Notes of Faith April 10, 2024

Notes of Faith April 10, 2024

Time Bandits

By David Jeremiah

It’s hard to determine how much time we spend on leisure-based electronic pursuits. Just think of how many hours we all invest every day with our screens, whether watching movies or television, or on computers, tablets, or phones. Some of the time is well spent, but much of it isn’t.

Many parents feel pangs of concern when they see their children so absorbed in texting or gaming that they’re seemingly oblivious to their environments. One survey found that children and teens spent more than seven hours a day in media use.

We must be vigilant against time bandits.

I wonder how the Lord feels when He looks down and observes how His children are using the time He’s given them. In seeking to gain victory in every aspect of spiritual warfare, we must be vigilant against time bandits—those activities and influences that rob us of our greatest resource, the moments and minutes that fly past us in swift succession.

“Pick my left pocket of its silver dime,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes “but spare the right—it holds my golden time.”

That reminds me of the Bible’s golden rule about time, Ephesians 5:15-16: “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (HCSB).

What Jesus Said About Time

Jesus paid careful attention to how He walked, and He made the most of His time. He once implied there’s a vast difference between how godly and ungodly people view time. When His unconverted brothers tried to goad Him to go to Jerusalem and make Himself famous during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus replied, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready” (John 7:6). In other words, “My life and My time are preordained. But since your lives have little purpose, it matters little how you use your time.”

Time is the zone in which we accomplish God’s will for us. But if we’re not interested in accomplishing God’s will, time has less value. In that sense, Christians live in a different time zone than anyone else. We have a different clock ticking for us. Unbelievers can come and go as they please and use their time however they’d like. But we’re to follow our Lord’s example. Jesus chose to live a schedule predetermined by His Father, and it was important for Him to stay on task.

If you’ve studied the life of the Lord Jesus, you’ve discovered how carefully He invested His days.

If you’ve studied the life of the Lord Jesus, you’ve discovered how carefully He invested His days, months, and years, few though they were. He was born on schedule, He was baptized by John on schedule, He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He died on Good Friday, and He rose on Resurrection Day—right on schedule. Ten times in John’s Gospel we’re reminded that Jesus was watching the clock, for He often said things like, “My hour is not yet come” or “The hour is here.”

Our Lord lived out the aforementioned advice from Ephesians 5: “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (HCSB).

What Time Says About Us

If I’d been alive in Christ’s day, I’d rather have spent time with Him than with His brothers. His life had purpose, and He lived on a schedule that reflected the Father’s agenda. His brothers had no such purpose or agenda or schedule—just like lots of people today. Without a driving purpose in life, we have no compelling reason to make the moments count. Without the hope of eternal life, we’re left with a mindlessness that renders our moments insignificant.

If our lives are meaningless, our time is purposeless. If our lives have purpose, our time is meaningful.

Our culture has a million ways of distracting itself from the implications of its own rejection of spiritual values. Society says there is no God, no Creator, no ultimate meaning, no essential values. We’re simply random accidents destined to perish. Most people cannot cope with that level of emptiness, so they need lots of diversions, lots of distractions, and lots of entertainment. The rise of the entertainment industry is in exact proportion to the collapse of our personal sense of significance. I’m not saying all entertainment is bad. I’m saying our world is drowning in entertainment of all kinds because it needs to be distracted from the despair of a life without God. Christians need periodic refreshment and occasional entertainment too, but we don’t need to drown in it. We have better things to do.

If our lives are meaningless, our time is purposeless. If our lives have purpose, our time is meaningful. The value of our time cannot exceed the meaning of our lives. God’s true people—those sold out to Jesus Christ—are blessed on earth; our lives have meaning. We have purpose. There’s a preordained agenda for us, and each day is a new opportunity to serve Him.

How to Capitalize on Time

If we’re in a war with time bandits and Satan is seeking to rob us of our golden time, we need some strategies for victory.

First, give God the best part of your day. When He’s in control of your schedule, He will always make time for Himself. If one day passes the next without your quiet time or prayer time or Bible study time, it’s a warning. God may not be Lord of your hours. On a notepad or the back of an envelope, take a moment to sketch out your schedule for today, just as it’s unfolding right now. How could you have adjusted your time today to have included the Lord? How can you do so tomorrow?

Second, rein in your screen time. Experts suggest we keep time logs for a few days to help us determine how we’re really spending our moments. For the next few days, conduct an informal study of your use of time. Look at yourself as though an efficiency expert were watching you. Perhaps, for example, you legitimately sit at your computer to check your email or research a project. But how likely are you to become distracted and end up surfing the Internet for a wasted hour?

Third, do the most important things. Satan distracts us from the best things by having us do things that are merely good. Perhaps you’re too busy at church or too involved in some ministry. Perhaps you need to say “No” to something so you can regain time for your family or for the well-being of your own soul. If we aren’t careful, we’ll end up living according to somebody else’s schedule instead of the one God ordains for us. In his book on leadership, Henry Blackaby said, “The key to successful leadership is not creating more time in one’s life or packing more activities into one’s day, but staying on God’s agenda.”1

Finally, learn the value of remnants. In earlier days when women typically made the family’s clothing, there were often scraps and cuttings left on the floor. These shards of cloth were never thrown away but tossed into a remnant chest and later converted into beautiful quilts. Every day we have shards of time that shouldn’t be thrown away—five minutes here, ten minutes there. Good stewards know the value of those moments—in reading, in jotting a note, in reviewing a memory verse, in meditating on a Bible passage. Learn to use the leftover bits of your hours. Time bandits will just as soon steal a minute as a day, so guard every moment.

Are you winning or losing in the battle for your time? Life is not a game. We need a battle cry—a helpful strategy to guard and regard our hours. Time is a great spoil in spiritual warfare. If the enemy controls your time, God gets little of you. But if God controls your time, Satan will have a hard time infiltrating your days. “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16, HCSB).

1Henry Blackaby, Spiritual Leadership (Nashville: B&H, 2001), 200.

Time…we all have the same amount each day, yet we all choose different ways to spend it. It takes discipline to use it for the glory of God and not for selfish purposes. Time spent well takes care of our needs and brings honor to God and reward in our heavenly treasury. Let us strive to use what God gives us in time to be fruitful and prosperous for His name’s sake!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 9, 2024

Notes of Faith April 9, 2024

The Enemy Wants You to Believe the World Is out of Control

By David Jeremiah

The Wall Street Journal carried a story last year saying the new world order has fallen into disorder and the planet is beyond disarray. It’s hard to imagine how global affairs could be more dangerous. Our problems are beyond our greatest statesmen and thinkers.

Board a jetliner with me, and let’s fly around the globe to see for ourselves. Looking down at America, we see a country polarized by political division, deeply in debt, riddled by crime, and sinking into the quicksand of godless worldviews.

In times like these, we need to know more about God’s Word and His power.

Before we know it, we’re flying over Europe. The Russian government has reignited the Cold War and several hot ones. Turning south, we find failed states in North Africa, a breeding ground for terrorists. In the rest of Africa, the once hoped for democracies are battling military juntas and civil wars. In Asia, China’s military resources have exceeded anything known in human history, and we worry about Taiwan. Heading homeward, we detour over South America where runaway inflation is threatening the entire continent and democratic governments are collapsing into corruption and Marxism.

As we land, we ponder the brutal fact that we flew over 32 wars that are going on now somewhere on earth. That’s the view at 35,000 feet. On the ground the world is filled with personal suffering, war zones, refugee camps, and famine zones. Sometimes it’s we who are suffering.

Where is God in all of this?

I can understand why people who aren’t familiar with the whole counsel of biblical teaching ask hard questions about God’s role in the world. If there is a God, they ask, “Why is the world in terminal crisis? Why so much individual anguish and anxiety?”

The enemy wants us to be duped and deceived so we’ll dismiss the idea of a sovereign God who has the “whole world in His hands.” But Jesus said in Matthew 22:29, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.” In times like these, we need to know more about God’s Word and His power.

The Permission of God

The ultimate plan of God is bound up in the Cross of Christ—and in His Second Coming.

Let’s begin with the permission of God. When He created Adam and Eve, He didn’t make them as robots but as people with the ability to make choices. He permitted them to decide whether to love or hate Him. All the evil and suffering around us comes from humanity’s bad choices, which represents rebellion against God. Proverbs 17:11 says, “An evil man seeks only rebellion.”

The Word of God tells us how we should live, but it also warns us of the dangers of disobedience. Deuteronomy 30:19-20 says, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life” (NIV). Much of the world has chosen otherwise.

The Plan of God

These wrong choices reverberate through millennia, but as soon as sin first occurred, God launched a plan of redemption. In Genesis 12, He called a man named Abram (whom He renamed Abraham) to establish a family, which became a nation, which produced a Messiah—Jesus Christ. Our Lord offered His life for the sins of the world, and He offers pardon and peace for all who turn from their sins and place their faith in Him. The apostle John wrote, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2, NIV). The ultimate plan of God is bound up in the Cross of Christ—and in His Second Coming.

The Patience of God

God’s plans are unfolding at the speed of prophecy.

The Lord is implementing His plan with incredible patience. He doesn’t choose to solve all the problems in a day. His purposes and plans unfold over time. Erwin Lutzer wrote, “God always acts from the standpoint of eternity rather than time, and all decisions are made with an infinite perspective.”1 Peter wrote, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, NIV).

