http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15049059/submit-to-one-another-full-of-the-spirit
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Pregnancy Can Be Scary: Finding Peace While Expecting
There was a bucket of electric bouncy balls, not a baby, in my stomach. He just never stopped moving. Usually the jabs and kicks gave me comfort — “Call the doctor if you haven’t felt the baby move in a while,” they say. I had no reason to pick up the phone, so instead I came up with one that would keep me up all night.
“I wonder why he moves so much,” I said to my husband before bed. As he reached for the lights, I grabbed my phone. What does it mean if your baby moves a lot? I typed into Google. My stomach dropped as I read the first result: “High Fetal Movement Associated with Stillbirth.”
Like I said, I didn’t sleep that night.
Psalms and Search Engines
I wonder how many twenty-first-century tech-saturated Christian mothers, like myself, abide by their own translation of Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything let your requests be made known to Google.” When we remove prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and — above all — God from the equation, we forfeit all chance of experiencing any lasting end to our motherly anxiety. We cannot type, scroll, click, and read our way to peace. There is no “peace of Google,” only the peace of God (Philippians 4:7). And for that, we must pray.
Which can be quite difficult for expectant mothers to do. Burdened for the children we cannot hold but deeply love, our minds tend to tumble down hypothetical rabbit holes: “How long has it been since the baby kicked? Shouldn’t the kicks be harder? Is the baby really growing? Am I eating enough? How much should I be eating?” Pounding heart, tight lips, it seems far easier to search, our fingers frantic, than to seek God in prayer.
That’s where the book of Psalms comes in. For millennia, restless saints have fled to its pages. When we lack our own words, enough calm, or even the desire to pray, the Psalms hand us hundreds of ways to talk to God. Consider, for example, how an anxious expectant mother might use Psalm 139 to pray for herself and her unborn child.
‘You See’
Because of the sheer fact that we cannot see our unborn babies, we often imagine what could be wrong. With the help of Psalm 139, we can turn from anxiety to adoration. King David’s words call us to wonder, rather than worry, over what man cannot see, as we praise God that his eyes keep watch over the children in our womb.
In the spirit of the psalm, we can begin by focusing on God’s omniscience over our blindness. “O Lord,” we might pray, “you have searched and known not only me, but also my child. You know when I sit; you know when my child stirs. You are acquainted with all our ways, from the words I will say soon, to the organ that will form next. In a word, your hand is upon us” (verses 1–5). What is dark to mothers — the womb, our unborn children, what lies ahead — is light to him (verse 12). Anxious about what we cannot see, we can adore the God who never stops seeing.
Nor has he ever not seen. His knowledge of our unborn children never began; it has always been: “Your eyes saw this child’s unformed substance an eternity before the pregnancy test came back positive. No part of this process has ever been hidden from your sight” (verses 15–16). As we say these words to our all-seeing God, we send them coursing through our unseeing selves. Wonder is a great antidote to worry.
‘You Are Sovereign’
Not only does God see what goes on within our stomachs and lives; he sovereignly oversees it all. We know we cannot watch our unborn babies grow, but that doesn’t stop us from thinking we can control our pregnancy, at least in some measure. That’s why we often flit from one search to the next — for control. We can praise God for so much access to life-sustaining information (it’s probably wise not to eat raw fish if every health institute says so), but we must not deceive ourselves. While we carry our children, God is in control of them.
Psalm 139 offers a fitting reminder, as David attributes action upon action, outcome upon outcome, to God alone. With David we declare, “You form this child’s inward parts; you knit this baby together in my womb. I praise you for the fearful and wonderful works of pregnancy. You are making and weaving this little person together” (verses 13–15). A pregnant mother can attend to the atoms in her unborn baby’s body no more than she can touch the moon — thankfully. We have not the power to form, to knit, to make, to weave. But our God does, and we have his ear.
What’s more, David affirms how God forms both bodies and days. Before the foundation of the world, God not only chose to create our children, but he determined the length of their lives. Through prayer we say to God and ourselves, “In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for this baby” (verse 16).
God didn’t pen our children’s stories into a dusty three-ring notebook, the kind that are always lying around, and then slam it shut. David says, “In your book were written.” Expectant mothers, our Father has a book! He is ever aware of its tales, of the lives of our unborn children (and everyone else). For what he has written, he will bring to pass. Whatever this trimester may hold, may our prayers lean into the sovereign God who holds it.
‘You Are There’
By this point, it’s easy to agree with David about the extent of God’s knowledge and power. His attributes are “too wonderful for [us],” too “high” to grasp and grip (verse 6). At the same time, Psalm 139 encourages mothers to rest assured that he is with us, in all his great and mysterious perfections.
