There never seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done that needs to be done. Most of us have a lot on our to-do list and our wish-to-do list. Those things are not unimportant, even if they may sometimes seem to be. Whether it is a mundane chore or a major project that will revolutionize the world, those daily, weekly, and yearly tasks are a means of Christian fruitfulness that brings glory to our Lord. But the primary work we are made for is the activity we may be most likely to neglect when other duties are pressing upon us. We were made to worship, whatever else we have been gifted and called to do in this world.
Worship is primary. It is the basic human function. Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is man’s all (Ecc. 12:13). Human beings are literally made to work and pray. As important as the rest of our ordinary labors are—and they are very important—everything flows from and returns to God’s altar. We pray that we may work, and we return from our work to give thanks for what has been done. Rightly understood, all the activities in our lives are an exercise of worship (Rom. 12:1). Our daily activities are not the same as the explicit and formal worship we offer in the hours of prayer: our private devotions, family worship, and the Church’s corporate assemblies. But God is praised, nonetheless. We are to approach all of our tasks with gratitude to God for his mercy and goodness to us and do whatever we do to the glory of his Name.
Nevertheless, when busyness overtakes us, we are most likely to neglect the worshipful aspect of our lives. There is no time for morning prayer and Scripture reading—we have too much to do! We cannot take time to meditate gratefully on God’s gift of our labor—we are too consumed by trying to get it done so that we can move on to something else! Work spills over into the Lord’s Day, we become cranky and resentful, and rather than glorifying God we dishonor him by neglecting that which is of first importance (Lk. 10:41-42) and by working with a selfish and ungrateful attitude.
The Lord’s Day begins the week on the right note, with the proper frame of mind. We work from grace, not for it. Unlike our Jewish fathers prior to the coming of Christ, our week begins with rest rather than culminating in it. The joy and peace of redemption accomplished and applied forms the foundation of our weekly labor. We labor not in messianic anticipation but with the joy of those who belong to the Regeneration. We know that Christ is on his throne, ruling us, defending us, interceding for us, and overcoming all of his and our enemies. We begin the week by worshiping around the throne of our glorious Lord, and as we are sent forth in the benediction and commission so that worship spills out into the world, driving away the darkness and filling creation with the knowledge of the glory of God.
Christ is the grace of God come into this world, God made Man, given to us, offered for us, reigning over us. Reformed Christians are accustomed to emphasizing the “means of grace,” especially “the word, the sacraments, and prayer.” These are not the only means by which God imparts grace to us and strengthens us. He also does so by Christian fellowship, communion with the Spirit in meditation and solitude, by acts of service, through fighting battles against the world, the Devil, and our own flesh in sanctification. But all of these channels of grace are instruments whereby Christ is communicated to us. It is Christ proclaimed, Christ praised, Christ prayed, Christ obeyed, and Christ enjoyed that strengthens us in the life we have with God, by the Spirit, in Christ.
The means of grace are not pouring a mystical substance into us; they are communicating Christ to us. He comes to us in gospel proclamation and in the forms of water, bread, and wine. We meet him in the prayers and songs of the Church. We see him in the faces and lives of our brothers and sisters who are members of his Body on this earth. We feel his strength as we grow weak in resisting temptation, and even when we do not feel his strong arms, we know by faith that he is there to encourage and support us.
When we talk about the means of grace, we are talking about the ways in which the Holy Spirit brings Christ to us and applies the benefits of his kingly, priestly, and prophetic work. Grace is the milkshake, and the means of grace is the straw by which that sweet goodness gets into our mouth. But grace is not a substance like a milkshake; it is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are accounted righteous in him. We are becoming righteous through him. We will be fully vindicated in righteousness because of him. “He must increase, and I must decrease.” That is what the means of grace are accomplishing in our lives. They are causing there to be more of Jesus in my life and less of Joel.
There is a mystery to the means of grace that we ought to embrace and celebrate. Exactly how does preaching awaken a sinner dead in trespasses and bring him to new life by the Spirit in Jesus Christ? How does baptism cleanse the penitent believer and seal his regeneration received by sovereign grace alone? How does the Eucharist strengthen our faith and nourish our souls in grace, especially when it is gluten-free communion bread? How can a service of covenant renewal worship make any real difference at all in my relationship with God?