When we’re tempted to wonder if God is still in control, we should look below the surface, at His millions upon millions of servants—people like you and me—seeking to minister to those in need and to extend the Gospel. Our Almighty Lord is much more active than people imagine. He’s doing something wonderful in this world. He is reaching the lost and building His Church. He is doing it on His own timetable.

The Prophecies of God

In other words, God’s plans are unfolding at the speed of prophecy. After Jesus died and rose again, He ascended to heaven to oversee His Church as it spreads the message of the Gospel to the earth. But this same Jesus will return in God’s timing to establish His Kingdom. Isaiah 11:9 speaks of a time when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Paul spoke of the day when “the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes, in that Day, to be glorified in His saints and to be admired among all those who believe” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10).

The Lord intends to make all things right. Evil will be abolished, evildoers will be punished, the godly will be rewarded, and all will acknowledge that the Judge of all the earth has done right (Genesis 18:25).

The Power of God

We also need to focus on God’s power to accomplish everything He intends to do. Romans 4:21 says, “What He had promised He was also able to perform.” Daniel said, “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings” (Daniel 2:20-21).

Psalm 66:7 says about our God: “He rules by His power forever; His eyes observe the nations; do not let the rebellious exalt themselves.”

He can and will do all He intends. He is able!

The Protection of God

As we await the full unfolding of God’s plan, we’re not left alone to face the turmoil of the world. The Lord watches over His children and allows nothing to touch us unless He allows it. Peter wrote, “[We] are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold…may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:5-7, NIV).

The Lord doesn’t want us to live in fear and panic. Even when we’re in dark valleys, He is with us. He has a promise for every problem, a comfort for every crisis, and a blessing for every burden.

The Paradise of God

Finally, we know how the story ends. Think of the suffering thief on the cross to whom Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). The apostle Paul was on one occasion caught up to Paradise (2 Corinthians 12:4), and the book of Revelation promises a day when we’ll dwell forever in “the Paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7).

The author of confusion, Satan, doesn’t want you thinking about that. He wants to con you into believing your world is out of control. Remember, world problems are caused because God has given permission to humans to make choices and most have chosen badly. But the Lord has a plan to deal with it—one that centers on the Cross of Jesus. He’s patiently working according to His predictions and prophecies, and He’s doing so with limitless power. Along the way, He shields His children as we serve Him. Soon we’ll be with Him in Paradise, far beyond the grip of worldly woe.

When the devil tries to tell you that God has lost control, remember:

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun doth its successive journeys run, His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moons shall wax and wane no more.2

Sources:

1Erwin W. Lutzer, Where Was God? (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2006).

2Isaac Watts, “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun,” 1783.

When we are able to look at the world with the eternal perspective of God, we see that everything is under His ultimate sovereign control. Praise God! He will complete the work that He began. All things belong to Him. God wants relationship with His creation and mankind has the choice to believe in Him, draw near to Him, love Him, serve Him, or serve themselves and seek the blessings of the world…that God still created and preserves with His power. Seek the blesser, not the blessing.

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 8, 2024

Notes of Faith April 8, 2024

Few things highlight the uniqueness of the Christian faith more than the dichotomies we frequently encounter when reading the word.

Psalm 30:11

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.

Mourning and dancing are not words you would normally find in close proximity to one another when talking about life experiences.

Psalm 30:5

For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Anger and favor, weeping and joy, all being found together in one sentence is a rather significant anomaly. Yet, these seemingly contradictory statements are at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. The ultimate of these is in relation to Jesus Himself when it is said of Him:

Hebrews 12:2

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

There was a joy that was greater than the shame Jesus despised when He was hung naked on a cross made from a tree. That joy was saving our perishing souls by His shed blood. With Him as our ultimate example, we can see the legitimacy of these opposing terms being paired together so frequently. There are joys awaiting us that far exceed the pains and sorrows in this life.

Psalm 16:11

You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Someday we will be in His presence forevermore and only joy and pleasure will be our experience. If we consider this when times of difficulty come, it will keep us on the path of life in our thinking. Often times our minds and emotions want to take us on a different path, one of doubt and seemingly endless despair. The enemy is more than happy to exploit these moments.

We live in intimidating times when wars and rumors of wars abound, economic struggles are a constant, truth and facts have been replaced with lies and fables, as we see the “whole world lying under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19). Add to that, the earth is quaking, plagues and famine are looming, and all these things could lead to forgetting where we are going.

Another of the monuments of contrasting experiences is a reminder by the Lord Himself regarding this life:

John 16:33

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Jesus is not telling us that we will be present in the Great Tribulation, as some erringly propose, but rather that the life we now live in the flesh by faith in the Son of God will be peppered with affliction, troubles, anguish, persecution, and burdens. In fact, the word translated “tribulation” can also be rendered as any of the struggles on that list. Yet, Jesus says, when they come, be of good cheer for they have all been overcome.

It is easy to get distracted during perilous or troublesome times. It takes a conscious decision to remember where we are going and who has made our future of joy and pleasures possible, if we want to ensure we don’t let them control us. We live in perilous times and yet are reminded frequently that we can trust the Lord at all times, peace is ours to enjoy, and we can be of good cheer because we know where we’re going.

Psalm 121:1-3

I will lift up my eyes to the hills— from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.

It has been said: A single uplook can change your whole outlook. So keep your eyes on the prize and focus on the One who made the hills, the One who is our help, the maker of heaven and earth!

Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus,

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 7, 2024

Notes of Faith April 7, 2024

Here at the End of All Things

How to Deal with Change

Article by Gerrit Scott Dawson

Pastor, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

“Well, this is the end, Sam Gamgee,” said Frodo to his dear companion. The Ring was melting in the fires of Mount Doom. Mordor was collapsing in ruin around them. For all they knew, the whole world was disintegrating. Lava rushed down the slopes. The quest was, beyond hope, achieved. The hobbits had done what they came to do, but they did not count on getting home. Frodo had given every drop of strength and will. He sat down and waited to die. This seemed to be the world’s, and his, last hour.

In those apparently final moments, Frodo’s only comfort was the sweetness of companionship. “I am glad you are here with me,” he said. “Here at the end of all things, Sam.” These words pierce me every time. I can see Sam gently holding Frodo’s wounded hand. “Yes, I am with you, Master . . . and you’re here with me. And the journey’s finished” (The Lord of the Rings, 950).

The great burden lifted, we can feel the relief. We may even tear up over the tenderness, our hearts breaking over Frodo’s resignation. He celebrates this utter triumph for Middle-earth only in terms of having his Sam with him in the brief moments before the end.

Brushes with the End

We may well experience events that make us feel the end of all things has arrived. Once, I was young and foolish enough to keep driving on the interstate in a snowstorm. Suddenly, my car flew off the road. Airborne off a hill, time slowed down. The very heart of me spoke, “I love Jesus. I love my family.” Surprisingly, I felt companioned in those milliseconds. This was the end, and weirdly I felt peace along with the adrenalin. Then the car landed in the snow, miraculously undamaged. Completely fine, I just drove back onto the highway like nothing had happened. Yet I would never be the same. I knew I could die anytime. I knew I was never alone.

That was not the last time I braced for death. In Louisiana, we know hurricanes. A few years before Hurricane Ida in 2021, we’d lived through major damage and repairs from uprooted trees crashing on our house. So this time, as Ida roared toward us, we waited for the worst. The power had already gone out. We moved to the family room, lest the neighbor’s fifty-foot tree should crush us in the night. We settled into our sleeping bags with the dogs, turned off the transistor radio, and tried to sleep. The end of all things — that is, life as we know it — might well be coming. It was good not to be alone.

“Jesus himself is the end, the purpose, the goal, the completion of everything.”

Or take last winter. My wife put tiredness aside and drove through the night when word came that her ailing father had suffered a stroke. She made it in time to spend a day with him at hospice. Her prayerful, loving presence brought peace to her family. But more, she felt the sweet companionship with her father, even though he was not awake. “It’s good to be here with you, Dad, here at the end of all the things we’ve known together in this world. Nothing will be the same, but these moments are ours.”

Life as we know it always stands on the brink of endings, both small and momentous. The curtain closes on the final performance, and the troupe will never be so close again. Graduation means now you can never quite go home. The divorce decree arrives, stamped and notarized; the book closes on all that life you once shared. The family business shutters after generations. It was on your watch. The song ends, the plates are cleared, and each day — the best and the worst — fades to night.

The world rotates and revolves relentlessly so that change, endings, always draw nigh. We look around and see who remains when nothing will be as it has been. Maybe a friend, a son, a daughter, a spouse. “It’s good to be with you, dear one, here at the end of all things.”

The World Is Passing Away

These personal tastes of the end remind us that the whole world, even the cosmos, will not remain in present form. Indeed, the conclusion of this age has already been set in motion. Peter writes, “The end of all things is at hand” (1 Peter 4:7). The completion of everything has drawn near. With the incarnation of the Son of God and his journey through death, resurrection, and ascension, this world has entered the last days. Of course, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8). The world may endure for centuries more, but the last day, as we know it, is now inevitable. Jesus will return.

