As a Slave, Who Do You Aim to Please?

“If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10 HCSB)

Again and again the New Testament presents those redeemed by Christ’s death as slaves to God, slaves to Jesus Himself: We have been bought at a price (1 Corinthians 6:20); we do whatever He desires from the heart (Ephesians 6:6); we are slaves of God (Romans 6:22), and living as His slave is the only way to find true freedom (Romans 6:16-18, 1 Peter 2:16).

Contemplate this image. Strip away all the negative connotations of slavery. Think of a Master who is worthy of all honor, authority, and status, who is wise far beyond you, who therefore knows better than you what is in your own best interest, who understands your strengths and weaknesses, your capabilities and limitations – who loves you and will make you effective and productive in fulfilling His good purposes for your joy.

If you are a slave with such a master, it only makes sense to obey Him wholeheartedly, to follow His will in everything. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says, what anything else thinks, what anyone else asks, what anyone else does; you aim to please your Master, not others. Others may try to tell us we are doing things wrong; they may accuse us of being foolish or arrogant; they may command us to follow them or serve them; but we should ignore those other voices and slave for our wise, loving Master.

Now, our Master does instruct us to do good to others, to love others, even to serve them – but we do so in response to the Master’s command, in the way the Master explains, not in response to the commands of others or in the way they prefer. Thus Paul can say as a slave of Christ he is not trying to please people (Galatians 1:10) while also saying, “I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved” (1 Corinthians 10:33, emphasis added). That is, Paul does not aim to please himself, nor does he do whatever others want him to do; he obeys his Master’s command to make disciples of all nations, to be His ambassador, to share the Gospel – so that others may join Him in the glorious freedom of slavery to Christ. By obeying the Master, we love others in the best way possible, pointing them to the deepest joy.

We constantly face temptations, however, to please others in ways that are contrary to our Master’s command: To modify the Gospel, or not to mention it; to live as they instruct, rather than as God instructs; to quarantine Jesus to Sunday mornings, rather than acknowledging Him, following Him, and delighting in Him every minute of every day.

But when we see ourselves rightly as His slaves, as bought by Him, as redeemed by His blood, as being transferred from the kingdom of darkness to His Kingdom of light – we will ignore those siren songs. We will do neither our own will nor the will of others. Instead, we will serve Him to our fulfillment and joy.

This very day, may we see ourselves rightly as belonging body, soul, and spirit to Jesus Christ, and so aim to please Him in all of our interactions with others.

 

Hear Instruction!

What did you give thanks for this last week? Many of us gave God thanks for our families and friends. But what about for the counselors and guides He has put into your life? Did you thank Him for them?

Some of us did. Some of us readily acknowledge our need for advisors, our need to hear instruction from those who have experience and wisdom. Others of us balk at that: We’re thankful for friends, but we think we can guide ourselves, we think we can make our own decisions.

The book of Proverbs emphasizes time and again our need for guides. Let’s consider a few verses from Chapter 19.

Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future. (Proverbs 19:20)

The implication is: You don’t have wisdom now – or at least not sufficient wisdom to guide yourself through the maze of life’s choices. You need help. God provides His grace to us in part through granting us His church; within the church are those who have walked wisely with Him for more years than we have, as well as those older or younger who have walked similar paths to ours.  We learn wisdom by listening to them, and by sharing life with them.

This chapter then warns of the danger facing the stubborn among us, those who are wise in their own eyes:

Cease to hear instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge. (Proverbs 19:27)

Note that this verse is not speaking primarily to those who have never listened to instruction. Such folks have never walked in wisdom and thus can’t stray from the words of knowledge. Rather, Proverbs 19:27 warns those who once listened but no longer do. For we never outgrow our need to gain wisdom from the advice of others. We may have experience and wisdom in one area of life, which is valuable for us personally and helpful to share with others, while simultaneously needing help in other areas of life. God therefore puts us together in the Body of Christ, His Church, so that together we might “spur one another on to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24), so that together we might be built up and “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”  (Ephesians 4:13).

When we quit listening to God’s truth through others, however, we deviate more and more from His path. We may have heard those truths numerous times in the past, but without that regular reminder from His people, we drift away. We close our ears; we are responsible for our wandering.

And yet who do we blame? In such situations, do we take responsibility ourselves?

When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord. (Proverbs 19:3)

Do you know people like this? Those who have been blessed with a witness to the Gospel, who have read God’s Word, who have had every opportunity to follow Him – and yet angrily reject the Jesus of the Bible and try to turn others away from Him? This proverb tells us: Expect to encounter such people. They have ceased to hear instruction. They have strayed from the words of knowledge. In their anger against God they are driving themselves further and further from Him.

