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.
Tonight we continue our look at the monumental, towering book of Romans. All are welcome to our home at 7 est, or you may join us for dinner at 6:15. We will also stream the study at Facebook, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
From virtually every angle our thinking on more recent events, and everything leading from the Balfour Declaration to them is enmeshed with confusion and emotion. In this country we have many who seem to believe Israel can do no wrong and middle easterners can do know right. The bulk of Christians have little notion of the number of Christians in the Middle East, nor how western policies impact them. We likewise have Americans who believe Israel can do no right and anything done by Muslims against them is justly deserved. Add in the mix the complicated history of the crusades, the horror of the holocaust, the allied relationship between Israel and the United States, the tangled family history of Christians and Jews, the secular perspective of the Israeli government and, well, it’s a mess.
When we face a mess the first thing we need to do, after acknowledging the mess, is seeking out what we can know and what we can untangle. We set aside, without denying the scope of the horror, our understandable emotional responses and try to coolly apply the wisdom of God. For instance, even if you have embraced the fevered dreams of raving antisemitic conspiracy theorists, even if you are right, such doesn’t justify terrorism. An anti-communist John Bircher might have thought it a good and wise thing for the United States to fight against the Viet Cong, lest all the southeast Asian dominoes fall. Such could not, however, justify the My Lai Massacre. Whether Gaza is a free country given to Palestinians in exchange for a peace they are now breaking, or an open air prison may be a difficult question. Assaulting civilians is not.
What tends to justify such horrors in the minds of Hamas radicals is the perception of being gravely wronged by Israel. Israel, having been gravely wronged, now faces the temptation to retaliate. Seeking out enemy combatants, destroying weapons caches, bombarding rocket launching sites is not retaliation. It is waging war against an aggressing army. On the other hand, carpet bombing cities, targeting civilians is retaliation.
To put it another way, one thing we ought to know is the difference between terrorism and war. They have death and destruction in common. They differ as to the targets. Terrorism attacks civilians. War attacks soldiers. If this is not clear, chances are high that emotion is clouding your judgment. A wicked enemy that practices terrorism must have war waged against it, not have terrorism terrorizing the innocent.
I don’t pretend to know where all this is going. We could be in the early stages of World War III. Or, this could turn out to be the biggest brushfire in a long history of brushfires. I do know that thousands have died by the deliberate acts of thousands. Which means we need more light than heat, more just war commitments than jingoism. We need to mourn for our fallen natures, that we are all capable of barbarism. And we need to pray for the peace of the whole of the war-torn and terrorism torn region.
There are, of course, plenty of nutty Christian numerologists. Like the Bible code that once captured the imagination of Bible lovers, so too is there a steady crowd that practice a Christian brand of kabbalah, mixing mysticism and math. On the other hand, there are even more Christians who are so afraid of numerology that they deny the plain truth that God treats some numbers differently from others. And none is > 7. In seven days God created the universe. He commands of us that we rest one day in seven, that we leave our ground fallow one year in seven, that we set free our indentured servants every seven years. It is the number of completeness. Seven sevens brings us to an even greater celebration, Jubilee.
Tomorrow will mark the seventh anniversary of my marriage to my precious wife Lisa. To the world this is a harbinger of doom, as the seven year itch is expected to come and create havoc. To those in Christ, however, it is a year of rest, celebration, giving thanks and praising God. It is a year to acknowledge our dependence, not just as two individuals but as one couple, on Him and His grace. He is the one who brought us together. He is the one who prepared us all our lives for our time together. He is the one who bound us, the first strand around whom we are wrapped.
There is one thing, however, that I will not rest from in the coming year. I will continue in my habit of, just before going to sleep, thanking God for Lisa. And my habit, first thing when I wake, of thanking God for Lisa. The habit helps me to remember that I never run out of things to be thankful for. Lisa, first, forgives me. I’m not yet what I will be, and still struggle with sin. I need to repent often, and she forgives often. She too repents often, and it is my delight to forgive.
Lisa also speaks words of encouragement with the softest, most gentle voice. I get to hear her encouraging others with it, and get to receive it myself. Lisa speaks words of wisdom as well, learning from all that providence has taught her. Best of all Lisa speaks the words of Scripture, rightly applying the Word of truth to our changing circumstances.
I could go on about her sense of humor, her beauty, her abundant skills as a keeper of our home, her managerial acumen. Those are wonderful gifts. What is more wonderful still is that she seeks after God. She doesn’t speak to Him as if He was in the room. She speaks to Him knowing that He is in the room. She cries out. She sings His praises. She searches the Scriptures.
She has, not one year but for the last seven, given rest to the parched, cracked field that was my life before her. She has, not one year but for the last seven, helped to set me free from unbearable chains. She has, not one year, but for the last seven loved me faithfully, while loving Him faithfully.