This awareness changes how we view the world. We may be despairing of the future. The earthly powers bluster and threaten, posturing that they know the score and call the shots. The world insists that now is all. We’re prodded to accept that the way things are is the way things always will be. We can rush into our days filled with the dull but persistent anxiety that comes from hopelessness. We try not to think about the end. But when we gather around the word in worship with other believers, we see more clearly. The new age of the reign of Christ has begun. The old world in all its rebellion is fading away (1 John 2:17). The true purpose of every created thing will be made clear very soon.

Jesus declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). Jesus himself is the end, the purpose, the goal, the completion of everything. Apart from him, we find only the emptiness and abyss of being outside his purpose. Joined to him, we will find that everything gets resolved.

What Matters in the End

This higher view of where the world is going gives us hope. But it also presses on us the urgency of accountability. Every moment may be our last. So, Jesus told the parable of the complacent man who believed he had secured enough goods for a comfortable future. The man told himself, “Relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But then God said, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you” (Luke 12:19–20). Our personal endings can come at any hour. And then an accounting of our lives must be given.

That’s why Peter expands on the implications of his statement, “the end of all things is at hand.” He writes, “Therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:7–8). This life counts. This life could end in an instant. So, live with the end, the goal, the purpose in mind. Live for what lasts.

“This life counts. This life could end in an instant. So, live with the end, the goal, the purpose in mind.”

In his great love chapter, Paul concludes, “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Only what partakes of faithful trust in Christ and lovingkindness toward others will survive through the end into the new creation. Jesus both evokes fear and inspires hope when he says, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). Because we know what the end of all things will be, we also know what matters. Every present moment is charged with the future end of all things. And our personal ending could arrive any second.

So, we live with the end in mind.

With Us to the End

We cannot stop the ever-arriving endings in the world, or even in our personal lives. Endings come because change continues. But when we trust that the world’s true end is the day of Christ Jesus, we live in hope. We live for his mission. And he promises that we are companioned. “Go . . . and make disciples of all nations. . . . And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19–20).

We are not alone. We face these endings, even the endings of life as we know it, with one who has endured the end of all things, the plunge into the utter darkness of God-forsakenness on the cross, so that we do not face any ending, any nightfall, alone. And usually, in his mercy, he sends us a fellow believer, a Sam, to keep us company along the way.

I am a lover of books, especially the Bible, but also those that stimulate my imagination, like the Lord of the Rings series. If you have not read it, I encourage you to do so. There are three movies and a prequel that have been made from those books, but they can’t hold a candle to reading and your own imagination.

We experience the end of things all the time…some good, an ice cream cone on a very warm day, some filled with sorrow, the loss of a loved one, or in the case of the example above, the end of a good book or story.

Our ultimate end, as believers and followers of Jesus, is more blessed than we can imagine. God wants to and will bless those who seek Him and do His will. If our focus is on our ultimate end, everything else will fall into place where it belongs. Until then, let us love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves! See you at the end…

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 6, 2024

Notes of Faith April 6, 2024

Wrap Your Soul in Truth

Under-Armor for Spiritual War

Article by David Mathis

Executive Editor, desiringGod.org

Given enough time, men and women of principle stand out. After waves of social pressure and the mounting cares of this life, such people are left standing, long after others around them have compromised and toppled.

I’m referring to Christians who don’t play favorites and aren’t partisans of this age. They don’t bend the truth or sweep respectable sins under the rug. Rather, they call Jesus “Lord,” and standing with two feet on his soil, they call “spade” and “evil” to all sides of error and unbelief. Such men and women refuse to cut moral corners, or presume that strategic wrongs can make others right. They shun small compromises and may not stand out at first. But give it time, and their truth and good will be conspicuous (1 Timothy 5:25).

When justice is at stake, such people are not partial to the rich, or the poor. They don’t pick a favorite group, or preferred person, and twist truth and righteousness to fit their darling. Bearing the name of their God, and the Messiah he sent, they judge with impartiality and decide with equity.

And in the spiritual conflict in which we’re engaged, they “stand against the [plural] schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11) that come from every side. They remember that our warfare is spiritual, not “against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12) — and that this war cannot be fought with the weapons of the world.

If such men and women seem to be in short supply in some circles, we might ask, Where do such people come from?

God’s Armor and Ours

“God shows no partiality” is a striking refrain across Scripture, and particularly in the New Testament (Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25). The implication for God’s people is plain and explicit: do nothing from partiality (1 Timothy 5:21). This is James’s memorable teaching about rich and poor who come to worship: “show no partiality” (James 2:1). “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:9).

“The Christian who wraps his soul in the objective truth of Scripture shapes his subjective heart for the wiles of war.”

But all this truth and righteousness, precious as it is, remains downstream when we come to “the whole armor of God” — and what Paul lists first. Before we start reaching for God’s armor, we should know whose it is, and who wore it first.

Now, some of Scripture’s most magnificent passages can be lost on us through over-familiarity. Such chapters as Isaiah 53 and 1 Corinthians 13 are deservedly famous — and in that due emphasis and celebration, many of us need to move past our dulling acquaintance with them and see them with fresh eyes, and amazement.

The “armor of God” in Ephesians 6 is one of these stunning flourishes. This is Paul at his best, with dazzling Christian creativity, if we might call it that. In one powerfully rhetorical swath, he both pulls together Old Testament references to armor and presses them into Christian use (perhaps even against a Roman backdrop). This is instructive of the range of usages the apostles can make of the Hebrew Scriptures, not only as simple promise-fulfillment, but also illusions and types and patterns and artistic syntheses crafted to serve the holy designs of the authors and needs of their readers. Here the apostle is both poet and pastor.

Iain Duguid makes a compelling case that

each of the pieces of armor has a rich background in the Old Testament, where they describe God’s armor — the armor that God himself dons to rescue his people. The Old Testament, not the Roman legionary, provided Paul with his inspiration — and if we miss this background, we may misinterpret and misapply the various pieces of the armor.

So, we begin with the first — “the belt of truth,” which strictly speaking isn’t armor, defensive or offensive, but pre-armor or under-armor. Let’s see it first in its original context, and what it shows us of our Divine Warrior, and then how we, very practically, might “wear the belt” today as Christians in a world of half-truths.

Messiah Wrapped in Righteousness

Isaiah 11 tells of the coming “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” David’s father. The mention of Jesse recalls the humble origins of Israel’s greatest king. The wide trunk that is God’s first-covenant people may be felled by an invading army, but God will see to it that a stump will remain — and in time a new shoot of life will spring from David’s line.

The prophet anticipates that this coming Messiah, with the Spirit of God resting on him, will delight in the fear of God — and so will be no partisan king. He will not be deceived by appearances and personal preferences, “but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth” (Isaiah 11:3–4). Strikingly, he will not then take up the physical sword to enforce his will but exact justice with the word of his power: “he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).

Seven centuries later, when the apostle writes so memorably to Christians about putting on “the whole armor,” he draws first on Isaiah 11:5:

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,

and faithfulness (truth) the belt of his loins.

Gracious and merciful as will be this Messiah to rescue his people, he will not act unjustly. He will not take bribes or underwrite half-truths. He will not treat wrong as right, or sweep injustice under the rug. Delighting to reverence his divine Father and cosmic justice, he will be a king who delights in right, does right, and is known for it. Even his opponents will have to admit, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God” (Luke 20:21).

So here, looking to the righteous actions of Jesus, Paul notes our first step in dressing for spiritual battle.

Prepare Your Soul with Truth

Before reaching for breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet, or sword, first comes the under-armor. There’s technically no “belt” here in Ephesians 6:14. This first step of preparation is literally, “having girded up your loins in truth” (perizōsamenoi tēn osphun humōn en alētheia). We might say wrap your waist in truth.

In the ancient world, “girding up your loins” meant wrapping your waist with the excess fabric of a long robe as “preparation for vigorous activity” (O’Brien, Ephesians, 473). Drawing up the dangling garment, and securing it at the waist, enabled running, free movement, and unhindered combat. With this foundational fashion in place, warriors then could secure their armor and go into battle.

For spiritual war, the Christian first is to wrap his loins in truth. Now, as “the belt,” this is not yet truth on the offensive (that’s the sword of the Spirit), but this is God’s truth applied to oneself, to the inner man, the soul, the “inward being” or “secret heart” (Psalm 51:6). The Christian who wraps his soul in the objective truth of Scripture shapes his subjective heart for the wiles of war. He takes the divine word deep into his human center, for transformation and joy. He not only searches the Scriptures, but lets the Scriptures search him. He ingests God’s truth both to feed and to condition his soul, subjectively using the objective truth to shape his pliable affections.

Slowly, one day at a time, over months and years, this wrapping makes him a vastly different person, far better equipped to both identify truth and embody it.

Wrap Yourself in His Word

Wrapping ourselves in truth applies to more than personal Bible intake, but not less. Those best prepared for spiritual war are those who not only dip into the word briefly but saturate their lives with it. They wrap their souls in God’s truth through various habits and patterns, personally and corporately — through reading and rereading and study and meditation and memorization and discussion. They click on content that strengthens their bearings and their delight in truth, rather than error.

We all wrap our souls in something. Is it truth or error? And as we practice choosing truth daily, reading truth, clicking truth, meditating on truth, talking truth, then we become ready to discern truth from error, counterfeits, and half-truths.

