We start, it seems to me, by asking the question. The shakeup that comes from this pandemic and the economic issues that tag along is good for waking us up. It is so easy to go through our normal days without giving much thought to why we do what we do. Are we busy about our King’s business? Are we intentional about the work that we do, and the way that we do it? Am I raising my family, or am I just watching it grow? Take the time, while you have the time, to ask these kinds of questions.
Second, spend some time doing what you can do to make things better. If you can’t go to work, such doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work. It just means you can’t go. Work not just at home, but perhaps on home. Those projects that never seem to get done? Now is our chance to do them. I’m not suggesting you need to finish the room above the garage or build your own potting shed. But maybe tighten up that wobbly door nob, or clean out the clutter in the attic.
Third, start reading through the Bible with your spouse. You know how you always say, “I know I ought to do this, but things have just been so hectic”? Well, if Covid-19 is keeping you away from your normal appointed rounds, maybe things are less hectic for you. You will find, if you start, that it is a great blessing to you, your spouse and your home. More Bible has never been a bad idea.
Fourth, have some old-school fun. It seemed, back when I was growing up in western Pennsylvania that power outages were common, especially in winter. What I remember was the fun of it, not the inconvenience. You likely have power, but now would be a great time to break out a deck of cards, or a board game, to play chess with your children, and remember a time of more simple pleasures. Games, once upon a time, were designed to allow room for conversation, and for quiet, thoughtful strategy. Most games today, like video games, are just Red Bull with rules. Greater intensity isn’t what troubled times call for but greater calm.
Fifth, find a way to encourage someone. You could do that with a phone call, an email, or go utterly retro and send an actual letter, written in your own hand. It doesn’t have to be maudlin or over the top. Just a “I appreciate you because…” I’ve been personally blessed in including in my Jesus Changes Everything podcast a segment each week called Heroes You Never Heard Of, in which I take a few moments to remember the people that I have admired who aren’t well known. It feeds my soul to remember God’s grace through others.
Finally, find a way to serve those who serve. I’ve enjoyed seeing stories like the person who would buy a gift card at the grocery store only to hand it to the cashier, or the person who left out toilet paper and hand sanitizer for any delivery men who came by the house. There’s a great deal of tension and fear out there. Saying thank you to those living in risk to make sure we have what we need is good for everyone.
And pray. Pray for the world, for the country, your state, town and neighborhood. Then pray for you, that God would cause you to grow in grace and wisdom and that He would bear the fruit of His Spirit in you.
One of the common complaints against the doctrine of unconditional election is that it seems to make God out to be capricious. The late great John Gerstner, in trying to emphasize the sovereign grace of God in election once, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, described that moment before time when we were chosen as “our lucky day.” The Reformers, however, in arguing for unconditional election were dealing with a particular argument from the other side. That is, they were more interested in denying something than affirming something. The driving motive here was to make sure we understood that election is not done on the basis of any good in those who were chosen. There were no meritorious conditions in the elect that motivated God to make them the elect. He did not peer down the corridor of time to find out which of us were good enough to choose Him, and then on that basis choose us. Total depravity, of course, is sufficient to undo that notion. If He peered down the corridor of time to see who would of themselves choose Him, then none would be elect.
That God looked for nothing good in us before He chose us, however, does not mean that He looked for nothing at all. The goal of the doctrine is not neutrality, but humility. If we look to God’s Word, we find that God just may have used a particular criteria in choosing us. Paul writes about God’s choosing His people, “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are” ().
That’s us. Were we more honest, we would give up our dignified church names, like Covenant Church, First Church, Trinity Church, and adopt more honesty in our labeling. We ought to tell our neighbors, “We worship each Lord’s Day with the saints down at First Church of the Ignoble.” We ought to put bumper stickers on our cars advising “Follow me to Base and Despised Community Fellowship.” God did indeed have a reason for choosing you and choosing me- He wanted to choose losers.
Does the church acknowledge this painful reality? Do we embrace our inner loser? No. He chooses us because we are fools, and we, because He was right, think ourselves wise. We come up with elaborate marketing strategies for the kingdom of God. We divide up the congregation by market tastes, setting up the hip, urbane fancy coffee gathering place over here, and the country/western place over there. We’ll serve this group lattes and the other group Mountain Dew, and we’ll send the satellite feed of Pastor Sweater to both. He chooses us in our weakness, and we start flexing our political muscles. He chooses us in our lack of nobility, and we pat Him on the back for choosing such fine fellows such as we are.
