When I left India, in early 1979, I spent a few months in Belgium before returning to the States. The OM base where I was staying revolved mostly around two areas: finance and maintaining OM vehicles. I wasn’t of much use in either of these areas, but I guess the leaders decided I was likely to do less damage helping the mechanics. So I worked for three months, assisting in the garage. The head mechanic would give me simple jobs to do, by describing to me exactly what he wanted and what tools I’d need. Almost always, though, the jobs turned out to be more complex than I was expecting. I’d run into unexpected problems and find myself in over my head, so I’d have to go back and pester my boss with more questions. Because my understanding was so limited, this was a regular experience during the whole time I was there. The jobs were never really as simple as I expected, and they nearly always led to more questions than I could answer myself.
This is the position Habakkuk is in by the middle of chapter 1. We saw in the first sermon that he is struggling with living in a society that is in serious spiritual decline. The people are living in persistent rebellion against God and are even persecuting those who speak in His name. So Habakkuk cries out to God about the situation: “Why are you allowing these things to happen? Why don’t you do something?” And God responds, “I’m raising up the Babylonians to come and punish my people.” Habakkuk knows something about these Babylonians, so he responds, “what kind of an answer is this?” The answer he received to his first question hasn’t helped at all; it’s created more problems, raised more questions.
Conditions in this fallen world are such that it often looks like no one is in charge. Those who manage to get the upper hand, who gain an advantage over others by seizing power, or by having lots of money, or by learning to manipulate people, end up tyrannizing those under them. People, looking at this situation, often conclude that there is no God, or that if there is a God, He is either unjust or is powerless to bring about justice.
This is the problem Habakkuk is faced with in the middle of chapter 1. How can this answer he’s been given – that God is going to use the Babylonians to punish His people – how can this be consistent with what he knows about God? Listen to him, as his words are translated in The Message: “God, you’re from eternity, aren’t you? Holy God, we aren’t going to die, are we? God, you chose Babylonians for your judgment work? Rock-Solid God, you gave them the job of discipline? But you can’t be serious! You can’t condone evil! So why don’t you do something about this? Why are you silent now? This outrage! Evil men swallow up the righteous and you stand around and watch!” Habakkuk was complaining about his own people in the beginning, but the Babylonians are clearly worse. “How can they be the ones to deal out punishment? How can this be, and is it going to keep going on indefinitely? Is this the way things are, and are they going to continue in this direction? How can I reconcile this with what I already know about God?” God’s response to Habakkuk, at the beginning of chapter 2, tells us some important things about His justice in this world that’s so full of injustice.
The first thing is that God’s justice is not apparent on the surface of things. Habakkuk needs to be attentive and put himself in the way of receiving an answer to the question: “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.” Some of the commentators are very concerned about whether or not Habakkuk actually goes up into a watchtower. They want us to be sure to understand that this is a spiritual exercise that Habakkuk is engaged in, and that he doesn’t actually need to go anywhere special. It’s something that happens within him, in his heart.
But this is a false dichotomy. What we do, and where we are, has an immense impact on the things that happen within us. A friend of mine told me about being on a fishing trip, and one of the men he was with said, “I don’t need to be in church; God speaks to me right here.” So my friend asked him, “Is that true? What does He say to you?” And, of course, the man didn’t have a response. God wasn’t speaking to him, he was just doing something he liked and he felt good about it. When I hear people say, “I can worship God anywhere,” or “I don’t need to set aside special times and places for prayer; I can pray anywhere, anytime;” I usually assume that these people are spending very little time, if any at all, in worship and prayer. It’s true that we can pray anytime, anywhere. But it’s also true that God calls us to set aside times and places to worship Him and cultivate His presence, and when we refuse to do this we end up not praying and worshiping much at all. Was Habakkuk literally stationing himself on one of the watchposts of the city? Probably not. But I’m certain that he had specific times and places where he cultivated God’s presence, and that’s what he’s describing here. He raised the question, then he diligently and persistently put himself in the way of receiving an answer from God.
The author of Psalm 73 is wrestling with a similar question. He begins the psalm by affirming the goodness of God: “Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart.” He believes that this is true, but then he goes on to say that he went through a time of doubt in this area. He looked around him and saw wicked people prospering; they oppressed others and got away with it; they seemed to live charmed lives, not struggling like other people: “For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people.... Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning” (vv. 4-5, 12-14). He looked around and saw that wicked people had a much easier, less painful life than he did. So he began wondering, “what’s the point of my obedience?” But here’s the turning point in the psalm: “until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end” (v. 17). He went into the place set aside for corporate worship, the place that God had set aside for making Himself known to the people, and then God enabled him to see the truth. What we’re doing, and where we put ourselves, will have an effect on our spiritual perception. Can we pray and worship God anywhere, anytime? Yes, but only if we begin by praying and worshiping Him together with His people in those places and times where He has chosen to make Himself known. God’s justice is not apparent on the surface of things. Habakkuk needs to be attentive and put himself in the way of receiving an answer to his question. The same thing is true for us.
The second thing is that God’s justice is not going to appear in its fullness right away. He’s not going to crush injustice immediately. He tells Habakkuk two things that point in this direction: 1) write it down (so that if will be available for people to read in the future); and 2) be patient and wait for it to come. Here it is in The Message: “Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run. This vision-message is a witness pointing to what’s coming. It aches for the coming – it can hardly wait! And it doesn’t lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It’s on its way. It will come right on time.” It will come right on time, but not on our timetable. Our calling is to “wait for it” in confidence that God will carry out His plans in His own time and according to His own wisdom.
But waiting patiently is not resigning ourselves to the injustice all around us. It doesn’t mean that we just say, “oh well, that’s just the way things are; there’s no use getting worked up about it.” If you never get worked up about the injustice of this world, you don’t understand what’s going on; you may have managed to safely insulate yourself from the suffering of others in this world, but what you’re doing is not the thing God is calling Habakkuk to do. Psalm 37 is another psalm that addresses this problem. The psalmist begins with the words, “Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers” (v. 1). Why does he begin this way? Because fretting, getting worked up about it, is a very natural response. So he’s saying, recognize the larger truth about the situation (“for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb”), and turn your heart to the Lord (“Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security”). He’s saying, “you’re going to need to be intentional to keep yourself from fretting over this; you’re only going to be able to do this by turning to the Lord for help and recognizing that He will set things right in His own time and way.”
Waiting on God’s time is not stoic resignation. Paul has a good description of what it’s like to wait on God for the fulfillment of His purposes in this world: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:22-25). We’re waiting in patience for the fulfillment of our hope, but during this in-between time we “groan inwardly.” We’re filled with longing, and we cry out to God, like we see Habakkuk, and the psalmists, doing: “How much longer, O Lord?”
This leads to the third point, which is this: though it may, at present, appear otherwise, those who trust in God and obey Him are better off now and will be infinitely better off in the future. Even while we’re waiting in faith and hope, we are better off than those who appear to have the upper hand right now. Listen to verse 4 in The Message: “Look at that man, bloated by self-importance – full of himself but soul-empty. But the person in right standing before God, through loyal and steady believing is fully alive, really alive.” Jesus said, “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?” (Mark 8:36-37, The Message). That man, “bloated by self-importance,” is in the process of losing his soul.
If we only look at things as they are right now, in this particular slice of time, we’ll get an inaccurate picture. Those who live by faith in God have life and are moving in the direction of greater fullness of life in eternity. The wicked are dead, alienated from the source of life and of all good, and they are moving in the direction of ultimate, final separation. The consequences of the life of faith are infinitely more desirable than anything the wicked are able to take by force in this life.
So, how do we, as Christians, respond to the reality of injustice in the world? We cultivate God’s presence and influence in our lives. He is the source of all justice. If we’re concerned when we see injustice, our concern should drive us to Him, not away from Him. Habakkuk models that for us. As we draw closer to Him, we’ll be able to see things in clearer perspective. We bring our concerns and questions to Him, like Habakkuk did, then we put ourselves in the way of receiving an answer. Then we accept the fact that injustice is going to be part of this world until the Lord returns. We don’t like that, and we don’t just resign ourselves to it. We do all we can to reduce injustice and to work for justice within the context of our individual callings. Christians have historically been engaged in seeking to make this world a better place to live by showing compassion and working for laws that prevent brutality and exploitation. But we do that within the context of a world that’s in rebellion against God and that repeatedly asserts its independence from Him. Because of that, our success is always less than what we desire, and we pray and long for that day when we will live together in the new heaven and new earth. We live by faith, in anticipation of that time when everything will be made right, and we will see God face to face. We work for justice, but we recognize that we won’t be able to eradicate injustice until that day when God makes all things new.
And when we begin crying out to God about injustice, we see that the problem is not just “out there.” The problem is also within us. Injustice is a result of sin, and we are sinners. Our central focus is in these words in verse 4, which in many ways are the central point of the book. This phrase, “the righteous will live by their faith,” is quoted three times in the New Testament, twice by the Apostle Paul and once in Hebrews (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38-39). Paul uses it at the beginning of his great exposition of the gospel in Romans: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.” We’re made right with God by faith, and we continue to live in a right relationship with Him through faith. This gospel is the “power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith.” This gospel is the only hope for sinful people living in this fallen world with all its injustice. Jesus has borne the weight of the world's sin, ours included; the price has been paid in full, not just for our individual salvation, but for the healing of this world.
As people made right with God by faith, this is what we look forward to: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:1-5). Until that day, may God help us to walk with Him, cultivating His presence in every area of our lives; may He help us to live increasingly according to the life of His eternal kingdom, seeking to show mercy and grace to others in His name; and may He enable us to hold firmly to the hope of the gospel and to proclaim that message to all in the hope that they will believe and be saved. “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered” (Psalm 130:3-4). That forgiveness comes to us in the gospel, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” May we, having contributed, even in seemingly small ways, to the injustice of this world, know the power of that forgiveness in our own lives, and may we offer it to others and pray that they will believe and be reconciled to God.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
A Surprising Answer to Prayer, Habakkuk 1:1-11
Awhile back, I heard about some studies that have been done recently on the benefits of prayer. Researchers were discovering, to their surprise, that prayer is immensely beneficial, that people with a strong prayer life have more resources for dealing with difficult things. They couldn’t help coming to the conclusion that prayer is a good thing, that prayer is very effective therapy. The reports I heard didn’t have anything to say about the object of prayer; there wasn’t much concern about whether or not there is anyone there listening to our prayers. The whole point was that prayer tends to make people feel better. We tend to function better as human beings if prayer, any kind of prayer, is a regular part of our lives.
Now, I don’t want to dismiss this. I think these researchers were discovering something that is true about us as people made in God’s image: we’re made in such a way that we function better when prayer is part of our lives. We could go even further and say that if we never pray at all our humanness is diminished. God has made us to commune with Him for eternity, and when this part of our lives is not functioning we are less than what He created us to be. We function better, we’re better off on the whole, when prayer is a regular part of our lives.
But then, having said that, we need to recognize that this is an inadequate view of prayer. Prayer does tend to be therapeutic, but prayer is more than therapy. Prayer does tend to benefit us emotionally and psychologically, but prayer is about more than making us feel better. When we come into God’s presence in prayer, we are not in control of the outcome. We never know what God is going to do in response to our prayers. When we make prayer a regular part of our lives, no doubt we will experience some emotional benefits, but we need to be careful not to reduce prayer to this. When we come before God in prayer, we’re involved in something we don’t fully understand, something that’s beyond us. We’re not the ones in control. We’re interacting with the living, sovereign God. We’re in relationship with the One who rules the universe, who acts in His own ways and according to His own wisdom. We can see this clearly in this short book of Habakkuk.
Notice, first of all, that Habakkuk’s prayer is a dialogue. The first two chapters of this book are in dialogue form; Habakkuk speaks, then God replies. Habakkuk is a man of prayer; we have some of his prayers recorded in this book. But his prayer isn’t over when he stops speaking. He speaks to God, but his relationship with God involves more than speaking. He speaks, then waits in anticipation for God to answer him. His prayer is part of a relationship.
During the first few years after I became a Christian I read about people who spent large amounts of time in prayer. I read David Brainerd’s diary, where he describes whole days that he set aside for prayer and fasting, while he was serving as a missionary among the American Indians. I read about George Whitefield and John Wesley, who became great evangelists because they were people who knew God, who spent hours in prayer. I read that E.M. Bounds, who wrote several books on prayer, spent 6 or more hours in prayer each day. And there were lots of others, enough to depress me with my own inadequacies. So I decided, at one point, that I should set aside two hours each day for prayer.
The problem was, what was I to do during that time? I know this might not be a problem for everyone, but I found myself wondering how these great Christians found so many things to talk about in God’s presence for hours each day. I quickly ran out of things to talk about, so I’d sing hymns and choruses, but then I felt guilty, because I thought I wasn’t really filling the time with prayer like I wanted to. I made lists and prayed through missionary prayer letters, trying to fill up more of the time. But I got bored doing that day after day. I’ve since that time realized that my understanding of prayer was too limited. I don’t doubt that these great people who spent hours each day in prayer were doing more than making requests the whole time. Prayer includes worship, singing in God’s presence, and sitting before Him in silence. We don’t need to fill all the time with chatter. Habakkuk speaks in God’s presence, but then he stops and waits. He’s willing to be silent before God.
The second thing to notice is that Habakkuk brings before God the deepest concerns of his heart. He complains to God about the things that are overwhelming him. He’s free to speak the truth to God; he doesn’t feel compelled to dress up his prayers to make them acceptable. When I was a young Christian I remember speaking to an older Christian about something difficult that had happened. I don’t remember what the incident was, but I do remember this man’s response. He said, “I don’t know, but I do know that we don’t have the right to ask God why this happened.” So I didn’t. I accepted this man’s word for it, since he was older and more mature as a Christian than I was.
But listen to Habakkuk: “Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?” He feels free to ask God “why.” Things are not right in the nation. Habakkuk is living before the nation was taken into captivity in Babylon, but we don’t know the exact time. He gives us almost no information about himself. But we do know that he was living in a time of serious spiritual decline. These people who were called by God’s name were acting unjustly, persecuting those who spoke the truth.
Here’s an example from Jeremiah, who may have been a contemporary of Habakkuk (and even if they didn’t know each other, they lived in similar circumstances). Jeremiah had been prophesying, speaking in God’s name and at His command, and because of it was beaten and put into the stocks. Here’s Jeremiah’s response: “O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long” (20:7-8). God’s people are acting wickedly, even to the point of persecuting His prophets. That’s what Habakkuk is complaining about in verses 1-4: why does God keep putting up with this? Why does He tolerate wrong?