“Those best prepared for spiritual war are those who not only dip into the word briefly but saturate their lives with it.”

And having wrapped our souls in truth, we become the kind of people who bring truth with us wherever we go. We not only speak truth but embody it, and even more, speak the truth of the gospel into places and hearts of unbelief. We are truth-tellers in our jobs, on our taxes, when we fill out insurance claims, when we serve as jurors, when we find a financial error in our favor, and when we hear someone speak a half-truth about someone else. Like Jesus, we will become agents of truth wherever we go: when we walk into a room, or stand up at a school-board meeting, or sit in a conference room, or engage in conversation.

Wrapped in truth, we’ll be the kind of people who say, in every crisis, Let truth hold sway. Let the unvarnished truth be discovered and known. Truth will not undermine the cause of our God and Christ, who is the Truth. Rather, the cause of truth — openhanded, not angling, full exposure, light into darkness — is an effect downstream of our knowing and enjoying the word of truth, the gospel, about the one who is Truth himself.

And so we call out spades and evil, and call on Jesus as Lord. We refuse to cut moral corners, cater to lies, or presume that some wrongs can make others right. First, we wrap ourselves daily in God’s truth. Then, we reach for the armor, and over time we grow increasingly bright and shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father, and in this age besides.

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org

We all too often take lightly the reading of God’s Word. This is God speaking to us, to teach, to reprove, to make us more like Jesus! Read it often. Read portions over and over even if you are familiar with them. There is much truth to be gleaned, learned and used. These Scriptures are applicable to our every day. Wake up and put your armor on!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 6, 2024

Notes of Faith April 6, 2024

Wrap Your Soul in Truth

Under-Armor for Spiritual War

Article by David Mathis

Executive Editor, desiringGod.org

Given enough time, men and women of principle stand out. After waves of social pressure and the mounting cares of this life, such people are left standing, long after others around them have compromised and toppled.

I’m referring to Christians who don’t play favorites and aren’t partisans of this age. They don’t bend the truth or sweep respectable sins under the rug. Rather, they call Jesus “Lord,” and standing with two feet on his soil, they call “spade” and “evil” to all sides of error and unbelief. Such men and women refuse to cut moral corners, or presume that strategic wrongs can make others right. They shun small compromises and may not stand out at first. But give it time, and their truth and good will be conspicuous (1 Timothy 5:25).

When justice is at stake, such people are not partial to the rich, or the poor. They don’t pick a favorite group, or preferred person, and twist truth and righteousness to fit their darling. Bearing the name of their God, and the Messiah he sent, they judge with impartiality and decide with equity.

And in the spiritual conflict in which we’re engaged, they “stand against the [plural] schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11) that come from every side. They remember that our warfare is spiritual, not “against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12) — and that this war cannot be fought with the weapons of the world.

If such men and women seem to be in short supply in some circles, we might ask, Where do such people come from?

God’s Armor and Ours

“God shows no partiality” is a striking refrain across Scripture, and particularly in the New Testament (Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25). The implication for God’s people is plain and explicit: do nothing from partiality (1 Timothy 5:21). This is James’s memorable teaching about rich and poor who come to worship: “show no partiality” (James 2:1). “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:9).

“The Christian who wraps his soul in the objective truth of Scripture shapes his subjective heart for the wiles of war.”

But all this truth and righteousness, precious as it is, remains downstream when we come to “the whole armor of God” — and what Paul lists first. Before we start reaching for God’s armor, we should know whose it is, and who wore it first.

Now, some of Scripture’s most magnificent passages can be lost on us through over-familiarity. Such chapters as Isaiah 53 and 1 Corinthians 13 are deservedly famous — and in that due emphasis and celebration, many of us need to move past our dulling acquaintance with them and see them with fresh eyes, and amazement.

The “armor of God” in Ephesians 6 is one of these stunning flourishes. This is Paul at his best, with dazzling Christian creativity, if we might call it that. In one powerfully rhetorical swath, he both pulls together Old Testament references to armor and presses them into Christian use (perhaps even against a Roman backdrop). This is instructive of the range of usages the apostles can make of the Hebrew Scriptures, not only as simple promise-fulfillment, but also illusions and types and patterns and artistic syntheses crafted to serve the holy designs of the authors and needs of their readers. Here the apostle is both poet and pastor.

Iain Duguid makes a compelling case that

each of the pieces of armor has a rich background in the Old Testament, where they describe God’s armor — the armor that God himself dons to rescue his people. The Old Testament, not the Roman legionary, provided Paul with his inspiration — and if we miss this background, we may misinterpret and misapply the various pieces of the armor.

So, we begin with the first — “the belt of truth,” which strictly speaking isn’t armor, defensive or offensive, but pre-armor or under-armor. Let’s see it first in its original context, and what it shows us of our Divine Warrior, and then how we, very practically, might “wear the belt” today as Christians in a world of half-truths.

Messiah Wrapped in Righteousness

Isaiah 11 tells of the coming “shoot from the stump of Jesse,” David’s father. The mention of Jesse recalls the humble origins of Israel’s greatest king. The wide trunk that is God’s first-covenant people may be felled by an invading army, but God will see to it that a stump will remain — and in time a new shoot of life will spring from David’s line.

The prophet anticipates that this coming Messiah, with the Spirit of God resting on him, will delight in the fear of God — and so will be no partisan king. He will not be deceived by appearances and personal preferences, “but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth” (Isaiah 11:3–4). Strikingly, he will not then take up the physical sword to enforce his will but exact justice with the word of his power: “he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4).

Seven centuries later, when the apostle writes so memorably to Christians about putting on “the whole armor,” he draws first on Isaiah 11:5:

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,

and faithfulness (truth) the belt of his loins.

Gracious and merciful as will be this Messiah to rescue his people, he will not act unjustly. He will not take bribes or underwrite half-truths. He will not treat wrong as right, or sweep injustice under the rug. Delighting to reverence his divine Father and cosmic justice, he will be a king who delights in right, does right, and is known for it. Even his opponents will have to admit, “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God” (Luke 20:21).

So here, looking to the righteous actions of Jesus, Paul notes our first step in dressing for spiritual battle.

Prepare Your Soul with Truth

Before reaching for breastplate, shoes, shield, helmet, or sword, first comes the under-armor. There’s technically no “belt” here in Ephesians 6:14. This first step of preparation is literally, “having girded up your loins in truth” (perizōsamenoi tēn osphun humōn en alētheia). We might say wrap your waist in truth.

In the ancient world, “girding up your loins” meant wrapping your waist with the excess fabric of a long robe as “preparation for vigorous activity” (O’Brien, Ephesians, 473). Drawing up the dangling garment, and securing it at the waist, enabled running, free movement, and unhindered combat. With this foundational fashion in place, warriors then could secure their armor and go into battle.

For spiritual war, the Christian first is to wrap his loins in truth. Now, as “the belt,” this is not yet truth on the offensive (that’s the sword of the Spirit), but this is God’s truth applied to oneself, to the inner man, the soul, the “inward being” or “secret heart” (Psalm 51:6). The Christian who wraps his soul in the objective truth of Scripture shapes his subjective heart for the wiles of war. He takes the divine word deep into his human center, for transformation and joy. He not only searches the Scriptures, but lets the Scriptures search him. He ingests God’s truth both to feed and to condition his soul, subjectively using the objective truth to shape his pliable affections.

Slowly, one day at a time, over months and years, this wrapping makes him a vastly different person, far better equipped to both identify truth and embody it.

Wrap Yourself in His Word

Wrapping ourselves in truth applies to more than personal Bible intake, but not less. Those best prepared for spiritual war are those who not only dip into the word briefly but saturate their lives with it. They wrap their souls in God’s truth through various habits and patterns, personally and corporately — through reading and rereading and study and meditation and memorization and discussion. They click on content that strengthens their bearings and their delight in truth, rather than error.

We all wrap our souls in something. Is it truth or error? And as we practice choosing truth daily, reading truth, clicking truth, meditating on truth, talking truth, then we become ready to discern truth from error, counterfeits, and half-truths.

“Those best prepared for spiritual war are those who not only dip into the word briefly but saturate their lives with it.”

And having wrapped our souls in truth, we become the kind of people who bring truth with us wherever we go. We not only speak truth but embody it, and even more, speak the truth of the gospel into places and hearts of unbelief. We are truth-tellers in our jobs, on our taxes, when we fill out insurance claims, when we serve as jurors, when we find a financial error in our favor, and when we hear someone speak a half-truth about someone else. Like Jesus, we will become agents of truth wherever we go: when we walk into a room, or stand up at a school-board meeting, or sit in a conference room, or engage in conversation.

Wrapped in truth, we’ll be the kind of people who say, in every crisis, Let truth hold sway. Let the unvarnished truth be discovered and known. Truth will not undermine the cause of our God and Christ, who is the Truth. Rather, the cause of truth — openhanded, not angling, full exposure, light into darkness — is an effect downstream of our knowing and enjoying the word of truth, the gospel, about the one who is Truth himself.

And so we call out spades and evil, and call on Jesus as Lord. We refuse to cut moral corners, cater to lies, or presume that some wrongs can make others right. First, we wrap ourselves daily in God’s truth. Then, we reach for the armor, and over time we grow increasingly bright and shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father, and in this age besides.