David teaches us this lesson by taking us on a trip around the universe. He imagines himself up in heaven and down in Sheol (verse 8), east as the sunrise and west as the seas (verse 9). In each place, he finds God there. Amazingly, the Lord does not arrive after David, but leads David there himself (verse 10).
After David’s example, we can imagine ourselves walking through a hundred different high and low points of pregnancy (an exercise that may run our emotions through a pinball machine). Picture a doctor gesturing at a dot of flashing white, tears of joy springing to our eyes. There’s a heartbeat. A month later, that heartbeat seems too low, even inconsistent. We cry again, this time for fear.
Step back from each hypothetical. Turn to God and say, “During ultrasounds, you are there! Through worry-ridden nights, you are there! In the hospital room, you are there! Come what may, you are with me wherever I go, leading me, guiding me, holding me” (verse 8). As we praise his presence, his presence comforts us.
‘Protect This Child’
Toward the end of the psalm, after David has adored the all-seeing, sovereign God who is in his midst, he turns to petition, earnestly pleading for God to act (verses 19–22). Confident that God is over his life, he asks God to intervene in his life. In the same way, the more a mother recalls the power of God both to take and to give life, the more she will ask God to protect the child in her womb.
We pray confidently for God to protect our unborn children because we are confident that he can protect them. We ask him to decrease blood pressure, to increase growth, to remove hemorrhages, to induce labor — all because he can. And so we pray, with every mother’s blood-earnestness and a Christian mother’s confidence, “Oh that you would protect this child, O God!”
He delights in a mother’s pleas for her unborn child, which are themselves expressions of worship. We petition him because we know he is with us, listening to our cries. We petition him because we know that only an all-knowing, all-powerful God is able to sustain the babies in our bellies. We petition him because we know he loves those babies, more than we could understand.
Ought God’s thoughts about this pregnancy, then, be more precious to us than Google’s (verse 17)? A single search may produce 239,000,000 results (I just checked), but even that number has an end, a limit, a boundary. God’s knowledge is infinite, vaster than the sands on every shore (verse 18). His power, presence, and ability to protect likewise know no end. And — can you believe it? — this God is with us.
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Ordinary Elders, Part 1: Working for the Joy of Others
Tom Carson died thirty years ago this month. He was an ordinary pastor.
He grew up in Ottawa a century ago, attended seminary in Toronto, did evangelism in Montreal for a decade in the 1930s and ’40s. Then from 1948 to 1963, he was a paid pastor in Drummondville, which I understand to be about seventy minutes from here.
In 1963, at age 52, he returned to Ottawa as a translator for the Canadian government and began serving as an unpaid pastor. He died quietly and without fanfare on October 26, 1992. He was not well-known or celebrated in his day. He was an ordinary pastor and elder.
In fact, his son, Don, as you may know, wrote a short book about him called Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor. Today some of us remember Tom because of Don, and because of the book, but we remember Tom Carson for his blessed ordinariness. So, in his honor, I’ve entitled these two sessions tonight “Ordinary Elders.”
In this first session, I would like for us to linger together in perhaps my favorite eldership passage of Scripture: 1 Peter 5:1–5. But before I read those verses and pray for our time together, note the “So” at the beginning of verse 1, which links this passage to chapter 4 and therefore to the hard times Peter and the elders knew.
First Peter 4:12 mentions “fiery trials.” Verse 13, “sufferings.” Verse 14, “insults.” Verses 15, 16, 19: “suffer,” “suffers,” “suffer.” This is a word for elders who know hard times, like the last two years perhaps for some.
God-Given Under-Shepherds
Now to 1 Peter 5:1–5:
So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
One of the most precious promises in all the Bible for pastors in particular is Jesus’s words in Matthew 16:18: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Jesus is the chief shepherd, and the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls (1 Peter 2:25; 5:4), “the great shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13:20). He builds his church. And his work will not fail. He will prevail. Over hell, and sin, and death, and disease, and division.
And one of the ways Christ builds and governs his church, and blesses her, is by giving her the gift of leaders under him: “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–12).
Faithful pastors and elders are a gift from Christ to guide and keep his church. This is a truth that may not be healthy to regularly preach to ourselves personally, but it can be good to have someone else preach to you from time to time. Brother pastors and elders, you are a gift from the risen Christ to your flock.