The distress of living in the midst of wickedness has often been difficult for God’s people. Peter says that Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who lived in Sodom just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, was “sick of all the immorality and wickedness around him. Yes, he was a righteous man who was distressed by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day” (2 Peter 2:7-8, New Living Translation). Following Jesus brings us into conflict with the ways of this world. In this fallen world, the wicked often prosper and succeed. They oppress others and get away with it, and often it seems like their lives are charmed. The author of Psalm 73 struggled with this problem: “For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.... This is what the wicked are like--always carefree, they increase in wealth” (Psalm 73:3-6, 12). It’s not very difficult to find examples of this in our own society. And watching this causes us to grieve. But the psalmists and prophets don’t just grieve. They don’t just get depressed about it. They cry out to God in their distress. That’s what Habakkuk is doing in these early verses.
Part of Habakkuk’s prayer life involves complaining to God, instead of complaining to others. I’m afraid our tendency is too often just the opposite. Maybe we’re not comfortable with the idea of bringing our complaints to God. Maybe we feel like we need to be at our best in prayer and feel guilty about venting these emotions in God’s presence. These things don’t seem spiritual enough to be part of our prayer lives. But then what often happens is that we vent our frustrations to one another. And things just get worse. We become more angry and resentful at the situation, and the more we talk about it the more we realize our powerlessness to bring about any change. It’s far better to bring these things into God’s presence in prayer. Habakkuk cries out to God with the deepest concerns of his heart.
The third thing to notice is this: in response to Habakkuk’s prayer, God does something that Habakkuk could never have anticipated, something he wouldn’t have believed even if he were told: “The Lord replied, ‘Look at the nations and be amazed! Watch and be astounded at what I will do! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if somebody told you about it. I am raising up the Babylonians to be a new power on the world scene. They are a cruel and violent nation who will march across the world and conquer it” (NLT). Habakkuk has been praying about the wickedness of his own people, but these people God is raising up are clearly worse. How can this be an answer to his prayers? It doesn’t make sense (and he addresses this complaint to God in his next prayer).
We need to know, in coming before God, that His ways are not our ways: “‘I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work.’ God’s Decree. ‘For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think” (Isaiah 55:8-9, The Message). In coming before God, we need to know that there are mysteries that surpass our understanding. He is God, and we are not (that’s the thing that comes across clearly in the book of Job). As creatures, our calling is to humble ourselves before the ultimate mystery of our infinite God. There is much about Him, and much about our relationship with Him, that we don’t understand. When we come into His presence in prayer, we’re in over our heads. We’re not in control of the outcome, and much of the time we don’t even fully understand what we’re doing.
God is wiser than we are, and He is doing things that exceed our comprehension right now. How could Habakkuk have ever imagined that this infinite God, shrouded in the mystery of unapproachable light, would a few hundred years later be born of a virgin? How could he have ever guessed that this God, who seemed unconcerned about the sins and suffering of His people, would one day die on the cross to bear the weight of the world’s sin? God is wiser than we are, and He is doing things that exceed our comprehension right now. His perspective is larger than ours. He’s proven Himself to be trustworthy. Our calling, as His people, is to humble ourselves before Him, recognizing that He is God and we are not.
If we want to pray like Habakkuk prayed, we need to get beyond the idea that prayer is nothing more than asking things from God. Here are two exercises that can help in this area. Spiritual exercises are ways of training ourselves spiritually, just as physical exercises train our bodies to do things we couldn’t do otherwise. 1) The first is a prayerful reading of Scripture called Lectio Divina (which is just Latin for divine reading). Set aside 10 minutes to read through a short passage of Scripture. Begin by asking God to speak to you, then read the passage out loud. Then read it again, slowly, and pray in response to it. Allow God to speak to you through the Word, and let your prayer be a response to His speaking. Don’t force it, just keep reading through the passage until you have something to pray about. Then, for the last few minutes, sit in silence, attentive to God in the presence of this passage you’ve just been reading. Don’t try to do anything during this time; just be attentive to God. When your mind wanders, bring it back to the text. And then end the time by giving thanks.
2) The second exercise is a form of silent, contemplative prayer. Set aside the last 5-10 minutes of your prayer time for silent prayer. The point of this prayer is not to coerce God into speaking to you. We don’t have control over God in that way. This prophecy of Habakkuk is something he “received” (v.1), something given by God in His own time and way. The point is to be attentive to God, to be silent in His presence. It’s helpful to have a word or phrase to help bring your attention back when your mind starts to wander (something simple: “Jesus,” or “Father,” or “Lord help me”). Each time your mind wanders, use your word to bring your attention back to God. Simply sit in his presence, and then end the time by slowly praying the Lord’s Prayer. Both of these exercises are ways of stopping our own incessant chatter and turning our attention to God Himself.
When we come before God in prayer, we’re involved in something we don’t fully understand, something that’s beyond us. We’re not the ones in control. We’re interacting with the living, sovereign God. We’re in relationship with the One who rules the universe, who acts in His own ways and according to His own wisdom. We’re in relationship with the One who “sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). It’s because God is wiser, more powerful, and more loving than we are that we are able to be rescued from our sins.
Now, I don’t want to dismiss this. I think these researchers were discovering something that is true about us as people made in God’s image: we’re made in such a way that we function better when prayer is part of our lives. We could go even further and say that if we never pray at all our humanness is diminished. God has made us to commune with Him for eternity, and when this part of our lives is not functioning we are less than what He created us to be. We function better, we’re better off on the whole, when prayer is a regular part of our lives.
But then, having said that, we need to recognize that this is an inadequate view of prayer. Prayer does tend to be therapeutic, but prayer is more than therapy. Prayer does tend to benefit us emotionally and psychologically, but prayer is about more than making us feel better. When we come into God’s presence in prayer, we are not in control of the outcome. We never know what God is going to do in response to our prayers. When we make prayer a regular part of our lives, no doubt we will experience some emotional benefits, but we need to be careful not to reduce prayer to this. When we come before God in prayer, we’re involved in something we don’t fully understand, something that’s beyond us. We’re not the ones in control. We’re interacting with the living, sovereign God. We’re in relationship with the One who rules the universe, who acts in His own ways and according to His own wisdom. We can see this clearly in this short book of Habakkuk.
Notice, first of all, that Habakkuk’s prayer is a dialogue. The first two chapters of this book are in dialogue form; Habakkuk speaks, then God replies. Habakkuk is a man of prayer; we have some of his prayers recorded in this book. But his prayer isn’t over when he stops speaking. He speaks to God, but his relationship with God involves more than speaking. He speaks, then waits in anticipation for God to answer him. His prayer is part of a relationship.
During the first few years after I became a Christian I read about people who spent large amounts of time in prayer. I read David Brainerd’s diary, where he describes whole days that he set aside for prayer and fasting, while he was serving as a missionary among the American Indians. I read about George Whitefield and John Wesley, who became great evangelists because they were people who knew God, who spent hours in prayer. I read that E.M. Bounds, who wrote several books on prayer, spent 6 or more hours in prayer each day. And there were lots of others, enough to depress me with my own inadequacies. So I decided, at one point, that I should set aside two hours each day for prayer.
The problem was, what was I to do during that time? I know this might not be a problem for everyone, but I found myself wondering how these great Christians found so many things to talk about in God’s presence for hours each day. I quickly ran out of things to talk about, so I’d sing hymns and choruses, but then I felt guilty, because I thought I wasn’t really filling the time with prayer like I wanted to. I made lists and prayed through missionary prayer letters, trying to fill up more of the time. But I got bored doing that day after day. I’ve since that time realized that my understanding of prayer was too limited. I don’t doubt that these great people who spent hours each day in prayer were doing more than making requests the whole time. Prayer includes worship, singing in God’s presence, and sitting before Him in silence. We don’t need to fill all the time with chatter. Habakkuk speaks in God’s presence, but then he stops and waits. He’s willing to be silent before God.
The second thing to notice is that Habakkuk brings before God the deepest concerns of his heart. He complains to God about the things that are overwhelming him. He’s free to speak the truth to God; he doesn’t feel compelled to dress up his prayers to make them acceptable. When I was a young Christian I remember speaking to an older Christian about something difficult that had happened. I don’t remember what the incident was, but I do remember this man’s response. He said, “I don’t know, but I do know that we don’t have the right to ask God why this happened.” So I didn’t. I accepted this man’s word for it, since he was older and more mature as a Christian than I was.
But listen to Habakkuk: “Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?” He feels free to ask God “why.” Things are not right in the nation. Habakkuk is living before the nation was taken into captivity in Babylon, but we don’t know the exact time. He gives us almost no information about himself. But we do know that he was living in a time of serious spiritual decline. These people who were called by God’s name were acting unjustly, persecuting those who spoke the truth.
Here’s an example from Jeremiah, who may have been a contemporary of Habakkuk (and even if they didn’t know each other, they lived in similar circumstances). Jeremiah had been prophesying, speaking in God’s name and at His command, and because of it was beaten and put into the stocks. Here’s Jeremiah’s response: “O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long” (20:7-8). God’s people are acting wickedly, even to the point of persecuting His prophets. That’s what Habakkuk is complaining about in verses 1-4: why does God keep putting up with this? Why does He tolerate wrong?
The distress of living in the midst of wickedness has often been difficult for God’s people. Peter says that Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who lived in Sodom just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, was “sick of all the immorality and wickedness around him. Yes, he was a righteous man who was distressed by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day” (2 Peter 2:7-8, New Living Translation). Following Jesus brings us into conflict with the ways of this world. In this fallen world, the wicked often prosper and succeed. They oppress others and get away with it, and often it seems like their lives are charmed. The author of Psalm 73 struggled with this problem: “For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.... This is what the wicked are like--always carefree, they increase in wealth” (Psalm 73:3-6, 12). It’s not very difficult to find examples of this in our own society. And watching this causes us to grieve. But the psalmists and prophets don’t just grieve. They don’t just get depressed about it. They cry out to God in their distress. That’s what Habakkuk is doing in these early verses.
Part of Habakkuk’s prayer life involves complaining to God, instead of complaining to others. I’m afraid our tendency is too often just the opposite. Maybe we’re not comfortable with the idea of bringing our complaints to God. Maybe we feel like we need to be at our best in prayer and feel guilty about venting these emotions in God’s presence. These things don’t seem spiritual enough to be part of our prayer lives. But then what often happens is that we vent our frustrations to one another. And things just get worse. We become more angry and resentful at the situation, and the more we talk about it the more we realize our powerlessness to bring about any change. It’s far better to bring these things into God’s presence in prayer. Habakkuk cries out to God with the deepest concerns of his heart.
The third thing to notice is this: in response to Habakkuk’s prayer, God does something that Habakkuk could never have anticipated, something he wouldn’t have believed even if he were told: “The Lord replied, ‘Look at the nations and be amazed! Watch and be astounded at what I will do! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if somebody told you about it. I am raising up the Babylonians to be a new power on the world scene. They are a cruel and violent nation who will march across the world and conquer it” (NLT). Habakkuk has been praying about the wickedness of his own people, but these people God is raising up are clearly worse. How can this be an answer to his prayers? It doesn’t make sense (and he addresses this complaint to God in his next prayer).
We need to know, in coming before God, that His ways are not our ways: “‘I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work.’ God’s Decree. ‘For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think” (Isaiah 55:8-9, The Message). In coming before God, we need to know that there are mysteries that surpass our understanding. He is God, and we are not (that’s the thing that comes across clearly in the book of Job). As creatures, our calling is to humble ourselves before the ultimate mystery of our infinite God. There is much about Him, and much about our relationship with Him, that we don’t understand. When we come into His presence in prayer, we’re in over our heads. We’re not in control of the outcome, and much of the time we don’t even fully understand what we’re doing.
God is wiser than we are, and He is doing things that exceed our comprehension right now. How could Habakkuk have ever imagined that this infinite God, shrouded in the mystery of unapproachable light, would a few hundred years later be born of a virgin? How could he have ever guessed that this God, who seemed unconcerned about the sins and suffering of His people, would one day die on the cross to bear the weight of the world’s sin? God is wiser than we are, and He is doing things that exceed our comprehension right now. His perspective is larger than ours. He’s proven Himself to be trustworthy. Our calling, as His people, is to humble ourselves before Him, recognizing that He is God and we are not.
If we want to pray like Habakkuk prayed, we need to get beyond the idea that prayer is nothing more than asking things from God. Here are two exercises that can help in this area. Spiritual exercises are ways of training ourselves spiritually, just as physical exercises train our bodies to do things we couldn’t do otherwise. 1) The first is a prayerful reading of Scripture called Lectio Divina (which is just Latin for divine reading). Set aside 10 minutes to read through a short passage of Scripture. Begin by asking God to speak to you, then read the passage out loud. Then read it again, slowly, and pray in response to it. Allow God to speak to you through the Word, and let your prayer be a response to His speaking. Don’t force it, just keep reading through the passage until you have something to pray about. Then, for the last few minutes, sit in silence, attentive to God in the presence of this passage you’ve just been reading. Don’t try to do anything during this time; just be attentive to God. When your mind wanders, bring it back to the text. And then end the time by giving thanks.
2) The second exercise is a form of silent, contemplative prayer. Set aside the last 5-10 minutes of your prayer time for silent prayer. The point of this prayer is not to coerce God into speaking to you. We don’t have control over God in that way. This prophecy of Habakkuk is something he “received” (v.1), something given by God in His own time and way. The point is to be attentive to God, to be silent in His presence. It’s helpful to have a word or phrase to help bring your attention back when your mind starts to wander (something simple: “Jesus,” or “Father,” or “Lord help me”). Each time your mind wanders, use your word to bring your attention back to God. Simply sit in his presence, and then end the time by slowly praying the Lord’s Prayer. Both of these exercises are ways of stopping our own incessant chatter and turning our attention to God Himself.
When we come before God in prayer, we’re involved in something we don’t fully understand, something that’s beyond us. We’re not the ones in control. We’re interacting with the living, sovereign God. We’re in relationship with the One who rules the universe, who acts in His own ways and according to His own wisdom. We’re in relationship with the One who “sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). It’s because God is wiser, more powerful, and more loving than we are that we are able to be rescued from our sins.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
All Things in Jesus' Name, Colossians 3:15-17
All Things in Jesus’ Name
Colossians 3:15-17
First Sunday of Christmas, 2012
Shiloh Lutheran Church
Whenever we come to a passage of Scripture, it’s important to take note of the context. Paul didn’t write this letter in chapters, and the people who received it didn’t read it in sections as we’re doing. They read straight through it, as we do when we receive a letter. So as we come to a brief passage like this, we need to notice what Paul has been saying up to this point; otherwise we’re in danger of misreading Scripture. And we’ll certainly miss out on much of what is being said.