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org

We all too often take lightly the reading of God’s Word. This is God speaking to us, to teach, to reprove, to make us more like Jesus! Read it often. Read portions over and over even if you are familiar with them. There is much truth to be gleaned, learned and used. These Scriptures are applicable to our every day. Wake up and put your armor on!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 5, 2024

Notes of Faith April 5, 2024

A Story of Reckless Love

Reconsidering the parable of the good Samaritan

________________________________________

The parable of the Good Samaritan is among the handful of Jesus’ stories that, whether or not you’re a church-going person, you can likely recount from memory. “Being a Good Samaritan” has become cultural shorthand for showing kindness and assisting those who are less fortunate. But Jesus’ story is far more subversive than a fable encapsulating principles to spur common decency.

“It stretches our imagination, inviting us to walk that treacherous road through dangerous country, to know the threat of armed hooligans at every blind bend, to sense conflict over how to engage our religious convictions in complicated situations.”

In Luke 10, the parable of the good Samaritan provides not so much a moral tale for us to dissect or appropriate, but a story in which we live. It stretches our imagination, inviting us to walk that treacherous road through dangerous country, to know the threat of armed hooligans at every blind bend, to sense conflict over how to engage our religious convictions in complicated situations, to struggle over what exactly it means to love our neighbor, to grapple with how Jesus embodies reckless love.

When one of Israel’s religious experts tried to trap Jesus inside a tightly spun web of theological intricacies, Jesus reversed the interrogation: How do you understand the essence of God’s law? With his tactical examination careening out of control, the exasperated questioner found himself uttering the very words Jesus had quoted from Deuteronomy, as the greatest of all the commandments and the heart of everything Scripture teaches: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Luke 10:27 NIV).

You’ve nailed it, Jesus said. Go do that.

Feverishly scrambling to regain the upper hand, the religious expert had a burst of inspiration and devised one last conundrum. I’d be happy to, he answered, sitting back smugly, if only you could tell me who among all the masses is actually my neighbor. Without batting an eye, Jesus launched into a story.

“After a while a Levite (one who tended the temple) appeared, and he too crossed and hurried past, likely distracting himself by humming a worship tune and reciting a favorite Bible verse.”

Jesus’ tale commenced in an ominous setting, with the description of a man traversing the terror-filled road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was overrun by armed bandits. These ruffians beat the man savagely, stripped him, and left him like road kill. Eventually a priest came by, but when he saw the bloody pile of a man, he crossed the road and hurried past, his eyes locked forward like a tractor beam. After a while a Levite (one who tended the temple) appeared, and he too crossed and hurried past, likely distracting himself by humming a worship tune and reciting a favorite Bible verse.

A third traveler turned the corner, a Samaritan, though that was the worst character Jesus could write into the story if He was hoping to pull this devout Jew to His way of thinking. Jews and Samaritans detested one another. They had theological animosity, each considering the other a heretic. They had racial antagonism, each considering the other inferior. When Jews saw a Samaritan, they avoided him like the plague. Purity was on the line. And reputation, too. We see much of this tension continuing now between Christians and Muslims, between white communities and communities of color, between those who have formal education or money and those who do not.

And wouldn’t you know, it was the detestable Samaritan who took pity on the man he was supposed to hate, bandaging his infected wounds and hoisting him onto his donkey. The Samaritan carried the gasping man to an inn, secured a room, and covered the cost, instructing the innkeeper to tend to every need for as long as necessary—he’d foot the bill. The Samaritan lavished this generosity not on a family member or a friend or even someone who shared his ethnicity or theological conviction. The Samaritan enacted this reckless grace for a neighbor.

“The Samaritan carried the gasping man to an inn, secured a room, and covered the cost, instructing the innkeeper to tend to every need for as long as necessary—he’d foot the bill.”

Of course, everything’s wrong with this story. The ones with the correct doctrine (the priest and the Levite) disobeyed God’s command while the one with questionable faith (the Samaritan) fulfilled His instruction. It’s humbling—and essential—to remember that believing the right things doesn’t necessarily lead to doing the right things. The story’s disequilibrium teeters even more when we recognize that ancient interpreters (Ambrose, Origen, Augustine) typically understood Jesus as the Good Samaritan. Imagine that: Jesus casting Himself as the maligned figure arriving to rescue the one who is despised, helpless, and tossed aside. Sounds like the gospel.

Something else is wrong here. This whole exchange began with the religious expert asking who precisely was the neighbor he was responsible to love. But in Jesus’ concluding query (“Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”), the point He stressed was not aimed at clarifying who is or is not a neighbor in need. Instead, Jesus forced us to grapple with whether or not we are a neighbor to whomever we find along the way. Jesus answered the wrong question—or so it seemed. In truth, Jesus answered the right question—the one that wasn’t asked.

According to Jesus, a person in dire need as well as a person with resources aplenty are bound in a community of friendship. We are in this together. One of the parable’s strange truths is that we find Jesus in each person we encounter, even in those people we most detest. In every God-beloved human, we discover our neighbor: every desperate person and every accomplished person; every person we see as a friend and every person we consider an enemy; every person possessing a fat bank account and every person without two pennies to his name.

Some scholars suggest that Jesus did not cast Himself as the Good Samaritan but rather (shockingly) as the bloodied man, the one who suffered at the hands of human violence. That interpretation has merit, though it requires a good bit of parsing. Yet perhaps it’s a mistake to see Jesus as any single character. On the cross, Jesus both suffered with us (the bloody man) and healed us (the Good Samaritan). Jesus, after all, overwhelms every human expression of goodness. He is not a player in the story. Jesus is the story.

The reckless love of neighbor at the center of this parable could never be confused with our humanly contrived attempts at benevolence and niceness. Rather, the story points toward the immeasurable, sacrificial love of Jesus. In Christ, God both suffered and saved, loving even the unlovely with irrational abandon. And now God invites us, by the power of the Spirit, to join Him as reckless lovers. As neighbors.

By Winn Collier June 22, 2018

Everyone is our neighbor. We are to do good to help all as we travel this journey of life together. Our love and resources are to be given freely to those in need. The God-given reward at the end of the journey for being obedient and faithful will be more glorious than anything we could possibly give from the abundance we have been given in this life. Be a “Biblical Neighbor”!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 3, 2024

Notes of Faith April 3, 2024

I was visiting the ARK Encounter in Kentucky on the third of April and apparently forgot to send out a devotion. This fits for me and a great deal of my friends walking in faith with me. Pastor Dale

Five Fears of Old Age

Finishing Our Race by Future Grace

Dear older saint, I need to join you in the fight against the fears of aging, and to do so by faith in future grace. There are five fears that we will likely walk through together. God has given us antidotes for each in his word. These antidotes work through faith, and without faith they won’t work. But by faith they will work, and fear will be overcome, and we will go to be with Jesus in due time without walking in fear during our last season. That’s my confidence.

Let me first give a word about future grace. I picture the Christian life as a stream of divine grace flowing to me from the future. I’m walking into it. It flows over the waterfall of the present into a reservoir of the past. The reservoir is getting bigger and bigger, which means our thankfulness as we look back should be getting bigger and bigger. So, what’s the disposition of our hearts as we look out over that stream toward the future and that reservoir in the past? The answer is gratitude as we look back and faith as we look forward. That’s why I’m calling it faith in future grace.

By future, I mean the future five minutes from now, when you finish reading this, and the future 5,000 years from now. Grace will be arriving moment by moment as the sustaining power from God — free and gracious. So, in the future of these next five minutes, you’re going to sit there reading, being held and sustained by grace. It’s coming to you moment by moment, and we’re called to bank on it — to trust that God will keep supplying it, forever.

1. The Fear of Being Alone

Maybe you’ve lost your spouse, or you’ve been single all your life. Maybe singleness has been fine, but singleness is not looking as great when you’re outliving all your friends. Maybe you start to wonder, “Is anybody going to remember me?” Jesus says, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). I think “always” is even more important than the phrase “to the end of the age.” It’s one thing to say he’ll be with us to the end of the age; it’s another for him to say, “I’ll be with you every minute of your life.”

John Paton was a missionary to what’s now Vanuatu. He was driven up into a tree as 1,300 aboriginal natives were trying to kill him. As they were beneath him, he laid hold of the promise of Matthew 28:18, 20, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. . . . I am with you always.” And here’s what he wrote later — because he survived:

Without that abiding consciousness of the presence and power of my dear Lord and Savior, nothing else in all the world could have preserved me from losing my reason and perishing miserably. His words, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” became to me so real that it would not have startled me to behold him, as Stephen did, gazing down upon the scene. I felt his supporting power. . . . It is the sober truth, and it comes back to me sweetly after 20 years, that I had my nearest and dearest glimpses of the face and smiles of my blessed Lord Jesus in those dread moments when musket, club, or spear was being leveled at my life. (John G. Paton, 342)

He will be there for you. I don’t want to create the impression that you should discount human people in your life. God made us a church. You shouldn’t have to live by yourself with nobody caring for you. That would be a failure of the community of Christians, and we should work at resisting that failure. So, I exhort you: While you can, look around, and see who’s alone. While you can, be there for others.

2. The Fear of Being Useless

I’m a man, so I am thinking mainly of men here. Ralph Winter said, “Men don’t die of old age in America. They die of retirement.” Built into men’s souls is the need to be productive. I’m sure that’s true of women in different ways, but I’m thinking of men right now. A man who loses his sense of productivity, usefulness, and accomplishment is running the risk of losing his entire identity and reason for being.