Pray that our gracious Lord may have mercy on such folks, granting them humility and repentance before Him. But then all the more, examine your own heart: Are you seeking out instruction? Or are you implicitly acting as if you have arrived, you have become wise, you don’t need instruction?

God has provided us with all that we need to know Him, to follow Him, to grow in Him, to take on His character, and to play our role in helping others to grow in Christ. May we therefore feed on His Word; may we seek out instruction and guidance from those wise in Him; and may He thereby conform us to His likeness more and more through these means, day by day, month by month – so that on Thanksgiving Day 2019 we may have many counselors, advisors, and guides to praise Him for.

The Arrogant in Heart

God hates human pride. He detests human arrogance. Indeed, one could argue that pride and arrogance are the fundamental sins according to Scripture, for all other sins result from exalting our own judgments, our own opinions, our conceptualization  of our own best interests, above God’s Law.

Consider some examples of the ways pride and arrogance cause us to act:

  • Pride keeps a struggling couple from seeking help in their marriage.
  • Pride keeps a father from confessing to his child that he acted harshly.
  • Pride causes us to lash out when others confront us with our sins.
  • Pride causes us to look for and find even imaginary weaknesses and faults in those who oppose us.
  • Pride causes us to label those who differ from us on theology or politics or public policy as morons or morally corrupt or unworthy of being listened to.
  • Pride causes a pastor to care more about his reputation than about those in his care.
  • Most of all, pride keeps us from humbling ourselves before God, acknowledging that He created us, He knows us, He knows what is best for us – and that He alone can tell us how to be right with Him.

So we can see why God hates pride. But Scripture tells us He not only hates the sin of pride. He also detests those who exhibit pride:

“Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 16:5 ESV). Or, as the NIV renders the first clause: “The LORD detests all the proud of heart.”

Those of us brought up on platitudes like, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” shrink back from such harsh statements. We’re tempted to slough them off as characteristic only of the Old Testament. But it is Jesus Himself who says, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41-42). It is Jesus Himself who tells us that He will say to many on the Last Day, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Just so with the arrogant in heart; they will not go unpunished. Jesus will see to that on the Last Day. For they are an abomination to Him, and their sin is not atoned for. “And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and the LORD alone will be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:17).

But praise God there is hope for the proud – or none of us would be saved! Our gracious Lord invites us to confess our sins, to humble ourselves before Him, to admit that we are not worthy now to come into His holy presence and we can never make ourselves worthy. He commands us to repent of our arrogance and to acknowledge Jesus as our Savior, our Master, and our Treasure.

Have you made that most important confession, that humbling of yourself before God? Guess what? Your battle against pride and arrogance has only just begun. Welcome to the continual, day-to-day, hour-by-hour fight.

Engage in this fight by, first, testing yourself regularly: Do I think of myself more highly, or simply more, than I ought? Am I humbled today by the glory, majesty, wisdom, love, power, and mercy of the Lord? Do I see myself today as deserving of God’s condemnation, yet embraced by Him solely because of His mercy? Am I thinking today, “How can I be served?” or, “How can I serve?”

Then, second, think of those around you who seem arrogant and prideful. Some perhaps are hindering your work, hampering your ministry; some perhaps are even attacking you. Pray for God to grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 2:25-26). Pray that nothing in your response to their arrogance would drive them further from God. Know that God will punish that sin – so don’t be dismayed or disheartened by their opposition. He will bring down the proud – either through humbling them via salvation or through punishing them directly. Ensure that you don’t have a preference for their personal punishment.

So, Christian, be at peace. Serve faithfully. God will deal with all the proud, all the arrogant. Put to death that desire for self-exaltation. Continue to humble yourself before Him, without worries. Delight in your dependence on Him – and trust Him to exalt you at the proper time (1 Peter 5:6).

 

How To Make Your Heart Content

[From The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs (1600-1646). Justin Perry of Covenant Life Church in Tampa quoted the third consideration in his talk this week at the Treasuring Christ Together Network’s pastors and wives retreat.]

CONSIDERATIONS TO CONTENT THE HEART IN ANY AFFLICTED CONDITION.