We are not able to explain these things, and if we think we can, it just proves how ignorant we are. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies (1Cor. 8:1). Some Christians think of growth in grace strictly in intellectual and rationalistic terms. The “means of grace” sounds too Catholic to their ears, too superstitious, and so they simply approach the Christian life as a matter of learning and applying information. Others acknowledge the category of the means of grace, but they are inconsistent in how they think about it. “The word, the sacraments, and prayer,” yes, but mainly the word, because we know that the Supper is expendable but the Sermon never is. We may inadvertently elevate the preacher and his wisdom above the ministry of our High Priest and his memorial of grace. The point is not to pit the Table against the Pulpit or debate the relative potency of the Supper versus the Sermon. The point is that both the Sermon and the Supper are a ministry of Christ. He is proclaimed both in the preaching and in the elements. He is eaten by faith with both our ears and also our mouths.
The means of grace are the ways in which Christ comes to us, enters into us, continues to fill us, and finally saves us. The word and water, bread and wine, fellowship and feasting, praises and prayers, celebration and suffering, all become the Spirit’s instruments for proclaiming, applying, and exalting Christ in our hearts. Christ in you is the “hope of glory” (Col. 1:27), and the means of grace are how the Spirit brings our Savior to fill us with hope and, finally, with his glory.
On a holy day long ago, Ezra the scribe addressed God’s people and said: “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn nor weep. Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength” (Neh. 8:9-10). I often refer to this passage as a reminder of why churches ought to have donuts after worship and not dill pickles. But there is another part to it, the part that more often gets cross-stitched on pillows and doilies. The joy of Yahweh is your strength. What does that mean? There is a sermon there, or ten, but think about it briefly.
This is a passage I have failed to live up to for most of my life. The longer I read G. K. Chesterton, the more convicted I become over how much I have lacked the joviality of one who knows Jesus. Not that I or anyone else have anything at all to learn from a filthy papist like Chesterton. His cheerfulness is simply self deception and a demonic spirit, as I’ve been assured. If he really knew Christ, he would be sour, depressed, and slightly self righteous like every self-respecting Christian ought to be. But I digress.
I wonder if we realize just how powerful this transcendent, spiritual joy really is and can be? I’m not referring to the sappy and superficial masquerade we sometimes play on Sundays. “How are you doing today?” “I’m blessed,” by which, too often, we may mean, “I’m anxious, angry, and in a foul mood, but I don’t want to talk about it, and I need to sound spiritual so you’ll simply go away.” Other times we are all too free to tell anyone and everyone exactly how we feel, at length, and in great detail, because among our many admirable traits none stands out so greatly as our honesty and transparency.
How is joy a strength? An exegesis of the passage can tell us this and more. Suffice it to say here that the joy of the Lord encompasses joy from God, God’s joy in us, our joy concerning him. This is more than the “joy, joy, joy, joy” I have buried “down in my heart.” Where? Down in my heart, of course, even deeper than my affection for the Book of Church Order and Robert’s Rules. This is the joy that grace and truth bring to us, a joy that transcends sorrow and adversity, a joy that triumphs, the joy that enables us to smile in the face of danger, laugh in the face of opposition, and sing in the hour of death.
When they bury you, what will your friends and family remember about you? I hope all three of the people that attend my funeral remember something more than that he dipped Oreos in coffee and dressed weird. None of them will remember the answers I gave in my theology exam on the floor of Presbytery. They will not recall whether I was an infralapsarian or supralapsarian. Will my children remember the joy I had in Jesus, or will they say that Dad sincerely loved Jesus in spite of how moody, depressed, and melancholy he sometimes was?
If the joy of Yahweh is our strength, is it possible that some of us are 98-lb. weaklings and that the Devil is kicking sand in our faces most days?
What does Christianity look like? I do not mean what doctrinal convictions does orthodox Christianity affirm. I mean what does the Christian faith look like in a Christian. Does it only look like moral uprightness, daily prayer, consistent church-going, temperamental restraint? It does not look like less than any of these, but if that is what Christianity looks like, then it looks a lot like orthodox Judaism, devout Mohammedanism, and Mormonism. But we have a risen Savior.
It is astonishing how many of us seem to disconnect our Christian faith from our emotional countenance. “But the joy of the Lord is not strictly emotional!” some will object. Indeed, that is true. But is it true, therefore, that the joy of Yahweh will have no affect on our emotions and countenance? It seems counter-intuitive that we would be able to identify those whose sins are forgiven, who are filled with the Holy Spirit, and who are bound for everlasting glory by watching for those who look as if they were weaned on a dill pickle.
