Our Boast

Psalm 89, verses 15-17a says:

Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you,
who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD.
They rejoice in your name all day long;
they exult in your righteousness.
For you are their glory and strength... (NIV)

In a world where humans seek to rejoice in their own name, exult in their own "goodness," and boast in their own glory and strength, this God-centered boasting is all too often an alien concept. We are all guilty of it. And so, lest we sink more deeply into believing the lie of human-centered pride, may we remember Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1:28-31.

[God] chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 1:28-31, NIV. Also see Jeremiah 9:23-24 regarding the final quote.)

Whom do we seek to please?

Yesterday, I met a pastor who was a friend of someone I know. He said something that has really stuck with me, and though he specifically applied it to those who wish to enter ministry, I think it is a crucial rule for life for all believers:

"Please God, not man."

We can seek to make our lives an endless, weary pursuit of the often shallow and fickle praise of other people, or we can (by the power of the Holy Spirit) seek praise from God: whole, real praise that is at its very essence truthful. And our lives may be lived to His praise forever, for to God belong the glory and the honor and the praise.

Do you, I know Jesus Christ?

I have been challenged recently in thinking about how easy it is to neglect actually seeking to know God in favor of trying to rack up knowledge about God. It is socially more acceptable to ask someone what church they attend or even to have debates about certain doctrinal beliefs, and yet it is a whole different issue when the question "Do you know Jesus Christ?" arises. This is a much more challenging question that actually reaches the recesses of our heart. A.W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God, writes of this contrast:

It was Canon Holmes, of India, who more than twenty-five years ago called attention to the inferential character of the average man's faith in God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the individual. `He must be,' they say, `therefore we believe He is.' Others do not go even so far as this; they know of Him only by hearsay. They have never bothered to think the matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He is law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena of existence.

These notions about God are many and varied, but they who hold them have one thing in common: they do not know God in personal experience. The possibility of intimate acquaintance with Him has not entered their minds. While admitting His existence they do not think of Him as knowable in the sense that we know things or people.

Christians, to be sure, go further than this, at least in theory. Their creed requires them to believe in the personality of God, and they have been taught to pray, `Our Father, which art in heaven.' Now personality and fatherhood carry with them the idea of the possibility of personal acquaintance. This is admitted, I say, in theory, but for millions of Christians, nevertheless, God is no more real than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyal to a mere principle.

Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. (The link to the chapter can be found here.)

Let us pray that we may know Christ.

Preaching is Not Enough

I can't resist another quote from John Piper. He begins a sermon entitled "The Love of Human Praise as the Root of Unbelief" by pointing out his conviction that though preaching is important, listening to it in a large group setting is insufficient for believers. He gives seven reasons that highlight the need for small groups, which I find convicting, and which invade our all-too-pervasive desire for passivity and ease. Here they are:

1. The impulse avoid painful growth by disappearing safely into the crowd in corporate worship is very strong.
2. The tendency toward passivity in listening to a sermon is part of our human weakness.
3. Listeners in a big group can more easily evade redemptive crises. If tears well up in your eyes in a small group, wise friends will gently find out why. But in a large gathering, you can just walk away from it.
4. Listeners in a large group tend to neglect efforts of personal application. The sermon may touch a nerve of conviction, but without someone to press in, it can easily be avoided.
5. Opportunity for questions leading to growth is missing. Sermons are not dialogue. Nor should they be. But asking questions is a key to understanding and growth. Small groups are great occasions for this.
6. Accountability for follow-through on good resolves is missing. But if someone knows what you intended to do, the resolve is stronger.
7. Prayer support for a specific need or conviction or resolve goes wanting. O how many blessings we do not have because we are not surrounded by a band of friends who pray for us.

Still, all too easy to listen to this exhortation as a podcast from the comfort of my own living room, and neglect to apply it. May we each respond to these wise words by seeking out fellow Christians who will walk beside us and spur us on toward love and good deeds, confession and repentance.

For those interested in listening to the whole sermon, it can be found here.

A Gospel of Ego

John Piper, in a talk he gave to the American Association of Christian Counselors entitled “Beholding Glory and Becoming Whole: Seeing and Savoring God as the Heart of Mental Health,” includes an Edwards excerpt:

True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God. And this is the spring of all their delights, and the cream of all their pleasures. . . . But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order: they first rejoice . . . that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground, he seems in a sort, lovely to them. (Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, ed. John Smith [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959], 249­250. Emphasis added)

Piper continues to unpack the implications of this quotation:

This is my concern. Do we make clear to people over and over again that yes, they should feel loved because Christ died for them; and yes, they should feel loved because they are undeserving and he loves them anyway; and yes, they should feel loved because their sins are forgiven and God’s wrath is removed through Christ; but to what end? Died for while undeserving. Forgiven. Wrath removed. But to what end?

And just at this point, I wonder if many of our people are left thinking that what it means to be loved by God simply that he affirms their desire to be made much of. “Christ died for me to make much of me. He rescued me while undeserving to make much of me. He forgave me to make much of me. He removed his wrath to make much of me.” Oh how gloriously good this feels! What a precious gospel! And it’s all merely natural. There’s nothing supernatural about it. It looks like recovery and healing! It works. But at root, it is not “to the praise of the glory of his grace.” It’s all to the praise of the glory of his affirmation of me.

So my second implication is that feeling loved by God means feeling glad that God not only crushed his Son for me, but that he is now crushing every vestige of desire in my life that competes with the pleasure of the praise of the glory of his grace.

The entirety of John Piper's talk is well worth listening to, especially for those in the helping professions, and can be found here.