Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.  Isaiah 1:3

Most of the sins we commit are not conscious.  It’s natural for us all to cruise along in a mental environment of easy-going benevolence, protected from self-awareness within walls of soft but impenetrable good intentions.

The Lord said, for example, “You are robbing me” (Malachi 3:9).  His people did not respond, “Busted!  We didn’t think you’d notice.”  They said, “How have we robbed you?”  They may have felt misjudged.  So God explained, and showed them a new path of realism and blessing.

Christ said, “You say, I am rich, . . . not realizing that you are wretched” (Revelation 3:17).  Then he counseled his people to do new business with him, “so that you may see” (Revelation 3:18).  Their loss would be painful — saying goodbye forever to the comforting illusion of their own okayness — but their gain would be the glory of his living presence (Revelation 3:20).

When Jesus wept over Jerusalem — he wept, he didn’t rage — he said, “Would that you had known on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:42).  In rejecting their Messiah, the people weren’t deliberately pushing away the shalom of God.  They just had a full to-do list that day, suddenly Jesus was more a problem than a resource and — well, their incomprehension made a snap judgment, and their historic opportunity moved on.  The Lord himself said, “You did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:44).

To miss our own time of visitation, it is not necessary that we defy Christ.  Just not knowing, if we do not want to know, is enough.  We cannot repent of sins we cannot see, and we cannot see what we refuse to face.  But we can place ourselves deliberately out in the light of God’s Word, standing there without flinching, and ask the Lord to show us ourselves in our need, and show us himself in his all-sufficiency, and tell us what he wants us to do next.

In that place of honest self-reappraisal before the Savior of the world, he will certainly visit us, and wonderfully.

How not to miss the visitation

“No stroke or calamity upon the people of God can separate them from Christ.  Romans 8:35, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation?’  There was a time when Job could call nothing in this world but trouble his own.  He could not say, ‘My estate, my honor, my health, my children,’ for all these were gone.  Yet then he could say, ‘My Redeemer.’”

John Flavel, Works (London, 1799), IV:488.

When everything else is taken away

The Journal of John Wesley for May 1, 1738, records how he and others made this verse a working reality in their lives:

“In obedience to the command of God by St. James, and by the advice of Peter Bohler, it is agreed by us:

1.  That we will meet together once a week to confess our faults one to another and pray one for another, that we may be healed.

2.  That the persons so meeting be divided into several bands, or little companies, none of them consisting of fewer than five or more than ten persons.

3.  That every one in order speak as freely, plainly and concisely as he can the real state of his heart, with his several temptations and deliverances since the last time of meeting. . . .”

The “real state of his heart” opened up freely, plainly and concisely in a regular small group of non-accusing friends in Christ, with prayer — no wonder there was healing!

Healing in honesty

“[Grace is] my favorite word in the lexicon of the English language.  It’s a word I’m depending on.  The universe operates by Karma, we all know that.  For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.  There is some atonement built in: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  Then enters Grace and turns that upside down.  I love it.  I’m not talking about people being graceful in their actions but just covering over the cracks.  Christ’s ministry really was a lot to do with pointing out how everybody is a screw-up in some shape or form, there’s no way around it.  But then He was to say, well, I am going to deal with those sins for you.  I will take on Myself all the consequences of sin.  Even if you’re not religious, I think you’d accept that there are consequences to all the mistakes we make.  And so Grace enters the picture to say, I’ll take the blame, I’ll carry the cross.  It is a powerful idea.  Grace interrupting Karma.”

Bono, in U2 by U2 (London, 2006), page 300.

Grace and Karma

Acts 29 pastor Steve Fuller recounts how God intervened for his grandfather during a crisis moment for the advance of the gospel here.  As a boy, I watched Charles E. Fuller and his generation of gospel-stalwarts scale heights for Christ that seemed impossible.  Indeed, they were impossible.  But the Lord was with them.

What are you going to do that is utterly impossible, unless God is with you?  Have you ever stuck your neck out that far?  Wouldn’t you love to, really?  It is so freeing to attempt the impossible for Christ, and to pray and struggle and strive and suffer, and then watch it happen, by his grace and power.

Don’t live your life without the thrill of experiencing the impossible!

Doing the impossible

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.  Matthew 5:4

“The difference between an unconverted man and a converted man is not that one has sins and the other does not; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his hated sins.”

William Arnot, Laws From Heaven for Life On Earth (London, 1884), page 311.

The difference

He had his assistant use this book to keep a personal record of the various aspects of his pastoral ministry through the years, starting with his ordination in 1950.  There are 486 pages in the book, most of them filled out — pages and pages and pages recording weddings, baptisms, funerals, new members, sermons.  For example, here are his sermons from March to October of 1963:

All in all, these pages record, one by one, over 1800 sermons during his ministry at Lake Avenue Congregational Church alone, and by no means a complete record even during those years.

How many hours of preparation and prayer and study are represented by this simple but eloquent written record, I wonder?  Add to that the weddings, funerals, ordinations.  Add to that the committee meetings, the personal evangelism and counseling, the social events.  Add to that the seasons of strife and opposition which he had to endure, all the while keeping up the steady output of gospel ministry without being crushed.  Add to that the way he came home every evening with something emotionally positive to give to the family.  Add to that the fact that he not only came to all my high school football games but even to many practices during the week.  Add to that . . . .

I am not impressed by young pastors who seem too eager to publish books and speak at big events and get noticed.  They are doing the work of the Lord, and that’s good.  But what impresses me is my dad’s daily slogging, year after year, in the power of the Spirit, with no big-deal-ness as the payoff.

This is the pastoral ministry that brings Jesus into the world today.

