanses the universe, pervading and flowing over all creatures. Wherever they are it pursues them. It precedes them, accompanies them, follows them” (p. 3). We can get so intent on pursuing God that we forget He is pursuing us. Then, a few pages later: “You are seeking God... and he is everywhere. Everything proclaims him to you, everything reveals him to you, everything brings him to you. He is by your side, over you, around you and in you. Here is his dwelling and yet you still seek him. Ah! You are searching for God, the idea of God in his essential being. You seek perfection and it lies in everything that happens to you – your suffering, your actions, your impulses are the mysteries under which God reveals himself to you” (p. 18).
God us pursuing us; He is all around and within us, but we miss Him because we’re not attentive and because He appears in surprising ways. So here’s de Caussade’s advice: “There remains one single duty. It is to keep one’s gaze fixed on the master one has chosen and to be constantly listening so as to understand and hear and immediately obey his will” (p. 9). Sacraments are tangible things that enable us to connect with God; they’re like doorways into the invisible world. Be attentive to the things God does for you throughout the day, things you’d be likely to take for granted; these things can become sacraments as you turn your heart to God and give thanks. When you encounter difficulties, these things can also be sacraments, when you remember that God is there, ready to help carry you through the experience. If we’re attentive, we’ll find that God is reaching out to us all the time, calling us into His presence. The more we pay attention, the more we’ll find that everything in life proclaims Him to us. James is calling us to turn to God in all the experiences of life: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick?” He’s not giving us a complete list; he’s saying, “whatever is going on in your life, turn your heart to the Lord.”
When we invite God into every area of our lives, we not only come to know Him, we experience His help and intervention in surprising ways. That’s the point of James’ example in verses 17-18: “Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years is did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.” When we hear of people who’ve had a strong prayer life, we very quickly put them on a pedestal and think, “of course, I could never pray like that.” James wants to remind us that Elijah was like us, a weak, frail human being, but prayer connected him with all the resources of God.
Prayer connects us, in all our weakness and failure, with God, who is our Father and is committed to caring for our needs. Spend time in His presence, and recognize that even when you’re praying on your own you are praying as part of the Church. Make use of the great resources that are available in the Church for cultivating a life of prayer. Pray the Psalms, pray through a hymnal, make use of a prayer book. All these things can enlarge and enrich our prayer lives. May God bless our efforts to spend time in His presence and may He make Himself known to us all in deeper ways until we see Him face to face.
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Ministering Through Prayer, Ephesians 1:15-20
Ministering Through Prayer
Ephesians 1:15-20
Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College PA
When I became a Christian, in the summer of 1974, I received some interesting advice from my friends. I was living in Sonoma, California, and had graduated from High School the year before. Neither I, nor any of my friends, had any interest in Christianity, so everyone who knew me was surprised when I started going to church. But they also knew my life was going nowhere, and they thought this might be a good thing, as long as it didn't get out of hand. Their main concern, and I heard it over and over again, was "don't let this become a crutch." They were afraid I'd go too far, that I wouldn't keep it in perspective, that I'd become a fanatic and let religion dominate my whole life. In their view, religion had its place, but it needed to be carefully confined and kept under control. "Faith is a good thing," they said, "but don't get carried away with it."
The apostle Paul exemplifies the sort of thing they were worried about. While he was on his way to Jerusalem, a place where he knew he'd be in great danger, he stopped in Ephesus and called the elders of the church together. And he told them this: "I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace" (Acts 20:23-24). The most important thing to Paul, the thing that consumed his life, was knowing God and walking with Him faithfully to the end. And his prayer here in Ephesians reflects that same concern. His overwhelming passion as their spiritual leader is their relationship with God, and when he prays for them, this is the thing that receives the most attention. The most important reality in our lives is the fact that God has created us to know and worship Him. In the famous words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, our chief end is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." That's what we were made for, and that's what God desires for us.
Notice, first of all, that Paul isn't praying for them because they're in trouble. We sometimes think of prayer as sort of a last resort, something we do when things go wrong, or when everything else fails. If you tell people you're praying for them, some will respond, A"things are going pretty well right now, it hasn't come to the point where I need prayer." As people living in a fallen world we very often find ourselves in trouble, and God calls us to seek His help. But the purpose of prayer is not only to ask for God's help when we're in trouble. The purpose of prayer is to seek God Himself.
How do you decide who you're going to pray for? (We're thinking here about intercessory prayer. There's more to prayer than intercession, but we're thinking today about this one aspect of prayer, lifting the needs of ourselves and others before God). There are so many people in need, and it's just not possible to pray for everyone. It's not even possible to keep up with praying for all the really desperate situations that we hear about on the news each day. But Paul's prayer life is not only consumed with praying for people who are in trouble. Paul prays for the recipients of this letter because God is at work in their lives. He begins verse 15 with the words "for this reason," or "because of all this" (NEB). He's spent the last paragraph enumerating, in detail, all God has done in calling them to Himself. They've received, in Jesus Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (v.3). He describes some of these blessings, then he concludes this section in this way: "And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people" (1:13b-14a). God has called them to Himself, and He has good intentions for their lives. Paul isn't praying for them because they're in trouble; he's praying for them because he knows that God is already at work in their lives.
Notice, next, what Paul asks for on their behalf. In verse 17, he asks God to give them "a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better." He's asking for two things: wisdom and revelation. Wisdom includes an understanding of who God is and what He calls us to do. But it's more than just understanding. Wisdom is knowing God's will and seeking to obey it. Revelation is the unveiling of things we couldn't otherwise know, things that are hidden. But more than that, it's God making Himself known to us. Jesus said, in John 14:21: "Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them, and I will reveal myself to each one of them" (John 14:21, NLT). That's what Paul is praying for, that as they walk with God and seek Him He will make Himself known to them, reveal Himself to them in new ways.
He goes on, in verse 18, to pray that they'll be able to understand what God has given them in Jesus Christ. He prays for the eyes of their heart to be enlightened. The heart, in Scripture, refers to our inner being. The New American Bible translates it in this way: "May he enlighten your innermost vision." Or, here's the New Living Translation: "I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light". Sin has darkened our minds, it's dulled our perception of spiritual things. That's why we can hear these things over and over again and never really grasp them. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 2:14: "The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can't receive the gifts of God's Spirit. There's no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit--God's Spirit and our spirits in open communion" (The Message).
Our hearts are dull by nature. We hear that God has done wonderful things for us in Jesus Christ, and we know it's true, but it doesn't seem to sink in. We know we should be moved, but we're not. Our hearts, very often, are dead to the things of God. Even after we turn to Jesus and are indwelt by the Spirit and have the capacity to understand spiritual things, our hearts still tend to be dull and slow to grasp the things that matter most. Throughout the first half of this chapter, Paul has been enumerating all the blessings that are theirs in Christ, but he knows their hearts will be dull to grasp them. So he prays that their hearts will be flooded with light. Have you ever been reading the Bible and had it suddenly come to life? Maybe you've read the passage many times before, but then it's as if your eyes were opened and you grasped it in a way you never had. It's as if you're reading that passage for the first time. That's what Paul is praying for here.
He wants them to understand three things: the hope to which God has called them, the riches of His inheritance, and the power He exercises on behalf of His people. The "hope to which he has called us" is our inner sense of hope. It's what Paul is describing when he says, in Romans 5, that we "confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory" (Romans 5:2, NLT). The "riches of his glorious inheritance" is the object of that hope, it's the thing we confidently and joyfully look forward to. And God's "incomparably great power for us who believe" is what guarantees that inheritance for us. All three of these things are oriented toward the future. We can have assurance in the present, because we truly have something to look forward to, and because God is with us to bring us safely into our inheritance.