During the Olympics in 1992, I preached on “Olympic Spirituality,” comparing the Games with Paul’s language of running and fighting and boxing and wrestling. The next day, I was told that Elsie Viren, an aged member of our church, was in the hospital, dying. I had been saying, “Come on — let’s fight.” Realizing that Elsie would probably never get out of bed, I asked, “How does Elsie, probably ninety-plus years old and dying, do that?” I wrote an article called “How Can Elsie Run?” in the Bethlehem Star (our church’s newsletter), in which I asked, “What does her marathon look like right now?”

The key verses are 2 Timothy 4:6–7, “I am already being poured out as a drink offering” — yes, she was. She had served the church faithfully for 62 years. Then Paul says, “and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” When Paul ends by saying, “I have kept the faith,” he’s interpreting the first two phrases, about fighting and finishing. So, what does Elsie’s marathon look like? The answer is believe. Believe him. Trust him. Rest in him. Don’t let Satan win this battle to destroy your faith.

So, believing is the way to fight the fear of uselessness. Is it not amazing that Paul says in Ephesians 6:8, “[We know] that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord”? He says, “Whatever good . . .” Picture the smallest, most hidden good deed you can do this afternoon. It may be some simple good that nobody knows about. At the end of this age, you will receive your reward for every good deed. That’s useful. You’re useful. The smallest thing is eternally significant.

Or consider Philippians 1:20–21, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Paul considers the possibility that his next appointment is death. Someone might say, “Are you telling me, pastor, that there’s usefulness in the next three days before I die? I can be useful? I have a tube down my throat.”

And the answer is that Paul said his aim was that Christ be magnified by his death. Over the next three days, there is a way for you to die that magnifies Jesus — or not. And here’s the way to do it: Die like Paul did. Die like death is gain.

3. The Fear of Affliction

Affliction, in the purposeful hand of God, has effects now in this life, and after death. It is never meaningless. It is never without God’s merciful design for our good. Romans 5:3–5 describes the effect of affliction while we live.

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Our mindset with regard to suffering and affliction and pain should be this: “This affliction is doing something good in me and for me and through me. It’s making me a kind of person.” That’s what that text teaches.

But what about when the hour of death arrives and that doesn’t make sense anymore because there is no time left for me to grow in character building? My death is hours away. You might think, “I’m not going to be alive to show anybody my character tomorrow. I’m going to be dead at six o’clock, and it’s now noon. I’ve heard all these arguments for how suffering can be turned for good, but I don’t understand the point of the next six hours because I’ll be gone after that.”

Second Corinthians 4:16–17 is very precious to me at that very point. See if you see what I see: “We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction [by that he means a lifetime of affliction] is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” This affliction is preparing, bringing about, producing “for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” These last hours of suffering will have an effect for my good beyond the grave.

Let’s say I’m at a hospital bedside, and the sick person knows he has maybe one day at the most. He says, “Pastor, it hurts. It hurts. What’s the point?” I answer, “As God gives you the grace to endure to the end without cursing him, resting in him as much as you can, these next twenty hours are going to make a massive, precious difference in the weight of the glory you experience on the other side. These hours are not pointless.”

I really believe that. They are not pointless. True, they won’t make your character here shine because you are going to be gone. There will be no character on earth left to shine. But as soon as you cross that line between now and eternity, in some way God is going to show you why those twenty hours were what they were, and what they did for you. That’s good news.

4. The Fear of Failing Faith

By failing faith, I mean, “God, am I going to make it? I am so embattled, and doubts come. I have horrible thoughts.”

Consider one of the most magnificent ladies in Bethlehem Baptist Church when I became pastor there. She was a prayer warrior, and everybody probably would have said she was the most godly woman in the church. She is in heaven now.

I was with her as she was dying in the hospital. Her tongue was black like a cinder. I walked into the room, and she was trembling. She took my hand. She said, “Pastor John, they come, and they dance around my bed. They dance around my bed, and they’re taking their clothes off.” She was describing horrible things. It was so unlike her. She was being harassed by the devil. An old, godly saint was being harassed by the devil as she died. That taught me something as a young pastor: the battle is never over. I used to think that as you lived a faithful and godly life, you became more free from terrible attacks of the evil one. That’s not true.

So, in horrible moments like those, Philippians 3:12 has been a favorite verse for me: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Here I am, pressing on: “I want you, Jesus. I want to make it through death as a believer and not commit apostasy and throw you away. I want you, and I want to make it.” And he reminds me, “The only reason you’re reaching out for me is because I have hold of you.” The only reason you want Jesus is because he laid hold of you. You wouldn’t otherwise reach out so passionately for him.

One of the greatest doxologies in the Bible says, “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever” (Jude 24–25). That passage is all built on the fact that he keeps us. One of the more recent worship songs that speaks powerfully to this fear of failing faith is “He Will Hold Me Fast.” “He will hold me fast, for my Savior loves me so. He will hold me fast.” I love this song.

5. The Fear of Death

Here’s a little glimpse into my life. I sleep on my side because I can’t sleep on my back. I lie there on my back, saying, “Oh, this feels so good. I wish I could go to sleep like this,” but I never do. So I finally turn on my side, and I imagine the Lord saying to me as I dose off, “John Piper, I did not destine you for wrath, but to obtain salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for you so that whether you wake or sleep, you will live with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:9–10). Almost every night I say that. No wrath. No wrath! Whether I live or die.

Noël and I bought plots to be buried near our granddaughter. We’re not going back to South Carolina. We’re in Minnesota to die. So up on a hill, we have our plot, and we’ve chosen some stones, and we’ve chosen Bible verses for our stones. And 1 Thessalonians 5:9–10 — those are my verses.

For some reason, for me to have God look me in the eye and say, “I didn’t destine you for wrath. It’s not going to happen. Ever. No wrath. My Son bore the wrath you deserve. If I take your life tonight at 3 AM, it will not be a problem because my Son died for you.” That helps me fall asleep.

I know that in the context “whether you wake or sleep” means whether you are alive when the second coming happens or dead when the second coming happens. But the application to my sleeping or waking now works. He is saying, “Whether you’re awake or asleep (live or die, now or later), you’re going to be alive with me.” And I need that. I can’t go to sleep thinking, What if I die? What if I die? He says, “Not a problem. We’ve got that covered. We took care of that.”

What Would He Not Do?

To end, let me give you what I think is one of the most important verses in the Bible: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). This means that if God did the hardest thing in the universe — namely, giving his Son to be tortured and killed — what would he not do for you? That’s the logic, and he states it. He’ll do everything for you. He will give us “all things.” This applies to every promise that we’ve looked at. God’s giving Christ for us guarantees those promises.

Therefore, trust Christ. That’s the issue for us all right now. Do you trust Christ and his purchase of all these promises? Do you trust his word? Trust his promises of ever-arriving future grace. He’ll always be there. Be glad in him. Be freed by this gladness for service, not self. Glorify him by your gladness in him and your service to others. And along with those around you, pray for each other. Help each other to die well and to live well till then.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary.

Amen! I’m working on this…how about you?

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 4, 2024

Notes of Faith April 4, 2024

Take Jesus at His Word

LEARNING FROM HIS LOVE FOR SCRIPTURE

Faithful discipleship means following Jesus and submitting to his authority in every area of life, including how we treat the Bible. Jesus appealed to the authority of Scripture in the face of temptation and opposition. He used it in teaching his disciples. And importantly, he looked to Scripture to explain who he was, the message he preached, and the works he accomplished. Faithful reading of Scripture follows in Jesus’s steps by submitting to the authority of the Bible that both anticipates and explains him.

What does it mean to be a Christian disciple? Putting it as simply as possible, being a disciple means following Jesus Christ. Christian disciples want to follow their Lord in everything, to be shaped by his teaching and his example in the way they think, feel, and behave. We want him at the center of our perspective on the world, his mission as the priority of our life, his glory our chief concern in every endeavor. That is as true for the Christian theologian as for any other disciple.

Christian theology can helpfully start at any number of places. Its fundamental ground lies in the triune God himself. Theology has long been defined as “words about God and all things in relation to God.” Yet because what we know about God is made known by God — spoken through the prophets and apostles, and given to us in the more permanent form of Scripture — all true theology arises from and is tested by the Bible. So, we could start the discussion of any theological topic with a reflection upon the person of the triune God or upon what the Bible tells us about that specific topic.

But what makes theology specifically Christian theology is the critical place accorded to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God and Savior of the world. He is the one in whom the revelation of the triune God finds its proper focus (John 1:18; Hebrews 1:1–3; 2 Corinthians 1:20), he is the one who enables us to come before the God who made us without fear (Ephesians 3:11–12), and he is the one who both endorsed the Old Testament (Luke 24:44) and commissioned the apostolic program that produced the New Testament (Matthew 28:19–20). Prior attention to what Jesus taught is how the Christian theologian demonstrates faithful discipleship.

