We’ve been away for a bit. But that hasn’t kept us from meeting your podcast needs. Lisa was a guest of Women in Christian Leadership and their podcast, It’s Her Story. Give a listen as she recounts not just her faith in the Lord, but the Lord’s faithfulness to her.
It’s a bit of a tired joke, but it makes quite a good point. One man finds another on his hands and knees under a streetlight. “What are you doing down there?” he asks. “Looking for my keys” the man responds. “Did you drop them around here?” “No,” the man replies, I dropped them about fifty yards farther on, but the light is so much better here.” How easy it is to mistake that which we can know with that which we need to know.
Consider for a moment the biblical qualifications for an elder. Paul, on more than one occasion, gives us a list. An elder should, for instance, not be quarrelsome, not greedy for money. In one of his lists Paul puts down thirteen qualifications. Twelve of them are issues of character. One of them, not so much. Elders are to be “apt to teach.” Like the man looking for his keys under the streetlight, we have come to measure the qualifications of a pastor by the one quality that has some semblance of an objective measurable standard- a GPA.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Of course it is a good thing for a pastor to be able to handle the text well. The capacity to interact with the original languages can be quite helpful. A familiarity with the historical creeds and the issues the church has wrestled with over the centuries is valuable. Grasping the fundamental principles of logic can help keep a pastor on the doctrinal straight and narrow. I’ve not only been a student but a professor at the college and seminary levels, and am not ashamed for having been so.
That said, what does it say about us, and our commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture, about our capacity to see past our cultural blinders, that we see a seminary education as essential, while the Bible says not a word about seminaries at all? How well are our seminaries training us when we don’t even know to ask this fundamental question? I suspect it is because we are still caught in the grip of modernism whose sacrament has always been education. We think education is good for what ails us.
For some of us I’m sure that’s true. For most of us, however, our failures are not grounded in knowing too little, but caring too little about what we know. Ignorance is low down on the list of destructive influences in our lives, well below stubbornness, pride, and, no surprise here- quarrelsomeness and greed for money. I get that these more pressing weaknesses are often easily hidden or disguised. They must, however, be in some sense knowable or Paul would not have given us such a list.
I am certainly not suggesting that pastors must have no sin struggles. Mercy no. What I am saying is that by and large in the evangelical church those qualities we value most are not the ones the Holy Spirit tells us to value most. We have what we have because we want what we want, because we don’t submit to the Word of God. Which is why we can’t seem to find our keys.
I have two neighbors. On the east side is Mr. Jones. He’s a decent man, a loving husband, and an attentive father. He serves at the local soup kitchen at least once a month. He loves to talk to people about Jesus, and all that Jesus means to him. Indeed Jesus is Mr. Jones’ hero- he aspires to be just like him. Mr. Jones is at peace with his life. He’s content with where he is, and has every confidence about where he will spend eternity.
Mr. Smith, on the other hand, only spends time with his children every other weekend. They spend the rest of the time with their mother, his ex-wife. She divorced Smith after catching him in his affair. Mr. Smith wonders if he might soon end up visiting the local soup kitchen as well. With the child support, the cigarettes and work being so unsteady, there’s often month left after the money is gone. Mr. Smith doesn’t often like talking about Jesus. In fact, most of the time when others do he feels acutely embarrassed. He is anxious, uncertain about both the near term future, and his eternity.
Of course things could change, and I don’t pretend to have any magic glasses that can see into men’s souls. But if I had to make a guess, even a judgment, it would be this- Mr. Jones will suffer eternally the wrath of the Father. Mr. Smith will be welcomed with open arms into heaven. You see I’ve listened to Mr. Jones talk about Jesus. He’s expressed to me many a time how grateful he is for all that Jesus has done for him. Jesus has blessed his business such that it prospers. He’s blessed the man’s family, keeping it not only intact, but headed for a bright future. His boys are leaders in the local Fellowship of Christian Athletes, his daughter a peer counselor in the youth group. Mr. Jones thinks Jesus is terrific. His life wouldn’t be the same without Him.