The Christian life is lived in anticipation of the future. God brings good things into our lives now, but they are only a foretaste of what is coming in God's eternal kingdom. Back in the 1970's I remember hearing a popular Christian song that claimed even if heaven wasn't promised it would still be worth it to be a Christian, because of all the great things God does in our lives now. I understand what the writer meant, but that really wasn't Paul's perspective at all. He said "if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world" (1 Corinthians 15:19).
1 Peter 1:3-6, which was written to Christians suffering persecution, is full of hope for the future: "All honor to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given us the privilege of being born again. Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. It is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And God, in his mighty power, will protect you until you receive this salvation, because you are trusting him. It will be revealed on the last day for all to see. So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while" (1 Peter 1:3-6, New Living Translation). The Christian life is a life of hope, of anticipation. But often we don=t see it, we become blinded by the things of this world. So Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened.
Several years ago I watched a PBS special about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was executed by the Nazis near the end of World War II. When the war began, Bonhoeffer was lecturing in this country, and he was given the opportunity to stay here and teach theology. Friends begged him to stay, knowing that he would be in great danger if he returned to Germany. But he responded that his people needed him, and that to stay in safety here would be a denial of everything he believed and taught. Near the end of the movie, as Bonhoeffer is standing ready to go to the gallows to be hanged, the Gestapo officer who's been interrogating him for months walks up and says, "So, Dr. Bonhoeffer, this is the end." And Bonhoeffer replies, "No," and walks calmly to the gallows. He was able to face death confidently because he lived in hope, because by faith he was able to look forward to something beyond the horrible evil he had witnessed in Naziism. He knew that what he was facing there was not the end.
Paul prays that these Christians in Asia Minor will be growing in the knowledge of God and that they will be enabled to see what He has given them, especially that they will be enabled to live in joyful anticipation of the hope that is before them. And he's able to pray with confidence because the answer depends not on their efforts or his, but on God's incomparably great power for us who believe. In verses 19-21 he describes that power in more detail.
The power at work in us who believe is the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Paul is so concerned to emphasize the magnitude of this power that he uses four different words for power in these verses. The strict definition of each word is not the important thing; there's some overlap in meaning with these words. What Paul is doing is piling one phrase on top of another, hoping to get his idea across. "That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ...." Eugene Peterson, in The Message, brings Paul's idea across well: "oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him--endless energy, boundless strength!"
And yet, much of the time we're unaware of God's work within us. We don't feel His power surging through us. It's easy to miss many of the things God is doing as He works silently to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ. And even when we do see evidence of God's work in ourselves, this doesn't give us an accurate measure of His great power. Watching a beach ball rise and fall with the tide doesn't tell us much about the power of the sea. Nor do we get an accurate picture when we sit in a rowboat and feel the waves tossing us around. But that sea which moves a beach ball or a rowboat will do the same thing to a supertanker loaded with oil. And God's silent work of transformation within us, the power that is guarding us until the day when we stand in His presence, is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Paul wants us to be aware of something of the magnitude of what God is doing in our lives.
What's the most important thing in your life right now? Is it your work? Or a hobby, or another person? Where does God fit into your list of priorities? The main attraction of eternity is that we will be in God's presence and will see Him face to face. Are you cultivating a relationship with Him now? As you cultivate a relationship with Him, and as you grow to know Him better, you'll find yourself more and more longing for that day when nothing will cloud your vision of Him.
And yet, it's important to remember that the Ephesians aren't being instructed to do something here. Paul is praying that God will do things for them and within them. He wants God to give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they may know Him better. They can't just go through the right formulas to obtain this. It's something that is given by God. In verse 18, when he prays for them to be enlightened, he uses a passive verb. This is not something they can do; it's something that is done to them. It's not under their control. So Paul prays for them, because he knows these things will only come to them from God's hand. They could give intellectual assent to all the right ideas, and with sufficient will power they might be able to get their behavior in line. But the Christian life is more than this, and if they want to know God--if they want to glorify God and enjoy Him forever--they are dependent on His intervention in their lives. The things Paul is asking for here will only come into their lives if they are given to them from the hand of our gracious and merciful God.
When we pray for each other we are truly serving one another as members of the body of Christ. Not just when people we know are in trouble, but all the time. If it's true that: 1) our relationship with God is the most important thing in our lives; 2) we can only come to know God truly as He makes Himself known to us; and 3) God, in His infinite mercy, has promised to answer prayer; then surely our prayers for one another are important beyond our comprehension. Sooner than we know, we will all be in the Lord=s presence. We're passing through this life, on our way to God=s eternal kingdom. Many things press for our attention now, but the most important thing we do over the course of our lives is cultivate a relationship with God our Creator and Redeemer in preparation for the life of eternity. Let's press on to know Him. And let's help one another through prayer, as Paul did with these Christians in Asia Minor.
Ephesians 1:15-20
Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College PA
When I became a Christian, in the summer of 1974, I received some interesting advice from my friends. I was living in Sonoma, California, and had graduated from High School the year before. Neither I, nor any of my friends, had any interest in Christianity, so everyone who knew me was surprised when I started going to church. But they also knew my life was going nowhere, and they thought this might be a good thing, as long as it didn't get out of hand. Their main concern, and I heard it over and over again, was "don't let this become a crutch." They were afraid I'd go too far, that I wouldn't keep it in perspective, that I'd become a fanatic and let religion dominate my whole life. In their view, religion had its place, but it needed to be carefully confined and kept under control. "Faith is a good thing," they said, "but don't get carried away with it."
The apostle Paul exemplifies the sort of thing they were worried about. While he was on his way to Jerusalem, a place where he knew he'd be in great danger, he stopped in Ephesus and called the elders of the church together. And he told them this: "I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me--the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace" (Acts 20:23-24). The most important thing to Paul, the thing that consumed his life, was knowing God and walking with Him faithfully to the end. And his prayer here in Ephesians reflects that same concern. His overwhelming passion as their spiritual leader is their relationship with God, and when he prays for them, this is the thing that receives the most attention. The most important reality in our lives is the fact that God has created us to know and worship Him. In the famous words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, our chief end is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." That's what we were made for, and that's what God desires for us.
Notice, first of all, that Paul isn't praying for them because they're in trouble. We sometimes think of prayer as sort of a last resort, something we do when things go wrong, or when everything else fails. If you tell people you're praying for them, some will respond, A"things are going pretty well right now, it hasn't come to the point where I need prayer." As people living in a fallen world we very often find ourselves in trouble, and God calls us to seek His help. But the purpose of prayer is not only to ask for God's help when we're in trouble. The purpose of prayer is to seek God Himself.
How do you decide who you're going to pray for? (We're thinking here about intercessory prayer. There's more to prayer than intercession, but we're thinking today about this one aspect of prayer, lifting the needs of ourselves and others before God). There are so many people in need, and it's just not possible to pray for everyone. It's not even possible to keep up with praying for all the really desperate situations that we hear about on the news each day. But Paul's prayer life is not only consumed with praying for people who are in trouble. Paul prays for the recipients of this letter because God is at work in their lives. He begins verse 15 with the words "for this reason," or "because of all this" (NEB). He's spent the last paragraph enumerating, in detail, all God has done in calling them to Himself. They've received, in Jesus Christ, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (v.3). He describes some of these blessings, then he concludes this section in this way: "And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us everything he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people" (1:13b-14a). God has called them to Himself, and He has good intentions for their lives. Paul isn't praying for them because they're in trouble; he's praying for them because he knows that God is already at work in their lives.
Notice, next, what Paul asks for on their behalf. In verse 17, he asks God to give them "a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better." He's asking for two things: wisdom and revelation. Wisdom includes an understanding of who God is and what He calls us to do. But it's more than just understanding. Wisdom is knowing God's will and seeking to obey it. Revelation is the unveiling of things we couldn't otherwise know, things that are hidden. But more than that, it's God making Himself known to us. Jesus said, in John 14:21: "Those who obey my commandments are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them, and I will reveal myself to each one of them" (John 14:21, NLT). That's what Paul is praying for, that as they walk with God and seek Him He will make Himself known to them, reveal Himself to them in new ways.