Happy Anniversary my beloved. May He bless us with seven sevens together, and then the Jubilee.
It’s 84 degrees. My face and my noggin are sunburned. And it’s October as I write. I live not only in the northern state of Indiana, but in the northern portion of the state. Which pushes me, as a lover of fall and cold to wonder, “What gives?” I’ve been waiting since the beginning of June for the cold weather to come, counting down the days. My frustration in turn leads to me wonder if perhaps I’m the problem.
No, I don’t mean I should learn to love the heat. All you believers who love the heat will be healed of that malady when you are glorified. I mean I may well be misunderstanding the weather. When God makes covenant with Noah in Gen. 8:22 He makes a promise upon which not only all science but even all inductive reasoning is built upon. He said,
“While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Winter and summer,
And day and night
Shall not cease.”
This is God’s promise of order, predictability, that to some degree we can count on the future being like the past. It is the reason I don’t expect it to be so hot in October. Truth be told, soon enough I won’t be hot. (Tomorrow is the day. I’m so excited.) We’re not going to jump right into Summer next week. Two cheers for predictability says I.
Not, however, three cheers. God’s promise of order is not a promise to let go of the reins of the future. It is not as if He vowed to be a tame lion. Whether it is the foolish enlightenment notion that the world is itself just a clock slowly unwinding through the inexorable march of impersonal forces or the confused notion that God wrote the story, set up the dominoes, bumped the first and now watches from a distance, we are prone to missing His nearness, His active works of providence. We forget that He is not only there and not silent but He is here and not passive.
We won’t plant next year’s garden in February, though God could make such the perfect time. I won’t either fear that the universe is broken if February is warm. The same God who told Job that He alone shut in the sea with doors is the God who sends tsunamis. The one who promised never again to flood the earth has chosen to flood everything from the Mississippi River to the city of Johnstown, PA, twice.
In short, we should not be surprised when we find ourselves surprised from time to time. We should not, in receiving the blessing of predictability, curse ourselves by forgetting that He is near. The laws of nature do not belong to nature nor are they, properly speaking, laws. They are instead the patterns by which God usually operates. What He never does is leave the stage He has built for the sake of making manifest His glory. Which means, rain or shine, hot or cold, summer and winter, springtime and harvest we praise Him.
The appeal of ethical relativism is rather plain to see. If there is no right and wrong then I can’t be convicted of any wrong. Ethical relativism allows me to write my own law, to edit on the fly, to finish “I may do this…” with an unassailable … “because I want to.” Desire becomes its own justification. My will becomes my law.
This appeal, however, soon enough begins to dissipate if we have any interest at all in being coherent, consistent in our thinking. We quickly turn, “I may do this, because I want to” into “You may not do that, because I want to do this.” Consider, just as an example, sexual perversion. The problem, morally speaking, with sexual perversion is that it is an abomination to God. Ethical relativism, of course, bars God from the conversation. Therefore there is no reason by which we might condemn the practice. There is, to these folks, no transcendent moral standard by which we are all bound. We can do what we want, no matter how perverse. Which means, doesn’t it, that I can call sexual perversion an abomination to God? What, after all, is to stop me? If all things are permissible, saying some things are impermissible, must be permissible.
My ethical relativist friends, of course, do not take my bigoted, narrow, hateful position lying down. In fact, they will insist that since there is no right or wrong, it is, oops, wrongfor me to say otherwise. They will chasten me, rebuke me, come down on me with all the grace and love of a Pharisee. And in so doing expose the lie of their own foundational premise. They don’t deny the existence of law, just any law that would stop them.
In like manner if instead of condemning sexual perversion I club baby seals, or question global warming (oops again, climate change), or argue that government schools ought to be forbidden to teach evolution, suddenly my friends embrace a transcendent moral standard- one I am guilty of violating. Sadly, it doesn’t do much good to be more thoughtful, or more radical. You still run into the same problem. Nietzsche, you’ll remember, castigated Christianity for its “herd morality.” He grumbled that we believers were all the time going about doing what we were told. If we wanted to be authentic, right thinking, if we wanted to be Super men, he reasoned, we ought to throw off all morality and each of us create our own. But, oops, there’s that pesky “ought” again. Did you miss it? It’s there. Why “ought” we to throw off the herd morality? Where did that moral imperative come from? We ought not to listen to other people, according to Nietzsche, unless, of course, the other person is Nietzsche. Even Nietzsche could not escape the unbearable oughtness of being.
Lawlessness does not fail because bad things will happen without law. Lawlessness fails because if it succeeds it becomes law. If moral law requires there be no moral law, then it’s a rather nasty pickle. Law is inescapable, and all those who insist that we not follow any law ultimately want us to submit to their law. Nietzsche and his heirs are not liberators, but slave traders, slave traitors. They do not throw off law but impose it. The only difference is their yoke is not easy, their burden not light.