Mr. Smith, on the other hand, is weighed down by his sins. He knows how badly he failed his wife, and in turn their children. His struggles with depression, as well as anger, he suspects, impact his lack of job security. And then there’s those accursed cigarettes. They have such a hold on him. He feels like a complete failure. Which, in turn, is why he is so often embarrassed when the conversation turns to Jesus. Mr. Smith wishes he could be more together like the people at church. He wants to be a faithful soldier of the Lord. But each Sunday he shows up feeling slovenly, his uniform besmirched with the week’s failures, stained with nicotine and regret.
Sunday, however, is where the difference shows. While Jones is confidently singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” Smith whispers with desperate hope another tune, about an amazing grace that saved a wretch like him. And, according to the Jesus Jones loves to talk about but does not know, Smith goes home justified. May we put away the folly of keeping up with the Joneses, and instead enter into the wisdom of breaking down with the Smiths.
Be sure to check back regularly. Bronchitis still have me in its grip.
James in his epistle gives us this command, “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (1:19). Perhaps we struggle with this command because we are too swift to move past the test. We don’t slow down enough to work out what we’re commanded to here.
We know, for instance, that there are plenty of places and contexts wherein we should be eager to speak. We’re commanded to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us (I Peter 3:!5). We are to boldly proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. The “slow to speak” is likely best understood in the context of the rest of the verse, which focuses on anger. The speech we’re to be slow to seems to be speech that might flow out of a position of anger. Which is often when we are most eager to speak. Anger, whether just or unjust, is not conducive to deliberation. Like steam building in a pressure cooker, it wants out, now.
The first step of being slow to speak is to step back from those emotions. A wise man recognizes his own anger, and remembers that there have been times in his past where a. his anger was unjust b. or his just anger wasn’t best served by angry words. He stops, sets aside his anger and assesses the situation carefully, dispassionately. “Have I misunderstood?” “Am I being over-sensitive?” “Could there be an alternate explanation for the data that is making me angry?” “Did I wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”
If our anger remains intact after these questions, next we need to take the time to assess our goals. “What am I seeking to accomplish with my words right now?” “Are my words conducive to building up the saints?” “Is now the time for the soft answer that turns away wrath?” (Proverbs 15:1).
Honest answers to these questions are powerful tools to helping guard our relationships. If my goal is to punish with my words the one whom I believe is responsible for my anger, that’s a good sign I need to slow down. If my anger flows out of the perspective that I am of great importance and those who fail to recognize this are fools who should feel my wrath, then I need not only to slow down but to repent. The experience of anger should be a potent goad to examining my own heart and motives.
Once I am calm I’m in a better position to make my words helpful for a better relationship. I can be a peacemaker, de-escalating rather than pouring gas on the fire. I can be a herald for God’s Word rather than competition against it.
That said, it may be that after careful thought it might be fitting and necessary to express anger. David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit writes, “Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies (Psalm 139:21-22). When my dignity is under attack, it may be, as David said of Shimei, that it is the very voice of God (II Samuel 16). When His dignity is under attack, however, we are called to arms, and to voices. Even then, however, we must slow down at least long enough to make sure we aren’t confusing our own dignity with His.
It was an astonishing conclusion, though I don’t remember exactly when it came to me. For many years as I grew up I looked forward to the day when I’d be grown up. My assumption was that I’d cross some clear, luminescent line when I’d turn into a grown up. For some years I worried that I was behind. Eventually the eureka moment came. Not when I became a grown up, but when I realized that moment would never come. I’m a grandparent nearly a dozen times over yet I’m still the same kid who believed all was right with the world if I had a pocketful of bubblegum.
While we are called to mature, the wisdom of experience tells us that much of us stays with us all our days. Consider fencing. No, not sword play, but safe play. We have been taught that little children crave the security that comes from limitations. Put a passel of tikes in a sandbox and their imaginations will take them around the world. Put those same wee ones in an open field and they become fearful. Even from birth babies are more at ease bound burrito-like in a blanket than let loose.
What if we never outgrow that? What if there will always be something comforting to us in limitations imposed on us? What if, from birth to death we flourish best when confined? What if the reason we never leave childhood and enter adulthood is because we are now and always will be His children? And what if our security is bound up in being bound up inside the fence of His good law?
The truth is that outside the fence is destruction and death. What looks to us, in moments of temptation, as greener grass is the poison that drove our first parents, when they were still new, east of Eden. Outside the fence we are outside the protection of our Father. Inside the fence we are ever under His protective watch.