Daily slogging in the power of the Spirit

Earlier today I received via email the following from one of the fine men at Immanuel Church.  I reproduce it here with his permission.  This warms my heart!

Five Things I Don’t Understand About Men’s Community at Immanuel:

1.  How when I reveal the darkest sins of my heart and my innermost struggles, I receive not humiliation, shame, or condescension, but forgiveness, hope, and unconditional love.

2.  How when I honor a man, he is not made glorious, but rather the One who works in him.

3.  How when I am honored, I am not puffed up, but humbled that God would use me in such a meaningful way in someone else’s life when I’m a complete mess on my own.

4.  How as I learn more about God, he doesn’t become more boring and static to me, but more exciting, unfathomable, and deep than a lifetime’s pursuit could ever uncover.

5.  How when I feel like I’ve gone far with God, the men of Immanuel show me how much further I can go in my relationship with the Lord.

Five things I don’t understand

It is possible to be a “missional” Christian or a “radical” Christian or whatever, and that language is being used merely as a way of communicating something biblical that you want to call people to, something truly in Christ.  But it is also possible — it all depends on internal factors, difficult to discern even in ourselves, much less in others — to use such qualifiers in a way that is truly legalistic.

Legalism is a serious accusation, as is obvious from Galatians.  That makes me reluctant to use it in a targeted personal way, naming names.  I could identify a specific man as a legalist only if (1) he makes an obvious theological blunder in writing, diminishing the finished work of Christ on the cross, adding something of his own to the empty hands of faith as the way of receiving that finished work, and he stands by his stated error even after appeals to reconsider, or if (2) I can have direct personal conversation with him and really press into what he means by what he says and I find out that, yes, he really is requiring more than the cross, received by mere faith, for peace with God.  But without that clarification, legalism is an easy accusation to make, and a difficult one to prove.  And any unprovable accusation is itself a wrong — a different kind of wrong, but still wrong.

It can get complicated, and quickly.  Caution seems wise.

Accusations of legalism

Where are the men who say ‘no’ to self, who take up Christ’s cross to bear it after him, who are willing to be nailed to it in college or office, home or mission field, who are willing, if need be, to bleed, to suffer and to die on it?

Where are the adventurers, the explorers, the buccaneers for God, who count one human soul of far greater value than the rise or fall of an empire?  Where are the men who are willing to pay the price of vision?

Where are the men of prayer?

Where are God’s men in this day of God’s power?”

Howard Guinness, Sacrifice (Chicago, 1947), pages 59-60.

Questions for the rising generation

“God’s goodness is a spreading, imparting goodness. . . . God is more willing to bestow good than we are to ask it.  He is so willing to bestow it that he becomes a suitor to us, ‘Seek my face.’  He seeks us, to seek him.  It is strange that heaven should seek earth, and yet so it is.”

Richard Sibbes, Works (Edinburgh, 1983), VI:113.

God’s goodness spreading toward us

Self-redefinition: can it really work?

“The gospel spirit is a catholic spirit, a noble and unconfined benevolence, like unto that of our Creator, not confined to any particular part of mankind exclusive of others. . . . To make the wickedness of men the cause of contention and strife in us is to make one sin the cause of another.  We cannot please the devil better than by hating men’s persons under pretense of duty.”

Jonathan Edwards, quoted in George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, 2003), page 97.

The gospel spirit

I give my sheep eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.  John 10:28

“Some will tell us that a man may receive spiritual life, and yet may die eternally.  That is to say, a man may be forgiven, and yet be punished afterwards.  He may be justified from all sin, and yet after that his transgression can be laid on his shoulders again.  A man may be born of God, and yet die.  A man may be loved of God, and yet God may hate him tomorrow. . . . As for me, I so deeply believe in the immutable love of Jesus that I suppose that if one believer were to be in hell, Christ himself would not long stay in heaven but would cry, ‘To the rescue!’”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Two Effects of the Gospel,” 27 May 1855.

“To the rescue!”

“It is one thing to love the Lord and His service, and quite something else to have an inexpressible longing for revival that cannot be denied.  It is one thing to wish for revival, and yet it is something in addition to be willing for revival at any cost to come in any way through any means that God may choose.”

V. Raymond Edman, quoted by my dad in a sermon at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, Pasadena, California, 1 February 1976.

At any cost, in any way, through any means

King, Vaughan

William Law, Works (London, 1762), IX:249-250.

HT:  John Lovell

No preconditions

“Now this is what I want to ask you.  Do let us be honest with one another and never profess to believe more than is actually true to our experience.  Let us always, with the help of the Holy Spirit, testify to our belief, in full, but never a word more. . . . Our chapels and churches are crowded with people nearly all of whom take the Lord’s Supper without a moment’s hesitation, and yet, without judging harshly or unjustly, do you imagine for a moment that all those people believe that Christ died for them?  Well then, you ask, why are they church members, why do they pretend to believe?  The answer is, that they are afraid to be honest with themselves.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his first sermon at his church in Wales, 6 February 1927, quoted in Iain H. Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 (Edinburgh, 1982), page 136.  Italics original.

Revival begins with honesty – honesty before God and one another.

“Do let us be honest with one another”

“You cannot sin and not suffer from it.  It just can’t be done.  I spent a great deal of my life trying to sin and to do away with my conscience at the same time.  One of the things I like best about being a Christian is the way that I suffer when I sin – it is the chastisement which guarantees me that I am one of God’s people.  I like it.  It feels good.  It feels like correction.  It feels as if I am being straightened out. . . .  When I was only half-believing God, he actually did come into me and make me miserable every time I sinned.  That is how I learned that he really is believable.”

Ted Wise, preaching at Peninsula Bible Church, 11 June 1972.

Our Father loves us this much

Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality (Wheaton, 1971), page 88.

Moment by moment