1) We should consider, in all our wants and inclinations to discontent, the greatness of the mercies that we have, and the meanness of the things we lack. The things we lack, if we are godly, are things of very small moment in comparison to the things we have, and the things we have are things of very great moment. … I will give you the example of a couple of godly men, meeting together, Anthony and Didymus: Didymus was blind, and yet a man of very excellent gifts and graces: Anthony asked him if he was not troubled at his want of sight. He confessed he was, ‘But’, he said, ‘should you be troubled at the want of what flies and dogs have, and not rather rejoice and be thankful that you have what angels have?’ God has given you those good things that make angels glorious; is not that enough for you, though you lack what a fly has? And so a Christian should reason the case with himself: what am I discontented for? I am discontented for want of what a dog may have, what a devil may have, what a reprobate may have; shall I be discontented for not having that, when God has given me what makes angels glorious? ‘Blessed be God,’ says the Apostle in Ephesians 1:3, ‘who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.’ It may be you have not such great blessings in earthly places as some others have, but if the Lord has blessed you in heavenly places, that should content you. There are blessings in heaven, and he has set you here for the present, as it were in heaven, in a heavenly place. The consideration of the greatness of the mercies that we have, and the littleness of the things that God has denied us, is a very powerful consideration to work this grace of contentment. …

3) The consideration of the abundance of mercies that God bestows and we enjoy. It is a saying of Luther: ‘The sea of God’s mercies should swallow up all our particular afflictions.’ Name any affliction that is upon you: there is a sea of mercy to swallow it up. If you pour a pailful of water on the floor of your house, it makes a great show, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, afflictions considered in themselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of God’s mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison. …

8) Before your conversion, before God wrought upon your souls, you were contented with the world without grace, though you had no interest in God nor Christ; why cannot you now be contented with grace and spiritual things without the world? If you yourselves were content with the world without grace, there is reason you should be content with grace without the world. Certainly there is infinitely more reason. You see that many men of the world have a kind of contentment; they do not murmur or repine with the world, though they have no interest in God and Christ. Then cannot you have as much contentment with God and Christ, without the world, as they can, with the world, without God and Christ? It is an infinite shame that this should be so.

9) Yea, consider, when God has given you such contentments you have not given him the glory. When God has let you have your heart’s desire, what have you done with your heart’s desire? You have not been any the better for it; it may be you have been worse many times. Therefore let that satisfy you-I meet with crosses, but when I had contentment and all things coming in, God got but little or no glory from me, and therefore let that be a means now to quiet me in my discontented thoughts.

10) Finally, consider all the experience that you have had of God’s doing good to you in the want of many comforts. When God crosses you, have you never had experience of abundance of good in afflictions? It is true, when ministers only tell men that God will work good out of their afflictions, they hear them speak, and think they speak like good men, but they feel little or no good; they feel nothing but pain. But when we cannot only say to you that God has said he will work good out of your afflictions, but we can say to you, that you yourselves have found it so by experience, that God has made former afflictions to be great benefits to you, and that you would not have been without them, or without the good that came by them for a world, such experiences will exceedingly quiet the heart and bring it to contentment. Therefore think thus with yourself: Lord, why may not this affliction work as great a good upon me as afflictions have done before?

When Your Heart is Not Right

If our hearts are not right, should we avoid worshiping God publicly?

In Malachi’s day, the priests and the people were going through the motions of worship, yet all the while despising His Name (Malachi 1:6), thinking, “What a weariness this is!” (Malachi 1:13). So God says:

Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors [of the temple], that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain! I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hand. For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:10-11)

God is great. And He is working together all the events of history to culminate in the grand, eternal, joyful worship of His Name by all peoples.

Worship today, in this age, is to foreshadow that final, glorious worship. But our perfunctory, going-through-the-motions worship does not do that. Instead, such obligatory worship degrades Him. Rather than the deserved honoring of the One who is holy, mighty, loving, and just, such worship makes Him look like some rich person who is not too bright, whom we need to fool and puff up so he’ll grant us what we really want. For we don’t want Him. Why should we? We just want what He will give us.

So God proclaims through Malachi that He would rather we not worship at all. He would rather board up the temple and cease all sacrifices. Today He would rather close the churches, disperse the choirs, and cancel Sunday School. We must halt any so-called worship that in effect distorts and dishonors His Name.

That leads us back to the opening question. We might think that we should apply this passage to ourselves individually, in saying, “I’m angry with God. I’m annoyed with Him. If I can’t get my heart right in time, I should just stay away. That’s what He would want. I shouldn’t be a hypocrite.”

But that is not what the passage implies. Indeed, the book of Malachi was written to change the hearts of those engaged in perfunctory worship. He deserves true, joyful worship – moving from perfunctory worship to no worship at all doesn’t solve the problem.