As this year draws to a close we enter another season of resolutions. Some of us will resolve to lose the pounds that found us during our feasting. Some will resolve to shed this vice, and others to cultivate that virtue. There’s not a thing in the world wrong with that. The only trouble is when we spend our energy so focused on shoring up the south fence that we fail to see the fence has toppled to the north, east and west. That is, what we need is not merely to improve in this area or that. What we need is to resolve to love and obey His law. All of it. We need to understand that God’s law isn’t Him capriciously spoiling all our fun, but is Him tenderly leading us in the safe paths of righteousness. His law is good, a gift, a blessing, a reflection of His glory.
Whether you are young or old, whether you, like me, have the aches and grey hairs of the aged with the uncertainty of childhood all in one package, as we enter together into a new year we get one year closer to home, one year closer to both the fullness of maturity and sitting in our heavenly Father’s lap. Give thanks.
Love him or hate him, embrace the theology that bears his name or reject that theology, there is no disputing that John Calvin had a profound impact on the world. Some scholars have argued that intellectually speaking, he is the father of our country, which country is and has been for many years, the most influential in the world.
That is influence. That is impact. If these scholars are correct — and they are — that means one man, one very frail man, shaped what would become the most prosperous, powerful, faithful nation in the history of the world. It’s enough to make one want to shout oneself hoarse. I, of course, because I am a Calvinist, will remember at least one caveat. I will remember that it was God who was at work in and through Calvin. Calvin was a vessel for the grace of God, first in the lives of those committed to Reformation in Switzerland, and later in Scotland, the Netherlands, England, and beyond. God, after all, not Calvin, is the sovereign one. Our celebration ought to be for the grace of God in this man’s life, more than merely for the man.
Getting that right, however, still leaves us with a fundamental problem in how we look at the phenomenon that was John Calvin. It’s good and right to see these ripples for what they actually were, great thundering tsunamis. It is in turn fitting that we should remember in the end that it is the Lord whom the wind and the waves obey, that what we are celebrating is what He has wrought. Let us not miss, however, how God brought this to pass in and through John Calvin.
Calvin was a man focused on a single goal. Though his life shaped our theology, our understanding of liberty, our conception of the state, our grasp of vocation, of the arts, of every “slice” of our lives, his goal was simple, uncluttered, alone. Calvin did not set out to reform our conceptions of this meta-theme or that. No, Calvin’s single concern was that God’s people would learn aright to worship the living and true God. Worship was what shaped him. Worship was what drove him. Worship was what formed Geneva and all that followed after. Please don’t misunderstand. Calvin didn’t believe that in order to remake the world, we must remake worship. Instead, Calvin understood that we must remake worship. Everything else is icing. To put it another way, Calvin understood that we must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, not so that we might have all these things added to us, but so that we might have the one needful thing — the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
We, the heirs of Calvin, have forgotten this lesson. We, if we think about worship at all, see it as a means to the end. The end we have in mind is the power and the glory. We want to build political coalitions that we might change the world. We want to overcome the powers of the Hollywood elite that we might change the world. We want to remake the economic landscape that we might change the world. What God wants is that we would bow down in repentance and give glory to His name. What God wants is what Calvin did.
When Jesus told us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, He wasn’t telling us: “Now when you go about your life, when you pursue your goals, don’t forget the big picture. Don’t lose sight of why you do what you do.” Instead Jesus was telling us: “Seek this. Seek this alone. Forget about everything else. Have a single-minded passion and leave the rest alone. It is in My hands anyway.”
We, on the other hand, have it all upside down and backwards. We look at the glory that once was Geneva because of the ministry of Calvin. We look out at all the nations that felt the ripples of Calvin, moving from Geneva, to England, to these United States, then back out across the globe through the modern missionary movement. We will remember the great economic power that was unleashed with the spread of liberty that likewise redounds to Calvin. What we miss is the true glory, the real story. What we miss is the unvarnished beauty of a single congregation in one neighborhood of Geneva, bowing in prayer to the living God, lifting up their voices, singing the Psalms of God, receiving the Word preached, and receiving the Word as bread and wine. There is where the glory is found.