In this new year, whether you make formal resolutions or not, let us resolve to let the joy of Yahweh more visibly and tangibly strengthen us. Let our children and grandchildren see the earthy yet otherworldly happiness we have in our Savior. Let our brethren see the cheerfulness of knowing the serpent’s servants are being crushed under our feet and that the Dragon’s mortal wound will finally overcome him on the last day. Let us sing as those who believe Christ is our greatest treasure. Every Lord’s Day, eat the fat and drink the sweet (or bitter, if you like your coffee black). Sunday is holy to the Lord. This world has plenty of evil over which we must sorrow, but the joy of the Lord is our strength.
We all are characters in the story God wrote from creation. Every day of our lives was written in a book before the first one began (Psa. 139:16), and when the Lord judges us, he will do so on the basis of what is written in our life story (Rev. 20:12). Yahweh is the Author, and we are the characters on the stage. This is one of the reasons human beings discover themselves and find strength and wisdom and are so powerfully moved by stories, whether written or acted before us.
Stories have been the means by which human societies have communicated values and virtue since the ancient world. You may immediately think of Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, but stories began long before either of those masterpieces. What are cave drawings but pictorial stories which memorialize great battles, hunts, and deeds? My office includes many volumes of theology and philosophy, including a large section on ethics. But truth, goodness, and beauty, including values, virtue, and wisdom, are more powerfully and memorably communicated in the books on the shelves which contain great literature, both history and fiction.
I reread great books and stories every year because they are the works that have proven to be the ones that teach and reinforce the lessons that I need. John MacArthur once expressed consternation at why anyone would ever choose to reread a book. I cannot understand why anyone would ever willingly read a book he knows he would never wish to reread. The difference is explained by why and how a person reads. You could be adequately nourished even if you never tasted the same food twice in your life, but a diet without repetition is a life without tradition and culture.
One of the many reasons we ought to reread great stories is because our lives include many of the same scenes and chapters over and over. You have noticed how great stories reappear in the Scriptures multiple times. Liberal scholars claim this is because these episodes are fictional and mythological, the repetition proves they are there for artistic effect and not as a matter of historical record, never seeming to realize that life is a collection of repetition and that the same events and experiences play out again and again in their own lives and on the pages of human history.
Every week, throughout each year, over many centuries, and now millennia, the Church has done the same things again and again. God calls, cleanses, consecrates, communes, and then commissions his people. The Church confesses her sins, celebrates the Father’s forgiveness, concurs with the revelation of the Word, communes in the Spirit, and continues victoriously to live and die by faith as salt, light, and leaven in the world. Our lives consist not in new things each day but in the same things, over and over. Birth and death. Marriage and funerals. Feasting and fasting. Celebration and sorrow. Triumph and trials. But unlike the pagans who saw life as a cycle, Christians recognize forward momentum in every recurrence. We are not spinning in place but moving along a trajectory toward glory. History is teleological; it has a purpose, a goal, and a glorious end.
One day I will close my favorite books for the last time. There will be a final trip to Mordor and then to the Grey Havens, a last battle against the White Witch, a last step through the door into Aslan’s country. We will not forever travel with Ransom through the heavens to visit distant worlds. Odysseus will return home and stay there, and Christian will pass through the river never to face danger and devils again. Each time I finish one of the great books, I wonder if that will be the last time I get to read it. Do not waste your reading. Life is too short to read much of what passes for literature today.
In a similar way, one day there will be a last Lord’s Day, but of course, it will be only the beginning of the true Lord’s Day, the eternal one, the day we were made for and toward which we have been traveling all along. Do not waste your Sundays. Do not underestimate the value of every occasion of worship in this present world. Yes, we are doing all of the same things again, but it is not meaningless repetition. We are revisiting the great story, the true story, the gospel of God’s Son and our salvation.
The Christ story is the one all other stories are telling us about. Every cave drawing and every Greek epic is a Christ story. Every story in the history of the world is true or false insofar as it reflects, anticipates, and echoes the Creator’s story of the redemption of this world. So enjoy the story once again, as long as you live. Fill your days by meditating on that story of redemption. Come and adore the Author of life and Perfecter of our faith.
The Son of God became Man in order to redeem and elevate men so that we might become the sons of God. Many Christians think of the Incarnation only as a solution to a problem, a means of addressing and rectifying sin. But there is a larger context to the first Advent than just correction of a problem. The God-Man came to bring creation to its intended fullness and glory.
Yahweh made Man as his image in creation and gave him dominion over it. But that dominion was lost by means of transgression. The image was marred by sin. The lord of creation rebelled against the Creator, and creation turned against its lord. Now thorns and thistles grow from the ground instead of grain, and the animals once named by Adam flee in fear or turn with bared teeth against his sons. Adam was given authority to rule the world and power to command its obedience. But he lost the power to exercise that authority so that now his heirs cower in terror as the wind and waves batter their boat rather than rising to order the water gods to knock it off and behave.