At the beginning of this chapter, Paul reminds the Colossians of their citizenship in heaven. Because they belong to Jesus Christ, they are no longer citizens of this world. They’ve been crucified with Christ, they’ve died to this world; and they’ve become citizens of heaven. They continue to live in this world, but their relationship with the world can never be what it once was. This is not just theological material for them to discuss over coffee. It’s not just something to agree with in a catechism class. God’s intention is that we live lives consistent with our citizenship, so in verses 5-14, Paul explains how this should affect their conduct.
The point, in these verses, is not just that individual Christians are to model the life of the kingdom. That’s part of it, but he’s saying more than that. All the pronouns throughout this passage are in the plural. Paul is addressing the church. The church, as a body of people called together in Jesus’ name, is to model the life of God’s kingdom, especially in the way we act toward one another: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (vv. 12-14).
This is what the church is to look like, according to God’s Word. But, of course, the church often doesn’t look like this. The author of the hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation,” recognized this: “Though with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed. By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” The church is often plagued with disunity, backbiting, gossip, an unforgiving spirit. In many churches, people live double lives because they’re afraid to admit the truth. They pretend that all is well, and that the Lord is doing wonderful things among them, when in reality their lives are so filled with inconsistency that they wonder whether the whole thing is really true at all. There’s no visible evidence in their lives, or in the life of their church, of the reality of God’s grace.
The church is a body of people called together because of our common bond in Jesus Christ. But this common bond that we have in Christ doesn’t automatically lead us to act in loving ways toward one another. These verses we’re looking at today, verses 15-17, emphasize that the church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual health of the church are closely tied together and have a profound effect on each other.
The first thing to notice here, in verse 15, is that when the peace of Christ is ruling in our hearts, we are enabled to live at peace with each other. What does it mean to “let the peace of Christ rule” in our hearts? Paul says, in Romans 5:1: “therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Before we were justified we were not at peace with God. We saw Him as our enemy, and we consistently refused to acknowledge His Lordship over our lives. Sin put a barrier between ourselves and God, and this also ended up separating us from one another, and even from ourselves. Sin isolates us.
C.S. Lewis has an interesting illustration of this in his book, The Great Divorce. It’s about a busload of people who travel from Hell to Heaven (and then back again). He describes Hell as a sprawling, dingy town, where people are constantly squabbling. Here’s a conversation he has with one of the people on the bus: “‘It seems the deuce of a town,’ I volunteered, ‘and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?’ ‘Not at all,’ said my neighbour. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move....’ ‘And what about the earlier arrivals? I mean – there must be people who came from earth to your town even longer ago.’ ‘That’s right. There are. They’ve been moving on and on. Getting further apart. They’re so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all. Astronomical distances. There’s a bit of rising ground near where I live and a chap has a telescope. You can see the lights of the inhabited houses, where those olds ones live, millions of miles away. Millions of miles from us and from one another. Every now and then they move further still. That’s one of the disappointments. I thought you’d meet interesting historical characters. But you don’t: they’re too far away’” (pp. 18-20). Sin isolates us, it drives us apart from one another.
In Christ those barriers are broken down. We have peace with God; we’re no longer in a state of war with Him. This is the “peace of Christ.” It’s easy to get sidetracked and argue about whether Paul is speaking here about an objective reality or a subjective feeling of peace. But I think he has both in mind. Because we’ve been justified freely by faith, because God has declared us “not guilty,” we are at peace with God. That’s an objective reality; it doesn’t depend on how we feel at the moment. But when we clearly grasp this reality it leads naturally to a sense of peace in our hearts. We’re at rest. We’re able, as Paul goes on to say in Romans 5, to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We’re not anxiously trying to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight. So, the “peace of Christ” is both an objective reality and the subjective feeling that results from it.
The word translated “rule” is an interesting one. Originally it described the work of an umpire in the games, then it later came to mean “to order,” or “to control.” The New Century Version translates this verse: “Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking.” The peace that Christ gives is based on the objective reality that God has declared us “not guilty,” purely by grace and not because of any good in ourselves. Paul’s point here is that this is to control the way we act toward one another. Notice how he finishes out the verse: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.” Peterson, in The Message, brings this out well: “Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other.” We’re to act, with one another, as people who’ve been pardoned by grace, who are at peace with God, and who are living in the certainty of a glorious future which is the exact opposite of what we deserve. When we’re tempted to erect barriers between ourselves, we need to remember the truth. We’re citizens of God’s kingdom, and all the old barriers have been broken down in Christ. The peace of Christ is to control the way we interact with each other. Because God has been gracious to us, we show grace to one another.
The second thing here, in verse 16, is that when the word of Christ is dwelling in us richly, we’re enabled to minister to one another. The Biblical view of life in the church is that we are all called to minister to one another; the function of pastors and teachers is to equip God’s people for this work of ministry. But, in ourselves, we have nothing to give. We don’t know what to do, and when we act out of a sense of guilt, thinking “I need to do more, I need to be ministering to others,” it usually doesn’t go well. We often do more harm than good.
Our inadequacy is especially clear when we try to minister to people in crisis. In the early 1980's, some workers from Operation Mobilization, the mission group we served with, were in a serious car accident, and Jonathan McRostie, the leader of the work in Europe, became a paraplegic. While he was still in the hospital, a young member of one of the OM teams visited and informed him that there were only two possible reasons for his condition: unconfessed sin, or lack of faith. Why did he do that? Yes, he was seriously wrong theologically; and yes, he was being incredibly insensitive. But he wasn’t seeking to do harm. He was seeking to minister; he thought he had a word from the Lord, and he was seeking to deliver it.
One of my professors at Messiah College shared that when his wife died of a brain tumor, his pastor called that day and asked if he could come over. George said no, he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. But his pastor said he didn’t want to talk; he just wanted to come over and sit with him. And that’s what he did. He just came over and sat. He didn’t try to give any answers (George knew all of them anyway). He didn’t try to give any advice at that time. George was in the initial shock of grief, and he really didn’t need any advice right then. But he needed the support and presence of another person, and that’s what his pastor gave.
How can we learn to minister to one another? How do we know when to speak and when not to speak? And when it’s time to speak, how do we know what to say to one another? In our culture, which is so obsessed with technique, we tend to think the problem is a lack of expertise. So the natural solution is to make up for this lack by taking a few courses. Then we’ll know more about the Bible and we’ll have a clearer idea of how to minister to others. And this can be helpful. But it’s not the primary thing. The primary thing is to be filled with the word of Christ, to “let the word of Christ” dwell in us richly. It’s not that we fill our heads with God’s word so that we’ll have something to talk about when it’s time to minister. It’s that we need to have our hearts full of God’s transforming Word, so that we’ll be people who are fit to minister to one another.
Colossians 3:15-17
First Sunday of Christmas, 2012
Shiloh Lutheran Church
Whenever we come to a passage of Scripture, it’s important to take note of the context. Paul didn’t write this letter in chapters, and the people who received it didn’t read it in sections as we’re doing. They read straight through it, as we do when we receive a letter. So as we come to a brief passage like this, we need to notice what Paul has been saying up to this point; otherwise we’re in danger of misreading Scripture. And we’ll certainly miss out on much of what is being said.
At the beginning of this chapter, Paul reminds the Colossians of their citizenship in heaven. Because they belong to Jesus Christ, they are no longer citizens of this world. They’ve been crucified with Christ, they’ve died to this world; and they’ve become citizens of heaven. They continue to live in this world, but their relationship with the world can never be what it once was. This is not just theological material for them to discuss over coffee. It’s not just something to agree with in a catechism class. God’s intention is that we live lives consistent with our citizenship, so in verses 5-14, Paul explains how this should affect their conduct.
The point, in these verses, is not just that individual Christians are to model the life of the kingdom. That’s part of it, but he’s saying more than that. All the pronouns throughout this passage are in the plural. Paul is addressing the church. The church, as a body of people called together in Jesus’ name, is to model the life of God’s kingdom, especially in the way we act toward one another: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (vv. 12-14).
This is what the church is to look like, according to God’s Word. But, of course, the church often doesn’t look like this. The author of the hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation,” recognized this: “Though with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed. By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” The church is often plagued with disunity, backbiting, gossip, an unforgiving spirit. In many churches, people live double lives because they’re afraid to admit the truth. They pretend that all is well, and that the Lord is doing wonderful things among them, when in reality their lives are so filled with inconsistency that they wonder whether the whole thing is really true at all. There’s no visible evidence in their lives, or in the life of their church, of the reality of God’s grace.
The church is a body of people called together because of our common bond in Jesus Christ. But this common bond that we have in Christ doesn’t automatically lead us to act in loving ways toward one another. These verses we’re looking at today, verses 15-17, emphasize that the church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual health of the church are closely tied together and have a profound effect on each other.
The first thing to notice here, in verse 15, is that when the peace of Christ is ruling in our hearts, we are enabled to live at peace with each other. What does it mean to “let the peace of Christ rule” in our hearts? Paul says, in Romans 5:1: “therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Before we were justified we were not at peace with God. We saw Him as our enemy, and we consistently refused to acknowledge His Lordship over our lives. Sin put a barrier between ourselves and God, and this also ended up separating us from one another, and even from ourselves. Sin isolates us.
C.S. Lewis has an interesting illustration of this in his book, The Great Divorce. It’s about a busload of people who travel from Hell to Heaven (and then back again). He describes Hell as a sprawling, dingy town, where people are constantly squabbling. Here’s a conversation he has with one of the people on the bus: “‘It seems the deuce of a town,’ I volunteered, ‘and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?’ ‘Not at all,’ said my neighbour. ‘The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move....’ ‘And what about the earlier arrivals? I mean – there must be people who came from earth to your town even longer ago.’ ‘That’s right. There are. They’ve been moving on and on. Getting further apart. They’re so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all. Astronomical distances. There’s a bit of rising ground near where I live and a chap has a telescope. You can see the lights of the inhabited houses, where those olds ones live, millions of miles away. Millions of miles from us and from one another. Every now and then they move further still. That’s one of the disappointments. I thought you’d meet interesting historical characters. But you don’t: they’re too far away’” (pp. 18-20). Sin isolates us, it drives us apart from one another.
In Christ those barriers are broken down. We have peace with God; we’re no longer in a state of war with Him. This is the “peace of Christ.” It’s easy to get sidetracked and argue about whether Paul is speaking here about an objective reality or a subjective feeling of peace. But I think he has both in mind. Because we’ve been justified freely by faith, because God has declared us “not guilty,” we are at peace with God. That’s an objective reality; it doesn’t depend on how we feel at the moment. But when we clearly grasp this reality it leads naturally to a sense of peace in our hearts. We’re at rest. We’re able, as Paul goes on to say in Romans 5, to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We’re not anxiously trying to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight. So, the “peace of Christ” is both an objective reality and the subjective feeling that results from it.
The word translated “rule” is an interesting one. Originally it described the work of an umpire in the games, then it later came to mean “to order,” or “to control.” The New Century Version translates this verse: “Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking.” The peace that Christ gives is based on the objective reality that God has declared us “not guilty,” purely by grace and not because of any good in ourselves. Paul’s point here is that this is to control the way we act toward one another. Notice how he finishes out the verse: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.” Peterson, in The Message, brings this out well: “Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other.” We’re to act, with one another, as people who’ve been pardoned by grace, who are at peace with God, and who are living in the certainty of a glorious future which is the exact opposite of what we deserve. When we’re tempted to erect barriers between ourselves, we need to remember the truth. We’re citizens of God’s kingdom, and all the old barriers have been broken down in Christ. The peace of Christ is to control the way we interact with each other. Because God has been gracious to us, we show grace to one another.
The second thing here, in verse 16, is that when the word of Christ is dwelling in us richly, we’re enabled to minister to one another. The Biblical view of life in the church is that we are all called to minister to one another; the function of pastors and teachers is to equip God’s people for this work of ministry. But, in ourselves, we have nothing to give. We don’t know what to do, and when we act out of a sense of guilt, thinking “I need to do more, I need to be ministering to others,” it usually doesn’t go well. We often do more harm than good.
Our inadequacy is especially clear when we try to minister to people in crisis. In the early 1980's, some workers from Operation Mobilization, the mission group we served with, were in a serious car accident, and Jonathan McRostie, the leader of the work in Europe, became a paraplegic. While he was still in the hospital, a young member of one of the OM teams visited and informed him that there were only two possible reasons for his condition: unconfessed sin, or lack of faith. Why did he do that? Yes, he was seriously wrong theologically; and yes, he was being incredibly insensitive. But he wasn’t seeking to do harm. He was seeking to minister; he thought he had a word from the Lord, and he was seeking to deliver it.
One of my professors at Messiah College shared that when his wife died of a brain tumor, his pastor called that day and asked if he could come over. George said no, he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. But his pastor said he didn’t want to talk; he just wanted to come over and sit with him. And that’s what he did. He just came over and sat. He didn’t try to give any answers (George knew all of them anyway). He didn’t try to give any advice at that time. George was in the initial shock of grief, and he really didn’t need any advice right then. But he needed the support and presence of another person, and that’s what his pastor gave.
How can we learn to minister to one another? How do we know when to speak and when not to speak? And when it’s time to speak, how do we know what to say to one another? In our culture, which is so obsessed with technique, we tend to think the problem is a lack of expertise. So the natural solution is to make up for this lack by taking a few courses. Then we’ll know more about the Bible and we’ll have a clearer idea of how to minister to others. And this can be helpful. But it’s not the primary thing. The primary thing is to be filled with the word of Christ, to “let the word of Christ” dwell in us richly. It’s not that we fill our heads with God’s word so that we’ll have something to talk about when it’s time to minister. It’s that we need to have our hearts full of God’s transforming Word, so that we’ll be people who are fit to minister to one another.
We “teach and admonish one another” as people whose hearts are full of God’s Word, who are being transformed by the power of the Word. When I was in graduate school, in the Religion Department at Temple University, I often found comfort and encouragement from these words in Psalm 119: “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts” (Psalm 119:97-100). God’s Word is powerful. The environment I was in at the time was hostile to faith, but I found God’s Word sustaining me and nourishing me and enabling me to stand firm. Paul is calling us, in verse 16, to be people who meditate on God’s Word. As we lovingly meditate on the Word, we’ll find ourselves ministering to one another naturally.