No matter what that recent email said. No matter how flat it seems your last sermon fell. No matter what you hear whispered about leaders in society, not to mention the cynicism that isn’t whispered. No matter what that person posted online about your church — and you didn’t see it, but your wife saw it and said, “Did you see this?” No matter what has been said explicitly or implied, to the contrary, you, dear brother, as you lean on Christ and remain faithful to his word, you are a gift from him to your church.
Are we pastors and elders flawed? Of course. Sinful? Regrettably. Have some who carry the name “pastor” made terrible mistakes, sinned grievously, fleeced their flocks, and harmed the very ones they were commissioned to protect? Sadly, yes, some have. But such failures were not the fulfilling of the vision of what true Christian leadership is. Such failures fell short of God’s vision, or departed from it altogether. In fact, such failures show — by contrast — what real leadership in the church should be.
That’s our focus this evening: what Christ calls leaders in his church to be — especially the “lead office” or “teaching office” in the church, that of “pastor” or “elder” or “overseer,” three terms in the New Testament for the same lead office.
Preliminary Observations
Now, I want us to give most of our focus to the three not-but pairs in verses 2–3, but first let me make three preliminary observations on the passage.
1. Elders are plural.
Elders is plural in 1 Peter 5:1. One of the most important truths to rehearse about Christian ministry is that Christ means for it to be teamwork. As in 1 Peter 5, so in every context in which local-church pastor-elders are mentioned in the New Testament, the title is plural.
“One of the most important truths to rehearse about Christian ministry is that Christ means for it to be teamwork.”
Christ alone reigns as Lord of the church. He is head (Ephesians 1:22; 5:23; Colossians 1:18), and he alone. The glory of singular leadership in the church is his alone. And he means for his under-shepherds to labor, and thrive, not alone but as a team.
The kind of pastors we long for in this age are good men with good friends — friends who love them enough to challenge their instincts, tell them when they’re mistaken, hold them to the fire of accountability, and make life both harder and better, both more uncomfortable and more fruitful.
2. Elders are pastors.
Second, observe the main verb in 1 Peter 5:1–5, which is Peter’s charge to the elders: “shepherd the flock of God.” Shepherd, as a verb, is a rich image. Consider all that shepherds do: they feed, water, tend, herd, protect, guide, lead to pasture, govern, care for, nurture. To shepherd is an image of what we might call “benign rule” (the opposite of “domineering,” as we’ll see), in which the good of the shepherd is bound up with the good of the sheep.
The concept of shepherding also has a rich Old Testament background, not just in the Patriarchs and the nation of Israel in Egypt and in the wilderness, but also in King David, the shepherd boy who became the nation’s greatest king, the anointed one, who anticipated the great Anointed One to come. So, with David, shepherding takes on messianic meaning. David, of course, had his own grave failures in shepherding the nation, but after David, the trend of the nation’s kings became worse and worse.
Five centuries later, the prophet Ezekiel condemned the nation’s leaders for “feeding themselves” rather than feeding the sheep:
Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. (Ezekiel 34:2–4)
The leaders of Israel should have fed the people, not fed on them. They should have strengthened the people, and healed them, bound them up, brought them back, and sought them, but instead they have governed them “with force and harshness” — not benign rule but malignant rule.
The people long for a shepherd, a king, who will rule them with gentle strength, with persuasion and kindness, with patience and grace, even as he protects them from their enemies. And God says in response, again and again, “I will rescue my flock,” but also, “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:22–23). Note the prominence of feeding in shepherding.
Good Shepherd and His Help
The prophet Micah foretold that from Bethlehem, the city of David, will “come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel” (Micah 5:2; Mark 2:6). During his life, Jesus himself says he is the good shepherd (John 10:11), who, rather than taking from his sheep, comes to give, to give them life, and even to give his own life for them. He is the long-promised Shepherd.
Then amazingly, at the end of the Gospel of John, when Jesus asked Peter three times — this same Peter who wrote 1 Peter — if he loved him, Peter said yes, and then Jesus said three times to Peter, “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” and “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17).
Here “feeding” and “pastoring” are synonymous. Jesus is the good shepherd, but he is leaving, and he will now pastor his sheep through Peter and other under-shepherds — not just apostles, but local church elders, overseers, pastors, as Paul says in Acts 20:28 to the elders in Ephesus: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock [!], in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” The elders are also overseers, and they are to “care for” — or literally, “pastor the church of God” (elders = overseers = pastors).
Finally, in the book of Revelation, we have two images of Jesus as shepherd. The Lamb, as shepherd, “will guide them to springs of living water” (Revelation 7:17), and in three texts, he will rule “with a rod of iron” (Revelation 2:27; 12:5; 19:15), which doesn’t mean he is forceful or harsh with his people, but that he protects them from their enemies (with his rod). The shepherd’s rod and staff are for protecting and guiding his flock: “your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).