He goes on, in verse 18, to pray that they'll be able to understand what God has given them in Jesus Christ. He prays for the eyes of their heart to be enlightened. The heart, in Scripture, refers to our inner being. The New American Bible translates it in this way: "May he enlighten your innermost vision." Or, here's the New Living Translation: "I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light". Sin has darkened our minds, it's dulled our perception of spiritual things. That's why we can hear these things over and over again and never really grasp them. Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 2:14: "The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can't receive the gifts of God's Spirit. There's no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit--God's Spirit and our spirits in open communion" (The Message).
Our hearts are dull by nature. We hear that God has done wonderful things for us in Jesus Christ, and we know it's true, but it doesn't seem to sink in. We know we should be moved, but we're not. Our hearts, very often, are dead to the things of God. Even after we turn to Jesus and are indwelt by the Spirit and have the capacity to understand spiritual things, our hearts still tend to be dull and slow to grasp the things that matter most. Throughout the first half of this chapter, Paul has been enumerating all the blessings that are theirs in Christ, but he knows their hearts will be dull to grasp them. So he prays that their hearts will be flooded with light. Have you ever been reading the Bible and had it suddenly come to life? Maybe you've read the passage many times before, but then it's as if your eyes were opened and you grasped it in a way you never had. It's as if you're reading that passage for the first time. That's what Paul is praying for here.
He wants them to understand three things: the hope to which God has called them, the riches of His inheritance, and the power He exercises on behalf of His people. The "hope to which he has called us" is our inner sense of hope. It's what Paul is describing when he says, in Romans 5, that we "confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory" (Romans 5:2, NLT). The "riches of his glorious inheritance" is the object of that hope, it's the thing we confidently and joyfully look forward to. And God's "incomparably great power for us who believe" is what guarantees that inheritance for us. All three of these things are oriented toward the future. We can have assurance in the present, because we truly have something to look forward to, and because God is with us to bring us safely into our inheritance.
The Christian life is lived in anticipation of the future. God brings good things into our lives now, but they are only a foretaste of what is coming in God's eternal kingdom. Back in the 1970's I remember hearing a popular Christian song that claimed even if heaven wasn't promised it would still be worth it to be a Christian, because of all the great things God does in our lives now. I understand what the writer meant, but that really wasn't Paul's perspective at all. He said "if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world" (1 Corinthians 15:19).
1 Peter 1:3-6, which was written to Christians suffering persecution, is full of hope for the future: "All honor to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given us the privilege of being born again. Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. It is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And God, in his mighty power, will protect you until you receive this salvation, because you are trusting him. It will be revealed on the last day for all to see. So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while" (1 Peter 1:3-6, New Living Translation). The Christian life is a life of hope, of anticipation. But often we don=t see it, we become blinded by the things of this world. So Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened.
Several years ago I watched a PBS special about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was executed by the Nazis near the end of World War II. When the war began, Bonhoeffer was lecturing in this country, and he was given the opportunity to stay here and teach theology. Friends begged him to stay, knowing that he would be in great danger if he returned to Germany. But he responded that his people needed him, and that to stay in safety here would be a denial of everything he believed and taught. Near the end of the movie, as Bonhoeffer is standing ready to go to the gallows to be hanged, the Gestapo officer who's been interrogating him for months walks up and says, "So, Dr. Bonhoeffer, this is the end." And Bonhoeffer replies, "No," and walks calmly to the gallows. He was able to face death confidently because he lived in hope, because by faith he was able to look forward to something beyond the horrible evil he had witnessed in Naziism. He knew that what he was facing there was not the end.
Paul prays that these Christians in Asia Minor will be growing in the knowledge of God and that they will be enabled to see what He has given them, especially that they will be enabled to live in joyful anticipation of the hope that is before them. And he's able to pray with confidence because the answer depends not on their efforts or his, but on God's incomparably great power for us who believe. In verses 19-21 he describes that power in more detail.
The power at work in us who believe is the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Paul is so concerned to emphasize the magnitude of this power that he uses four different words for power in these verses. The strict definition of each word is not the important thing; there's some overlap in meaning with these words. What Paul is doing is piling one phrase on top of another, hoping to get his idea across. "That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ...." Eugene Peterson, in The Message, brings Paul's idea across well: "oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him--endless energy, boundless strength!"
And yet, much of the time we're unaware of God's work within us. We don't feel His power surging through us. It's easy to miss many of the things God is doing as He works silently to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ. And even when we do see evidence of God's work in ourselves, this doesn't give us an accurate measure of His great power. Watching a beach ball rise and fall with the tide doesn't tell us much about the power of the sea. Nor do we get an accurate picture when we sit in a rowboat and feel the waves tossing us around. But that sea which moves a beach ball or a rowboat will do the same thing to a supertanker loaded with oil. And God's silent work of transformation within us, the power that is guarding us until the day when we stand in His presence, is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Paul wants us to be aware of something of the magnitude of what God is doing in our lives.
What's the most important thing in your life right now? Is it your work? Or a hobby, or another person? Where does God fit into your list of priorities? The main attraction of eternity is that we will be in God's presence and will see Him face to face. Are you cultivating a relationship with Him now? As you cultivate a relationship with Him, and as you grow to know Him better, you'll find yourself more and more longing for that day when nothing will cloud your vision of Him.
And yet, it's important to remember that the Ephesians aren't being instructed to do something here. Paul is praying that God will do things for them and within them. He wants God to give them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they may know Him better. They can't just go through the right formulas to obtain this. It's something that is given by God. In verse 18, when he prays for them to be enlightened, he uses a passive verb. This is not something they can do; it's something that is done to them. It's not under their control. So Paul prays for them, because he knows these things will only come to them from God's hand. They could give intellectual assent to all the right ideas, and with sufficient will power they might be able to get their behavior in line. But the Christian life is more than this, and if they want to know God--if they want to glorify God and enjoy Him forever--they are dependent on His intervention in their lives. The things Paul is asking for here will only come into their lives if they are given to them from the hand of our gracious and merciful God.
When we pray for each other we are truly serving one another as members of the body of Christ. Not just when people we know are in trouble, but all the time. If it's true that: 1) our relationship with God is the most important thing in our lives; 2) we can only come to know God truly as He makes Himself known to us; and 3) God, in His infinite mercy, has promised to answer prayer; then surely our prayers for one another are important beyond our comprehension. Sooner than we know, we will all be in the Lord=s presence. We're passing through this life, on our way to God=s eternal kingdom. Many things press for our attention now, but the most important thing we do over the course of our lives is cultivate a relationship with God our Creator and Redeemer in preparation for the life of eternity. Let's press on to know Him. And let's help one another through prayer, as Paul did with these Christians in Asia Minor.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Looking Beyond our Circumstances, 2 Cor. 4:16-18
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
State College, PA
I’ve known a number of people who started out well in the Christian life, then later turned away. None of them turned away because they had heard an irresistible argument that undermined their faith. Most of them just drifted away over time. Their faith became buried under all the stress of living in this world, or some of them became embittered by suffering. Here’s one of the strategies Screwtape, a senior demon, suggests to Wormwood, a demon who is trying to destroy the faith of a Christian: “Your man... doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false,’ but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical,’ ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary,’ ‘conventional’ or ‘ruthless.’ Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.... Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’” (The Screwtape Letters, p. 8). The idea is not to argue him out of the faith–because an argument could easily move in the other direction–but to encourage him to become so engrossed in the business of this world–“real life”–that the things of heaven seem remote and irrelevant. Screwtape goes on: “Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things” (p. 10). When we’re completely engrossed in the things of this world, the things of heaven seem remote and irrelevant.