Singing is the other thing that results from having hearts filled with the word of Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” We don’t know the precise distinction between these three terms. It seems likely that “psalms” refers to the Old Testament book of Psalms. Right from the beginning, the early church followed the Jewish practice of praying and singing the Psalms. “Hymns” may refer to written compositions; Philippians 2:6-11 seems to be an example of a very early hymn. And “spiritual songs” could refer to more spontaneous outbursts of praise with music. In any case, God’s people, from the beginning, have been singing people, and they have drawn from a wide variety of styles in their worship. We may not be certain of the precise definitions here, but it is surely significant that Paul finds it necessary to use three terms to describe the singing of the church. We don’t need to argue about which are more appropriate or which are superior for worship. Looking around at creation, we can see clearly that God loves variety. So why shouldn’t our worship reflect something of this? “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” It takes all three to fully express our praise and thanksgiving to God. We impoverish the church when we divide up into factions and think there’s only one acceptable form of worship.
The third thing to notice, in verse 17, is that when we’re living with an awareness of Christ’s lordship, we’re aware that everything we do and say reflects our relationship with Him: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” It’s easy to lose sight of this in our society, which has such a strong emphasis on personal autonomy, but in everything we do we are acting as members of Christ’s body. We have no idea how far-reaching our actions are. It’s not possible to act on our own without influencing and affecting others. The year I graduated from Messiah College I spent a year working nights as a janitor in one of the buildings there. For awhile, there was a work-study student who worked with me for a few hours each night. He was a very serious Christian, and yet it seemed like he lived constantly under a cloud. He seemed weighted down and burdened. And the first time we had a serious conversation he told me that when he was only 18 months old his father had committed suicide. Nearly 20 years had passed, and he couldn’t even remember his father, but that man’s suicide had cast a shadow over his son’s life.
Our actions have consequences far beyond anything we can imagine. And this is true also in the spiritual realm. In everything we do, we are acting as members of the church, and our actions are either strengthening or weakening the spiritual condition of the body. We need to meditate on this and allow this realization to influence our daily choices. William Barclay has some wise counsel on this point: “One of the best tests of any action is: ‘Can we do it, calling upon the name of Jesus? Can we do it, asking for his help?’ One of the bests tests of any word is: ‘Can we speak it and in the same breath name the name of Jesus? Can we speak it, remembering that he will hear?’” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, p. 160).
The church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. And individual members can only learn to live with Christ at the center of their lives by entering into the life of the church. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual life of the church are closely tied together, and they affect each other far more than we realize. We want the peace of Christ and the Word of Christ to fill our corporate life in the church, and we also want these things to fill our hearts as we live out our lives in the world. And we want to invite Christ’s presence into every area of our lives.
But that’s not where we are, much of the time. And it doesn’t always help to know how far we are from where we should be. Often it just discourages us. So how can we get from where we are to where God calls us to be? First, notice Paul’s emphasis on thanksgiving in these verses. He refers to thanksgiving and gratitude three times in this passage, once in each verse. What would happen to our conflicts in the church if we were intentional in singing “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in [our] hearts to God?” How would it affect our daily lives in the world if we were diligent in giving thanks throughout the day? Verse 15 is translated, in the New American Bible: “Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.” Or, here’s The Message: “And cultivate thankfulness.” A spirit of thankfulness won’t just happen. We need to cultivate it. We need to take ourselves in hand, remind ourselves of the truth about ourselves and about God. And we need to say, as the Psalmist says: “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High” (Psalm 7:17). We won’t always feel like it. But as we intentionally give thanks over a lifetime, we’ll find ourselves cultivating a spirit of gratitude.
The second thing we can do is be attentive to the condition of our hearts. When we act in an unkind way toward someone, it will affect us. Pay attention to the condition of your heart when you’re at odds with someone, when you’re disturbed that things aren’t going your way, when you feel outraged because your rights are being violated. When we’re in that condition, the peace of Christ is not ruling in our hearts, and we need to turn to the Lord in repentance. Maybe the other person is wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is this: is the condition of your heart right at that moment pleasing to Jesus, who laid aside His rights to redeem us? Put aside for a moment the question of who is in the right, and attend to the condition of your heart before God. Then you’ll be in a better condition to confront any wrong the other person may have done.
The third thing is that we need to give time to God’s Word. We need to give enough attention to God’s Word to allow it to permeate our lives. A friend of ours spent some time at L’Abri in Switzerland when Francis Schaeffer was still living. She told once of being in a Friday night discussion when someone asked Dr. Schaeffer if he watched movies. He responded “yes, I do, but I wouldn’t if I didn’t read four chapters a day in the Bible.” What was his point? Was he being legalistic? No, he was conscious of how much we’re affected by the things that occupy our minds, and he wanted God’s Word to be the primary influence over his thinking. We need to be intentional in reading and meditating on God’s Word.
And the last thing is that we need to remind ourselves daily that we are not part of this world. We live in this world as citizens of God’s kingdom; we interact with people in this world as ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven. We need to be creative in reminding ourselves of this. And over a lifetime, as we repeatedly draw ourselves back to this fact, we’ll find that more and more this awareness will fill our conscious minds.
In 1978, I was working with a team in India and we spent two weeks with a missionary named A.R. Fromman. He was 92 years old at the time, and he’d been in India for 65 years. He’d been walking with God over a very long lifetime, and he exemplified these qualities more than anyone I’ve ever met. He lived with a constant awareness of the reality of Christ’s presence, and he was overflowing with joyful assurance. But he wasn’t that way at the beginning of his Christian life. He became that way by walking with God, by spending time in His Word, and seeking to apply it to his life. And the interesting thing is that being around him didn’t lead me to put him on a pedestal; it made me want to know God better. He didn’t draw attention to himself; he pointed us to Jesus. There are no shortcuts to the things Paul describes in these verses. These are qualities that become a reality as we cultivate Christ’s presence day by day for a lifetime. That’s what we’re celebrating in this Christmas season: the Word became flesh and lived among us so that we could become citizens of heaven. May God increasingly enable us to seek Jesus with all our hearts and all our strength, to praise and exalt Him above all others, and to invite Him into every area of our lives. And may He enable us to persevere in doing this until that day when we see Him face to face.
Singing is the other thing that results from having hearts filled with the word of Christ. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly... as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” We don’t know the precise distinction between these three terms. It seems likely that “psalms” refers to the Old Testament book of Psalms. Right from the beginning, the early church followed the Jewish practice of praying and singing the Psalms. “Hymns” may refer to written compositions; Philippians 2:6-11 seems to be an example of a very early hymn. And “spiritual songs” could refer to more spontaneous outbursts of praise with music. In any case, God’s people, from the beginning, have been singing people, and they have drawn from a wide variety of styles in their worship. We may not be certain of the precise definitions here, but it is surely significant that Paul finds it necessary to use three terms to describe the singing of the church. We don’t need to argue about which are more appropriate or which are superior for worship. Looking around at creation, we can see clearly that God loves variety. So why shouldn’t our worship reflect something of this? “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” It takes all three to fully express our praise and thanksgiving to God. We impoverish the church when we divide up into factions and think there’s only one acceptable form of worship.
The third thing to notice, in verse 17, is that when we’re living with an awareness of Christ’s lordship, we’re aware that everything we do and say reflects our relationship with Him: “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” It’s easy to lose sight of this in our society, which has such a strong emphasis on personal autonomy, but in everything we do we are acting as members of Christ’s body. We have no idea how far-reaching our actions are. It’s not possible to act on our own without influencing and affecting others. The year I graduated from Messiah College I spent a year working nights as a janitor in one of the buildings there. For awhile, there was a work-study student who worked with me for a few hours each night. He was a very serious Christian, and yet it seemed like he lived constantly under a cloud. He seemed weighted down and burdened. And the first time we had a serious conversation he told me that when he was only 18 months old his father had committed suicide. Nearly 20 years had passed, and he couldn’t even remember his father, but that man’s suicide had cast a shadow over his son’s life.
Our actions have consequences far beyond anything we can imagine. And this is true also in the spiritual realm. In everything we do, we are acting as members of the church, and our actions are either strengthening or weakening the spiritual condition of the body. We need to meditate on this and allow this realization to influence our daily choices. William Barclay has some wise counsel on this point: “One of the best tests of any action is: ‘Can we do it, calling upon the name of Jesus? Can we do it, asking for his help?’ One of the bests tests of any word is: ‘Can we speak it and in the same breath name the name of Jesus? Can we speak it, remembering that he will hear?’” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, p. 160).
The church can only model the life of God’s kingdom when individual members are putting Christ at the center of their lives. And individual members can only learn to live with Christ at the center of their lives by entering into the life of the church. Our individual spiritual lives and the spiritual life of the church are closely tied together, and they affect each other far more than we realize. We want the peace of Christ and the Word of Christ to fill our corporate life in the church, and we also want these things to fill our hearts as we live out our lives in the world. And we want to invite Christ’s presence into every area of our lives.
But that’s not where we are, much of the time. And it doesn’t always help to know how far we are from where we should be. Often it just discourages us. So how can we get from where we are to where God calls us to be? First, notice Paul’s emphasis on thanksgiving in these verses. He refers to thanksgiving and gratitude three times in this passage, once in each verse. What would happen to our conflicts in the church if we were intentional in singing “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in [our] hearts to God?” How would it affect our daily lives in the world if we were diligent in giving thanks throughout the day? Verse 15 is translated, in the New American Bible: “Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.” Or, here’s The Message: “And cultivate thankfulness.” A spirit of thankfulness won’t just happen. We need to cultivate it. We need to take ourselves in hand, remind ourselves of the truth about ourselves and about God. And we need to say, as the Psalmist says: “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness, and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High” (Psalm 7:17). We won’t always feel like it. But as we intentionally give thanks over a lifetime, we’ll find ourselves cultivating a spirit of gratitude.
The second thing we can do is be attentive to the condition of our hearts. When we act in an unkind way toward someone, it will affect us. Pay attention to the condition of your heart when you’re at odds with someone, when you’re disturbed that things aren’t going your way, when you feel outraged because your rights are being violated. When we’re in that condition, the peace of Christ is not ruling in our hearts, and we need to turn to the Lord in repentance. Maybe the other person is wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is this: is the condition of your heart right at that moment pleasing to Jesus, who laid aside His rights to redeem us? Put aside for a moment the question of who is in the right, and attend to the condition of your heart before God. Then you’ll be in a better condition to confront any wrong the other person may have done.
The third thing is that we need to give time to God’s Word. We need to give enough attention to God’s Word to allow it to permeate our lives. A friend of ours spent some time at L’Abri in Switzerland when Francis Schaeffer was still living. She told once of being in a Friday night discussion when someone asked Dr. Schaeffer if he watched movies. He responded “yes, I do, but I wouldn’t if I didn’t read four chapters a day in the Bible.” What was his point? Was he being legalistic? No, he was conscious of how much we’re affected by the things that occupy our minds, and he wanted God’s Word to be the primary influence over his thinking. We need to be intentional in reading and meditating on God’s Word.
And the last thing is that we need to remind ourselves daily that we are not part of this world. We live in this world as citizens of God’s kingdom; we interact with people in this world as ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven. We need to be creative in reminding ourselves of this. And over a lifetime, as we repeatedly draw ourselves back to this fact, we’ll find that more and more this awareness will fill our conscious minds.
In 1978, I was working with a team in India and we spent two weeks with a missionary named A.R. Fromman. He was 92 years old at the time, and he’d been in India for 65 years. He’d been walking with God over a very long lifetime, and he exemplified these qualities more than anyone I’ve ever met. He lived with a constant awareness of the reality of Christ’s presence, and he was overflowing with joyful assurance. But he wasn’t that way at the beginning of his Christian life. He became that way by walking with God, by spending time in His Word, and seeking to apply it to his life. And the interesting thing is that being around him didn’t lead me to put him on a pedestal; it made me want to know God better. He didn’t draw attention to himself; he pointed us to Jesus. There are no shortcuts to the things Paul describes in these verses. These are qualities that become a reality as we cultivate Christ’s presence day by day for a lifetime. That’s what we’re celebrating in this Christmas season: the Word became flesh and lived among us so that we could become citizens of heaven. May God increasingly enable us to seek Jesus with all our hearts and all our strength, to praise and exalt Him above all others, and to invite Him into every area of our lives. And may He enable us to persevere in doing this until that day when we see Him face to face.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
A Mission Born in Prayer, Nehemiah 2:1-10
A Mission Born in Prayer
Nehemiah 2:1-10
19th Sunday after Pentecost
Shiloh Lutheran Church
The sermon this morning is a follow up on last week’s sermon on the power of prayer. That’s why we’re looking at Nehemiah 2 rather than one of the lectionary readings. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, four children are visiting their uncle during their holiday from school. It’s a large old house, full of great places to explore. At one point, visitors come to the house and the children hide in a wardrobe to avoid having to talk to them. But once they enter the wardrobe, they find themselves in another world, the land of Narnia, where they experience many adventures and where the whole course of their lives is changed. They enter the wardrobe to hide, and the things that happen affect them for the rest of their lives. Surprising things happen to them, things they never could have anticipated.
Prayer is like that. When we come before God in prayer, we never know what is going to happen. When we pray, we come into the presence of the One who claims absolute lordship over our lives. We need to know that our prayers may set in motion things that will change the entire direction of our lives. This may not be our intention at all; it may be the last thing that enters our minds at the time. But because we’re dealing with God, our Creator and Redeemer, we never know what might happen when we begin to pray.
Prayer is not a safe, tame activity. When we begin praying, we’re not the ones in control. We’re not in charge. After the children enter the land of Narnia, they begin hearing about Aslan, the King, and learn that He is a lion. So Susan asks, “Is he–quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” And the conversation continues: “‘That you will, dearie, and no mistake,’ said Mrs. Beaver, ‘if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’ ‘Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you” (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, pp. 75-76). God is good, but He is not safe. He’s the King, and He claims absolute lordship over our lives. When we come into His presence, we never know what is going to happen.
And, when we begin crying out to God about a situation that concerns us, we never know when He is going to call us to become part of the answer. That’s what happened to Nehemiah. He began praying to God about the situation in Jerusalem, and then God called him to leave his home and become part of the solution. He had a very good position in the king’s court. Things were going well for him professionally. He had a stable, prestigious job. But when he started praying, God called him to leave all that behind and travel to Jerusalem, a place that was in ruin and disarray. Let’s look at how this all happened in Nehemiah’s life.
