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.

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.‘