Rather, after recognizing that our hearts are in the wrong place, we must ask Him to change us: to change us through His Spirit working directly on us, through His Word showing us who He is, and through the songs, Scriptures, prayers, and preaching of our worship. We must beseech Him to enable us to see His greatness, to encounter His love, to be overwhelmed by His grace and justice. We must beg of Him to lead our hearts to respond rightfully to His revelation of Himself.

And time and again God graciously grants such requests.

So having a hard heart is not a reason to avoid worship. Rather it is a reason to seek His face, a reason to beg Him to change your heart. May He use our worship services to that end among us.

 

Does God Reward Your Works?

[From a sermon preached by Edward Veal in 1675 on Psalm 62:12. You can read the entire sermon at this link.]

Learn to admire the grace of God in rewarding your works, It is much that he accepts them and what is it then, that he rewards them? It is much that he doth not damn you for them, seeing they are all defiled, and have something of sin cleaving to them; and what is it, then, that he crowns them? You would admire the bounty and munificence of a man that should give you a kingdom for taking up a straw at his toot, or give you a hundred thousand pounds for paying him a penny rent you owed him: how, then, should you adore the rich grace and transcendent bounty of God in so largely recompensing such mean services, in setting a crown of glory upon your heads, as the reward of those works which you can scarcely find in your hearts to call good ones! You will even blush one day to see yourselves so much honoured for what you are ashamed of, and are conscious to yourselves that you have deserved nothing by. You will wonder then to see God recompensing you for doing what was your duty to do, and what was his work in you; giving you grace, and crowning that grace; enabling you to do things acceptable to him, and then rewarding you as having done them.

Take heed therefore now of rivalling God’s grace, or Christ’s merits; of inverting his praises, and ascribing anything to yourselves which belongs only to him. Set the crown upon the right head; let him have the honour of the work that hath done it, the glory of your reward that hath purchased it. Say with yourselves, “What am I, and what are my services, that ever God should thus plentifully reward them? I never prayed but I sinned; never confessed sin, never begged pardon of it, [strove] against it, but I did at the same time commit it. I never heard a sermon, received a sacrament, did any good duty, but with some mixture of coldness, deadness, distractedness. I never had any grace but what God gave me, nor acted any but what he stirred up in me. All the good I ever had or did I received from him; and therefore I owe all to him. I am a thousand ways his debtor: — for my life and being, for the good things of this life, for the means and offer of eternal life, for the knowledge of his will, conviction of sin, restraint from sin, the change of my heart, the reformation of my ways, the graces of his Spirit, the privileges of his children conferred upon me. I am his debtor for all the evils he hath delivered me from, all the good he hath offered me, wrought in me, done by me. And doth God take so much notice of such poor things? Will he indeed reward such weak endeavours, such lame performances? Must I live in heaven, that never deserved to live on earth? Must I wear the crown of righteousness, who never deserved anything but the punishment of mine iniquities? Must eternal glory and honour be my portion, who have deserved nothing better than ‘shame’ and ‘everlasting contempt?’ (Dan. xii. 2.) I have nothing to boast of, nothing to glory in. I must cry, ‘ Grace, grace.’ (Zech. iv. 7.) All I have, and to eternity am to have, is grace. The foundation of my salvation was laid in grace; and so will the top-stone too. It was grace [that] sent Christ to redeem me and grace will send him at last fully to save me. I have received all from God; and therefore desire to return the praise of all to him: it is but just that all should be ascribed to him from whom all came.”

The God of Reversals

In the book of Esther, Haman plots to kill Mordecai and then wipe out the Jews; God turns that plan on its head, as the king has Haman hung on the gallows prepared for Mordecai, and the Jews win a great victory over their foes. Even more importantly in the storyline of Scripture, God saves the line of Jesus, the Messiah by destroying those who would kill His ancestors.

But when Mordecai refused to bow down before Haman, and when Esther approached the king without being summoned, neither knew what would happen. Both took dangerous actions that could have led to their imprisonment or death.

The Apostle Paul assures us that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). All things. He causes our efforts to work for good; He causes the evil acts of evil men like Haman to work for good. He causes your struggles and trials to work for good – sometimes in ways you can see in retrospect, oftentimes in ways you will not see until eternity.