Jesus’s View of Scripture

With that understanding of theology in mind, when we think about the nature and function of the Bible — “the enduring authority of the Christian Scriptures” (as one impressive tome puts it) — keeping Jesus at the center of our thinking is not optional.1

The record we have of his life and teaching in the Gospels comes from eyewitnesses, either directly in the case of Matthew and John or indirectly in the case of Mark (who, early testimony confirms, recorded the recollections of Peter) and Luke (the companion of Paul who collected statements from a vast number of eyewitnesses and wove them into a coherent narrative). Studies of the phenomenon of eyewitness testimony point out not only that the Gospels were “written within the living memory of the events they recount,” but that even the differences of perspective and detail confirm rather than undermine their veracity.2 The Gospels are the recollections of multiple eyewitnesses of what Jesus said and did, and thus they reveal what Jesus thought about the authority of Scripture.3

What, then, are we told about Jesus’s attitude toward the Scriptures he inherited (our Old Testament) and those by means of which his apostles would fulfill his commission to take the gospel to the ends of the earth until the end of the age (the New Testament)?

Authority of the Old Testament

Most basically, Jesus understood the words of the Old Testament to bear the authority of God, an authority that surpasses that of any other person, institution, or body of writing. This is clear from his appeal to Old Testament texts when tempted by the devil in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11), when challenged by the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matthew 19:1–9; 22:15–46), and when teaching his disciples (Mark 9:13; 14:21, 27). At each point, the Scriptures he quotes are enough to settle the matter. They are definitive in the sense that they are what God has to say on the matter.

Rejecting Temptation

The temptation in the wilderness is an interesting case in point. There are clear parallels here to the temptation faced by Adam and Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:1–6). The tactic employed by Satan in the garden of Eden is one he has continued to employ throughout human history. He casts doubt first on the clarity of God’s word (“Did God actually say . . . ?”), then on the truthfulness of God’s word (“You will not surely die”), and then finally on the character of God and the motives behind his word (“God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God”).

Jesus enters the wilderness to be tempted immediately after his baptism by John in the Jordan. There he had heard the voice from heaven say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

It should be no surprise, then, that the first temptation Jesus encounters is to doubt the word of God and seek to prove his identity on some other terms: “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Matthew 4:6). Jesus responds by appealing to Deuteronomy 8:3: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

With the second temptation, Satan assaults the truthfulness of God’s promise in Psalm 91, to which Jesus answers with Deuteronomy 6:16: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7).

The third temptation, to fall down and worship the devil, is an assault upon God himself and is met with Deuteronomy 6:13: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (Matthew 4:10). At each point, Jesus’s confidence in the word of God and its authority is on display.

Refuting Opponents

In his exchanges with the Pharisees, Jesus often cites Scripture with the words “it is written” (Mark 7:6; John 6:45; 8:17) or “have you not read?” (Matthew 12:3, 5; 19:4; 22:31; Mark 12:10). Jesus expects the words that God had given his people through the prophets to be sufficient to settle the matter. He tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus to make precisely that point (Luke 16:19–31). It is of no use to search for confirmations in the miraculous, as hard hearts will always find ways to explain the evidence away, as they did when the tomb was empty after Jesus’s resurrection (Matthew 28:13). “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

The “have you not read” question has an edge to it. Jesus expects them not only to have read but to have understood, believed, and obeyed what they read. This question carries with it the assumption that the meaning of Scripture is accessible. In the words of the Protestant Reformers, Scripture is clear. Of course, that doesn’t mean that every single part of the Old Testament is simple or easy. It doesn’t mean that any individual text can be plucked out of its context and, without reference to the rest of the Old Testament, immediately make sense. Nevertheless, it is accessible. Comparing one part of Scripture with another, the harder parts with the easier, sheds light over time.

Seeing Jesus’s life and ministry as the fulfillment of the promises made in the Old Testament puts the last and most important piece in place (which is what the Ethiopian eunuch found in Acts 8:26–38). But the point that Jesus is making is that what we have been given is enough — enough for the Israelites who had only the words from Sinai (Deuteronomy 29:29); enough for those who only had the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (our Old Testament, Luke 24:44); and enough for those who have all that and its fulfillment in the gospel and in the ministry of Jesus’s specially commissioned messengers, the apostles (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

Jesus as Old Testament Fulfillment

It is especially important that Jesus locates himself, his identity, and his mission against the backdrop of the history and promises of the Old Testament. At the very beginning of his ministry, when he attends the synagogue at Nazareth, he reads Isaiah’s prophecy of the one anointed by God in Isaiah 61 and then says, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).

His favorite form of self-description, “the Son of Man,” evokes the scene in Daniel 7 where “one like a son of man” is given the authority to execute the judgments of God. Though he does not use the title “Son of David” for himself, he responds positively to those who do, and he himself makes use of Psalm 110, which refers to the Davidic King (Matthew 22:42–45). When he is identified as the promised King coming to Jerusalem, and the Pharisees insist he rebuke those who do so, he answers, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40).

He contrasts the hard-heartedness of the religious leaders with the responses to the wisdom of Solomon (Matthew 12:42) and the preaching of Jonah (Matthew 12:41), and he says, “Something greater than Jonah is here. . . . Something greater than Solomon is here.”

As the time of his crucifixion approaches, he speaks more frequently of the prophecies concerning the suffering of the Messiah (Luke 9:22; 17:25; cf. 24:26–27), and at the Last Supper he uses the language of the “blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:28; Exodus 24:8), and the “new covenant” (Luke 22:20; Jeremiah 31:31), to describe what is unfolding on the night of his arrest. He knows that, as the suffering servant, he will be “numbered with the transgressors” (Luke 22:37; Isaiah 53:12).

In sum, Jesus clearly understood himself in Old Testament categories and as the fulfillment of various strands of prophetic promise in the Old Testament.

Jesus’s Exegetical Method

Jesus understood the deep structures of the Old Testament: its covenant framework (Luke 22:20), its dynamic of promise and fulfillment (Matthew 26:54, 56), and its focus on the descendants of Abraham in a way that includes outsiders like the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:25–27). In the Sermon on the Mount, he exposes the real intent of the Law: not mere outward observance, but a changed heart and a deep personal faithfulness that demonstrates a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:17–48).

Intriguingly, in a debate with the Sadducees over the resurrection, Jesus appeals to the account of Moses’s encounter with God at the bush that did not burn up. There God told the great prophet of the Old Testament, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6, 15). At first glance, Exodus 3 says nothing about the resurrection of the dead (and, to be fair, Jesus doesn’t say it does). Yet if you believe what God says in Exodus 3, then you cannot avoid the conclusion that life continues beyond the grave, and the dead are indeed raised. The Sadducees’ denial of the resurrection is entirely wrong if you take those words of Scripture seriously. Jesus here identifies what later theologians would describe as a “good and necessary consequence” of the teaching of Exodus 3. He demonstrates the same principle by his reflection on Psalm 110 in Mark 12: “David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” (Mark 12:37).

There is nothing superficial about Jesus’s appeal to Scripture, which is a constant feature of his ministry. The word of God (and he refers to it as such in Matthew 15:6) gave him his understanding of himself and his mission, and directed all that he did during his earthly ministry. He was confident in its authority and reliability, even to the smallest details. He might not have written a treatise on the doctrine of Scripture or even delivered a sermon devoted to unfolding each of its characteristics. Neither did he use the terms we so often associate with the doctrine, such as inspiration, inerrancy, perspicuity, sufficiency, efficacy, and the like. Nevertheless, the way he spoke of and used Scripture confirms he believed in all these things.

Authority of the New Testament

All of this raises the question of the New Testament. Since it did not exist during the time of Jesus’s earthly ministry, there was no New Testament text with which he might interact. However, the critical thing about the New Testament is its connection to the ministry of the apostles, those called and set apart by Jesus to be the foundational messengers of the gospel.

Jesus entrusted his words to the apostles. He commissioned them in a unique way. Revelation 21 signals their significance in the great vision of the New Jerusalem: just as the gates of the New Jerusalem are inscribed with the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel, so the twelve great foundations of the city contain “the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:12–14).

In the upper room, on the night he is arrested, Jesus promises his disciples the Spirit of truth, who will “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26), “guide you into all the truth,” (John 16:13), and “take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). Having been given all authority in heaven and on earth, Jesus commissions them to “go . . . and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20).

The apostolic authority of the apostles — including Paul, as “one untimely born” (1 Corinthians 15:8) — lies behind the New Testament. They were Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). They had a unique place in God’s purposes arising from their commissioning by the risen Jesus. While all subsequent faithful Christian ministry takes up their message and follows their example, they maintain that special role. Jesus gave them his words (John 17:14) and even prayed for those who would believe because of the words they would share (John 17:20). Thus, Jesus’s attitude toward this apostolic ministry shapes and guides ours toward the New Testament.

Seeing What Jesus Saw

The Christian faith is a personal trust in a living Lord. It means delighting in God and all that he has done in creating us and redeeming us. It means following his Son, given so that the terrifying problem of our sin might be dealt with from the inside, thoroughly and forever. There remains something deeply personal about genuine Christian discipleship. Jesus is not known from a distance.

Tragically, some have attempted to set this personal relationship of trust and love over against confident yet humble obedience to the teaching of Scripture. “We follow Jesus, not the Bible,” one man foolishly wrote.4 Yet that is a false choice that would have made no sense at all to Jesus himself. If we are going to take Jesus seriously, we must take the Bible seriously, because he did! Conversely, if we do not take the Bible seriously — expecting our thinking to be changed, shaped, and directed by its teaching — then in the end we are not taking Jesus seriously. Jesus and the Bible are not somehow competitors for the mantle of truth. The one who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) also said to his Father, “I have given them your word. . . . Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:14, 17).