The first thing to notice is that it did not happen immediately. He had heard about the problems in Jerusalem late in the fall, and chapter two begins “Early the following spring” (NLT). The events Nehemiah is describing in chapter two came after several months of prayer and waiting on God (you can read about that in chapter 1). Nehemiah didn’t make a hasty decision. He didn’t rush off in foolish zeal. When we were working on the ship Logos, an American pastor and his wife visited for about two weeks, teaching, preaching and ministering to the people on the ship, then they returned home. Several weeks later, they showed up at the bottom of the gangway with their suitcases. They had resigned from their church, sold their home, and traveled to the ship without consulting anyone. No one knew they were coming, and the leaders weren’t quite sure what to do with them. They had been stirred spiritually on their first visit, and when they got home they made a hasty decision to leave everything behind and join permanently. Nehemiah’s decision was not made in haste. He waited for the right moment.
We need to know that God is not in a hurry. He’s not in a hurry in answering our prayers, and He’s not in a hurry about showing us what our part is going to be in the answer. He calls us to continue going about our duties right where we are, to cry out to Him and submit to His lordship. And as we do that, He makes His will clear in His own time. In the late fall, when Nehemiah started praying and fasting, he had a strong concern but it’s unlikely that he had any sense of direction about what he would be doing about the problem. But as he prayed and waited on God, an idea started forming in his mind. As he continued praying, that idea became so clear and unshakable that he just couldn’t get away from it. When the time came to take a definite step, God had prepared him. Those months of waiting and prayer were an important part of the process.
The second thing is that when the right moment did come, Nehemiah needed a great deal of courage to act on his plan. In verse 2, Nehemiah says, “I was very much afraid.” He’s been confronted by the king about his sadness: “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.” Why does this frighten him? First of all, because his personal sadness doesn’t belong in the king’s court. He’s supposed to be cheerful in the king’s presence; he’s not supposed to be there dragging everyone else down with his personal struggles. In those days when kings exercised absolute power, Nehemiah could have been put to death for allowing himself to show sadness while he was serving the king.
But that’s not the only thing. The king’s question opens the door for Nehemiah to make his request, the thing that’s been weighing on his mind. He’s been waiting for the right moment, and now it’s arrived. It’s not just a private idea any more; Nehemiah is at a point where he needs to step out and act on the things God’s been showing him. There are two opposite dangers when we’re confronted with a situation like this. The first danger is to rush ahead without seeking God’s direction. Nehemiah hasn’t fallen into that danger. But the opposite danger is that we endlessly form ideas that we never act on. We wait on the Lord, like we’re called to do, but then when the time comes to act, we lose our nerve and back down. We get used to waiting and never get out of that mode.
T.S. Eliot has a poem that describes a person like that, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At the beginning of the poem, Prufrock sounds very bold. In the first section of the poem he’s calling for action: “Let us go then, you and I.” He repeats that line a few times early on, then the key phrase in the next section is “and indeed there will be time.” He’s hesitating now; he can’t seem to get over his sense of inertia. In Nehemiah’s place, he would have let the moment pass: “I’ll bring this up another time, not right now.” Later in the poem, he’s looking back, saying “And would it have been worth it, after all” (T.S. Eliot: The Collected Poems and Plays, pp. 3-7). The longer he waited, the more paralyzed he became, and finally he just gave up. He lost his courage. His bold intentions became fantasies in the end.
Nehemiah doesn’t do that. When the moment comes, he speaks tactfully but honestly to the king: “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” He doesn’t make his request yet. He answers the king’s question tactfully and wisely. The burial place of one’s ancestors was an important thing to people during this time, so the king would likely feel sympathy. And Nehemiah doesn’t immediately name Jerusalem; sometime earlier, the king had ruled against the rebuilding of the city (you can read about that in Ezra 4), so what Nehemiah is asking for is a reversal of the king’s earlier decision. On the whole, this is a very touchy situation, but Nehemiah doesn’t back down, like J. Alfred Prufrock does. He moves ahead cautiously, but he does move ahead.
His initial response opens the way for a further question from the king: “What is it you want?” Then notice what he does next: “Then I prayed to the God of heaven.” Before he responds to the king’s question, he turns his heart to God looking for help. But this isn’t the first time he’s prayed about the situation. He’s spent the past four months or so crying out to God on behalf of Jerusalem, so this brief prayer when he’s in the presence of the king is rooted in months of unhurried time in God’s presence. He prays briefly, then he goes ahead: “and I answered the king, ‘If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.” It took great courage for Nehemiah to bring this to the king. Those months that he spent praying brought him finally to this point where he had to step out of his comfort zone. It wasn’t easy for him. He was very much afraid, as he tells us. But he did it, looking to God for help.
The third thing is this: while he was waiting all those months in prayer, Nehemiah made good use of his time. He’s been thinking through the details of a plan. He’s been waiting, but he hasn’t been idle. He’s made good use of his time during this waiting period, so when the time comes he is ready. The king says yes to the initial request, and then notice what Nehemiah does next: “I also said to him, ‘If it pleases the king, may I have letters... so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?”
We make a serious mistake when we set spirituality and practicality at odds with each other. There was no conflict between Nehemiah’s intense prayer and his practical planning. His awareness of these practical needs that he brings to the king here is part of the way God has equipped him for the work. The time Nehemiah has spent planning out these details is not less pleasing to God than the time he’s spent in prayer and fasting. He’s doing it all in obedience to God’s lordship; it’s all part of the same work.
God calls us to pray, but He doesn’t call us only to pray. He calls us to bring every area of our lives under His lordship, to offer everything we do as an act of worship. For Nehemiah, this meant long hours planning out the details of what he was going to do. I’ve known many people who assume that the leading of the Spirit always happens spontaneously, when we act on the spur of the moment. In this view, Nehemiah would have been better off not planning, simply trusting God to put the right ideas into his mind when he needed them.
Some years ago, I was in a church service and when the pastor stood up to give the sermon he said, “I don’t have a sermon for you this morning; I have a word from the Lord.” We were supposed to be impressed that he was subject to the immediate inspiration of the Spirit in this way; he wasn’t giving us a sermon, he was giving us something better. But it wasn’t better. His “word from the Lord” sounded like the unfocused rambling of someone who isn’t quite sure what he wants to say. If he had a “word from the Lord” he’d lost track of it sometime before he got into the pulpit. He was relying on God to give him a word right then, while he was standing in the pulpit, but God had given him a whole week to pray and seek a message from Scripture. He was deceived by a false view of spirituality. There’s nothing unspiritual about planning and preparation. It’s part of what God calls us to do. God had given that preacher the gift of a whole week to come up with a message for the church; but he squandered that gift and was hoping to be bailed out by the immediate inspiration of the Spirit.
As Nehemiah has been crying out to God all these months, God has been preparing him for this moment. He responds well. He acts with courage; when he gains the king’s favor he presses further to get the things he needs to carry out the job. He’s not jumping out into the dark. He knows what he’s doing and what it will take to carry out the task. And he also knows why everything is going so well. Listen to what he says: “And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.” He attributes it all to God. God has been preparing Nehemiah for this moment.
Prayer is not a safe activity. We never know what God is going to do when we come into His presence. As Nehemiah prays, God leads him out of his secure position into the insecurity of trying to rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem. Everything falls into place when Nehemiah is with the king, but as soon as he arrives in Trans-Jordan, he encounters the beginnings of the opposition which will plague him throughout this book. The life God calls him to in Jerusalem is filled with hardship, sacrifice, difficulty and opposition. His life, in many ways, was easier as cupbearer to the king. But as he prayed, God called him to leave that behind.
Prayer is not a safe activity, because we follow One who perfectly modeled the sort of thing we see in Nehemiah: “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death–and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion. Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever” (Philippians 2, The Message). Knowing all that He’s done for us, let’s come before Him in prayer acknowledging His right to do whatever He wants with our lives. And then, having prayed, let’s seek to order every area of our lives in obedience to Him, no matter what He calls us to do, no matter what He calls us to give up, no matter where He calls us to go in His name. God is not safe, but He is good and He has good things planned for His people in the future. In the meantime, let’s offer ourselves in gratitude to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and follow Him wherever He leads.
Nehemiah 2:1-10
19th Sunday after Pentecost
Shiloh Lutheran Church
The sermon this morning is a follow up on last week’s sermon on the power of prayer. That’s why we’re looking at Nehemiah 2 rather than one of the lectionary readings. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, four children are visiting their uncle during their holiday from school. It’s a large old house, full of great places to explore. At one point, visitors come to the house and the children hide in a wardrobe to avoid having to talk to them. But once they enter the wardrobe, they find themselves in another world, the land of Narnia, where they experience many adventures and where the whole course of their lives is changed. They enter the wardrobe to hide, and the things that happen affect them for the rest of their lives. Surprising things happen to them, things they never could have anticipated.
Prayer is like that. When we come before God in prayer, we never know what is going to happen. When we pray, we come into the presence of the One who claims absolute lordship over our lives. We need to know that our prayers may set in motion things that will change the entire direction of our lives. This may not be our intention at all; it may be the last thing that enters our minds at the time. But because we’re dealing with God, our Creator and Redeemer, we never know what might happen when we begin to pray.
Prayer is not a safe, tame activity. When we begin praying, we’re not the ones in control. We’re not in charge. After the children enter the land of Narnia, they begin hearing about Aslan, the King, and learn that He is a lion. So Susan asks, “Is he–quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” And the conversation continues: “‘That you will, dearie, and no mistake,’ said Mrs. Beaver, ‘if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’ ‘Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you” (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, pp. 75-76). God is good, but He is not safe. He’s the King, and He claims absolute lordship over our lives. When we come into His presence, we never know what is going to happen.
And, when we begin crying out to God about a situation that concerns us, we never know when He is going to call us to become part of the answer. That’s what happened to Nehemiah. He began praying to God about the situation in Jerusalem, and then God called him to leave his home and become part of the solution. He had a very good position in the king’s court. Things were going well for him professionally. He had a stable, prestigious job. But when he started praying, God called him to leave all that behind and travel to Jerusalem, a place that was in ruin and disarray. Let’s look at how this all happened in Nehemiah’s life.
The first thing to notice is that it did not happen immediately. He had heard about the problems in Jerusalem late in the fall, and chapter two begins “Early the following spring” (NLT). The events Nehemiah is describing in chapter two came after several months of prayer and waiting on God (you can read about that in chapter 1). Nehemiah didn’t make a hasty decision. He didn’t rush off in foolish zeal. When we were working on the ship Logos, an American pastor and his wife visited for about two weeks, teaching, preaching and ministering to the people on the ship, then they returned home. Several weeks later, they showed up at the bottom of the gangway with their suitcases. They had resigned from their church, sold their home, and traveled to the ship without consulting anyone. No one knew they were coming, and the leaders weren’t quite sure what to do with them. They had been stirred spiritually on their first visit, and when they got home they made a hasty decision to leave everything behind and join permanently. Nehemiah’s decision was not made in haste. He waited for the right moment.
We need to know that God is not in a hurry. He’s not in a hurry in answering our prayers, and He’s not in a hurry about showing us what our part is going to be in the answer. He calls us to continue going about our duties right where we are, to cry out to Him and submit to His lordship. And as we do that, He makes His will clear in His own time. In the late fall, when Nehemiah started praying and fasting, he had a strong concern but it’s unlikely that he had any sense of direction about what he would be doing about the problem. But as he prayed and waited on God, an idea started forming in his mind. As he continued praying, that idea became so clear and unshakable that he just couldn’t get away from it. When the time came to take a definite step, God had prepared him. Those months of waiting and prayer were an important part of the process.
The second thing is that when the right moment did come, Nehemiah needed a great deal of courage to act on his plan. In verse 2, Nehemiah says, “I was very much afraid.” He’s been confronted by the king about his sadness: “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.” Why does this frighten him? First of all, because his personal sadness doesn’t belong in the king’s court. He’s supposed to be cheerful in the king’s presence; he’s not supposed to be there dragging everyone else down with his personal struggles. In those days when kings exercised absolute power, Nehemiah could have been put to death for allowing himself to show sadness while he was serving the king.
But that’s not the only thing. The king’s question opens the door for Nehemiah to make his request, the thing that’s been weighing on his mind. He’s been waiting for the right moment, and now it’s arrived. It’s not just a private idea any more; Nehemiah is at a point where he needs to step out and act on the things God’s been showing him. There are two opposite dangers when we’re confronted with a situation like this. The first danger is to rush ahead without seeking God’s direction. Nehemiah hasn’t fallen into that danger. But the opposite danger is that we endlessly form ideas that we never act on. We wait on the Lord, like we’re called to do, but then when the time comes to act, we lose our nerve and back down. We get used to waiting and never get out of that mode.
T.S. Eliot has a poem that describes a person like that, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At the beginning of the poem, Prufrock sounds very bold. In the first section of the poem he’s calling for action: “Let us go then, you and I.” He repeats that line a few times early on, then the key phrase in the next section is “and indeed there will be time.” He’s hesitating now; he can’t seem to get over his sense of inertia. In Nehemiah’s place, he would have let the moment pass: “I’ll bring this up another time, not right now.” Later in the poem, he’s looking back, saying “And would it have been worth it, after all” (T.S. Eliot: The Collected Poems and Plays, pp. 3-7). The longer he waited, the more paralyzed he became, and finally he just gave up. He lost his courage. His bold intentions became fantasies in the end.
Nehemiah doesn’t do that. When the moment comes, he speaks tactfully but honestly to the king: “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” He doesn’t make his request yet. He answers the king’s question tactfully and wisely. The burial place of one’s ancestors was an important thing to people during this time, so the king would likely feel sympathy. And Nehemiah doesn’t immediately name Jerusalem; sometime earlier, the king had ruled against the rebuilding of the city (you can read about that in Ezra 4), so what Nehemiah is asking for is a reversal of the king’s earlier decision. On the whole, this is a very touchy situation, but Nehemiah doesn’t back down, like J. Alfred Prufrock does. He moves ahead cautiously, but he does move ahead.
His initial response opens the way for a further question from the king: “What is it you want?” Then notice what he does next: “Then I prayed to the God of heaven.” Before he responds to the king’s question, he turns his heart to God looking for help. But this isn’t the first time he’s prayed about the situation. He’s spent the past four months or so crying out to God on behalf of Jerusalem, so this brief prayer when he’s in the presence of the king is rooted in months of unhurried time in God’s presence. He prays briefly, then he goes ahead: “and I answered the king, ‘If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.” It took great courage for Nehemiah to bring this to the king. Those months that he spent praying brought him finally to this point where he had to step out of his comfort zone. It wasn’t easy for him. He was very much afraid, as he tells us. But he did it, looking to God for help.