The problem Christ came to address was not merely that you or I sometimes do bad things or fail to do the good things that we ought. He came to rescue the created universe, to redeem a world in bondage, to repair and restore the temple of God’s glory. Adam forfeited his power and position to grasp a greater, forbidden power, but the Serpent’s promise proved to be a lie. The world descended into chaos as the covenant of life and creation was broken and its curse fell upon us all. Men sought order by looking for a new lord who could master and control the madness. Demons of fire, earth, air, and water were reinvented as gods who could bring order to one’s life and blessing to one’s labor, for a price. Men worshiped creatures rather than the Creator and lost the blessings of communion, liberty, and glory they were made to enjoy.
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1Cor. 15:3). He was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification (Rom. 4:25). This means more than merely that Jesus was crucified so that my sins could be forgiven and I could go to heaven when I die. It means more, not less, than a promise of personal salvation. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them (2Cor. 5:19). For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:20-21).
We know these passages and dozens like them, but we often read them narrowly, only in the context of personal salvation. We behold the glories of Christ’s Incarnation and saving work as if through a keyhole. We describe the doctrine of the kingdom and of new creation as would those chained inside a cave, watching shadows on a wall, never realizing the larger reality that surrounds us. The problem is not that what we are saying about the gospel and Christ’s work is wrong. In most cases it is right and good and true. But it is often incomplete, a story of personal relationship, individual salvation, exclusive grace without the greater creational, covenantal, and cosmological context.
Christ is Immanuel, God in the flesh, divine glory united to humanity, but he is also Man united to God, the beginning of resurrection and new creation, the reconciliation of heaven and earth, Man as God made him to be, invested with authority, exercising power, in righteousness and holiness, to bring creation to its intended glory. When we see Jesus, we see God, but we also see Man, true man, the Last Adam, the head of the human race. The Creator made men to be lords of creation, and Jesus is Lord over all lords and King over all kings. Men were made as the image of God, and Christ is the exact image of his glory (Heb. 1:3). Men were made for life with God, to glorify and enjoy him forever (WSC 1), and our destiny from creation is attained by union with Jesus Christ in whom we become partakers of the divine nature (2Pet. 1:4).
The Church’s celebration of Advent is larger and fuller than merely western society’s celebration of Christmas. There is more to be seen than a baby in a manger or an elf on the shelf. The Creator has come into creation. The Redeemer has descended in compassion. The King has come in triumph and brings everlasting glory in his train. O come, let us adore him!
Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King! Let every heart prepare Him room, and heav’n and nature sing, and heav’n and nature sing, and heav’n, and heav’n and nature sing.
Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns! Let men their songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat, repeat the sounding joy.
No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found, far as, far as the curse is found.
He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love, and wonders of His love, and wonders, wonders of His love.
“Joy To the World! The Lord is Come!” Isaac Watts (1719)
Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is that too, of course, and many of us anticipate celebrating it on Thursday. But the deliberate ritual of giving thanks is not just a national holiday. It is a spiritual discipline.
Biblical thanksgiving is historical, not conceptual. Thanksgiving in the Bible is never just gratitude in general for non-specific ideas. God’s people were taught to give thanks for specific things: God’s wonder, works, and word. The psalms teach us to thank God for who he is, what he has done, and what he has promised to do in the future. They recount specific stories from history. It may seem strange to sing-pray about creation (Psa. 104), the plagues on Egypt (Psa. 105), Israel’s persistent unfaithfulness (Psa. 106), or God killing Egyptian children and Canaanite kings (Psa. 135), but the point is that God has blessed us and cared for us at specific times, in specific places, and consistently throughout the centuries. We are not just to thank God in general. We are to recognize and recall specific instances of his grace and goodness, and give him thanks and praise for them.
Biblical thanksgiving is verbal, not merely emotional. On one occasion Jesus met ten lepers and directed them to go and show themselves to the priests (Luke 17:11-19). As they went, they discovered Jesus had healed them. Nine of them went on their way, but one immediately returned to Jesus “and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving [Jesus] thanks.” Do you suppose the other nine men were glad they had been healed? No doubt, they were. But they were not thankful, because thanksgiving is an act, not a thought, not a feeling. They might have felt grateful to the Lord, but they did not give thanks to him. Certainly our thanksgiving should be heartfelt, but biblical thanksgiving is more than a feeling of gratefulness. It is the communication of it.