This sort of thing easily destroys our spiritual lives. We become muddled and confused, and we begin thinking that we’re being silly to give so much attention to things we can’t see, talking to a person we’ve never met face to face, looking forward to a place where we’ve never been. Maybe it’s not really true. The “real world” seems so unquestionable. We have to deal with it every moment. And many people make a beginning in the Christian life but then turn back after awhile, not because they’ve heard an argument which undermined their faith, but because they’ve become completely engrossed in “real life,” the visible, physical realities around us. That pressure is there all the time. But it’s even greater when we experience suffering, which we all do at some point. The suffering is so real and painful, and the invisible realities of God’s kingdom can seem so distant. How do we prevent our faith from being overwhelmed by life in this world? How do we prevent the things of this world, both difficulties and joys, from crowding out our faith? Paul says some things in 2 Cor. 4:16 18 that can help us in this area.
The thing I want to emphasize in this passage is this: If we want to keep from being overwhelmed by our lives in this world, we need to learn, as Paul did, to live in the light of our future in eternity. We need to learn to weigh our present struggles–and our present enjoyments--in the balance with the eternal glory that awaits us; and we need to learn to live in the light of this comparison. We need to learn to live in the light of the reality of our eternal future.
The first thing to notice in this passage is Paul's description of his outward circumstances. He has just said, in v. 14, "we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence." Then, in v.16, he says, "Therefore, we do not lose heart." What he is saying is that, considered in themselves, apart from the assurance of his future resurrection and glorification, his outward circumstances would cause him to lose heart. If Paul judged his life by the world's standards, he would fall into despair.
He goes on to say that outwardly he is "wasting away." The word here was used of the corrosive effect of rust, or of moths eating away clothing. It is often tempting for God's people to assume that if we follow Him things will go well for us in the world. It wasn't this way for Paul. Things were going badly for him, by the world's standards.
Earlier in this chapter, he speaks of being hard pressed on every side, perplexed, persecuted and struck down. And in chapter one, he says "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life" (1:8). In 1 Cor. 15:19, he goes even further and says, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."
We need to beware of thinking that godliness will bring us success in this world. It may have just the opposite effect, as it did with Paul. Paul was much more successful, by worldly standards, before he became a Christian. He says in Philippians: "If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more...." He then goes on to describe his former way of life as a Pharisee, and then says: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ" (Philippians 3:4, 7). Becoming a Christian did not cause Paul to prosper outwardly. He was much more successful, in that sense, before his conversion. He was the ideal, the sort of person everyone in his society looked up to. Becoming a Christian ruined all that. We'd be wise to arm ourselves with this knowledge, so that we are not overwhelmed and surprised when difficulties come our way.
The Puritans have been unfairly caricatured in our popular culture as stern, sour moralists whose greatest worry was that someone might be having a good time. The term “Puritanical” stands for everything our society hates. But the Puritans, in reality, were people who sought to order their lives in relation to God. They stood for godliness and a heartfelt commitment to the Lord in every area of life, and they did so during very difficult times. But listen to what J.I. Packer says about the long term success of their ministry. "The Puritans lost, more or less, every public battle that they fought. Those who stayed in England did not change the Church of England as they hoped to do, nor did they revive more than a minority of its adherents, and eventually they were driven out of Anglicanism by calculated pressure on their consciences. Those who crossed the Atlantic failed to establish new Jerusalem in New England; for the first fifty years their little colonies barely survived. They hung on by the skin of their teeth. But the moral and spiritual victories that the Puritans won by keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations give them a place of high honour in the believers' hall of fame, where Hebrews 11 is the first gallery." (A Quest for Godliness, p.23) They were faithful, godly people, but they were not successful in accomplishing their outward goals. They remind us, as Hebrews 11 does, that it is dangerous to assume that godliness will lead to success.
But Paul does not stop there. He is not content to simply describe his miserable circumstances in this life and leave it at that. I think our trouble is that often we are content to stop here. We say, "Oh, things are really going badly; let me tell you about it," but then we don't go any further.
"Yes," Paul says, "we are wasting away outwardly, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day." If we don't get beyond a description of out outward situation, we are forgetting who we are as Christians, and we are forgetting that Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of the age. If all we do is complain about our problems, we’ve forgotten the most important parts of the truth.
But we need to notice what Paul is not saying here. He is not saying that this inward renewal will eventually raise us to a level of spirituality where trials will not bother us anymore. He is not saying that, as God renews us inwardly day by day we will gradually reach a point of detachment from outward things so that we just won't care about what happens to us. He’s not recommending the practice of resignation, which passively accepts everything that happens, in a spirit of indifference–as if the things that happen in this world don’t really matter. Some branches of mysticism have taught this sort of thing, but this is not what Paul has in mind.
Paul is saying that, with each new trial that threatens to destroy us, God graciously comes to our rescue and keeps us from being overwhelmed. Look at what he says in verses 8 and 9. He says, "we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." It is this daily inner renewal that enables Paul, in each of these cases, to say "but not." These things are still difficult and painful, but because of the present reality of God's grace they do not destroy him. Being hard pressed does not lead, as it otherwise might, to being crushed, perplexity does not lead, as it would if Paul was left to himself, to despair.
But Paul does not stop even here. Each time God rescues him and keeps him from giving in to despair, Paul is reminded that one day all of this is going to end. Each act of deliverance points beyond itself to that time when God is going to deliver us finally from this world of suffering and death. When one problem follows another, it’s easy to begin thinking, “one of these days it’s going to crush me; I can’t keep holding on like this forever.” But the reality is that we are not holding on. God is holding on to us. And He is keeping us until that day when He will wipe away all tears from our eyes and we will see Him face to face. Each act of deliverance reminds us that this is true.
Notice the word "for," at the beginning of verse 17. We are being renewed day by day, for these trials are achieving for us an eternal glory. God delivers us now, because we belong to Him, and because He intends to deliver us fully in the future. Each deliverance, each manifestation of God's grace on our behalf, is a foretaste of what is to come.
In the light of eternity, we can say that these trials themselves are working on our behalf. They are achieving for us an eternal glory. It is not that they can ever become good in themselves, but that by enduring them and standing firm in our commitment to the Lord we are storing up treasure in heaven. That treasure is a gift of grace; we are not earning God's favor by our endurance. But God, as a gracious father, will reward us in His presence for standing firm.
Paul says that, when weighed in the balance with the eternal glory that is ahead, these troubles he is enduring are "light and momentary." What he says in Romans 8:18 is similar. "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Paul is not trivializing the reality of suffering in this life. He is saying that our future glory is of such magnitude that, when it is placed in the balance with our present troubles, there is simply no comparison at all.
In the first place, this future glory is eternal, while our present troubles are temporary. The contrast here is so great that he can describe our current trials as "momentary." This present age, with all of its suffering and horror, is going to come to an end. The age to come, where our true home is, will never end. Life may, at times, seem long and tedious. But looking back–from the perspective of eternity–it will seem like “only a moment.”
In the second place, this future glory is greater in magnitude than our present sufferings. Jonathan Edwards describes it in this way. "God is the highest good of the reasonable creature; and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied, To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey towards heaven...; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life." (Works, vol.2, p. 244). All the good we experience in this life is imperfect and temporary. God is the source of all good, and there we will see Him face to face. We’ll be there forever, and the glory will be so great that it will eclipse both the suffering and joy of life in this world.
Listen to what God said through the prophet Isaiah (65:17 19): “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.”
This is the teaching, that we have this great hope before us which makes our present troubles, by comparison, seem light and momentary. But Paul still has something more to say. He is not content to simply fill our heads with ideas. He goes on to work out the practical implications of this teaching. “So,” he says, “because of all that I have been saying, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.”