God informs us of that truth – and He graciously gives us examples in Scripture to show us what that looks like. Here are a few more of the many reversals in Scripture:

  • Joseph’s jealous brothers sell him into slavery, but God raises him to a position of power over those brothers – and Joseph’s leadership saves those very brothers, the entire line of the promise to Abraham, from dying in the famine (Genesis 37-50).
  • Pharaoh refuses to comply with God’s command through Moses and Aaron to let the Israelites go to worship Him; God sends plagues and so works in Pharaoh’s heart that the Israelites end up leaving with abundant silver and gold, the Egyptian army is destroyed, and God’s Name is proclaimed in all the earth (Exodus 5-14; see especially Exodus 9:13-16).
  • A young shepherd boy armed with a sling and a few stones has no chance in single combat with a giant, experienced warrior, but God gives the giant into David’s hand so that “all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel … [and that] the battle is the Lord’s.” (1 Samuel 17:46-47).
  • The most powerful army in the world comes to attack the Kingdom of Judah and its capital Jerusalem. King Hezekiah acknowledges that he cannot defeat them, but prays that God would save them “that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone” (2 Kings 19:19). God kills 180,000 soldiers in their sleep and the Assyrians retreat.
  • After centuries of warnings and prophecies about what will happen if the Israelites continue to rebel against Him, God sends the Babylonians to destroy the Kingdom of Judah and the very temple that pictures God’s presence with His people. The siege and its aftermath are horrible – read the poetic accounts in the book of Lamentations. Yet, as God assures Habakkuk after telling the prophet ahead of time that this will happen, the end result will be that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).
  • Or think of the Fall itself: Adam and Eve reject God, choosing to trust in their own senses and to believe Satan’s lie instead of relying on the one who created them, who loved them, who provided everything for them (Genesis 3). Many millennia of tragedy follow, to the present day. Yet a time is coming when there will be “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages … crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7:9-10).
  • And all this comes about because of the greatest reversal of them all: Jesus – the only man ever to live a sinless life – is tried in a kangaroo court, sentenced to death, mocked, beaten, and hung on a cross where He dies. Evil and cowardly men bring this about. Yet God through that death pays the penalty for the sins of all those who trust in Him, and raises Him from the dead, “so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).

Add to this list others you can think of in Scripture. Meditate on these reversals – and on the God who brings them about. Think of the ways God has effected similar reversals in your life, and in the lives of those you know. And consider your own present trials, difficulties, pressures, and sorrows – knowing that God is working in ways you cannot fathom to bring about obvious or subtle reversals, so that every pain becomes a means of bringing glory to His Name and good to His people.

Laid Aside: Why?

[By Charles Spurgeon. Excerpted from an article in The Sword and Trowel, May 1876. I read a quote from this article in the September 23 sermon – Coty]

Mysterious are the visitations of sickness. When the Lord is using a man for his glory it is singular that he should all of a sudden smite him down, and suspend his usefulness. It must be right, but the reason for it does not lie near the surface. The sinner whose every act pollutes the society in which he moves is frequently permitted year after year to spend an unabating vigor in infecting all who approach him. No sickness removes him even for an hour from his deadly ministry; he is always at his post, energetic in his mission of destruction. How is it that a heart eager for the welfare of men and the glory of God should find itself hampered by a sickly frame, and checked in its utmost usefulness by attacks of painful disease?

We may ask the question if we do so without murmuring, but who shall answer it for us? When the advance of a body of soldiers is stopped by a galling fire which scatters painful wounds on all sides, we understand that this is but one of the natural incidents of war; but if a commander should check his troops in mid-battle, and proceed with his own hand to render some of his most zealous warriors incapable of service, should we not be at a loss to conceive his motives? Happily for us our happiness does not depend upon our understanding the providence of God: we are able to believe where we are not able to explain, and we are content to leave a thousand mysteries unsolved rather than tolerate a single doubt as to the wisdom and goodness of our heavenly Father. The painful malady which puts the Christian minister hors de combat [“out of action due to injury”] when he is most needed in the conflict is a kind messenger from the God of love, and is to be entertained as such: this we know, but how it can be so we cannot precisely tell. Let us consider awhile. Is it not good for us to be nonplussed, and puzzled, and so forced to exercise faith? Would it be well for us to have all things so ordered that we ourselves could see the reason for every dispensation?

Could the scheme of divine love be indeed supremely, infinitely, wise if we could measure it with our short line of reason? Should we not ourselves remain as foolish and conceited as spoiled and petted children, if all things were arranged according to our judgment of what would be fit and proper?

Ah, it is well to be cast out of our depth, and made to swim in the sweet waters of mighty love! We know that it is supremely blessed to be compelled to cease from self, to surrender both wish and judgment, and to lie passive in the hands of God.

It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but what we also dream of personal greatness; we think ourselves almost indispensable to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God.

We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, “How will the work go on without me?” As well might the fly on the coach wheel inquire, “How will the mails be carried without me?” Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord’s work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? If we were only put on one side when apparently we could be easily spared, there would be no rebuke to our pride, but to weaken our strength in the way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed, is the surest way to teach us that we are not necessary to God’s work, and that when we are most useful he can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured, for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone magnified.