Biblical thanksgiving is intentional, not haphazard. There is a specific ritual of thanksgiving. Scripture teaches us to “use our words” when thanking God. The psalms provide many different liturgies for thanksgiving. Consider Psalm 136, an antiphonal song in which the leader or choir sings the mighty acts of God and the congregation responds again and again: “For His mercy endures forever!” Thanksgiving is not merely something we are to do when we think of it or feel like it. There is a discipline to thanksgiving, a structure, a schedule for it. Biblical thanksgiving is a ritual. There may be many different ways to engage in it—Scripture does not provide only one but many models for giving thanks to God—but amid the varieties we see an overarching unity. We praise God for creation, his judgment of sin, his work of redemption, his forbearance, our ongoing sanctification, and for his promises of future glory. There is a gospel-logic to the Church’s thanksgiving. Not every element may be present in every instance, but the narrative of redemption ought to order our expressions of gratitude to God.
Biblical thanksgiving is continual, not occasional. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1Thess. 5:16-17). God’s people are to be “giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20). Every day, in every circumstance, at all times, we are to be giving thanks to God. We thank him for our pleasure and our pain, for our success and our sorrow, for our strength and our weakness. We know that he works “all things… together for good to those who love” him (Rom. 8:28). Not even evil can ultimately harm us, because God is using that evil to humble us and sanctify us. The things we imagine not even God could make us thankful for are reminders that we are not yet where we long to be, in the glorious presence of our resurrected Lord, so we can give thanks the Lord has not let us get too comfortable in our present state but ordered our lives so that we will fix our eyes on Jesus and “seek those things which are above” (Col. 3:1).
Every Lord’s Day is a day of thanksgiving. The Church has nothing of her own to offer God. The Divine Service is God’s service to us in renewing covenant and blessing his people through the means of grace. The service we offer is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise (Heb. 13:15). So bring your bulls of blessing and goats of gratitude, and place them on the altar of God. Light the fire of faith beneath them, and our prayers will ascend like the smoke of incense before God’s throne in heaven. Come, and “let us give thanks to Yahweh, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever” (Psa. 138:1).
Many Christians have thought very little about baptism and its significance in their experience of salvation. If they think of baptism at all, it may be only as a personal decision they made to get baptized or in terms of what they think baptism does not mean or accomplish. The Westminster Confession of Faith says:
Baptism is a sacrament of the new testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church; but also, to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.
WCF 28.1
Baptism makes a person a member of the church (1Cor. 12:13). It is a formal rite, conferring actual membership in the Body of Christ. The person baptized may choose to neglect that membership or abandon it later in life. He may become an unbeliever and apostate, but he can never be a non-Christian.
Baptism is a sign and seal that a person has been united to Christ (Gal. 3:27). It certifies that a person has been grafted into Christ, made part of the covenant of grace, and now partakes of the vine. The baptized person may neglect that union or decide to renounce it later in life. He may be cut off from Christ due to unfruitfulness or fall from grace. But he must be connected to Christ before he can be severed from him. He must be a partaker of grace before he can fall away from it. He is connected to Christ in his baptism.
Baptism is a sign and seal that a person has been regenerated (Tit. 3:5). We know that a person may be outwardly baptized and yet remain inwardly unregenerate. Simon the sorcerer was. But the person who is baptized is part of the regeneration (Matt. 19:28) and shares in the resurrected Israel (Ezek. 37:1-14). He may go on living according to the old man of sin. He may reject the resurrection life which we are offered in Christ. But his baptism will forever testify that the new creation has begun.
Baptism is a sign and seal that one’s sins are forgiven (Acts 2:38). It is a symbolic washing which cleanses our souls and saves us from the judgment to come (1Pet. 3:21-22). The person baptized may choose to walk in unbelief and unrepentance, just as Israel did after they were baptized in the Red Sea, and if he does so, then his sins will not be pardoned. But baptism is a visible sign of God’s promise that our sins are forgiven and that God will remember his promises and not our transgressions on the day of judgment.
Baptism is a sign and seal of a covenant obligation (Rom. 6:3-4). The baptized person no longer belongs to himself. He has died with Christ to sin and been raised with Christ to live in obedience for the glory of God. He may choose to forsake that covenant obligation—he may be unfaithful to it—but he cannot deny that he is so obligated. A person does not choose the nation of his birth, but he is subject to its laws as a citizen nonetheless. So too, the person baptized is forever obligated to life under God’s covenant grace and the law of Christ.