Notice that he does not begin with this. We are not being asked to engage in pious wishful thinking, or to turn our thoughts away from the world because it will make us feel better to do so. No, he begins with the truth, and then, having stated that, he goes on to apply it.
He tells us to fix our eyes on things unseen, to intentionally turn our focus away from the things of this world and of time, and to set our minds on the things of eternity. How do we go about this? Let me make three practical suggestions in this area, before I close.
1) We need to be much in God's word. Our natural inclination is to be primarily focused on the things that demand our immediate attention. We need the continual correction and instruction that we receive from the Bible. Read it daily, think on it, pray over it, and ask God to transform your mind through it. The Bible consistently reminds us that this life is a pilgrimage, that this world is not our home. If we want to fix our eyes on things unseen, we need to immerse ourselves in Scripture.
2) Recognize that this is not a "once for all" thing. What Paul is describing here is the work of a lifetime, and a lifetime of effort in this area would come to nothing without the continual intervention of God's grace. So, let's fix our eyes on things unseen, crying out to Him for help. And when we forget for a period of time, as we will, cry out to God and start over again. The only way we really lose in this area is by giving up. Don’t worry about all your failures. Just get up, cry out to God for grace and mercy, and keep going.
3) We would do well to speak to ourselves, to remind ourselves often that our true home is not here. We need to take ourselves in hand and preach to ourselves about this. Martyn Lloyd Jones preached a series of sermons on spiritual depression (which was later published as a book), and he said that our trouble is often that we listen to ourselves rather than talking to ourselves. We need to follow the example of the Psalmist in Psalm 42: "Why are you downcast, Oh my soul, why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God." This same emphasis is found in a number of hymns. For example, Charles Wesley is oppressed by guilt, but instead of listening to himself, he says: "Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears." He reminds himself of the truth of the Gospel. Thomas Ken is struggling to get out of bed to have devotions, and instead of lying there and going back to sleep, he addresses himself: "Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily stage of duty run. Shake off dull sloth and joyful rise to pay thy morning sacrifice." We need to do the same thing in this area, to speak to ourselves often and remind ourselves that this world is not our home and that there is an eternal weight of glory awaiting us.
Horatius Bonar, a Scottish preacher in the 19th century, said this: “We are but as wayfaring men, wandering in the lonely night, who see dimly upon the distant mountain peak the reflection of a sun that never rises here, but which shall never set in the ‘new heavens’ thereafter. And that is enough. It comforts and cheers us on our dark and rugged way” (quoted by Alister McGrath, The Journey, p. 138). We see it dimly–that’s why Satan’s tactic is so often to try and cloud our vision–but we look forward to a day when we will see clearly that sun which will never set. Let's make every effort to fix our eyes beyond our circumstances and into eternity, but lets also cry out to God and ask Him to grant us foretastes of glory, to support us on our journey. He is gracious, and delights in giving us good gifts.
State College, PA
I’ve known a number of people who started out well in the Christian life, then later turned away. None of them turned away because they had heard an irresistible argument that undermined their faith. Most of them just drifted away over time. Their faith became buried under all the stress of living in this world, or some of them became embittered by suffering. Here’s one of the strategies Screwtape, a senior demon, suggests to Wormwood, a demon who is trying to destroy the faith of a Christian: “Your man... doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false,’ but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical,’ ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary,’ ‘conventional’ or ‘ruthless.’ Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.... Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’” (The Screwtape Letters, p. 8). The idea is not to argue him out of the faith–because an argument could easily move in the other direction–but to encourage him to become so engrossed in the business of this world–“real life”–that the things of heaven seem remote and irrelevant. Screwtape goes on: “Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things” (p. 10). When we’re completely engrossed in the things of this world, the things of heaven seem remote and irrelevant.
This sort of thing easily destroys our spiritual lives. We become muddled and confused, and we begin thinking that we’re being silly to give so much attention to things we can’t see, talking to a person we’ve never met face to face, looking forward to a place where we’ve never been. Maybe it’s not really true. The “real world” seems so unquestionable. We have to deal with it every moment. And many people make a beginning in the Christian life but then turn back after awhile, not because they’ve heard an argument which undermined their faith, but because they’ve become completely engrossed in “real life,” the visible, physical realities around us. That pressure is there all the time. But it’s even greater when we experience suffering, which we all do at some point. The suffering is so real and painful, and the invisible realities of God’s kingdom can seem so distant. How do we prevent our faith from being overwhelmed by life in this world? How do we prevent the things of this world, both difficulties and joys, from crowding out our faith? Paul says some things in 2 Cor. 4:16 18 that can help us in this area.
The thing I want to emphasize in this passage is this: If we want to keep from being overwhelmed by our lives in this world, we need to learn, as Paul did, to live in the light of our future in eternity. We need to learn to weigh our present struggles–and our present enjoyments--in the balance with the eternal glory that awaits us; and we need to learn to live in the light of this comparison. We need to learn to live in the light of the reality of our eternal future.
The first thing to notice in this passage is Paul's description of his outward circumstances. He has just said, in v. 14, "we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence." Then, in v.16, he says, "Therefore, we do not lose heart." What he is saying is that, considered in themselves, apart from the assurance of his future resurrection and glorification, his outward circumstances would cause him to lose heart. If Paul judged his life by the world's standards, he would fall into despair.
He goes on to say that outwardly he is "wasting away." The word here was used of the corrosive effect of rust, or of moths eating away clothing. It is often tempting for God's people to assume that if we follow Him things will go well for us in the world. It wasn't this way for Paul. Things were going badly for him, by the world's standards.
Earlier in this chapter, he speaks of being hard pressed on every side, perplexed, persecuted and struck down. And in chapter one, he says "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life" (1:8). In 1 Cor. 15:19, he goes even further and says, "If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."
We need to beware of thinking that godliness will bring us success in this world. It may have just the opposite effect, as it did with Paul. Paul was much more successful, by worldly standards, before he became a Christian. He says in Philippians: "If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more...." He then goes on to describe his former way of life as a Pharisee, and then says: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ" (Philippians 3:4, 7). Becoming a Christian did not cause Paul to prosper outwardly. He was much more successful, in that sense, before his conversion. He was the ideal, the sort of person everyone in his society looked up to. Becoming a Christian ruined all that. We'd be wise to arm ourselves with this knowledge, so that we are not overwhelmed and surprised when difficulties come our way.
The Puritans have been unfairly caricatured in our popular culture as stern, sour moralists whose greatest worry was that someone might be having a good time. The term “Puritanical” stands for everything our society hates. But the Puritans, in reality, were people who sought to order their lives in relation to God. They stood for godliness and a heartfelt commitment to the Lord in every area of life, and they did so during very difficult times. But listen to what J.I. Packer says about the long term success of their ministry. "The Puritans lost, more or less, every public battle that they fought. Those who stayed in England did not change the Church of England as they hoped to do, nor did they revive more than a minority of its adherents, and eventually they were driven out of Anglicanism by calculated pressure on their consciences. Those who crossed the Atlantic failed to establish new Jerusalem in New England; for the first fifty years their little colonies barely survived. They hung on by the skin of their teeth. But the moral and spiritual victories that the Puritans won by keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations give them a place of high honour in the believers' hall of fame, where Hebrews 11 is the first gallery." (A Quest for Godliness, p.23) They were faithful, godly people, but they were not successful in accomplishing their outward goals. They remind us, as Hebrews 11 does, that it is dangerous to assume that godliness will lead to success.
But Paul does not stop there. He is not content to simply describe his miserable circumstances in this life and leave it at that. I think our trouble is that often we are content to stop here. We say, "Oh, things are really going badly; let me tell you about it," but then we don't go any further.