The third thing is this: while he was waiting all those months in prayer, Nehemiah made good use of his time. He’s been thinking through the details of a plan. He’s been waiting, but he hasn’t been idle. He’s made good use of his time during this waiting period, so when the time comes he is ready. The king says yes to the initial request, and then notice what Nehemiah does next: “I also said to him, ‘If it pleases the king, may I have letters... so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?”
We make a serious mistake when we set spirituality and practicality at odds with each other. There was no conflict between Nehemiah’s intense prayer and his practical planning. His awareness of these practical needs that he brings to the king here is part of the way God has equipped him for the work. The time Nehemiah has spent planning out these details is not less pleasing to God than the time he’s spent in prayer and fasting. He’s doing it all in obedience to God’s lordship; it’s all part of the same work.
God calls us to pray, but He doesn’t call us only to pray. He calls us to bring every area of our lives under His lordship, to offer everything we do as an act of worship. For Nehemiah, this meant long hours planning out the details of what he was going to do. I’ve known many people who assume that the leading of the Spirit always happens spontaneously, when we act on the spur of the moment. In this view, Nehemiah would have been better off not planning, simply trusting God to put the right ideas into his mind when he needed them.
Some years ago, I was in a church service and when the pastor stood up to give the sermon he said, “I don’t have a sermon for you this morning; I have a word from the Lord.” We were supposed to be impressed that he was subject to the immediate inspiration of the Spirit in this way; he wasn’t giving us a sermon, he was giving us something better. But it wasn’t better. His “word from the Lord” sounded like the unfocused rambling of someone who isn’t quite sure what he wants to say. If he had a “word from the Lord” he’d lost track of it sometime before he got into the pulpit. He was relying on God to give him a word right then, while he was standing in the pulpit, but God had given him a whole week to pray and seek a message from Scripture. He was deceived by a false view of spirituality. There’s nothing unspiritual about planning and preparation. It’s part of what God calls us to do. God had given that preacher the gift of a whole week to come up with a message for the church; but he squandered that gift and was hoping to be bailed out by the immediate inspiration of the Spirit.
As Nehemiah has been crying out to God all these months, God has been preparing him for this moment. He responds well. He acts with courage; when he gains the king’s favor he presses further to get the things he needs to carry out the job. He’s not jumping out into the dark. He knows what he’s doing and what it will take to carry out the task. And he also knows why everything is going so well. Listen to what he says: “And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests.” He attributes it all to God. God has been preparing Nehemiah for this moment.
Prayer is not a safe activity. We never know what God is going to do when we come into His presence. As Nehemiah prays, God leads him out of his secure position into the insecurity of trying to rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem. Everything falls into place when Nehemiah is with the king, but as soon as he arrives in Trans-Jordan, he encounters the beginnings of the opposition which will plague him throughout this book. The life God calls him to in Jerusalem is filled with hardship, sacrifice, difficulty and opposition. His life, in many ways, was easier as cupbearer to the king. But as he prayed, God called him to leave that behind.
Prayer is not a safe activity, because we follow One who perfectly modeled the sort of thing we see in Nehemiah: “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death–and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion. Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever” (Philippians 2, The Message). Knowing all that He’s done for us, let’s come before Him in prayer acknowledging His right to do whatever He wants with our lives. And then, having prayed, let’s seek to order every area of our lives in obedience to Him, no matter what He calls us to do, no matter what He calls us to give up, no matter where He calls us to go in His name. God is not safe, but He is good and He has good things planned for His people in the future. In the meantime, let’s offer ourselves in gratitude to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and follow Him wherever He leads.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
The Power of Prayer, James 5:12-20
18th Sunday after Pentecost
Shiloh Lutheran Church
A few years ago I was talking to my doctor about my asthma and said I hadn’t been having any trouble at all. In fact, I said, I’m fine most of the time. I go so long between asthma attacks that sometimes I wonder whether I really have asthma at all. She informed me that what I have is mild, intermittent asthma. I thought afterward that this is a good description of how we often approach prayer: our prayer life, if we’re not intentional in cultivating something more, tends to be mild and intermittent. It’s mild; we don’t put much effort or energy into it. And it’s intermittent; it’s not a regular discipline but something that happens from time to time when there’s a crisis or a felt need. It’s like my asthma: it usually doesn’t occupy much time or energy, and when it does it’s in response to a trigger, something that produces a sense of need for a limited period of time. It’s clear that James (and the rest of the New Testament for that matter) envisions prayer as something more than this. God doesn’t want our prayer lives to be mild and intermittent; He wants prayer to be at the very center of our lives.
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 is 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.
When I was a new Christian I often heard this advice about prayer: “just talk to God and tell Him how you feel.” I’ve never found this very helpful in developing a life of prayer. One thing that happens when I follow this advice is that my prayer revolves around myself and my own concerns and usually gets no further. Eugene Peterson says he had the same problem and that 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). Books of 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.
I’ve given John Baillie’s book, A Diary of Private Prayer, to many people (John Baillie was a Scottish theologian in the mid-20th century). The great thing about that book is not that it’s John Baillie’s prayers; the great thing about it is that his prayers are rooted in the Church. Baillie learned to approach God as part of the body of Christ, and his prayers reflect that larger perspective. We also have a book of written prayers in our Bible. 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 there is a great wealth of help in the Church for cultivating a life of prayer.
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.” There’s a direct connection between the way we speak to God and the way we speak to one another.
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. He wants us to be aware of Him in all the experiences of our lives, good and bad.
One of the most helpful books I’ve read in the past 10 years is 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). He says obedience to the duty of the moment can be a sacrament. 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.
George Verwer, the founder of Operation Mobilization, the mission group we worked with, has been a major influence in my life. Thousands of people have given their lives to Christ through his ministry. What many people don’t know is that George came to Christ through the prayers of a housewife in northern New Jersey who was concerned about the local high school. Mrs. Clapp had been praying for this school for years; she not only prayed for students to come to Christ, she also prayed that many of them would go out into the mission field. George Verwer was a student at that school, and he had no interest in the gospel. His goal in life was to make lots of money. But she prayed for him and sent him a Gospel of John in the mail. He says that he just couldn’t get away from that gospel. He read it over and over, and a short time later, at a Billy Graham crusade, he gave his life to the Lord. And then, through his witness in that high school, over 200 other students came to Christ. George Verwer went on to begin the work of Operation Mobilization, which now works all over the world, and many other students became missionaries in other organizations. But it all began with the prayers of Mrs. Clapp, who had a burden for the school in her neighborhood and who believed God’s promises.
These kinds of things don’t usually happen in response to a mild, intermittent prayer life. Mrs. Clapp was someone who gave herself to prayer, who saw prayer as a high priority in her life and who spent time learning to pray. If you want to cultivate a life of prayer, this passage in James is a good place to begin. Take seriously the importance of the Church in learning to pray: be faithful in corporate worship, and be willing to learn from the historic Church how to enlarge your prayer life. Be careful how you speak to others, and be quick to repent when you sin with your tongue, knowing that carelessness in this area can undermine your relationship with God. And practice attentiveness to God in every area of life; pay attention to the ways He reaches out to you as you’re going about your duties throughout the week, and use every opportunity to turn your heart to Him in thanksgiving and cries for help. As you do these things, and persevere in doing them, you will be cultivating a strong life of prayer.
Shiloh Lutheran Church
A few years ago I was talking to my doctor about my asthma and said I hadn’t been having any trouble at all. In fact, I said, I’m fine most of the time. I go so long between asthma attacks that sometimes I wonder whether I really have asthma at all. She informed me that what I have is mild, intermittent asthma. I thought afterward that this is a good description of how we often approach prayer: our prayer life, if we’re not intentional in cultivating something more, tends to be mild and intermittent. It’s mild; we don’t put much effort or energy into it. And it’s intermittent; it’s not a regular discipline but something that happens from time to time when there’s a crisis or a felt need. It’s like my asthma: it usually doesn’t occupy much time or energy, and when it does it’s in response to a trigger, something that produces a sense of need for a limited period of time. It’s clear that James (and the rest of the New Testament for that matter) envisions prayer as something more than this. God doesn’t want our prayer lives to be mild and intermittent; He wants prayer to be at the very center of our lives.
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 is 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.
When I was a new Christian I often heard this advice about prayer: “just talk to God and tell Him how you feel.” I’ve never found this very helpful in developing a life of prayer. One thing that happens when I follow this advice is that my prayer revolves around myself and my own concerns and usually gets no further. Eugene Peterson says he had the same problem and that 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). Books of 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.
I’ve given John Baillie’s book, A Diary of Private Prayer, to many people (John Baillie was a Scottish theologian in the mid-20th century). The great thing about that book is not that it’s John Baillie’s prayers; the great thing about it is that his prayers are rooted in the Church. Baillie learned to approach God as part of the body of Christ, and his prayers reflect that larger perspective. We also have a book of written prayers in our Bible. 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 there is a great wealth of help in the Church for cultivating a life of prayer.
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.” There’s a direct connection between the way we speak to God and the way we speak to one another.
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. He wants us to be aware of Him in all the experiences of our lives, good and bad.
One of the most helpful books I’ve read in the past 10 years is 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). He says obedience to the duty of the moment can be a sacrament. 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.
George Verwer, the founder of Operation Mobilization, the mission group we worked with, has been a major influence in my life. Thousands of people have given their lives to Christ through his ministry. What many people don’t know is that George came to Christ through the prayers of a housewife in northern New Jersey who was concerned about the local high school. Mrs. Clapp had been praying for this school for years; she not only prayed for students to come to Christ, she also prayed that many of them would go out into the mission field. George Verwer was a student at that school, and he had no interest in the gospel. His goal in life was to make lots of money. But she prayed for him and sent him a Gospel of John in the mail. He says that he just couldn’t get away from that gospel. He read it over and over, and a short time later, at a Billy Graham crusade, he gave his life to the Lord. And then, through his witness in that high school, over 200 other students came to Christ. George Verwer went on to begin the work of Operation Mobilization, which now works all over the world, and many other students became missionaries in other organizations. But it all began with the prayers of Mrs. Clapp, who had a burden for the school in her neighborhood and who believed God’s promises.
These kinds of things don’t usually happen in response to a mild, intermittent prayer life. Mrs. Clapp was someone who gave herself to prayer, who saw prayer as a high priority in her life and who spent time learning to pray. If you want to cultivate a life of prayer, this passage in James is a good place to begin. Take seriously the importance of the Church in learning to pray: be faithful in corporate worship, and be willing to learn from the historic Church how to enlarge your prayer life. Be careful how you speak to others, and be quick to repent when you sin with your tongue, knowing that carelessness in this area can undermine your relationship with God. And practice attentiveness to God in every area of life; pay attention to the ways He reaches out to you as you’re going about your duties throughout the week, and use every opportunity to turn your heart to Him in thanksgiving and cries for help. As you do these things, and persevere in doing them, you will be cultivating a strong life of prayer.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
The Bread of Life, John 6,1-71
9th Sunday after Pentecost
Shiloh Lutheran Church, State College PA
We're constantly tempted, in this fallen world, to become completely engrossed in the things of this life. I've heard people say, "I don't have time to sit in church; I've got work to do;" or "Sunday is the only day I have to sleep late." Jesus, in the Parable of the Sower, talks about the seed that fell among weeds. It sprouted and started to grow, but it was eventually choked out by the weeds. This represents those who hear God's Word and believe it, but then the Word becomes choked by the cares and pleasures of this life. "Ash heap lives," lives that are totally consumed with things that are going to end up in the city dump, are lives that are being choked by the cares and pleasures of this world.
John is concerned, in this gospel, to tell us how to have eternal life. He's not trying to satisfy our curiosity about Jesus; his purpose is to preach the gospel, to tell us about the saving work God accomplished in sending His Son. He says that explicitly in chapter twenty: "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (20:30-31). John's purpose is evangelistic. His intention in writing is to lead us to faith, so that by believing we might have eternal life.
Everything he records in his gospel has this purpose: to lead us to eternal life by believing the truth of the gospel. He gives us pictures of Jesus, descriptions from various angles and perspectives, all with the intention of leading us to eternal life. We see Jesus, earlier in this book, as the Word made flesh, and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In the chapter we're studying today, Jesus is the Bread of Life, and there are other pictures later in the gospel. We experience eternal life by feeding on Jesus, the Bread that came down from heaven to give His flesh for the life of the world. Jesus describes eternal life in chapter 17: "and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Eternal life is found in communion with God and with Jesus Christ the Son. This is how we escape the cycle of ash heap living. We experience eternal life by feeding on Jesus, the Bread that came down from heaven. This morning we're going to look at three things that keep us from experiencing eternal life in all its fulness.
The first thing that keeps us from experiencing this eternal life is a limited perspective, an outlook on life that is confined to the things of this visible world. Jesus tells the people, in chapter 6, that their perspective is all wrong, that their expectations are bound by the limitations of this world. The two miracles at the beginning of this chapter set the tone for what He's going to say about the Bread of Life. It's helpful to know that John is presenting Jesus here as the New Moses: the feeding of the five thousand corresponds to the provision of manna in the wilderness; and Jesus' walking on water corresponds to the crossing of the Red Sea. John wants us to see Jesus as the prophet promised by Moses: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him" (Deut. 18:15). The people realized the significance of the first miracle: "After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world" (v. 14). So Jesus withdrew into the mountain, because they were ready to make Him king by force. They understood the point of Jesus' miracle, but there was still something wrong.
The next day they sought Him out, but when they found Him Jesus said: "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life." They had experienced His miraculous provision, so they came to Him thinking He'd provide for them again. They believed in Him in a sense, but their faith was confined to the things He could do for them in this life. Several years ago, I heard a man speak about all the wonderful things that had happened to him since he became a Christian. He'd become a successful writer; he had a nice home in California, was involved in film making and had several celebrities who were personal friends. All because he had given his life to Jesus Christ. He was speaking to kids, and his was that if you follow Jesus He'll give you a successful and glamorous life. Apart from the fact that it usually doesn't work this way (it certainly didn't work that way for Jesus or any of the apostles), it's the wrong perspective. He wasn't asking for too much. He was asking for too many things that will come to nothing in the end. "Don't waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last" (The Message). Having our perspective limited in this way keeps us from experiencing the eternal life Jesus offers, because it leads us to be satisfied with something less. We become so preoccupied with the things of this life that we just don't look for anything else.