The name and the label are just short of useless. The lesson is priceless.
Obedience, of course, is a good thing. Our Father delights to see His children embracing His wisdom, heeding His warnings, walking in the joy that is His law. When we dance in His presence we presage the beauty and glory of heaven. But this, our obedience, is not how we get there.
“In the beginning God” tells us that once there was God, and nothing else. There are no givens, no set of existing realities that He must contend with, and so everything that came after is utterly under His absolute control. He could have constructed a world in which there was no temptation. He could have planned a world in which there was no sin. But He didn’t.
Why didn’t He? Not because He so loved free will that He had to make it that way. Not because otherwise we would just be robots. The glory is not due to the liberty of our wills. He made the world the way He made it, with temptation, with the possibility of sin, for the sake of His glory. That glory, according to Romans 9, shines forth in His just judgment of sin. That, however, is not the end of the story.
The grace. Oh, the grace. Our sin is the theater of His mercy. By it we are broken,
that He might heal us. By it we are lost, that He might find us. By it we are shamed, that He might delight in us. He delights in our broken and contrite spirits not because they are worthy to be praised, but because He is worthy to be praised. He delights when we are bowed down by the weight of our sin, because He rejoices to lift it from us.
We may not, of course, sin all the more that grace may abound. Neither, however, may we stay in our remorse. Because grace truly abounds. Our calling is to enter into the reality and depth of our sins, to own not just our misdeeds, but the darkness that yet resides in our hearts. No matter how deeply we look at our sin, however, it has already been outpaced by His grace. We look at it as His children, already forgiven, loved from eternity. We give thanks then not just for forgiveness, but for the Forgiver. We rejoice to know that He rejoices to forgive. We receive from Him what we receive because He is who He is.
Ours is no begrudging Father. He is so quick to forgive us that He doesn’t wait for our free will to bring us to repentance, but sends His Spirit to drive us there. All the world is His stage. We are indeed His players. We do not, however, signify nothing. Rather we are signposts to His glory. May we ever thank Him for every plot twist He has planned, every line He has written, every moment of shame and contrition. For it all, all of it, redounds to His everlasting glory.
One cannot miss the irony that the biggest shopping day of the year begins in the wee hours of the day after Thanksgiving. The second biggest shopping day of the year comes with its own irony- it’s the day after Christmas. It takes a few hours to move from contentedness to acquisitiveness and then, a month later, a few hours to move from the flurry of Christmas wrap to the realization that what you received is not really what will satisfy.
The Brits have an interesting addition to their liturgical calendar that perhaps we would be wise to adopt. In the United Kingdom, and in many other nations that once were part of the British empire, the day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day. This is not a day dedicated to breaking down and disposing of all the boxes our presents came in. Neither is it the one day a year when all of England puts on boxing gloves and pays homage to the Marquis of Queensbury. Rather, it is that day when those less fortunate are remembered.
Those who served the wealthy not only received the day off, but received from their employers gifts, often big boxes of them. Those who worked in service industries in turn were given gifts on this day. When Christians gathered to worship on Christmas Day (whatever day of the week it was) a special offering of alms was taken up and given to the poor on Boxing Day. Boxing Day is the embodiment of the biblical wisdom that it is better to give than to receive (Acts 25:30). In giving, however, we receive that greater blessing.
The blessing of giving is that it not only doesn’t feed our hunger for more, but satisfies our hunger to be satisfied. In giving to those less fortunate we are better able to see the blessings we have already received. Boxing Day is the better day not because giving is more important than the birth of Jesus, but because Jesus was born to give, to lay His life down for us, the spiritually destitute.
Here then is a suggestion or two. When you look back at yesterday, begin by asking yourself not what was the favorite gift you received, but what was your favorite gift that you gave. Have the whole family ask the same question. Cherish the memory of the joy of the receivers. And when those receivers fail the test, when they race to the next gift or fail to appreciate the last one, remember that such is how we treat our heavenly Father. Second, ask your heavenly Father for the best gift. Ask Him to bless you with the gift of gratitude. Not that He would change your circumstances, but that you would give deep and genuine thanks to Him for putting you in the circumstances He has. Finally, give thanks for the present you haven’t yet opened- eternal life in the glorious presence of the living God.
