Thesis 51 We must pray without ceasing.
One of the dangers of honoring the Reformation is that we can end up dishonoring the very principles that gave rise to it. If, for instance, we were to carry around bits of bones from Martin Luther and revere them, we would have badly missed the point. If, in like manner, our understanding of justification becomes so complicated that it takes a Ph.D. to understand it, we’ve missed the point as well. The Reformation did not happen because Martin Luther applied his prodigious intellect to a vexing intellectual problem, and came out with the right answer. It was driven more by courage than by raw intelligence, by fidelity more than finesse.
In like manner, while we want to be sound in our thinking, and while the things of God are infinite in depth, what we need if we want a new Reformation is not new information, but greater fidelity to the information we have already been given. Consider how much time and energy we devote to the question of prayer. If everything is already ordained, why pray? we ask. Does prayer really change anything? Should we pray in tongues? These are all legitimate questions. But we ought to be spending more time praying than asking questions about praying. We know this, and it is enough, we are commanded to pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5:17).
If we want Reformation, if we want to see the world changed, the church changed, our families changed, and ourselves changed, we need to change our habits. Reformation will come when we are obedient in the simple things. God calls us to pray without ceasing, and so we ought to do. As we obey this command we are changed, and the world around us is changed. As we obey this command we will in turn rejoice always. We will give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for us (5:16-18).
One of the most potent elements of prayer is shame. That is, when we are not praying, we seem to believe that God isn’t listening. Prayer is, to our subconscious minds, opening the communication link with heaven. When we’re “on” we are less likely to dwell not only on those sins we nurture in the quiet of our minds, but we are less likely to dwell on the trivial and insignificant. Praying to the Lord of heaven helps keep our focus on heavenly things. This in turn will turn our efforts toward heavenly things. A person who prays constantly is probably not given to thinking all the time about their favorite football team. Neither are they busy trying to make sure their favorite team wins. A person in constant prayer is already working for the kingdom. But such a man is in turn far more likely to set his hands and feet to work on that which is not wood, hay and stubble.
Pray without ceasing, for God is at work in and for us, without ceasing.
One of the benefits that comes from age is learning from experience. One thing I’ve learned over the years is I don’t know as much as I think. Another thing I’ve learned is that there is often a deep disconnect between a person’s experience and a culture’s experience. Children contracting polio was a life changing experience for whole families. It did not, however, radically change the world.
At my age I have lived through the Club of Rome’s environmental apocalypticism, back when it was a global ice age we were supposed to fear. I’ve lived through the certainty that we would soon be buried under hyper-inflation. I’ve lived through the AIDs crisis. I survived the millennium bug. I have yet, however, to see the mountains melt and the stars fall from the sky.
Because there are disagreements over the dangers and spread of COVID, because governments rarely miss an opportunity that comes with a crisis, this illness is raising the specter of permanent totalitarian rule. They’re telling us if we can meet for worship, whom we can invite for Christmas dinner and if we can sing Christmas carols. It is all terribly draconian, no question.
What it is not, is new. Did you know, in the midst of the Cold War, there was a country where the national government made it a crime for any business to raise its prices, or to give an employee a raise? That this same country witnessed consumers lined up for block after block, hoping just for the chance to buy necessary goods? That, after a regime change the new head of state went so far as to forbid his comrades to heat their homes above a certain temperature? For decades this country has cut people off from educational opportunities if they don’t get vaccinated. To this day, in that same country, if you want build a shed in your backyard you must wait for a government bureaucrat to come and give his approval, which won’t happen if you don’t write a check.
That country, of course, is the land of the free and home of the brave. The intrusiveness would most certainly shock our founding fathers. We, on the other hand, have gotten used to it. Do I expect a seismic shift? Not at all. That is long behind us. Do I expect Big Brother’s mask to slip further? That I can see. He has been in power, however, across generations.
We are already deep into the bowels of institutional entropy, that law that says all institutions tend toward apostasy unless acted upon by an outside force. For the state, apostasy falls in two directions. One, the state falls to fulfill its calling, protecting life and property. We’ve had this for decades as police stand guard at public centers for the murder of the unborn. We have frequent Purge nights in our cities as the police are ordered to stand down while looting runs amuck. Two, the state intrudes where it does not belong. That camel has long since followed its nose into our tent and is now curled up in our sleeping bag, snoring to beat the band.
No, no seismic shift. Just more of the same.
There is, in a rather small subsection of the Reformed world, a rather curious conviction. Some otherwise sound folks take the true and sound notion that because God knows those whom He has not chosen, because it is a great sin against Him to not give thanks to Him, that it is wrong to speak of Him being gracious to those who were not chosen. Every time He sends them the rain, and they fail to give thanks, all that happens for those not chosen is that the thermostat in hell goes up higher still. These folks are right- He does send the rain, knowing they will not give thanks. He will heat up hell all the hotter because of it. But, contra this peculiar view, the rain is in fact grace. In fact, if it’s not grace the very conclusion we have reached, that they will receive greater judgment for their lack of thanksgiving, makes no sense. If God is in fact not being gracious toward them, why should they give thanks? You can’t have it both ways. You can deny that God is giving the reprobate unmerited (or de-merited) favor, or you can affirm the reprobate has a duty to give thanks. But you can’t do both.
There is, on the other hand, in the whole of the Reformed world, a curious lack of conviction. That is somehow we have come to forget that we too are the recipients of His grace, that we receive so much better than what we deserve, and that we have a solemn duty to joyfully give thanks. One of the ways this broader failure manifests itself is in what some might call the objection to “worm theology.” “Worm theology” is that pejorative term given to those of us who are eager to affirm the biblical reality of two things- first, we are by nature children of wrath. We are born the enemies of God. We are totally depraved. We would, in our natural state, if we could, commit deicide. Second, when we are given new hearts, and we embrace the work of Christ, as we grow in grace, moving toward our glorification, we have sin yet remaining in us.
