The Death of the Family

Reading Al Mohler’s blog this morning has made me even more indignantly passionate about God’s view of families and children—even more than I was recently on a grocery trip to the local supermarket. 

As my wife and I walked down the produce aisle with our 15-month old son and the 7-month old girl that my wife watches during the week, a lady came up and asked, flabbergasted: “Are these both yours?” 

I looked around to see if there were any more children trailing behind us, and then thought, “Both? Lady, there’s only two of them!” I can sort of expect that comment if we had 8 or 9 kids, but two? It has solidified for me in a more personal way how diametrically opposed to Scripture our culture’s view of children really is. As I told my wife, that attitude is no different than Pharaoh or Herod in trying to kill infants who will be raised to worship God.

Christ in the Wilderness

As I ponder what it means to walk through wildernesses of suffering in my own life, I was reflecting on Deuteronomy 2:7 this afternoon: 

For the LORD your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through the great wilderness. These forty years the LORD your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing.

What God said to the people of God then, and to us now in our present trials: 

1) I know everything you’re going through. 

2) I am blessing you in your sufferings, even though you either overlook it or can’t see it. 

3) I am with you at every turn, with every step, and in every trial. 

4) I have given you all that you need; you have lacked nothing in your trials.

The Meaning of Water Walking

In this sermon, Jonathan Pennington not only preaches from Mark 6:45-52, but he details the way we are to read the gospels as narratives. An excellent sermon and expose of other problematic ways of preaching gospel narratives.

more about “The Meaning of Water Walking“, posted with vodpod

Where are you going?

“Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, ”Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now?” (John 13:36-37). 

When Jesus told the disciples that His time to leave this terrestrial ball had come, it must have shocked them. They were known and identified as followers of Jesus because they were always with Jesus. Now He was leaving. And then the bitter truth that they would all fall away Peter simply could not fathom. 

I can’t fathom it either, how there are times when it seems like I’m on the dark side of the moon—questions about how things will turn out will simply have to wait, and what God has ordained in my life just doesn’t make sense. Like Peter, I wonder, Why not answer now? 

Though there are truths that get close to an answer to Peter’s question about God’s providence and why He times things as He does, it’s ultimately a mystery of His sovereign, gracious, good, will toward His children. “Little children,” Jesus says as He addresses His disciples, showing His compassion, yet leaving the ultimate purpose hidden. 

But it’s the same mysterious will that saved Peter—and me. And while I don’t know why God saved me, I do know, and am profoundly melted with gratefulness, that He did. There are more important questions to be answered than Why God does what He does when He does. Like Will God be my ever-present Refuge and Treasure and Joy, even in the midst of the worst kinds of sufferings? 

Jesus doesn’t tell Peter why it has to be this way, that He has to die and be crucified and the disciples have to not understand—at least not yet. He doesn’t tell me either. But there is a promise here of an “afterward.” There is a day when it’s going to make sense, and when the glory which I’ve been forged like steel to adore is set before me, there will be only joy.

But not only that; there is the promise that right here, right now, Jesus is my shelter in the storm. Not somewhere, someplace deliverance, but right here and right now. Jesus is the Life, Bread, Water, and Blood which is to be partaken of right now. Get grace.

Fix Your Gaze

“Great things stir up faith, and keep it above, and faith keeps the soul that nothing else can take place of abode in it. When the ‘great things of God,’ Hos. viii. 12, are brought into the heart by faith, what is there in the whole world that can out-bid them? Assurance of these things, upon spiritual grounds, overrules both sense and reason, or whatever else prevails with carnal hearts” (The Soul’s Conflict with Itself, Richard Sibbes, pp. 217-18). 

Sibbes makes the point a couple hundred years ago that John Piper has made in the last 20 years, namely, that what crushes sin is our superior pleasure in God. I am reminded once again that my desire for the precious things of God, revealed in the Scriptures, is what conquers worldly pleasures. 

As a simple application, that means that when I become overwhelmed with the daily struggles of life so much that the things of God seem distant, unimportant, or unsavory, the first order of business (as with every other day) is to focus my mind and heart (and thus my faith) on truth. Dwindling affections for God mean a distraction from heart-impassioning truth. 