Let us not forget or neglect the significance of our own baptism but be deliberately mindful of what it says to us and about us. Improve your baptism, not by doing it over and over again, but by meditating upon its truth, goodness, and beauty, and endeavoring to live in light of it.
The recent attacks by Hamas on the State of Israel and the rapidly expanding war in the Middle East that has followed have prompted many Christian preachers and pew-warmers to try their hand at theo-political punditry. This, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. The last few years have rightly undermined confidence in the competence of credentialed experts in many fields. We should bear in mind, however, that the fact the experts are making it up as they go is not an argument for the superiority of uninformed and ill-thought out opinions.
Many dispensationalists, predictably, see the latest violence in Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and harbinger of the last days. The fact this is how they have interpreted every instance of violence involving Israel since their particular prophetic perspective appeared in the mid-1800s does not seem to dim their enthusiasm and confidence in reading the tea leaves of providence.
Christians who lean left politically (or long ago toppled over) can be heard making arguments about nuance, context, and the evils of colonization, as if any of those things had anything to do with deliberate war crimes against a civilian population, rape, kidnapping, multilation of the dead, and calls for systematic genocide against an ethnic group. If this argument is relevant, I suppose we might offer the same nuance and context for the Holocaust and Final Solution carried out by Nazi Germany. Maybe there was something to their claims about the Jews and their manipulation and control of financial markets after all.
Even among, more politically conservative, Reformed Christians there seems to be a perverse need to state the obvious. Ethnic Israel is no longer the covenant Israel of God and The political State of Israel is not God’s chosen people—believers in Jesus are. That is true, and there is a place for noting it. So many Christians in the west have been indoctrinated by dispensational theology that we must be prepared to offer such clarifications. But what does such a claim have to do with recent violence and the present war? Why would we make this clarification our emphasis at such a time? Is it helpful or appropriate?
How are we to think christianly about ethnic Israel? The Jews are not accepted by God simply on the basis of their heritage. Membership in the covenant is delineated by faith in Christ, not merely by biological lineage.
For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
(Galatians 3:26-29)
This does not, however, mean there is no longer any distinction to be found between ethnic Jews and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The same apostle who wrote Galatians 3 also clearly affirmed:
What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not!
(Romans 3:1-4a)
He goes on in the same epistle to the Roman saints:
I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.
(Romans 9:3-5)
These historical, bibliographical, religious, and spiritual advantages do not mean that Jewish people are saved apart from faith in Christ.
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.
(Romans 10:1)
The Jews must embrace their Messiah, but Paul says they will.
For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:“The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.”Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.
(Romans 11:25-32)
All Israel will be saved. All Israel, i.e. ethnically Jewish people, as Jews, will come to faith in Christ. This means that while the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles has been broken down in Christ, ethnic identities still exist. The fact that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people in the way they once were does not mean they have merely been absorbed into a mass of undifferentiated humanity. That is not what Scripture claims, quite the contrary.
Even under the Mosaic economy, the Jews were in proximity to covenant blessings that could only be fully and finally possessed by faith (John 8:31-58). Those who trusted in their ethnic heritage would not be accepted by God. They were sons of the Devil, not of Abraham. Abraham’s children have always been defined by their participation in Abraham’s faith. What has changed is not the recognition of Jewish ethnicity but the expansion of Abrahamic blessings to all nations through the resurrection and reign of Israel’s long-awaited Messiah.
God does not have two people groups with separate identities and destinies, as dispensationalism claims. But the Bible does acknowledge the persistence of the Jewish people, their distinctiveness as an ethnic group, and their future conversion to faith in Christ. Their destiny is not distinct from the Church of God but is rather to ultimately be united with the Church of God.
How are we to think about the recent attacks against Israel and their war with violent Islamists who openly state their intention to exterminate the Jews? All of the theology explained above may be true, and it may be helpful to Christians who are ill-taught on these issues. But it is of little use or relevance in responding to the kind of godless slaughter we have lately seen. Christians are sometimes guilty of the kind of theology as comfort practiced by Job’s friends. Miserable comforters are you all (Job 16:2).
Would Christian pastors have chosen September 12, 2001 as an opportune time to remind us that many of those killed the day before were unbelievers and now in Hell? Would it be helpful to observe, what is undoubtedly true, that American believers have more in common with Arab Christians than unbelieving New Yorkers who worked in the World Trade Center? The death of a neighbor’s child is not the time to lecture them about the mysteries of election. The young woman may have been dressed inappropriately, but the hours after her rape are not the best moment to discuss the importance of modesty.