It is true, gloriously true, that when we embrace the work of Christ on our behalf we have peace with God. The Spirit indwells us. We are made knew, and are deemed righteous by the Father who adopts us as His own children. We are promised eternal joy at His right hand, and that one day all the remnants of our sin will be washed away. We are promised that every sin, past, present, future, has already been covered by the blood of Christ. We become saints, beloved of Christ. None of which changes the truth that until our deaths, our glorifications, we still sin, often in the most grievous ways. We are still, in ourselves, worthy of His just wrath, of His displeasure.
The challenge is to keep all these truths in their proper places. Where we are in danger of doubting His tender love for us, we must needs remember that He moves us from grace to grace, that all His promises are yea and amen, that He allows us to be called His children. When, however, we are in danger of believing we deserve all the good that we receive, we need to remember our true nature, what we are apart from His grace. We should never despair of what we are because we are already His, and are being remade. We should never demand what we haven’t been given, because are still sinners, and are always already living in the very lap of His grace.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “Black Friday is proof that Thanksgiving didn’t stick.” I understand the importance of proper qualifications. One should not hear in that pithy phrase a condemnation either of getting a good deal, or having nice things. I’m in favor of both. No “bah, humbug” from me. What concerns me isn’t the thriftiness of finding the best deals but our propensity to feel dissatisfied, to believe that things can bolster our contentment. It’s one thing to get up early in the morning to go in search of bargains, another thing altogether to go in search of meaning. One you can find almost anywhere. The other, you’d be looking in all the wrong places.
We’re all familiar with the story of John D. Rockefeller when he, who was at the time the richest man in the world, was asked, “How much money is enough?” His response, “Just a little bit more.” If you think this a lesson on how greedy the rich are you’re missing who you are in the story. It is true enough that the rich are greedy. So are, however, the middle class. Even the poor don’t escape. Greed is a human heart problem, not a income bracket problem. We would all answer as Rockefeller did, were we honest. There are always things we’d like to have that seem just out of our reach, a kind of mental shopping list for when our ship comes in, “If somehow I had X dollars, then I’d buy Y.” Perhaps because this isn’t necessarily a look we like to see in the mirror, we may instead tell ourselves, “If somehow I had X dollars, then I’d give Y to Z.” We tell ourselves what great givers we’d be, if we only had more. But here’s the thing. Precious few of us have ever found ourselves in debt because we were donating too much to others. Precious few of us are financially upside down because of what we wanted to give. It is instead what we wanted to get. We fault the Pharisees for making a grand show of their giving, while we hide our merely hypothetical giving in our minds.
There are two potent signposts that show us what we value, rather than what we like to think we value, what do we spend our time on, and what do we spend our money on? On Black Friday the two come together as we give up time sleeping in order to purchase more stuff.
Please do not hear me scolding anyone. Rather hear me confessing. I have confidence in my assessment of your heart simply because of the ugliness I see in my own. That said, here’s something we all ought to be thinking about as we wake from our feast-induced coma. Maybe we should be thinking about what we can give rather than what we can get. Maybe we should be looking for bargains, those organizations that provide great bang for your buck. Maybe we should put the gratitude we expressed yesterday to work today.
Without question the most vexing challenge faced by the early church was understanding how believing Jews and believing Gentiles ought to relate to one another. The theme gets major play in Galatians, Hebrews, Acts, and is even the root of the issue that led to Paul’s stern and public rebuke of Peter. That so much time and attention was paid to this issue might incline us to believe it was settled. Or it just may prove how deep runs the temptation to botch this up.
Let’s start here- we have peace with God by trusting in the finished work of Christ alone. Add anything to that and you have fallen into a false gospel. You do not have peace with God by trusting in Christ and by being circumcised, or by trusting in Christ and keeping the Feast of Weeks. Add anything to the work of Christ, and you lose the work of Christ.
God gave the feasts to point our spiritual fathers toward Christ. They were shadows and He the real thing. The author of Hebrews warns his audience, professing believers who were tempted to go back to the Temple and the Old Covenant shadows, that to go back is to deny that Christ has come.
If we grasp that these were types, shadows that pointed to Christ we will reach two conclusions. First, they were not bad things. Too often some treat the Old Covenant like it was flawed, something to be thrown aside. But God Himself ordained these feasts, for the good of His people. Second, however, Christ is greater than the shadows. We do not keep the feasts by keeping the feast. Instead we keep the feasts by clinging to Christ. He is our feast.
So should we celebrate these feasts? Not if by “should” we mean we have an obligation to do so. May we? Well, that certainly depends on where our hearts are. The Bible prescribes liberty, Paul telling us: One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks (Romans 14:5-6).
I have no quarrel with a person celebrating these feasts. Instead I have a caution. My concern about some who celebrate these feasts is that while they profess their dependence on the finished work of Christ alone, some seem to believe that feast keeping somehow elevates their Christian walk. All of our sub-culture convictions within the church carry this danger. Whether it be speaking in tongues, observing feasts, modesty, or reciting the prayer of Jabez we are inveterate second blessing seekers. We want to be superior Christians who have glommed on to the secret way. Then we go out with all the zeal of an Amway salesman trying to get our friends all on board.
Paul, however, is far more easy-going. He described his Hebrew roots as dung (Philippians 3:1-8). What matters is that we know Him, and the power of His resurrection.
You didn’t think I was going to leave you bereft of a podcast on this day of thanks did you?