May not our gracious Lord design a double honor when he sends a double set of trials? “Abundant in labors” is a high degree, but “patient in suffering” is not less so. Some believers have excelled in active service, but have scarcely been tried in the other and equally honorable field of submissive endurance; though veterans in work, they have been little better than raw recruits as to patience, and on this account they have been in some respects but half developed in their Christian manhood. May not the Lord have choice designs for some of his servants and intend to perfect them in both forms of Christly imitation? …

A change in the mode of our spiritual exercises may also be highly beneficial, and avert unknown but serious evils. The cumbering engendered by much service, like a growth upon the bark of a fruit tree, might become injurious, and therefore our Father, who is the husbandman, with the rough instruments of pain scrapes away the obnoxious parasite. Great walkers have assured us that they tire soonest upon level ground, but that in scaling the mountains and descending the valleys fresh muscles are brought into play, and the variety of the exertion and change of scene enable them to hold on with less fatigue: pilgrims to heaven can probably confirm this witness. The continuous exercise of a single virtue, called forth by peculiar circumstances, is exceedingly commendable; but if other graces are allowed to lie dormant, the soul may become warped, and the good may be exaggerated till it is tinged with evil. Holy activities are the means of blessing to a large part of our nature, but there are other equally precious portions of our new-born manhood which are unvisited by their influence. …

May not severe discipline fall to the lot of some to qualify them for their office of under-shepherds? We cannot speak with consoling authority to an experience which we have never known. The suffering know those who have themselves suffered, and their smell is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed. The “word to the weary” is not learned except by an ear which has bled while the awl has fastened it to the door-post. “The complete pastor’s” life will be an epitome of the lives of his people, and they will turn to his preaching as men do to David’s Psalms, to see themselves and their sorrows, as in a mirror. Their needs will be the reason for his griefs. As to the Lord himself, perfect equipment for his work came only through suffering; so must it be to those who are called to follow him in binding up the broken-hearted, and loosing the prisoners. Souls still remain in our churches to whose deep and dark experience we shall never be able to minister till we also have been plunged in the abyss where all Jehovah’s waves roll over our heads, If this be the fact – and we are sure it is – then may we heartily welcome anything which will make us fitter channels of blessing. For the elect’s sake it shall be joy to endure all things; to bear part of “that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church” shall be bliss to us.

Alas, there may be far more humiliating causes for our bodily afflictions! The Lord may see in us that which grieves him and provokes him to use the rod. … It can never be superfluous to humble ourselves and institute self-examination, for even if we walk in our integrity and can lift up our face without shame in this matter, as to actual sin, yet our shortcomings and omissions must cause us to blush. How much holier we ought to have been, and might have been! How much more prevalently we might have prayed! With how much more of unction we might have preached! Here is endless room for tender confession before the Lord.

Yet it is not good to attribute each sickness and trial to some actual fault, as though we were under the law, or could be punished again for those sins which Jesus bore in his own body on the tree. It would be ungenerous to others if we looked upon the greatest sufferer as necessarily the greatest sinner; everybody knows that it would be unjust and unchristian so to judge concerning our fellow-Christians, and therefore we shall be very unwise if we apply so erroneous a rule to ourselves, and morbidly condemn ourselves when God condemns not. Just now, when anguish fills the heart, and the spirits are bruised with sore pain and travail, it is not the best season for forming a candid judgment of our own condition, or of anything else; let the judging faculty lie by, and let us with tears of loving confession throw ourselves upon our Father’s bosom, and looking up into his face believe that he loves us with all his infinite heart. “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him,” — be this the one unvarying resolve, and may the eternal Spirit work in us a perfect acquiescence in the whole will of God, be that will what it may.

 

DGCC is Looking for a Resident

Desiring God Community Church is looking for a resident with organizational skills and abilities whom we can build up in preparation for cross-cultural missions, church planting, or pastoral ministry, while the resident serves us through helping the church move from vision to practice in several key areas. The resident will assist in equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, enabling us to better serve our members and community. This is a two-year, part-time residency, with the church providing compensation for 15 hours per week, with an expected time commitment of an additional ten to twelve hours per week to fulfill the residency. If the resident is enrolled in seminary, we will arrange to fulfill the mentored ministry component of the degree program through the residency.  See the job description for more details.

DGCC is part of the Treasuring Christ Together church planting network. Applicants should complete the TCT Pre-Residency Application as well as our list of supplemental questions no later than October 22. We plan on the residency beginning in January, 2019.