It is true that American believers have more in common with a Palestinian Christian than they do with a secular Jew. It is also true that a believer has more in common with an American Christian than with his unbelieving cousin. But it would be naive and inappropriate to imagine that because one person (or group) is unbelieving, there can be no special connection to them. I have family members who are not walking with Christ, and I have far more affection and compassion for them than for anonymous Christians I have never heard about or met.
The Jews are the Christian’s cousins, and one day the family will be reunited. Christianity is a Hebraic faith. There is no denying the impact of Hellenistic language, philosophy, and culture on various aspects of the Christian tradition, but insofar as the two streams of Hebraism and Hellenism stand in opposition to one another in interpretation of Scripture, typology, liturgy, and ethics, the Christian faith stands in line with the tradition of the Hebrews, not the Greeks. Christians worship a Jew as the Son of God. Our spiritual fathers, first teachers, and foundational Scriptures are all Jewish. This is not to diminish the way in which God used the Greek language and culture to advance the cause of Christ. It is not to deny that the Jewish people, by and large, rejected their Messiah, fell under God’s condemnation, and have been estranged from the covenant of promise. But we should affirm that the Christian Church has more in common with modern Jews than with the average Gentile unbeliever, and we have vastly more in common with the State of Israel than we do with militant, Islamic terrorists.
One does not have to be a Zionist, neo-con, or dispensationalist to support Israel in its war with Hamas. The State of Israel is largely secular, but the conduct and stated mission of Hamas is explicitly, indefensibly evil. There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses, no room for context, nuance, or negotiation. The Arab-Israeli conflict may be complicated. The Israel-Hamas war is not. To think christianly means not only thinking theologically and covenantally; it requires us to think with ethical clarity.
Every week Christians gather around the world to worship the true God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Their songs and prayers ascend to heaven as incense, and God’s word and grace fall to the earth like thunder, lightning, and rain. God speaks, and his people answer. God blesses, and the saints are renewed. God judges, and the Church is vindicated. God appears in his glory, and the Body of Christ shines with reflected radiance.
What happens on Sundays in Christian churches cannot be understood merely by what we see with our eyes. In fact, many believers do not realize the supernatural event that they participate in every Lord’s Day. We walk in the midst of angels. We sing praise with saints who surround heaven’s throne. We are strengthened as the Spirit moves upon us and in us, arousing love, increasing faith, and deepening hope.
The Church does battle every Sunday against the world, the flesh, and the demons. The spiritual hosts of wickedness are arrayed against us, but they are vanquished through faith exercised in worship and obedience. We pray against the darkness, and those prayers become beams of light, penetrating dark spaces and frightening the fallen sons of God. We sing psalms, and the walls of the enemy’s stronghold crack and fall. The war is not over. In some ways it has just begun. But the victory is assured having been won by our Savior who destroyed sin and Death’s power from the inside.
The Church is Christ’s Bride, but it is also his Body. She is both the one whom he rescues and the hands and feet by which he makes war. The Church is a Dragon-Slayer, not passive, not effeminate, but embodying the risen and ascended Christ who lives, reigns, rules, and judges in and through his people. The Church sings war psalms because she is at war. She sings royal psalms because she serves the world’s true King.
The Church is an army, and worship is war. But the weapons of our warfare are not carnal or earthly. They are psalms and prayers, confession of sin and confession of faith, the word preached and believed and obeyed, the sacraments applied, the covenant lived in our homes and communities every day. When the Church forgets who she is, where she is, and what she is doing in worship, she becomes worldly, effeminate, passive, and ineffectual. But the spiritual reality persists. On the Lord’s Day God descends to meet with his people, and his Church ascends Mt. Zion. Prepare your heart with joy to meet the living God.
How many times have you faced an overwhelming and seemingly hopeless scenario, only to look back later and recognize the kind (though difficult) providence of God at work in that situation? Most of us have probably had moments in our lives that we imagined we could not endure, when despair had a death grip on our hearts, when sorrow and fear seemed certain to drown us. But God. The Lord is rich in mercy, and he promises to work all things together for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28), but that sovereign good does not always appear dramatically. In fact, sometimes we may miss it entirely. God is there, but as in the book of Esther, he stands hidden amid the shadows. Somehow we survive. Somehow we begin to breathe again and move on. We did not perceive the moment of rescue. We cannot put our finger on a sudden deliverance. We simply came to the moment of defeat and despair, and then the moment passed, and we were still alive.