What did Jesus see in the Scriptures? He saw the written word of God given for the rich benefit of his people and the glory of his own name. He saw a word that challenges facile religiosity and invites us into the joy of faithful living in fellowship with the God who created all things with just a word. He saw a word that is worth trusting because, though what was written was originally written by human beings, it came into existence only through the work of the Holy Spirit. These are truly the words of Moses or David or Jeremiah, actively and creatively involved in their utterance — but these are finally the words of God to us.

So, Christian theologians, like all other disciples of the Lord Jesus, find in him the example that challenges and directs all that they do. Keeping Jesus at the center of our doctrine of Scripture prevents us from pitting his authority against that of the biblical text. It also keeps us from unsettling the proper balance between biblical theology and historical theology, even in the interest of a retrieval of “the great theological tradition,” as God’s words are always more important than the words of those who speak about God.

Finally, it reminds us that our engagement with Scripture is personal and relational, not merely theoretical and abstract, though it does involve the applications of our minds. We cannot rightly speak about God from a distance or (as a friend of mine used to say) “as if he has just stepped out of the room for a minute.”

In following Jesus, we find that we stand in the place indicated by the prophet Isaiah: “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).

Let us be humble, contrite, and tremble, obey…the Word of God!

Pastor Dale

Notes of Faith April 2, 2024

Notes of Faith April 2, 2024

Risen to Love His Own

The Surprising Mercies of Easter

Article by Scott Hubbard

Editor, desiringGod.org

Our tired, sinful world has never seen a surprise so momentous as the one that spread from the tomb on Easter Sunday. “The dead stayed dead in the first century with the same monotonous regularity as they do [today],” Donald Macleod writes (The Person of Christ, 111). No one, in any age, has been accustomed to resurrection.

To the disciples, it mattered little that their Lord had already given away the ending (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34). The resurrection of Jesus Christ — heart beating, lungs pumping, brain firing, legs walking — could be nothing less than a surprise. The greatest surprise our world has ever seen.

Pay attention to the resurrection narratives, however, and you may find yourself surprised at how Jesus surprises his people. He does not run from the tomb shouting, “I’m risen!” (as we may have expected). In three separate stories, in fact — with Mary, with Peter, and with the two disciples on the Emmaus road — he does not reveal himself immediately. He waits. He lingers. He hides, even. And then, in profoundly personal ways, he surprises.

Some of us woke up this Easter in desperate need of this same Jesus to offer a similar surprise. We declare today that he is risen, that he is risen indeed. But for one reason or another, we may find ourselves stuck in the shadows of Saturday. Perhaps some sorrow runs deep. Or some old guilt gnaws. Or some confusion has invaded the soul. Perhaps our Lord, though risen, seems hidden.

Sit for a moment in these three stories, and consider how the Lord of the empty tomb still loves to surprise his people. As on the first Easter, he still delights to trade our sorrow for joy, our guilt for forgiveness, our confusion for clarity.

Sorrow Surprised by Joy

Maybe, this Sunday, some long sadness seems unmoved by the empty tomb. Maybe the Easter sun seems to have stopped just below the horizon of some darkened part of life — some love lost, some long and aching wait. Maybe you remember Jesus’s words, “Your sorrow will turn into joy” (John 16:20), but you still feel the sorrow, still look for the joy.

Stand at the tomb with Mary Magdalene. Others have come and gone, but she waits, weeping (John 20:11). She has seen the stone rolled away, the absent grave, and the angelic entourage of her risen Lord — and now, Jesus himself stands near her. But though she sees him, she doesn’t see him. “She did not know that it was Jesus” (John 20:14). She mourns before the Lord of holy joy, not knowing how soon her sorrow will flee. And for a few moments more, Jesus waits.

He draws her out with a question: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” (John 20:15). She offers her reply, supposing she speaks to a gardener. And then, in a moment, with a word, the mask comes off. Shadows break, sun rises, sorrow makes its sudden happy turn. How? “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary’” (John 20:16). One word, one name, and this Gardener blooms flowers from her fallen tears. “Rabboni!” she cries — and cries no more (John 20:16).

Unlike Mary, you know your Lord is risen. Even still, for now, you may feel bent and broken. Seeing Jesus, but not seeing him. Knowing he lives, but not knowing where he is. Maybe even hearing his voice, but supposing you hear another’s. Dear saint, the risen Christ does not stand idly by while his loved ones grieve. He may linger for the moment, but he lingers near enough to see your tears and hear your cries — near enough to speak your name and surprise your sorrow with joy.

Keep waiting, and he will speak — sooner or later, here or in heaven. And until then, he is not far. Even if hidden, he is risen, and the deepest sorrow waits to hear his word.

Guilt Surprised by Forgiveness

Or maybe, for you, sorrow is only a note in a different, darker song. You have sinned — and not in a small way. The words of your mouth have shocked you; the work of your hands has undone you. You feel as if you had carried the soldiers’ nails. And now it seems that not even Easter can heal you.

Sit in the boat with Peter. He knows his Lord is risen — and indeed, he has even heard hope from Jesus himself. “Peace be with you,” the Master had told his disciples (John 20:19). But that “you” was plural. Peter needed something more, something personal, to wash away Good Friday’s stains.

“Jesus still delights to trade our sorrow for joy, our guilt for forgiveness, our confusion for clarity.”

And so Jesus stands on the shore — risen, hidden, and again with a question: “Children, do you have any fish?” (John 21:5). These are words to awaken memory (Luke 5:1–4), “yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus” (John 21:4). No, not yet. He will allow Peter to feel the night’s empty nets a few moments longer, and then the surprise will come. And so he reveals himself, this time not with a name but with fish — many fish, actually (John 21:6). Then, after feeding his men, he leads Peter in personal repentance and, as if all is forgotten, calls him afresh: “Follow me” (John 21:19).

That Jesus should turn our sorrow into joy is one of Easter’s greatest wonders. But perhaps greater still is that he should turn our guilt into innocence — that he should address our most sinful, shameful moments so personally, that he should wash our souls as humbly and tenderly as he washed his disciples’ feet. Yet so he does.

The process can take some time, however. We may not feel his forgiveness immediately, and he does not always mean us to. He sometimes hides for some moments or some days. Yet as he does, he prepares the scene for a surprise so good we too may feel like leaping into the sea (John 21:7). Our Lord is here, bringing grace and mercy; we must go to him.

Confusion Surprised by Clarity

Or maybe you find neither sorrow nor sin afflicting you this Easter, but rather another kind of thorn, a pain that can pierce deep enough to drive you mad: confusion. Life doesn’t make sense. Logic fails. God’s ways seem not just mysterious but labyrinth-like. Who can untangle these knots or find a way through this maze?

Walk with the two disciples toward Emmaus. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” you hear them say (Luke 24:21). Yes, had hoped. No more. Three nails and a spear stole the breath from that dream. Now all that’s left is confusion, a body and blood and a burial of all that seemed good and right and true. If not Jesus, then who? Then how? We had thought he was the one.

But then “the one” himself “drew near and went with them” (Luke 24:15). Again he asks a question: “What is this conversation that you are holding?” (Luke 24:17). And again he conceals himself: “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). So they walk; so they talk; so they spill their confusion all along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Yes, they have heard his body was gone, have heard even a report of his rising (Luke 24:23–24). But still, they just can’t make sense of it all.

But oh, how Jesus can. So, with a swift and tender rebuke, a lesson in the Scriptures, and a face revealed over broken bread, he picks up their shattered thoughts and arranges them in a vision of startling, stunning clarity. Then “he vanished” (Luke 24:31), taking all their confusion with him. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” they ask each other (Luke 24:32). Christ had risen, and the clarity they could not imagine had walked with them, talked with them, and loved them into the light.

Our hearts today may brim with questions, some that seem unanswerable. But the resurrected Jesus knows no unanswerable questions. He can solve every riddle in every corner of every human heart — even if, for the moment, he walks beside us incognito.

Our Final Surprise

We live today in an in-between land. Jesus is risen, but we don’t yet see him. Jesus lives, but we haven’t yet touched the mark of the nails in his hands. If we are his, however, then one day we will. And these stories give us reason to expect on that day a final, climactic surprise.

If hearing Jesus’s word by faith can lift the heaviest heart, what sorrow can withstand his audible voice and the new name he will give to us (Revelation 2:17)? If even now we taste the relief of sins forgiven and condemnation gone, what will happen when he puts a white robe around our shoulders and renders sin impossible? And if we have moments here of bright clarity, then what will come when the mists lift altogether, when Truth himself stands before us, and when all deception disappears like a bad dream?

Then we will see what a risen Christ can do. His dealings with Mary, with Peter, with the Emmaus disciples — these are but the fringes of his power, the outskirts of his ways. So keep waiting, dear Christian. At the right time, he will speak your name. He will appear on the shoreline of your long-repeated prayers. He will walk with you on the road of confusion and loss until you reach a better table, and in the breaking of the bread you will see his face.

Can’t wait to see the face of Jesus! How about you? Perhaps today?

Pastor Dale