This, of course, is one more reason, as if we need another reason, why it is wise to come together at the table each Lord’s Day. How can we go on thinking so highly of ourselves if, each week we see the body we broke, and the blood we shed? How can we persuade ourselves of how much the kingdom of God needs us, when we need our Captain not just to provide for us, but to feed us with His own body? How can we perceive ourselves to be a net gain for the body, when we cannot stay alive without the body? The table, for all the joy and delight that it brings, powerfully reminds us of who we are, the weak, the foolish, the ignoble.
Why would God choose losers like us? Is it because of His compassion? Was it sympathy that drove Him to overlook the stronger, wiser, nobler of His creatures? No, the text tells us how God reasoned this out- “that no flesh should glory in His presence” (verse 29). God’s motive for picking us is the same as His motive for all that He does, that His glory might be made known. When we preen about, thinking too highly of ourselves, therefore, we are not merely showing our foolishness by misunderstanding ourselves, but we fall under the very curse of Malachi, “Will a man rob God?” (3:8). A failure of humility is a failure to render unto God the things that are His, glory.
We’re not, by the way, fooling anyone anyway. The world knows what losers we are. God knows what losers we are. Losers that we are, we’re the only ones that don’t seem to notice. We’re too busy trying to impress each other. May God have mercy on our souls.
The answer, of course, isn’t to get all Puddleglum about ourselves. That we are losers isn’t cause for mourning, but for rejoicing. We should move not only from grace to grace, but from shocked to stunned- ME? He chose ME? But I’m awful. I’m a bundle of dust and rebellion. What did He see in me?
What did He see in us? Losers so awful that He was our only way out. He saw in us an opportunity to make known His glory, to shine forth the riches of His grace by bestowing them upon we the poverty-stricken. We now have no more reason to pretend. We need no more put on a show for others. All we need to do is to repent and believe. And having believed, all we have left to do is rejoice and give thanks. We are losers, every one of us. But by His grace and for His glory, we’re His losers.
It is a good thing to affirm the sovereignty of God over all things. God delights in the truth and we ought to draw the deepest comfort from it. It is right and proper to understand that His sovereignty is over all things, the great and the small, that He ordains not just the rise and fall of kings and nations, but the swirling fall of every leaf that kisses the ground. Yeah, and amen.
It is, however, a most dangerous and damaging tiny little step to move from affirming that God is in control of all things to affirming we know precisely why He does any one thing. We know He does all things for His glory and our good. We don’t always know what that means. I once read a Puritan sermon in which the pastor told the story of when he found in the corner of their meeting house a torn up old copy of the Book of Common Prayer. He rightly discerned it had been chewed up by a mouse. He rightly affirmed that God had determined from before all time that that mouse would come upon that book (which as a Puritan the preacher would have despised) and chewed it up. Then he affirmed, “Even God’s creature the mouse knows the Book of Common Prayer should be destroyed.” Well, maybe. Could we not just as easily affirm, based on God ordaining that mouse to eat that book, “Even God’s creature the mouse knows to feed upon the Book of Common Prayer.” Same event, same affirmation that God brought it to pass, two wildly differing but equally plausible views as to why God did it.
We are in the midst of what our fathers would have called a “hard providence.” That is, God in His sovereignty is leading us through some significant challenges. It is critically important that we acknowledge the glorious truth not only that He is leading us, but that they are His challenges. The Chinese may be as guilty as Joseph’s brothers. But it is still His plan. God isn’t merely sovereign enough to respond to hardship. His sovereignty extends to sending the hardship.
And as always, He has His reasons why. Which reasons He has not been pleased to reveal to us. Beware of anyone who claims that they know. Could this illness be judgment on the world for our unbelief? Could God be tearing down our idol, Mammon? Of course He could. Even if we could know that however, we still don’t know why. That is, what if God is sending this hardship to bless us with a Joseph? What if He is sending this hardship to drive those whom He has chosen but who have not yet been brought in, to repent and believe? What if He is sending this hardship so that His children can minister to unbelievers in the name of Jesus? What if it’s all those things?
We thought we knew this- that our days would go on much the way they always have. We were wrong. We do, however, know this- our days are in the scarred hands of Jesus, the King of Kings. I know not what the future holds. But His grace, however, I know the One who holds it. It is more than enough.