Elders shepherd. So there’s just a taste of the richness in this shepherding image: centrally, feeding and watering (“green pastures” and “still waters,” Psalm 23:2), but also protecting. Shepherding means caring for the sheep, and leading with gentleness and kindness, with persuasion and patience, and wielding the rod of protection toward various threats to the flock.
3. Elders exercise oversight.
A third and final preliminary observation, more briefly: the verb that augments “shepherd” is “exercising oversight.” It’s a form of the noun “overseer” used in Acts 20:28, as well as four other New Testament texts (Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:7; 1 Peter 2:25). “Oversee” in this context doesn’t mean only to watch and observe, but also to “see to it” that important observations about the flock, and any threats to it, also become tangible initiatives and actions in the church.
Which brings us to the heart of this passage where Peter gives us three “not-buts” — not this but that. Verses 2–3: “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight . . .
not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you;
not for shameful gain, but eagerly;
not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”Let’s take them in reverse order.
1. Not Domineering, but Exemplifying
We saw God’s condemnation for the leaders of Israel who ruled “with force and harshness.” Peter says “not domineering” — which is the same language we see elsewhere translated “not lording it over.” It’s built on a strong verb (katakurieuo) that can refer in other contexts to Jesus’s lordship (Romans 14:9; 1 Timothy 6:15); or the kind of lordship sin once had, and should no longer have, over us (Romans 6:9, 14; 7:1); or the kind of lordship Christian leaders do not have over those in their charge (Luke 22:25).
The intensified form of the verb here in 1 Peter 5 is the same one Jesus uses in Mark 10:42:
Those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you.
Then, what will be so among us? Verse 43: “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” So the opposite of “not lording it over” others is serving them, their good, their joy. Like Christ himself, not coming to be served but to serve.
And so Paul says to the Corinthians, about his labors as an apostle: “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy” (2 Corinthians 1:24).
As in Mark 10, “lord it over” implies the exercise of privilege, the seeking and obtaining of personal/private benefit; benefit from them (versus through or with them). Rather, Paul’s vision of the opposite in leadership is “working with you for your joy.” The “we” here is Paul with his assistants Timothy and Silas (2 Corinthians 1:19). He says “we work”: we give effort, expend energy; it is not just “overflow” but work, labor (as Jesus says in Matthew 9:37–38: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest”). It might begin almost effortlessly, as “overflow,” but then takes effort (sometimes great effort) to complete. Spiritual leadership, pastoral ministry is work, requiring a work ethic. And Paul, of all people, was not one to suffer laziness, and especially among pastor-elders.
But this work isn’t alone. Not only is there a “we” in the company of the leaders but it’s also “with you” — with the people. Pastors equip the saints to engage, expend effort, and invest energy — to work with us (which is vital to keep in mind in our discipling and counseling; we work with them, not instead of them).
And that work, Paul says, is “for your joy.” Not thin, fleeting sugar highs. He’s talking real, deep, lasting, long-term, durable joy in Christ. Joy that tastes of the next age even in this painful, evil one. In Christian joy, our promised, blissful future in Christ is brought into the painful present — which means the frictions and sufferings of our present times do not preclude real joy but make us all the more desperate for real joy.
So, Christian leaders, as workers for the joy of their people, are not to be controlling and domineering, lording over them. Rather, they are to serve (in the words of Jesus), as workers for their people’s joy (in the words of Paul) and examples to the flock (in the words of Peter): “not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”
Pastors Are Examples
Examples. You might hear that as terrifying, if you don’t want your life observed and imitated. Or, you might hear “examples” as humbling. “Examples? That’s all? Nothing about great oratory, or thoroughly entertaining, or gifted communicator, or local hero?” Examples might sound so normal. And it is. Ordinary elders. What was Tom Carson? He was an example.
Twice Peter says the elders are “among” the flock: “I exhort the elders among you . . . : shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Peter 5:1–2). Not above, or off to the side, or far away — not remote — but among.
“Good pastors are first and foremost sheep. They know it and embrace it.”
Good pastors are first and foremost sheep. They know it and embrace it. Pastors do not comprise a fundamentally different category of Christian. They need not be world-class in their intellect, oratory, or executive skills. They are average, ordinary, healthy Christians, thinking for the flock, praying for the flock, and serving as examples for the flock, while among the flock, as they lead and feed the flock through teaching God’s word, accompanied with wise collective governance. The hearts of good pastors swell to Jesus’s charge in Luke 10:20: “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Their first and most fundamental joy is not what God does through them as pastors but what Christ has done (and does) for them as Christians.