The second thing that prevents us from experiencing eternal life is wrong expectations. After Jesus confronted the people with their limited perspective, they immediately cried out: "What must we do to do the works God requires?" What great thing can we do to please God? They expect Him to give them something important to do. There's a story in 2 Kings about a man named Naaman. Naaman was an important man, a commander in the army of the king of Aram. The king valued him as an officer in his army, and he was highly respected in the nation. But he had leprosy, so he was sent to Elisha, a prophet in Israel, to be healed. He arrived at the prophet's door with great expectations. But Elisha didn't even come out to greet him. Elisha didn't recognize his importance, didn't make a fuss over him. He sent a messenger, instructing Naaman to wash himself seven times in the Jordan river. But that wasn't what he was looking for: "But Naaman went away angry and said, ‘I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.... So he turned and went off in a rage" (2 Kings 5:11-12). Elisha's instructions weren't dramatic enough. They were too simple.
The people who are talking to Jesus are like this. They want something that they can do "to do the work that God requires." But Jesus directs them to the simplicity of faith: "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." When Jesus tells them to eat the Bread of Life, He's calling them to faith. Verse 29: "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." Verse 35: "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." Verse 40: "For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." Verse 47: "I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life." The people were asking Him for manna in the wilderness, like God provided through Moses, so Jesus takes their request and says "this isn't what you need. You need Me. If you come to Me in faith, you will have eternal life." So, throughout most of this chapter, eating the flesh of the Son of Man is equivalent to believing in Him, trusting in Him.
But in verses 53-59 He expands the image: "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." He's still talking about the union we have with Him through faith, but He's expanded the image in a way that points to Communion, or what has traditionally been called the Eucharist (which is from the Greek word for thanksgiving). The original hearers wouldn't have understood it in this way, but in John we often see Jesus saying things that will only be understood later. The Lord's Supper is a tangible way to unite ourselves with Christ in faith. We see the same thing with baptism in chapter 3: saving faith is not only something that happens within us; it takes concrete form in the things we do. Baptism is a tangible identification with Christ in His death and resurrection and a tangible break from our old way of life in this world. Baptism, and the calling to live a life that's consistent with our baptism, keeps us from a merely internalized faith. Communion is another one of those things that keeps us from a merely internalized faith; at the table of the Lord we are nourished by Jesus' body and blood.
When we find that our perspective is limited to external things, as we saw in the first point, the answer is not simply to retreat into our inner world. Jesus provides ways for us to find connections between physical and spiritual realities. As we, in the context of worship, take the bread and the cup, we are being nourished spiritually by the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Robert Webber, who was a college professor for many years, and just died a few years ago, has a good description of what this means: "When the elements of bread and wine are taken in faith, the transforming and nourishing power of Christ for the salvation and the healing of the person is made available.... Sometimes students or other persons struggling with a painful experience in their lives will come to me for counsel. I always say to them, ‘I'm not a counselor and I don't have the tools necessary to help you with this problem. But I can suggest one thing–flee to the Eucharist. Get to the Table of the Lord just as fast as you can, because it is there that God can and does touch his people in a healing way.' In all the years that I have been giving this advice, not a single person has come back and told me it is not true. On the contrary, many have affirmed that God through the Eucharist reached into their pain and touched them with his healing presence" (Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, p. 111). That's why the early church celebrated communion so often. At the table of the Lord, when we come to Him in faith, we are nourished by Jesus' body and blood.
But there's one more thing that keeps us from experiencing eternal life: lack of ability and power. We're not able to believe on our own. These people had wanted something they could do to make themselves pleasing to God, and then Jesus had pointed them to faith. But then, as they began grumbling, He said: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise them up at the last day." We don't have the power, in ourselves, to come to Jesus, to enter into communion with Him. We're dead in sin and alienated from the life of God. Saving faith is more than intellectual agreement with what the Bible says about Jesus. It's not enough to simply agree that Jesus is sent from God. That's James' point when he says, "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that–and shudder" (James 2:19). Saving faith, eating the flesh of the Son of Man, coming to Jesus, leads to a radical transformation. That's why Paul says "If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come!" We don't have the power to accomplish this ourselves. All we can do is bow before God and cry out to Him for help and for mercy. We're completely dependent upon God, even for the simple act of putting our faith in Jesus, the Bread of Life.
We experience eternal life, a life of fellowship with God that begins now and extends throughout eternity, by feeding on Jesus, the Bread of Life. We allow Him to broaden our perspective, so that we're living in the light of the reality of eternity, so that we're not any longer living as if this world were the only thing that matters. We humble ourselves before Him, believing that He is the "living bread that came down from heaven," and we cry out to Him for mercy and grace. And we come faithfully to the Lord's Table, to be nourished by his body and blood. As we do these things, we're beginning the life of eternity here on earth.
Jesus' words in chapter 6 lead to two responses on the part of those who claim to be His followers. At this point in Jesus' ministry, the opposition of the religious leaders is beginning to intensify, and some of those who've followed Him till now are beginning to have doubts. After this discussion, John says that many of Jesus' disciples become disillusioned: "Many among his disciples heard this and said, ‘This is tough teaching, too tough to swallow.' Jesus sensed that his disciples were having a hard time with this and said, ‘Does this throw you completely? What would happen if you saw the Son of Man ascending to where he came from? The Spirit can make life. Sheer muscle and willpower don't make anything happen.... After this a lot of his disciples left. They no longer wanted to be associated with him" (The Message). They had been enthusiastic at the beginning. They were impressed with all the miracles He was doing. But this is just too much for them, so they turn away. They don't want to be associated with Him any more. Their perspective is too restricted; they can't begin to accept what He's saying. Their expectations are wrong, and they're not willing to readjust. And they're not willing to humble themselves and confess their helplessness. So they turn away.
Then Jesus turns to the Twelve: "You do not want to leave too, do you?" The Twelve often seem clueless. They miss the point of what Jesus is doing half the time, they fight with each other about who is the greatest, and they have no idea what Jesus is talking about when He begins trying to prepare them for His death and resurrection. As we see them in the gospels they're not terribly impressive or inspiring. But they're open and attentive, they're willing to have their priorities rearranged, and they recognize their need of God's help. Their attitude is just the opposite of those who are turning away. So Peter answers for all of them: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." He alone has the words of eternal life. In Him, we can begin the life of heaven here on earth, a life of fellowship with God that begins now and extends into eternity. Where else would we go, but to Him. John Calvin said: "For how comes it that we are carried about with so many strange doctrines [or any of the other distractions that lead us away from Him], (Heb. 13:9), but because the excellence of Christ is not perceived by us? For Christ alone makes all other things suddenly vanish" (Commentary on Colossians). This is similar to the chorus: "Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace." Christ frees us from all that is false, and causes all the good things in our lives to find their proper perspective in relation to Him. May God grant us grace to find our nourishment in Him, the Bread of Life.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Coming to Christ for Strength, 2 Timothy 2:1-7
I was meeting with a client recently, and when I started scratching the palm of my hand she said, "you're going to win a lot of money in the lottery," to which I responded, "no, I don't think that's going to happen." Winning lots of money in the lottery is unlikely in the best of circumstances, but since I don't ever buy lottery tickets my chances of winning anything are pretty-much non-existent (unless I were to find a winning ticket on the sidewalk). I don't meet the one necessary condition for winning, because you have to play to win, and I don't play. I don't put myself "in the way" of winning. If you want a suntan, you don't sit inside with the shades drawn; you go outside and put yourself in the way of the sun. If you're looking for a job, it won't do you much good to sit at home and wait for someone to offer you one. The sensible thing is to start filling out applications; this doesn't guarantee that you'll find a job, but it does put you in the way of finding one.
Paul, who is nearing the end of his life, is reminding Timothy of things he's said in the past, knowing that he won't be around much longer to act as Timothy's mentor. Near the end of chapter one he says that everyone in Asia has deserted him. Then he prays for the family of Onesiphorus (who appears to have died), since he was not ashamed [of Paul's] imprisonment. It seems likely, as I pointed out in the last sermon, that those in Asia deserted him because they were ashamed. Onesiphorus is someone who did the opposite, who stood with him during a difficult and dangerous time.
So there are two different ways that people respond to the hardships Paul is enduring as a prisoner of the Lord: those in Asia have turned away from him, and Onesiphorus sought to minister to him (and maybe ended up paying for it with his life). Then Paul turns to Timothy and says, "You, therefore..." Timothy himself seems to have been a timid, easily intimidated person, and Paul doesn't want him to be frightened away or scandalized by the things that are happening. He doesn't want Timothy to follow the example of those who've been ashamed and have abandoned him. Maybe Timothy's been bullied and pushed around in the past; in any case, Paul wants him to stand firm with confidence in his calling to preach God's Word.
The fundamental thing, the foundation for everything else that he's going to say in this passage, is in verse one: "be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." The verb is passive, so "be strengthened," as it reads in the ESV, is clearer than the NIV's "be strong." Paul is not telling Timothy to do something but to receive something. We can't, by an act of the will or by sheer determination, be strengthened in grace. This is not something that depends on our own efforts and ability. But it's also not something we just wait for passively. We are involved in the process (otherwise, why would Paul bother to give this exhortation at all?). It won't do any good to sit at home in front of the TV and say, "I'm waiting to receive strength from the Lord before I attempt anything." Timothy can't strengthen himself in grace, but he can put himself in a place to receive strength. He can put himself in the way of receiving strength from the Lord.
This strength has two characteristics: it comes to us by grace, and that grace is found in Jesus Christ. It comes as a gift, something for which we are unworthy; and this gracious gift is found in Christ. It's source is outside of ourselves and we are unworthy of it, in fact are powerless to take hold of it for ourselves. We can be strengthened in grace only by coming to God with empty hands, poor in spirit, confessing our poverty and neediness.
That's the main idea in this passage: "be strengthened in grace." We don't have strength in ourselves. Paul isn't offering a self-help program: "you're stronger than you realize; you just need to learn how to draw upon your inner resources." Paul's not telling Timothy to toughen up and be strong. He's telling Timothy to come to Jesus to receive strength. We become strong by acknowledging our weakness and then coming to Jesus, crying to Him for help. That's the lesson Paul himself learned, as he describes in 2 Corinthians 12. He had prayed repeatedly to have a problem removed, something he saw as a hindrance to his ministry, something that got in the way of his full functioning. It seemed clear that he could do so much more as an apostle if he was functioning at 100 percent. But the answer he received was "My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness" (v. 9).
As he receives strength, Paul wants Timothy to use his gifts to build up the Church: "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others" (v. 2). Timothy is to equip others for the work of ministry by passing on to them the teaching he received from Paul. One of the great temptations we face is the temptation to use our gifts selfishly, to use them for our own sense of fulfillment or to boost our pride. But the gifts we've been given are not ours to use as we like. We've been entrusted with them for the benefit of others and the good of the Church. Whatever gifts we have are not really ours at all. They don't belong to us. God has entrusted them to us for building up the Church, for equipping others to live obedient and fruitful lives as followers of Jesus Christ.
Of course, it may be tempting at this point to say, "well, Timothy was a leader, so he needed to be strengthened in grace to carry out his ministry; what I do in the church is not such a big deal." But think, for a moment, about what we're called to do as disciples of Jesus Christ. We're called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We're called to bear one another's burdens, to pray for each other, to help those in need. We're called to help others, often in ways that are costly and inconvenient (think of Onesiphorus and those in Asia who ended up throwing in the towel), and to do so without resentment in a genuine spirit of self-emptying. Do you feel up to this? Do you really think you can do this without being strengthened in grace?
Paul goes on to tell Timothy to "endure suffering and hardship." Peter says, in his first letter, "do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though some strange thing were happening to you" (4:12). Paul and Barnabas strengthened new disciples by "exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). For Paul, exercising his gifts did not lead to success and prosperity. It led to suffering, and the same will be true for Timothy. If we want to survive a life of discipleship over the long term we need to accept the likelihood that obedience will bring us into situations that we wouldn't choose for ourselves. If we're not armed with this expectation, suffering will take us by surprise and we'll be scandalized; many people end up turning away from the Lord when they encounter difficulties and opposition. "I didn't know it would be like this; God isn't taking care of me; He's not holding up His end of the bargain."
So the first temptation, in connection with our gifts, is to use them selfishly for our own benefit. But then, when we use them and suffer, the next temptation is not to use them at all. "This just isn't worth it. No one really cares anyway." But the point of using our gifts to serve one another is not to be successful, or even to see the fruit of our work. Sometimes we're enabled to see fruit and sometimes we're not; think of Jeremiah preaching year after year, with no measurable success. But the point is to please our "commanding officer" (v. 4). The benefits, the real benefits, lie in the future, a "victor's crown" (v. 5) and a "share in the crops" (v. 6). Paul is pointing forward to the time when we will see Jesus face to face. He's saying that in the light of all this it is worth it to endure suffering. We are following in Jesus' footsteps and He is with us.
Even if we aren't suffering right now, other members of the body of Christ are. We are connected with Jesus' sufferings and with the suffering of others in the body, both past and present. Paul tells the Colossians, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (1:24). He's not saying that Christ's sufferings are insufficient to redeem His people. He's saying that when Christians suffer they do so in communion with Christ as members of His body. Paul's sufferings are part of the suffering of Christ's body. When we are suffering we feel alienated and alone, and we combat this feeling by speaking to ourselves and reminding ourselves of the truth that we are not alone. We're connected, in Christ, with all those throughout the history of the Church who have suffered because they belonged to Jesus..
This leads to the third thing Paul says here: exercise discipline, or self control. "No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs – he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules" (vv. 4-5). The Christian life is not a life of following our impulses, doing what we feel like doing. Some teachings on sanctification seem to suggest that God will take over our lives in such a way that discipleship becomes effortless, that we just hand ourselves over to Him and He does the rest. If you read things written by Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, you might get that impression at times. He went through a period when he was overwhelmed by the burdens of the work and by all the demands he was facing. He was burning out and uncertain that he could keep going. But then his whole outlook changed. He wrote to his sister, describing his intense efforts to grow stronger in faith: "But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One. As I read I saw it all! ‘If we believe not, he abideth faithful.' I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, ‘I will never leave you'. ‘Ah, there is rest!' I thought, ‘I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me -- never to leave me, never to fail me?'" (Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, J. Hudson Taylor, pp. 213-214).