How to Have Riches and Joy

People long for riches and joy in their lives. They study. They work hard. They save and invest. They try to marry well. They buy good houses, nice cars. They try to overcome bad habits.

They also fall for get-rich-quick schemes, quack medical cures, and government lottery advertisements.

Jesus turns all this on its head – and then tells us how to find true riches and true joy. Let’s delve into what He says in chapter 10 of Mark’s gospel.

A rich young man has just approached Jesus, asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to obey the commandments, which he claims to have done. Jesus looks at him, loves him, and tells him to go, sell all he has, give the proceeds to the poor, and to come and follow Him. But the man goes away sorrowful, because he has great possessions (Mark 10:17-22).

Material riches were not the way to joy for this young man. Indeed, they were not even true riches.

Jesus then says, “How hard it will be for the rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:23).

In virtually every culture, the rich are looked up to, are seen as lucky or blessed by God, and most people desire to be rich. But Jesus says we are to pity them, for it is impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God.

Why do riches make entering the kingdom of God so difficult?

The most important barrier for entering the kingdom is the illusion of control provided by wealth. Poor people in poor countries (including all countries in the ancient world) acknowledge that they are at the mercy of the elements. Illness, natural disasters, even a bad rainy season can mean suffering or death for members of the family. Today in the poorest countries about one child in five dies before age five; in the ancient world, those numbers were undoubtedly higher. So the poor know that they cannot control these powers that determine their fate.

On the other hand, the rich tend to think that they can protect themselves, that they can use their money and influence to make sure that they do not suffer. As Jesus relates in Luke 12:19, the rich fool says to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ He thought he was in control; he thought he was now safe from the influence of random events. But that very night God took his life.

And who can fall prey to such an illusion of control? The great majority of Americans – including you and me. Put yourself in the position of those who are listening to Jesus say these words. How would they label someone who:

  • Lives in a house with central heating and indoor plumbing;
  • Has clean cold and hot water flowing through taps;
  • Is in no danger of going hungry;
  • Has more than 2 sets of clothes;
  • Has access to cures for all of the most common diseases.

Imagine! Wouldn’t such a person be considered rich indeed? So in comparison to those listening to Jesus, we all undoubtedly are incredibly rich.

So Jesus’ warning is for us: How hard it is for us to enter the kingdom of God – because of our supposed self-sufficiency, our security.

Furthermore, possessions enslave us. We become used to our possessions; we start calling our desires “needs” – and then we won’t even consider following Jesus in a way that would lead to:

  • A less prestigious job, or no job
  • A lower salary, or no salary
  • A smaller house, or no place at all to call home

We begin to require God to support us in the manner to which we have become accustomed.

Sometimes we justify this attitude by referring to our children: “I can’t do that; what would become of my children?” But what do our children need more than a parent who follows Jesus, wherever He may lead?

Ray Stedman uses an apt phrase to describe our condition, saying we are “addicted to comfort and ease.”

So if we are addicted to comfort and ease, if we depend on riches, if we find our security there instead of in our relationship to God – mightn’t Jesus be saying to us what He said to the rich young man: “Give up what you are addicted to! Come, follow Me!”

What happens if you hear that, and do it? Do you lose security? Do you lose out on joy? This brings us to Mark 10:28-31:

Peter began to say to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You.” Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life. “But many who are first, will be last; and the last, first.” (NASB)

Focus on these profound statements. Meditate on them. Pore over them. Let them sink into you.

  • No one.
  • Who has left anything, anything material or relational.
  • For what reason? Not to make oneself look good, or to win applause, but for Jesus’ sake and for the gospel.
  • Who will not have how much? One hundred times as much! Listen, this isn’t the 25% annual return you might get for a few years in a booming stock market: the promise is that you will get one hundred times as much.
  • When? When will we get this? In heaven, after we die? No! We will get one hundred times as much NOW! In the present age!
  • Is that all? No, plus you will have eternal life, what the rich young man wanted all along.

Jesus says in effect, “Whatever you give up for me now, you will receive one hundred times as much now – and billions times as much in the age to come.”

I think we expect Jesus to make the eschatological promise, the promise of future joy in eternity with Him. We don’t comprehend all that entails, we certainly can’t grasp what that will be like, but we know that promise.

We know, furthermore, that we are better off risen with Christ than we can ever be in this life; as Paul says, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

The promise of eternal joy is great and precious. But Jesus promises more than that here. He says that whatever we give up, we will receive one hundred times more in the present age. What could He possibly mean by that?