When did you look back and realize you had survived? Was it the next time you faced an unwinnable trial or unendurable adversity? Did you think back to the last time you were in a similar situation and only then reflect on the fact that God had brought you safely through it, even though you took little notice at the time?
I was reflecting on this recently while lying awake worrying and praying in the middle of the night. It was almost a moment of deja vu, but this wasn’t a glitch in the Matrix. I realized I had prayed to the Lord in the midst of similar anguished anxiety, many times before, and often in the middle of the night. You’ve probably been there too. “It’s me again, Lord. I’m worried about something, and I’m not sure you can fix this one.” Because this new worry is so different from all those that came before, right? We are justified in our sin of unbelief because the Lord has only delivered us 7,327 times, and everyone knows it is the 7,328th that is the really hard one.
If we are lying awake at night praying in bed, it’s probably not because we are praying the psalms. Sometimes we may do that too, but more often those middle of the night prayers are both prompted and dominated by the worry and fear from which Christ’s victory and sovereign rule have set us free. But there we are again, doubting his ability to rescue us, returning to the slavery of fear that is so familiar to us because we wore its chain so long. Anxious prayer usually centers on my worries, fears, and concerns. Even if they are not about me, per se, but my wife, my children, my family, or brethren, those prayers still focus, in large part if not in whole, on the immediate crisis that drove sleep away and compelled fervent prayer.
There was a man in the first church I pastored who related to me the story of when he first spent an entire night in prayer. He had never attempted or thought to do so until his young daughter was injured and taken to the hospital where doctors worked to save her life. Her father found it easy to stay awake and pray all that night.
Personal prayers in times of crisis are good and appropriate, a means of grace for battling doubt and fear. It is right that we pray earnestly, even if fearfully, because even when we are sinfully anxious, praying about it is an act of obedience to God. Such prayer confesses that I am a sinner who cannot cope with or carry this burden of sorrow. I cannot withstand the temptation to doubt in such cases, so we pray, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!”
Our prayers in the midst of crisis are important, but they ought to arise within the larger context of a life devoted to prayer. If the only time we pray is when we are fearful, we will find our prayers weak, and we may discover little comfort in them. This is when we open the Psalter, retrieving lines from our memories if praying in a dark bedroom, or stumbling downstairs and opening the prayer book of King Jesus, reading, singing, and praying God’s word and promises back to him. Suddenly we discover that our fears and trials are nothing new. No temptation has overtaken you except such as in common to man. God’s people have been here before, and we are praying with them. It is not only my children who need God’s gracious intervention; it is God’s children in India, Eritrea, North Korea, Sudan, and Canada. I am neither the first nor the last nor the only one at this present time who faces a seemingly unbearable situation. I am praying with the saints throughout the world. We are interceding for each other: I for them, and they for me, even if we have never met and do not know each other’s names.
These prayers in private crisis grow out of lives of ordinary, everyday prayer. Morning and evening sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, confession and intercession, supplication and meditation on God’s word, works, and wonder. On the Lord’s Day God summons his people to worship in order that he might bless us. Together the Church offers her prayers to the Father in the Name of the Son with the help of the Holy Spirit. God knows the needs of every individual. He heard your prayers at midnight and the deep and unutterable cries within your heart even now. But now we are not praying alone in our bed or closet. The Church has gathered and entered the Holy Place. Together with one voice we cry: “Lord, hear our prayer!” And he does. And he will. Not just our prayers on Sunday. Not just our prayers at the family dinner table. Not just our prayers in the middle of the night. Our faithful God hears all of them, and accepts them, not because we are righteous in ourselves. We are the doubters and unbelievers who imagine this hardship will be different. Maybe the Lord won’t show up this time around. But he always has. He always will. He is patient with us, even though we are often impatient with him.
It takes faith to see God’s faithfulness in our lives, and perhaps that is why we so often fail to perceive it. The same lack of faith that fills us with fear and despair in crisis makes us unable to recognize the quiet but powerful providence that has delivered us time and time again. Those prayers in the middle of the night are a means of grace. They change the world and events in our lives, to be sure, but they change us most of all. Someone once said we cannot pray one way and live another for very long. So as we confess our fears and doubts and beg God for mercy once again, his Spirit strengthens us, enabling us to see the past providence that we had overlooked or forgotten and assuring us that the Lord will be near us this time as well. I will never leave you nor forsake you. This is God’s promise, so we can continue to pray with boldness, even in the midst of anxiety, and be confident that he will hear and, once again, come to bless us.
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