"Yes," Paul says, "we are wasting away outwardly, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day." If we don't get beyond a description of out outward situation, we are forgetting who we are as Christians, and we are forgetting that Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of the age. If all we do is complain about our problems, we’ve forgotten the most important parts of the truth.
But we need to notice what Paul is not saying here. He is not saying that this inward renewal will eventually raise us to a level of spirituality where trials will not bother us anymore. He is not saying that, as God renews us inwardly day by day we will gradually reach a point of detachment from outward things so that we just won't care about what happens to us. He’s not recommending the practice of resignation, which passively accepts everything that happens, in a spirit of indifference–as if the things that happen in this world don’t really matter. Some branches of mysticism have taught this sort of thing, but this is not what Paul has in mind.
Paul is saying that, with each new trial that threatens to destroy us, God graciously comes to our rescue and keeps us from being overwhelmed. Look at what he says in verses 8 and 9. He says, "we are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed." It is this daily inner renewal that enables Paul, in each of these cases, to say "but not." These things are still difficult and painful, but because of the present reality of God's grace they do not destroy him. Being hard pressed does not lead, as it otherwise might, to being crushed, perplexity does not lead, as it would if Paul was left to himself, to despair.
But Paul does not stop even here. Each time God rescues him and keeps him from giving in to despair, Paul is reminded that one day all of this is going to end. Each act of deliverance points beyond itself to that time when God is going to deliver us finally from this world of suffering and death. When one problem follows another, it’s easy to begin thinking, “one of these days it’s going to crush me; I can’t keep holding on like this forever.” But the reality is that we are not holding on. God is holding on to us. And He is keeping us until that day when He will wipe away all tears from our eyes and we will see Him face to face. Each act of deliverance reminds us that this is true.
Notice the word "for," at the beginning of verse 17. We are being renewed day by day, for these trials are achieving for us an eternal glory. God delivers us now, because we belong to Him, and because He intends to deliver us fully in the future. Each deliverance, each manifestation of God's grace on our behalf, is a foretaste of what is to come.
In the light of eternity, we can say that these trials themselves are working on our behalf. They are achieving for us an eternal glory. It is not that they can ever become good in themselves, but that by enduring them and standing firm in our commitment to the Lord we are storing up treasure in heaven. That treasure is a gift of grace; we are not earning God's favor by our endurance. But God, as a gracious father, will reward us in His presence for standing firm.
Paul says that, when weighed in the balance with the eternal glory that is ahead, these troubles he is enduring are "light and momentary." What he says in Romans 8:18 is similar. "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Paul is not trivializing the reality of suffering in this life. He is saying that our future glory is of such magnitude that, when it is placed in the balance with our present troubles, there is simply no comparison at all.
In the first place, this future glory is eternal, while our present troubles are temporary. The contrast here is so great that he can describe our current trials as "momentary." This present age, with all of its suffering and horror, is going to come to an end. The age to come, where our true home is, will never end. Life may, at times, seem long and tedious. But looking back–from the perspective of eternity–it will seem like “only a moment.”
In the second place, this future glory is greater in magnitude than our present sufferings. Jonathan Edwards describes it in this way. "God is the highest good of the reasonable creature; and the enjoyment of him is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied, To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops; but God is the ocean Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey towards heaven...; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life." (Works, vol.2, p. 244). All the good we experience in this life is imperfect and temporary. God is the source of all good, and there we will see Him face to face. We’ll be there forever, and the glory will be so great that it will eclipse both the suffering and joy of life in this world.
Listen to what God said through the prophet Isaiah (65:17 19): “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.”
This is the teaching, that we have this great hope before us which makes our present troubles, by comparison, seem light and momentary. But Paul still has something more to say. He is not content to simply fill our heads with ideas. He goes on to work out the practical implications of this teaching. “So,” he says, “because of all that I have been saying, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.”
Notice that he does not begin with this. We are not being asked to engage in pious wishful thinking, or to turn our thoughts away from the world because it will make us feel better to do so. No, he begins with the truth, and then, having stated that, he goes on to apply it.
He tells us to fix our eyes on things unseen, to intentionally turn our focus away from the things of this world and of time, and to set our minds on the things of eternity. How do we go about this? Let me make three practical suggestions in this area, before I close.
1) We need to be much in God's word. Our natural inclination is to be primarily focused on the things that demand our immediate attention. We need the continual correction and instruction that we receive from the Bible. Read it daily, think on it, pray over it, and ask God to transform your mind through it. The Bible consistently reminds us that this life is a pilgrimage, that this world is not our home. If we want to fix our eyes on things unseen, we need to immerse ourselves in Scripture.
2) Recognize that this is not a "once for all" thing. What Paul is describing here is the work of a lifetime, and a lifetime of effort in this area would come to nothing without the continual intervention of God's grace. So, let's fix our eyes on things unseen, crying out to Him for help. And when we forget for a period of time, as we will, cry out to God and start over again. The only way we really lose in this area is by giving up. Don’t worry about all your failures. Just get up, cry out to God for grace and mercy, and keep going.
3) We would do well to speak to ourselves, to remind ourselves often that our true home is not here. We need to take ourselves in hand and preach to ourselves about this. Martyn Lloyd Jones preached a series of sermons on spiritual depression (which was later published as a book), and he said that our trouble is often that we listen to ourselves rather than talking to ourselves. We need to follow the example of the Psalmist in Psalm 42: "Why are you downcast, Oh my soul, why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God." This same emphasis is found in a number of hymns. For example, Charles Wesley is oppressed by guilt, but instead of listening to himself, he says: "Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears." He reminds himself of the truth of the Gospel. Thomas Ken is struggling to get out of bed to have devotions, and instead of lying there and going back to sleep, he addresses himself: "Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily stage of duty run. Shake off dull sloth and joyful rise to pay thy morning sacrifice." We need to do the same thing in this area, to speak to ourselves often and remind ourselves that this world is not our home and that there is an eternal weight of glory awaiting us.
Horatius Bonar, a Scottish preacher in the 19th century, said this: “We are but as wayfaring men, wandering in the lonely night, who see dimly upon the distant mountain peak the reflection of a sun that never rises here, but which shall never set in the ‘new heavens’ thereafter. And that is enough. It comforts and cheers us on our dark and rugged way” (quoted by Alister McGrath, The Journey, p. 138). We see it dimly–that’s why Satan’s tactic is so often to try and cloud our vision–but we look forward to a day when we will see clearly that sun which will never set. Let's make every effort to fix our eyes beyond our circumstances and into eternity, but lets also cry out to God and ask Him to grant us foretastes of glory, to support us on our journey. He is gracious, and delights in giving us good gifts.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Jesus, the True Vine, John 15:1-27
Shiloh Lutheran Church
State College, PA
Carlo Carretto was a leader in an Italian youth movement called Catholic Action. He was an effective and respected leader, but in 1954, when he was 44 years old, he left his career behind and joined a community in the Algerian desert called the Little Brothers of Jesus. He went into the desert, because he became convinced that his assumptions about the Church were all wrong. He needed to get away from all the action to give himself some perspective, to give himself some time and space to see things in the light of God’s perspective. Here’s how he looked at things before he went away into the desert: “After creating the world, God went away to rest; with the Church founded, Christ had disappeared into heaven. All the work remained for us, the Church. We, above all those in Catholic Action, were the real workers, who bore the weight of the day“ (Letters From the Desert, p. 14). God had done the initial work of creating the world, and then, for a brief period, Christ appeared on earth and founded the Church. But having founded the Church, Christ had departed. Now He expects us to work for the Kingdom of God, but we’re more or less on our own. He’s given us instructions in His Word, but the “weight of the day,” the real burden of the work, rests on us.