After this, he talked often about the rest of faith, and his favorite hymn was "Jesus I am Resting, Resting." People observed him, in the middle of immensely difficult situations, singing to himself, "Jesus I am resting, resting, in the joy of what Thou art; I am finding out the greatness of Thy loving heart." It changed his whole outlook, and sometimes when he talked he could give the impression that he was passive, just resting in the Lord, that he was no longer expending any effort and that everything was now being done for him. In reality he continued to work hard and spent much time in God's Word and in prayer. But he did it with a strong conviction of Jesus' constant presence and a confidence that he was fully accepted in Christ and was standing in grace. To get an accurate picture, we need to look at his words in the context of his life. He was doing the very thing Paul tells Timothy to do, coming to Christ to be strengthened.
Hudson Taylor, for the remainder of his life, exercised intense effort in following Christ and preaching the gospel, but he did it with an awareness of his full acceptance in Christ, which gave him strength to do the things that had previously exhausted him. The strength is not in us, but as we come to Christ and receive strength, we go on to take ourselves in hand, refusing to do some things and choosing to do others. I had a co-worker who was often overwhelmed. He had young children, worked full time and also taught piano in the evenings in addition to leading the choir in his church. Once when we were talking he complained that he didn't have time to read his Bible each day, that he was just too busy. I knew, from previous conversations, that he was in the habit of watching a fair bit of TV every night, so I suggested that it would be worthwhile to cut out some of that to make time for Bible reading, and that this would feed his spirit in a way that TV would not do. I don't know whether he ever did it, but it was clear that this had never occurred to him. To be strengthened in the Lord, as Paul calls us to do here, involves making choices in our daily lives that will put us in a place to receive strength, as Hudson Taylor continued to do after he had his great realization of the importance of resting in faith.
Then, having said all this, Paul ties it together by saying "Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this" (v. 7). Reflect, think on all this, not because you'll eventually figure it all out. It's not that by our intense mental effort we're able to sort through everything necessary for a life of discipleship. We listen attentively to God's Word and He gives us insight. We come to Him waiting to hear from Him, and He speaks the Words we need to hear at that point. That's what happened to Hudson Taylor. He had been living and growing as a Christian for years, but he came to a point where he needed a greater sense of rest and of peace. He was near the breaking point, but as he was listening attentively and expectantly to God's Word his eyes were opened and he was able to see things in a way that he had never seen before. And it changed his life. "Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this."
It's the same thing that we saw earlier about receiving strength. We can put ourselves in the way of being strengthened, but we can't make ourselves strong. We can reflect on God's Word, but we don't have the capacity within us to understand apart from the insight He gives. "It is God who gives understanding. The most intelligent man needs more and more of this gift. If he who gave the revelation in the word does not give the understanding in the heart, we are nothing" (Matthew Henry, Commentary).
I recently read a biography of the Scottish preacher Robert Murray M'Cheyne. He died before his thirtieth birthday and was in frail health for much of his life, but he knew how to come to Christ for strength, and he taught his congregation to do the same thing. He put together a Bible reading calendar, because he knew the importance of coming to Christ in His Word daily, not just sporadically when we feel the need. I've been using this calendar for many years, and it's the best one I've seen. Here's something M'Cheyne wrote to a younger minister who was just starting out in ministry: "You read your Bible regularly, of course; but do try and understand it, and still more, to feel it. Read more parts than one at a time. For example, if you are reading Genesis, read a psalm also; or, if you are reading Matthew, read a small bit of an epistle also. Turn the Bible into prayer. Thus, if you were reading the 1st Psalm, spread the Bible on the chair before you, and kneel, and pray, ‘O Lord, give me the blessedness of the man,' etc. ‘Let me not stand in the counsel of the ungodly,' etc. This is the best way of knowing the meaning of the Bible, and of learning to pray" (The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Kindle Location 792). If we do this kind of attentive, prayerful reading of Scripture, and seek to order our lives in obedience to what we read, we'll be putting ourselves in the way of receiving strength and understanding from the Lord.
Paul, who is nearing the end of his life, is reminding Timothy of things he's said in the past, knowing that he won't be around much longer to act as Timothy's mentor. Near the end of chapter one he says that everyone in Asia has deserted him. Then he prays for the family of Onesiphorus (who appears to have died), since he was not ashamed [of Paul's] imprisonment. It seems likely, as I pointed out in the last sermon, that those in Asia deserted him because they were ashamed. Onesiphorus is someone who did the opposite, who stood with him during a difficult and dangerous time.
So there are two different ways that people respond to the hardships Paul is enduring as a prisoner of the Lord: those in Asia have turned away from him, and Onesiphorus sought to minister to him (and maybe ended up paying for it with his life). Then Paul turns to Timothy and says, "You, therefore..." Timothy himself seems to have been a timid, easily intimidated person, and Paul doesn't want him to be frightened away or scandalized by the things that are happening. He doesn't want Timothy to follow the example of those who've been ashamed and have abandoned him. Maybe Timothy's been bullied and pushed around in the past; in any case, Paul wants him to stand firm with confidence in his calling to preach God's Word.
The fundamental thing, the foundation for everything else that he's going to say in this passage, is in verse one: "be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." The verb is passive, so "be strengthened," as it reads in the ESV, is clearer than the NIV's "be strong." Paul is not telling Timothy to do something but to receive something. We can't, by an act of the will or by sheer determination, be strengthened in grace. This is not something that depends on our own efforts and ability. But it's also not something we just wait for passively. We are involved in the process (otherwise, why would Paul bother to give this exhortation at all?). It won't do any good to sit at home in front of the TV and say, "I'm waiting to receive strength from the Lord before I attempt anything." Timothy can't strengthen himself in grace, but he can put himself in a place to receive strength. He can put himself in the way of receiving strength from the Lord.
This strength has two characteristics: it comes to us by grace, and that grace is found in Jesus Christ. It comes as a gift, something for which we are unworthy; and this gracious gift is found in Christ. It's source is outside of ourselves and we are unworthy of it, in fact are powerless to take hold of it for ourselves. We can be strengthened in grace only by coming to God with empty hands, poor in spirit, confessing our poverty and neediness.
That's the main idea in this passage: "be strengthened in grace." We don't have strength in ourselves. Paul isn't offering a self-help program: "you're stronger than you realize; you just need to learn how to draw upon your inner resources." Paul's not telling Timothy to toughen up and be strong. He's telling Timothy to come to Jesus to receive strength. We become strong by acknowledging our weakness and then coming to Jesus, crying to Him for help. That's the lesson Paul himself learned, as he describes in 2 Corinthians 12. He had prayed repeatedly to have a problem removed, something he saw as a hindrance to his ministry, something that got in the way of his full functioning. It seemed clear that he could do so much more as an apostle if he was functioning at 100 percent. But the answer he received was "My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness" (v. 9).
As he receives strength, Paul wants Timothy to use his gifts to build up the Church: "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others" (v. 2). Timothy is to equip others for the work of ministry by passing on to them the teaching he received from Paul. One of the great temptations we face is the temptation to use our gifts selfishly, to use them for our own sense of fulfillment or to boost our pride. But the gifts we've been given are not ours to use as we like. We've been entrusted with them for the benefit of others and the good of the Church. Whatever gifts we have are not really ours at all. They don't belong to us. God has entrusted them to us for building up the Church, for equipping others to live obedient and fruitful lives as followers of Jesus Christ.
Of course, it may be tempting at this point to say, "well, Timothy was a leader, so he needed to be strengthened in grace to carry out his ministry; what I do in the church is not such a big deal." But think, for a moment, about what we're called to do as disciples of Jesus Christ. We're called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We're called to bear one another's burdens, to pray for each other, to help those in need. We're called to help others, often in ways that are costly and inconvenient (think of Onesiphorus and those in Asia who ended up throwing in the towel), and to do so without resentment in a genuine spirit of self-emptying. Do you feel up to this? Do you really think you can do this without being strengthened in grace?
Paul goes on to tell Timothy to "endure suffering and hardship." Peter says, in his first letter, "do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though some strange thing were happening to you" (4:12). Paul and Barnabas strengthened new disciples by "exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). For Paul, exercising his gifts did not lead to success and prosperity. It led to suffering, and the same will be true for Timothy. If we want to survive a life of discipleship over the long term we need to accept the likelihood that obedience will bring us into situations that we wouldn't choose for ourselves. If we're not armed with this expectation, suffering will take us by surprise and we'll be scandalized; many people end up turning away from the Lord when they encounter difficulties and opposition. "I didn't know it would be like this; God isn't taking care of me; He's not holding up His end of the bargain."
So the first temptation, in connection with our gifts, is to use them selfishly for our own benefit. But then, when we use them and suffer, the next temptation is not to use them at all. "This just isn't worth it. No one really cares anyway." But the point of using our gifts to serve one another is not to be successful, or even to see the fruit of our work. Sometimes we're enabled to see fruit and sometimes we're not; think of Jeremiah preaching year after year, with no measurable success. But the point is to please our "commanding officer" (v. 4). The benefits, the real benefits, lie in the future, a "victor's crown" (v. 5) and a "share in the crops" (v. 6). Paul is pointing forward to the time when we will see Jesus face to face. He's saying that in the light of all this it is worth it to endure suffering. We are following in Jesus' footsteps and He is with us.
Even if we aren't suffering right now, other members of the body of Christ are. We are connected with Jesus' sufferings and with the suffering of others in the body, both past and present. Paul tells the Colossians, "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (1:24). He's not saying that Christ's sufferings are insufficient to redeem His people. He's saying that when Christians suffer they do so in communion with Christ as members of His body. Paul's sufferings are part of the suffering of Christ's body. When we are suffering we feel alienated and alone, and we combat this feeling by speaking to ourselves and reminding ourselves of the truth that we are not alone. We're connected, in Christ, with all those throughout the history of the Church who have suffered because they belonged to Jesus..
This leads to the third thing Paul says here: exercise discipline, or self control. "No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs – he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules" (vv. 4-5). The Christian life is not a life of following our impulses, doing what we feel like doing. Some teachings on sanctification seem to suggest that God will take over our lives in such a way that discipleship becomes effortless, that we just hand ourselves over to Him and He does the rest. If you read things written by Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, you might get that impression at times. He went through a period when he was overwhelmed by the burdens of the work and by all the demands he was facing. He was burning out and uncertain that he could keep going. But then his whole outlook changed. He wrote to his sister, describing his intense efforts to grow stronger in faith: "But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One. As I read I saw it all! ‘If we believe not, he abideth faithful.' I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, ‘I will never leave you'. ‘Ah, there is rest!' I thought, ‘I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has He not promised to abide with me -- never to leave me, never to fail me?'" (Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, J. Hudson Taylor, pp. 213-214).
After this, he talked often about the rest of faith, and his favorite hymn was "Jesus I am Resting, Resting." People observed him, in the middle of immensely difficult situations, singing to himself, "Jesus I am resting, resting, in the joy of what Thou art; I am finding out the greatness of Thy loving heart." It changed his whole outlook, and sometimes when he talked he could give the impression that he was passive, just resting in the Lord, that he was no longer expending any effort and that everything was now being done for him. In reality he continued to work hard and spent much time in God's Word and in prayer. But he did it with a strong conviction of Jesus' constant presence and a confidence that he was fully accepted in Christ and was standing in grace. To get an accurate picture, we need to look at his words in the context of his life. He was doing the very thing Paul tells Timothy to do, coming to Christ to be strengthened.
Hudson Taylor, for the remainder of his life, exercised intense effort in following Christ and preaching the gospel, but he did it with an awareness of his full acceptance in Christ, which gave him strength to do the things that had previously exhausted him. The strength is not in us, but as we come to Christ and receive strength, we go on to take ourselves in hand, refusing to do some things and choosing to do others. I had a co-worker who was often overwhelmed. He had young children, worked full time and also taught piano in the evenings in addition to leading the choir in his church. Once when we were talking he complained that he didn't have time to read his Bible each day, that he was just too busy. I knew, from previous conversations, that he was in the habit of watching a fair bit of TV every night, so I suggested that it would be worthwhile to cut out some of that to make time for Bible reading, and that this would feed his spirit in a way that TV would not do. I don't know whether he ever did it, but it was clear that this had never occurred to him. To be strengthened in the Lord, as Paul calls us to do here, involves making choices in our daily lives that will put us in a place to receive strength, as Hudson Taylor continued to do after he had his great realization of the importance of resting in faith.
Then, having said all this, Paul ties it together by saying "Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this" (v. 7). Reflect, think on all this, not because you'll eventually figure it all out. It's not that by our intense mental effort we're able to sort through everything necessary for a life of discipleship. We listen attentively to God's Word and He gives us insight. We come to Him waiting to hear from Him, and He speaks the Words we need to hear at that point. That's what happened to Hudson Taylor. He had been living and growing as a Christian for years, but he came to a point where he needed a greater sense of rest and of peace. He was near the breaking point, but as he was listening attentively and expectantly to God's Word his eyes were opened and he was able to see things in a way that he had never seen before. And it changed his life. "Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this."
It's the same thing that we saw earlier about receiving strength. We can put ourselves in the way of being strengthened, but we can't make ourselves strong. We can reflect on God's Word, but we don't have the capacity within us to understand apart from the insight He gives. "It is God who gives understanding. The most intelligent man needs more and more of this gift. If he who gave the revelation in the word does not give the understanding in the heart, we are nothing" (Matthew Henry, Commentary).
I recently read a biography of the Scottish preacher Robert Murray M'Cheyne. He died before his thirtieth birthday and was in frail health for much of his life, but he knew how to come to Christ for strength, and he taught his congregation to do the same thing. He put together a Bible reading calendar, because he knew the importance of coming to Christ in His Word daily, not just sporadically when we feel the need. I've been using this calendar for many years, and it's the best one I've seen. Here's something M'Cheyne wrote to a younger minister who was just starting out in ministry: "You read your Bible regularly, of course; but do try and understand it, and still more, to feel it. Read more parts than one at a time. For example, if you are reading Genesis, read a psalm also; or, if you are reading Matthew, read a small bit of an epistle also. Turn the Bible into prayer. Thus, if you were reading the 1st Psalm, spread the Bible on the chair before you, and kneel, and pray, ‘O Lord, give me the blessedness of the man,' etc. ‘Let me not stand in the counsel of the ungodly,' etc. This is the best way of knowing the meaning of the Bible, and of learning to pray" (The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Kindle Location 792). If we do this kind of attentive, prayerful reading of Scripture, and seek to order our lives in obedience to what we read, we'll be putting ourselves in the way of receiving strength and understanding from the Lord.
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