And as a broader application for the church, it means that the lukewarmness we all experience is due in large part to our distracted gaze from divine truth—we’re focused on things that don’t spark godly affection. The first order of business for reviving the church is the same as with the individual: we need to see God in truth so that our hearts, by His Spirit, will be ignited. 

Pigmy Christians are cultivated in a truthless soil of worldliness, and redwood Christians come from the soils of rich, deep, biblical truth, which is the revealed character of God.

Young Men and Sore Hips

What can you learn when you are disabled from exercise because of an aggravated Piriformis muscle that sends shooting pain down your leg, and into your back and hips?

Well, I am learning that my strength is limited, and it’s not go go go all in my own power. And I’m learning that exercise can be a pride issue, namely, in not acknowledging that I am weak, limited in energy, and in need of rest. And being injured has made me ponder how my arrogance led to the injury in the first place, particularly in disregarding rest (which is really an attempt to be like God).  

“He does not faint or grow weary… even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted” (Isaiah 40:28, 30).

God does not get tired and need rest, but in humility I must acknowledge that I do. In the meantime, I get to experience a small dose of the price for my arrogance every time I have to use ice or a heat pad, and every time I feel intense pain in my hips and gluteus maximus while sitting in a chair.

Unlike most old men, young men must be shown that their strength is limited. Sore hips do the trick nicely.

An unruly spirit

After exhorting his hearers that we must “trust [God] in all conditions and times, for all things that we stand in need of, until that time comes, wherein we shall stand in need of nothing,” because “as the same care of God moved him to save us, and to preserve us in the world till we be put in possession of salvation; so the same faith relies upon God for heaven and all necessary provision till we come [there],” Richard Sibbes makes this profound comment: 

“The unruliness of a natural spirit is never discovered more, than when God defers” (Sibbes, The Soul’s Conflict with Itself, vol. 1, p. 215). 

In the necessities of life, God ordains things so that we are dependent upon Him. But Sibbes’ point cuts to my heart—a statement that can be paraphrased this way: 

“When we get what we want, we seem content and obedient. But when God doesn’t immediately give us what we want and we throw an extended temper tantrum, it reveals the disobedience that was already in our heart. We become restless when we don’t get what we want.” 

I find myself here often. I think it’s the same place Adam and Esau found themselves, namely, desiring the pleasure of food over the pleasure of knowing and obeying God. I want and do not get, so I pout, spew venomous words, and do exactly what I know I’m not supposed to do. We find out about the rebellion that is in our hearts most when God says no. 

For this I deserve hell—the eternal outpouring of God’s full and furious wrath against me. But here’s where I stand amazed: not only did Christ die for this sin, but He obeyed the Father exactly where I have failed, earning my good standing before God. He stood condemned in my place so that I could stand accepted before the Father. Here’s one example. 

In John 4, while the disciples were driven by hunger into town to get some food after a long journey, Jesus remained at a well in Samaria where He proceeded to turn an adulterous woman into a worshiper of the Living God. For Jesus, the spiritual nourishment of obeying His Father exceeded the pleasure He could have derived from eating a meal. That’s why He said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (Jn. 4:32, 34). 

And then it strikes you: like Adam and Esau, the disciples chose food over obedience. But Christ chose obedience over food, which means that my obedience—what God sees now when He looks on me—is perfect. God no longer looks on me and sees my choosing food or sex or earthly things over Him; instead, because of the life and death of Christ in my place, He sees perfect obedience. 

So the prayer is not, ‘Help me to obey so that I can be accepted before God.’ Instead, it’s ‘Thank you that Christ died for my sin of disobedience, and that He obeyed perfectly. Thank you that you have united me to Him by faith; help me, since I am one with Christ, to become what I already am: someone who chooses the pleasure of God over everything else.‘

We’re a people who look back

In Psalm 52, David expresses his hope in God’s unending love: “The steadfast love of God endures all the day” (v. 1). When threatened by violent enemies, his confidence for his future welfare is not placed in his own hands, and it is not left in the hands of others—no, David’s confidence is in the fact that God will always work for His good, to satisfy him in God. 