In this section of John’s gospel, Jesus is preparing the disciples for His departure. He’s spent the past three years with them, instructing them, modeling the life of the kingdom. They’ve seen Him in all sorts of situations, casting out demons, healing the sick, miraculously providing for the crowds, confronting the religious authorities. And the idea is that they are to carry on His ministry after He is gone. That’s why they’ve been with Him for the past three years; it’s been a time of training. It’s been a time of preparation. During one of my years of graduate school, I was assigned to teach “Introduction to Western Religions” at Temple’s Ambler campus. I had been required to take a seminar the previous year on teaching religion at the college level, and when I received the assignment they told me I was supposed to cover Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And then I was on my own. The assumption was that my previous studies and training should be sufficient for the assignment I was given. Apart from turning in my grades at the end of the semester, I don’t think I had contact with the school leadership that whole semester. Something like this is happening with the disciples. They’re near the end of their training, and within a few days Jesus will be departing from them. So these chapters we’re looking at now are His instructions preparing the disciples for His absence.
But there’s this difference. They’re not really going to be on their own. They’re not being sent out away from Him. Things are going to change. He’s not going to be there with them in the flesh. But they’re going to be connected with Him; they’re going to be in union with Him, like branches connected to a vine. They’re not going to be on their own, like I was in the classroom at Temple, or like Carlo Carretto imagined he was in Catholic Action. Listen to Jesus’ words, as translated in The Message: “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.... This is how my Father shows who he is – when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.” They ‘re to maintain an intimate connection with Him. If they try to do it on their own, they’ll be headed for disaster: “apart from me you can do nothing.” All the things we do in connection with the church; all the behaviors that we associate with living a Christian life, are meaningless, unless we’re maintaining a close connection with Jesus Christ.
We often enjoy having cut flowers in our house. They bring something of the beauty of God’s creation. They add color and a sense of life to the atmosphere of our home. For awhile. No matter what we do, they eventually wither and die, because they’ve been disconnected from their source of life. Those flowers that initially bring a sense of life, eventually become a vision of death. As Christians, we’re not to be like cut flowers. We need to maintain our connection with Jesus Christ, the source of our life. If we don’t, we’ll eventually wither up and die. We may be able to keep up appearances for awhile, like cut flowers in water, but eventually it will become clear that we haven’t followed Jesus’ instructions to “remain in” Him. We’ve become disconnected from the source of our life and are now dead, decaying branches.
But if we stay connected with Jesus, if we “abide in” Him, He promises that we will bear much fruit. As is often the case, if you look into several commentaries you’ll find that there are a variety of opinions about what Jesus means by fruit. Some argue that this is the fruit of a transformed life, essentially the same thing as the fruit of the Spirit that Paul describes in Galatians 5. That’s what Peterson has in mind in The Message translation: “when you produce grapes – when you mature as my disciples.” Others insist that Jesus is talking about the fruit of our witness, people who become Christians because of our ministry. I’ve even heard sermons that questioned the salvation of anyone who wasn’t a successful soul winner. If you can’t point to specific individuals who’ve come to Christ through your witness, they said, you’re not bearing fruit. You’re going to be removed from the vine if things don’t change.
With questions like this, it’s always important to look at the general context. In chapter 14, Jesus has been talking about the importance of obedience. We show our love for Jesus and the Father by living in growing obedience to God’s Word. In the next section of chapter 15, Jesus commands the disciples to love one another, then He warns them that they will be hated by the world because they belong to Him. And then, at the end of the chapter, Jesus tells the disciples that they are going to testify about Him. But this is something they will do, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. The emphasis is on their concrete acts of obedience, not on their success in producing converts. The whole context in this section is about the transformation that flows from their relationship with Jesus; so the fruit that He’s talking about here is the fruit of a transformed life. This includes testifying about Jesus, bearing witness to Him, but the outward, measurable success of our witness isn’t what He has in mind. That’s God’s responsibility, not ours. When people turn to God, it’s because He’s awakened them and drawn them to Himself.
For example, when Paul was preaching in Macedonia, Luke says one of the women listening to him was a worshiper of God named Lydia. And then he says “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14b). Why did she listen eagerly? Because the Lord “opened her heart.” She was a worshiper of God, or a “God fearer.” This means that she was a Gentile who was attracted to Judaism, but who hadn’t yet taken the step of becoming a convert. It was common for these people to attend synagogue worship regularly, but they remained on the fringes. So the Lord had been opening her heart for some time. Others had a part in the process, before Paul ever got there to preach the gospel. He was just the last person in the process. And it’s that way whenever someone turns to Christ; God is the one who opens our hearts, and He uses many people along the way to lead us to faith. Most of them have no idea that they’ve been part of the process. So it’s impossible to look around for fruit in terms of outward results in other peoples’ lives. The fruit Jesus is talking about here is the fruit that grows from our living connection to Jesus Christ. Here it is again in The Message: “This is how the Father shows who he is – when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”
One of those fruits is listed in verses 9-17. As branches on the same vine, they’re to show love for one another. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He’s not saying that we need always to have warm, benevolent feelings toward each other. He’s telling us to follow His example in laying aside our own desires and showing love in concrete ways, as He did when He washed the disciples’ feet in chapter 13, and as He’s going to do very soon when He willingly lays down His life. “This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends” (The Message).
Christians are called to love one another and to show that love in concrete acts of service. We saw that in chapter 13. John says the same thing in his first letter: “This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear. My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality” (1 John 3:16-19a, The Message). John, in this passage, is just developing and applying Jesus’ words: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Another thing that follows from our connection with Jesus is in verses 18-25: because of our relationship with Him, our relationship to the world has changed forever. We no longer belong to this world as we once did, and because of this the world hates us, just as it hates Him. When I was studying in the religion department at Temple University I noticed this: people in the department were very open-minded, for the most part. One woman was into new age spiritualities and she talked freely, with much enthusiasm, about her practices. We had Islamic fundamentalists, Buddhist monks, Jews, Hindus, and secularists with an interest in the phenomenon of religion. There was a real spirit of openness toward all these things. The only position that these people found really intolerable was believing Christianity. Why is that? Because Christians, in a way that is not true of any of these other religions, do not belong to this world: “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.”
Why did the Roman Empire persecute the Church so bitterly during the first three centuries? One of the major reasons was that the Christians were seen as a group of people who didn’t belong. They somehow weren’t connected with the rest of society. One scholar explains it this way: “The Christian movement was revolutionary not because it had the men and resources to mount a war against the laws of the Roman Empire, but because it created a social group that promoted its own laws and its own patterns of behavior. The life and teachings of Jesus led to the formation of a new community of people called ‘the church.’ Christianity had begun to look like a separate people or nation” (Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 119). This is just saying, in a different way, what Jesus said to His disciples: “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.”
The only way they can possibly carry on in this way – being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, loving one another in concrete acts of service, even to the extent of laying down their lives, and enduring the hatred of the world – is to maintain a close connection with Jesus. “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” We maintain a strong connection with Jesus through prayer, meditation on His Word, laying aside our own desires in service to one another (as in chapter 13), by growing in obedience (as in chapter 14), and by regularly gathering together to worship and encourage one another (loving one another in the body of believers involves the concrete act of gathering together regularly). May He be with us and bless our efforts to abide in Him.
State College, PA
Carlo Carretto was a leader in an Italian youth movement called Catholic Action. He was an effective and respected leader, but in 1954, when he was 44 years old, he left his career behind and joined a community in the Algerian desert called the Little Brothers of Jesus. He went into the desert, because he became convinced that his assumptions about the Church were all wrong. He needed to get away from all the action to give himself some perspective, to give himself some time and space to see things in the light of God’s perspective. Here’s how he looked at things before he went away into the desert: “After creating the world, God went away to rest; with the Church founded, Christ had disappeared into heaven. All the work remained for us, the Church. We, above all those in Catholic Action, were the real workers, who bore the weight of the day“ (Letters From the Desert, p. 14). God had done the initial work of creating the world, and then, for a brief period, Christ appeared on earth and founded the Church. But having founded the Church, Christ had departed. Now He expects us to work for the Kingdom of God, but we’re more or less on our own. He’s given us instructions in His Word, but the “weight of the day,” the real burden of the work, rests on us.