Does He mean that if I give the church $4,000, I’ll get back $400,000? Some health, wealth, and prosperity preachers use these verses as a proof text for that idea. But clearly if that’s what Jesus meant, there was no reason for the rich young man to walk away. Jesus could simply have said, “Look, give all this away, and within a few years you’ll have one hundred times as much money, wealth, and prestige. That’s quite an investment!” Such a promise would appeal to his greed – the very problem he faced.

Part of the promise surely is that we have eternal life right now. We have “joy unspeakable” (1 Peter 1:8) because of our relationship to God; we have the love, joy, and peace the world longs for because the Spirit dwells in us. We have a true intimacy, a true fellowship with one another because He has made us brothers and sisters in Him. All this is much more valuable than anything we may give up.

But Jesus’ statement can’t mean only that our brothers and sisters multiply in the family of God, for He includes material goods in His promise: farms and houses.

This is what Jesus is saying; this is the key truth we need to take to heart: If you give all you have to the Lord, you will receive one hundred times more joy and pleasure from the material possessions you have than you would have received from the entire hoard if you had given nothing away.

Think about that statement. Some of you might be thinking, “Oh, is that all He means? I thought by giving I was going to get more!”

You are going to get more – more of what you really want! Why do we want possessions anyway? Because of the joy, pleasure, and security they give us, right? God promises us complete security; nothing can harm us until we have completed His calling on us in this world, and then we will be received by Him with great rejoicing. And in this life, He promises us the joy and pleasure we really want, that we try to get from hoarding possessions.

Why will we get more joy and pleasure from a few possessions when we follow Jesus, than we would get from vast hoards of possessions if we don’t follow Him? Consider these reasons:

(1) Our possessions can easily become our master. We worry about losing them, we devote time and energy to amassing them, and, in the end, they can make us miserable. Many wealthy men have been among the most miserable who ever lived.

(2) Even more importantly, we now enjoy what we have because we know it is all a gift from someone who loves us dearly. Think, now: What possessions do you value most? For many of us, we value most not the expensive item we bought for ourselves, but some little trifle that was given to us by a loved one. Perhaps a picture drawn by a three-year-old, perhaps a ring, or necklace, or a letter from your husband; perhaps the gift your parents gave you when you left home. These may not be worth much monetarily, but they are most valuable because they represent the love of another.

The Christian knows that everything we own is a gift from the One who loves us more than we can imagine. So even a few possessions can generate in our hearts unspeakable joy, because they all represent His love. So instead of considering these possessions as things we’ve earned, as things we deserve, we consider everything a special gift of love from the King of the Universe. We deserve nothing – rather, we deserve eternal punishment in hell — yet look what He gives us! Air to breath, warmth at night, food to eat, covering for our bodies! Every minute we live, then, we can thank God for His great mercy, for the love He shows us in everything that we used to take for granted.

Everything around us tempts us to pursue a type of life that, in the end, will never satisfy. Jesus calls us to give up that false life so that we might find true life, true joy, true love in a relationship with Him. And when we do that, we find that we now have all the love, joy, peace, and security that we used to seek through the ways of the world – at least 100 times as much as we had before. And our hearts are overflowing in thanks and praise to the One who gives us so much that we don’t deserve.

There is one note of discord in Jesus’ statement, however. He says this gift of 100 times as much as we give up will be accompanied by persecutions. Why does He say this? How is it consistent with a life of love, joy, and peace?

Paul writes 2nd Timothy shortly before his death. In chapter 4 he writes: ‘I am already being poured out as a drink offering” – an apt figure for one who would be beheaded. But then later in the chapter he writes, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack” (2 Timothy 4:18). Paul writes this even though he knows he will be executed. The inescapable conclusion: His execution is not an evil attack.

Just so with us:

  • When it is for our good and His glory, he lavishes safety and relationships and possessions and worldly success on us.
  • When it is for our good and His glory, he lavishes persecutions and trials and troubles on us.
  • When it is for our good and His glory he lavishes physical death on us.

God constantly uses what men intend for evil for His own good purposes. Whatever happens, He is in control; His purposes are beyond us, but He is always good, and always wise.

So this is Jesus’ command to us: Lose your false life; give it up. Yield all your plans, all your earthly desires, all your security to Him. Lose your life for Jesus, for the gospel. Then step forward – knowing that God will be with you. You will face trial, troubles, and tribulations. But amidst all that, He will give you a joy beyond measure even in this life, as you overflow with thanksgiving for the uncountable good gifts, the true riches, He gives you daily. So follow Him – and find true riches and joy.

[This devotion is an edited version of part of this sermon preached in 1999.]