I was blessed, over the years, to teach a number of the Great Works courses at Reformation Bible College. It is my contention that we ought to cover the great books of western civilization not so we can prepare our students to join in what some call the “great conversation” that back and forth over the centuries that seeks to answer the most foundational questions of our nature, purpose and end. Instead I want to prepare them for the “great confrontation.” I teach in light of the antithesis, the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent that began in Eden and ends with the end of history. I want my students to understand the culture they are living in, the ideological water they are swimming in, so that they might both guard their hearts and press the crown rights of King Jesus.
One of the best shortcuts to understanding a given culture is to ask this question- in this culture, what does a person have to be or to do to be considered a hero? Such tells us a great deal. In ancient Greece you became a hero by courage and victory in battle. During the Renaissance you became a hero by dint of deep and wide study. In our day you become a hero by becoming the best in your field.
The high virtues of the Christian hero, by contrast, have precious little to do with accomplishment. Indeed I would argue that the first and highest standard of the Christian hero is a passion for repentance. The hero is the one who knows from top to bottom that he is not a hero. The hero moves through his days not only aware of his moral failures, but of his dependence on the grace of God in all its manifestations. He must know, increasingly, how weak and needy He is.
Second, the Christian, or the true hero is about the business not of making a name for himself, but of lifting others up and magnifying the name of Christ. Which is why real heroes are so hard to find.
Third, the Christian hero forgives. It is likely much less difficult to do a good deed for another than it is to forgive an evil deed done to us. The former flows easily from a high view of the self- I can do this giving thing for you, because I have so much to give.” The latter flows more from a low view of the self- “ I can forgive this wrong done to me because I know my need for forgiveness for the wrongs I’ve done to others.”
The temptation that began in the garden has not yet left us. We are always eager to become more than we are. The solution then and now is the same, to recognize our need for the work of the one true hero, Jesus. May we learn to imitate those who imitate Him.
How important it is to not allow our grasp of man’s total depravity to cause us to miss the remnants of the image of God in us. We are plenty bad. Sin touches every part of our being, and makes us utterly unable to do anything in ourselves, by ourselves pleasing to God, including coming to faith on our own. We do not, however, run in precisely the opposite direction of where we should be running. Romans 1, wherein Paul’s chief goal is to explain the universal guilt of man, for instance, tells us not that man, made to worship God, in his sin merely refuses to worship God, but rather says we worship the creature rather than the Creator. Because we’re fallen we won’t worship God. Because we bear His image, however, we will worship. Even at Babel they didn’t merely turn their back on the dominion mandate but rather twisted it. They built the tower because of God’s image. They built it for their own glory because of their depravity.
The same principle, that many of our desires (to work, to worship) are good and proper but because of sin, misdirected, applies to our desire to be loved. We are relational beings, just like our Father in heaven. It is not good, He told us, for man to be alone. Wanting to be loved isn’t a shame, weakness, a failure. Looking for love in all the wrong places, however, is a shame, weakness, a failure.
When we are men pleasers, ear ticklers, when we seek the approval of the world we are seeking love where we ought not, and missing the love that we have. When we commit adultery, indulge in pornography, escape into fantasy we seek love where we ought not, and miss the love that we have. When we gossip, slander, bear tales, we are seeking love where we ought not, and missing the love that we have. When we use social media to present our lives as one glamorous success after another, we look for love where we ought not and miss the love that we have.
The answer to our longing, the one thing that will satisfy our hunger is the Father who sent His Son to dwell with us, to be our Husband, and to feed us. If I am in Christ, I am His beloved, and I am in turn beloved of the Father. The Spirit is ever with me, encouraging me. If I am in Christ I have all that I could ever ask or hope for. In my sin I’m like the beloved son of the wealthiest man the world has ever known, going to the seedy part of town to pick through dumpsters, seeking to fill my belly. A feast is laid out for me at home, my Father’s table heavy laden with the choicest delicacies, and I’m looking for a pizza crust in a trash can.
My shame is not that I am hungry, for I was made to eat. My shame is missing what my Father has given me. My weakness is not that I want, but that I don’t recognize that I have. My failure isn’t that I long to be loved, but that I fail to believe I am infinitely loved. He is my beginning- I bear His image. And He is my end- I will be with Him always.