In this section of John’s gospel, Jesus is preparing the disciples for His departure. He’s spent the past three years with them, instructing them, modeling the life of the kingdom. They’ve seen Him in all sorts of situations, casting out demons, healing the sick, miraculously providing for the crowds, confronting the religious authorities. And the idea is that they are to carry on His ministry after He is gone. That’s why they’ve been with Him for the past three years; it’s been a time of training. It’s been a time of preparation. During one of my years of graduate school, I was assigned to teach “Introduction to Western Religions” at Temple’s Ambler campus. I had been required to take a seminar the previous year on teaching religion at the college level, and when I received the assignment they told me I was supposed to cover Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And then I was on my own. The assumption was that my previous studies and training should be sufficient for the assignment I was given. Apart from turning in my grades at the end of the semester, I don’t think I had contact with the school leadership that whole semester. Something like this is happening with the disciples. They’re near the end of their training, and within a few days Jesus will be departing from them. So these chapters we’re looking at now are His instructions preparing the disciples for His absence.
But there’s this difference. They’re not really going to be on their own. They’re not being sent out away from Him. Things are going to change. He’s not going to be there with them in the flesh. But they’re going to be connected with Him; they’re going to be in union with Him, like branches connected to a vine. They’re not going to be on their own, like I was in the classroom at Temple, or like Carlo Carretto imagined he was in Catholic Action. Listen to Jesus’ words, as translated in The Message: “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.... This is how my Father shows who he is – when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.” They ‘re to maintain an intimate connection with Him. If they try to do it on their own, they’ll be headed for disaster: “apart from me you can do nothing.” All the things we do in connection with the church; all the behaviors that we associate with living a Christian life, are meaningless, unless we’re maintaining a close connection with Jesus Christ.
We often enjoy having cut flowers in our house. They bring something of the beauty of God’s creation. They add color and a sense of life to the atmosphere of our home. For awhile. No matter what we do, they eventually wither and die, because they’ve been disconnected from their source of life. Those flowers that initially bring a sense of life, eventually become a vision of death. As Christians, we’re not to be like cut flowers. We need to maintain our connection with Jesus Christ, the source of our life. If we don’t, we’ll eventually wither up and die. We may be able to keep up appearances for awhile, like cut flowers in water, but eventually it will become clear that we haven’t followed Jesus’ instructions to “remain in” Him. We’ve become disconnected from the source of our life and are now dead, decaying branches.
But if we stay connected with Jesus, if we “abide in” Him, He promises that we will bear much fruit. As is often the case, if you look into several commentaries you’ll find that there are a variety of opinions about what Jesus means by fruit. Some argue that this is the fruit of a transformed life, essentially the same thing as the fruit of the Spirit that Paul describes in Galatians 5. That’s what Peterson has in mind in The Message translation: “when you produce grapes – when you mature as my disciples.” Others insist that Jesus is talking about the fruit of our witness, people who become Christians because of our ministry. I’ve even heard sermons that questioned the salvation of anyone who wasn’t a successful soul winner. If you can’t point to specific individuals who’ve come to Christ through your witness, they said, you’re not bearing fruit. You’re going to be removed from the vine if things don’t change.
With questions like this, it’s always important to look at the general context. In chapter 14, Jesus has been talking about the importance of obedience. We show our love for Jesus and the Father by living in growing obedience to God’s Word. In the next section of chapter 15, Jesus commands the disciples to love one another, then He warns them that they will be hated by the world because they belong to Him. And then, at the end of the chapter, Jesus tells the disciples that they are going to testify about Him. But this is something they will do, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. The emphasis is on their concrete acts of obedience, not on their success in producing converts. The whole context in this section is about the transformation that flows from their relationship with Jesus; so the fruit that He’s talking about here is the fruit of a transformed life. This includes testifying about Jesus, bearing witness to Him, but the outward, measurable success of our witness isn’t what He has in mind. That’s God’s responsibility, not ours. When people turn to God, it’s because He’s awakened them and drawn them to Himself.
For example, when Paul was preaching in Macedonia, Luke says one of the women listening to him was a worshiper of God named Lydia. And then he says “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14b). Why did she listen eagerly? Because the Lord “opened her heart.” She was a worshiper of God, or a “God fearer.” This means that she was a Gentile who was attracted to Judaism, but who hadn’t yet taken the step of becoming a convert. It was common for these people to attend synagogue worship regularly, but they remained on the fringes. So the Lord had been opening her heart for some time. Others had a part in the process, before Paul ever got there to preach the gospel. He was just the last person in the process. And it’s that way whenever someone turns to Christ; God is the one who opens our hearts, and He uses many people along the way to lead us to faith. Most of them have no idea that they’ve been part of the process. So it’s impossible to look around for fruit in terms of outward results in other peoples’ lives. The fruit Jesus is talking about here is the fruit that grows from our living connection to Jesus Christ. Here it is again in The Message: “This is how the Father shows who he is – when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.”
One of those fruits is listed in verses 9-17. As branches on the same vine, they’re to show love for one another. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He’s not saying that we need always to have warm, benevolent feelings toward each other. He’s telling us to follow His example in laying aside our own desires and showing love in concrete ways, as He did when He washed the disciples’ feet in chapter 13, and as He’s going to do very soon when He willingly lays down His life. “This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends” (The Message).
Christians are called to love one another and to show that love in concrete acts of service. We saw that in chapter 13. John says the same thing in his first letter: “This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear. My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality” (1 John 3:16-19a, The Message). John, in this passage, is just developing and applying Jesus’ words: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Another thing that follows from our connection with Jesus is in verses 18-25: because of our relationship with Him, our relationship to the world has changed forever. We no longer belong to this world as we once did, and because of this the world hates us, just as it hates Him. When I was studying in the religion department at Temple University I noticed this: people in the department were very open-minded, for the most part. One woman was into new age spiritualities and she talked freely, with much enthusiasm, about her practices. We had Islamic fundamentalists, Buddhist monks, Jews, Hindus, and secularists with an interest in the phenomenon of religion. There was a real spirit of openness toward all these things. The only position that these people found really intolerable was believing Christianity. Why is that? Because Christians, in a way that is not true of any of these other religions, do not belong to this world: “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.”
Why did the Roman Empire persecute the Church so bitterly during the first three centuries? One of the major reasons was that the Christians were seen as a group of people who didn’t belong. They somehow weren’t connected with the rest of society. One scholar explains it this way: “The Christian movement was revolutionary not because it had the men and resources to mount a war against the laws of the Roman Empire, but because it created a social group that promoted its own laws and its own patterns of behavior. The life and teachings of Jesus led to the formation of a new community of people called ‘the church.’ Christianity had begun to look like a separate people or nation” (Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, p. 119). This is just saying, in a different way, what Jesus said to His disciples: “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.”
The only way they can possibly carry on in this way – being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, loving one another in concrete acts of service, even to the extent of laying down their lives, and enduring the hatred of the world – is to maintain a close connection with Jesus. “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” We maintain a strong connection with Jesus through prayer, meditation on His Word, laying aside our own desires in service to one another (as in chapter 13), by growing in obedience (as in chapter 14), and by regularly gathering together to worship and encourage one another (loving one another in the body of believers involves the concrete act of gathering together regularly). May He be with us and bless our efforts to abide in Him.
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