Perhaps more surprisingly, however, is the fact that David’s hope for future blessing from God is ultimately rooted in the past. David is sure about the future because God has secured it in the past. So he writes:

“I will thank you forever because you have done it” (v. 9). 

This is the pattern for a Christian’s hope today. I have hope (unbreakable confidence) that God will work for my joy and satisfaction in God when I wake up on mornings like today because of the finished work of Jesus. Salvation has been accomplished at the cross. Jesus didn’t pay for the possibility of my joy with His own blood—no, He purchased my eternal satisfaction in God once for all by His life and death.

I’m savoring and trying to marinate my heart in this truth, expressed by John Stott in The Cross of Christ as he quotes James Denney: 

“The work of reconciliation [of making peace between God and man], in the sense of the New Testament, is a work which is finished, and which we must conceive to be finished, before the gospel is preached… Reconciliation… is not something which is being done; it is something which is done. No doubt there is a work of Christ which is in process, but it has as its basis a finished work of Christ” (p. 196).

Stirring it is to stop and ponder that everything God is doing in me, today, and in my life, is happening because I have been reconciled to God at the Cross. Christ meant what He said when He cried, “It is finished!” 

Hark the voice of love and mercy, 

Sounds aloud from Calvary! 

See, it rends the rocks asunder, 

Shakes the earth and veils the sky!

“It is finished, it is finished,” 

Hear the dying Savior cry. 

“It is finished,” O what pleasure,

Do these charming words afford. 

Heavenly blessings, without measure, 

Flow to us from Christ the Lord.

 

Don’t Be a Mercenary

At a time and place when worship of the Living God should have consumed the people of Israel, what actually held more sway was a commitment to make worship profitable. The Passover was a time for the people to delight in the gracious salvation of their God—with heart, mind, and soul—and to remember how He saved them. Instead, it became a rebellious spectacle of how a place of worship could be lost for pragmatism and profitability. 

What happens—then, and now—when God’s people become more consumed with making worship practical, profitable, and efficient, rather than basing worship on the God they love, adore, and find their joy in? They become mercenaries. And mercenaries Christ drives from the church. 

“And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:15-16).

On the other hand, we’re not mercenaries when what motivates us is our desire to be satisfied in God. A mercenary fights because he gets paid, but a patriot and a true soldier fights because his joy is in the country or cause he fights for. So a Christian’s joy is in worshiping and adoring God, not in turning the church into a profitable business.    

The only way not to be a mercenary Christian is to be motivated by our pleasure in God. The church needs more worshipers—people consumed with the beauty and worth of God—not more entrepreneurial types who have another end motivating them. The church needs godly men, not businessmen.

Thinking Deeply Gives Greater Conviction

While most of the men who fought in the air war over Germany were simply doing their job, men like Lt. Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal had a far deeper purpose. 

A successful New York lawyer before World War II began, Rosenthal read Hitler’s biography, Mein Kampf, watched the propaganda films that Germany produced, and pondered closely the unfolding events of escalation. 

The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Rosenthal signed up for the air corps. 

Because Rosenthal had spent so much time thinking about the deeper truths of democracy and what the Nazis stood for, he had a far deeper purpose for fighting in the war. 

“When I finally arrived, I thought I was at the center of the world, the place where democracies were gathering to defeat the Nazis. I was right where I wanted to be” (p. 13).

And then Donald Miller gives us this astounding insight into Rosenthal’s heart:

“Rosie Rosenthal didn’t share these thoughts with his crewmates, simple guys who distrusted what they called deep thinking. They never learned what was inside him, what made him fly and fight with blazing resolve” (p. 14).

Rosenthal is good example for all of us: thinking deeply helps form convictions, and convictions lead to a resolved will and a sticktuitiveness in life that is absent from much of the Christian world. The church, like the world, is full of people who just show up, and whose resolve for Christ, like what fills their minds, is empty and thin. 

So, think deeply on the things of God in Scripture, because it is by so doing that we gain a “blazing resolve” to enjoy and spread a passion for Jesus Christ. If you won’t learn the lesson from Scripture, learn it from Rosie Rosenthal. He knew what it was to believe in something so strongly that it shaped who he was.