Against Celebrity
On this note, and consonant with our remembering Tom Carson as an ordinary pastor-elder, I can’t help but share quickly Bonhoeffer’s lightning strike against “celebrity” instincts in the church, as he saw it in the 1930s German church. This is at the end of chapter 4 in Life Together:
Jesus made authority in the fellowship dependent upon brotherly service. . . . Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community. . . . One finds there [in the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3] nothing whatsoever with respect to worldly charm and the brilliant attributes of a spiritual personality. The [elder] is the simple, faithful man [ordinary!], sound in faith and life, who rightly discharges his duties to the Church. . .
The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren. . . . The question of [the church’s] trust . . . is determined by the faithfulness with which a man serves Jesus Christ, never by the extraordinary talents which he possesses. Pastoral authority can be attained only by the servant of Jesus who seeks no power of his own, who himself is a brother among brothers submitted to the authority of the Word. (84–85)
Such is Bonhoeffer’s call for ordinary elders: “a brother among brothers,” present in the life of the church and accessible. They invite, welcome, and receive input from the flock. They don’t presume to shepherd God’s flock in all the world through the Internet, but focus on the flock “that is among you” (verse 2) — those particular names and faces assigned to their charge — and they delight to be among those people, not removed or distant.
2. Not for Shameful Gain, but Eagerly
“Shameful gain” would be some benefit not commensurate with the work, or some gain that is against the gain of the flock, and the glory of Christ — whether money as the driving motivation, or power, or respect, or comfort, or the chance to perform, enjoying being on the platform. In terms of “eagerness,” the epistle to the Hebrews gives this important glimpse into the dynamic of Christian leadership as workers for the joy of the flock:
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)
Here is a beautiful, marriage-like vision of the complementary relationship between the church and its leaders. The leaders, for their part, labor (they work hard, as we’ve seen; it is costly work) for the advantage — the profit, the gain — of the church. And the church, for its part, wants its leaders to work not only hard but happily, without groaning, because the pastors’ joy in leading will lead to the church’s own benefit. The people want their leaders to labor with joy because they know their leaders are working for theirs.
“Pastors are glad workers for the gladness of their people in God.”
Christ gives leaders to his people for their joy. Pastors are glad workers for the gladness of their people in God.
For Your Advantage
How eager, then, might the people be to submit to such a leader? The prospect of submitting to a leader drastically changes when you know he isn’t pursuing his own private advantage but genuinely seeking yours: what is best for you, what will give you the deepest and most enduring joy — when he finds his joy in yours, rather than apart from or instead of yours.
The word “submission” has negative connotations today in many circles. But how might the charge to “submit” in Hebrews 13:17 and “be subject” in 1 Peter 5:5 change when we see it in the context of this vision of shepherding and oversight and pastoring as working for the joy of our people? There’s no charge to submit in verse 5 until verses 2–4 establish a context of “workers for your joy” who are willing, eager, and exemplary: they feed the flock, not themselves; they attend to the flock’s needs, not their own; they gain as the flock gains, not as the flock loses.
It’s amazing to consider what actions and initiatives and care are presupposed (and commanded) in the New Testament, from husbands and fathers and governors and pastor-elders, before the charge is given to submit:
husbands, love and be kind, not harsh (Colossians 3:18);
fathers, do not provoke your children to anger but joy (Ephesians 6:3);
civil governors, be God’s servants for society’s good, avenging wrongdoing (Romans 13:1; 1 Peter 2:13);
pastors, feed the flock through public teaching (1 Corinthians 14:34) and paying careful attention to (Acts 20:28) and keeping watch over (1 Timothy 4:16) the flock.Pastor-elders are to give of themselves, their time, their energy, their attention, to work for the joy of the flock. Therefore, church, submit to your leaders. In Hebrews 13:17, negatively, God will hold the pastors accountable, and positively, it will be to your advantage, church, to your benefit, to your joy, if you let them labor with joy, for your joy, and not with groaning.
When leaders in the church show ourselves to be workers for their joy, we walk in the steps of the great shepherd — the great worker for joy — the one who bore the greatest cost for others’ good, and not to the exclusion of his own joy. He found his joy in the joy of his Beloved. “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Or, as I just recently have been struck by in Isaiah 53:11, “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”
As workers for the church’s joy, we pastor-elders emphatically pursue gain — not shameful gain but the shameless gain that is our joy in the joy of the church, to the glory of Christ. Joy now, and joy in the coming shameless reward: “When the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4).
3. Not Under Compulsion, but Willingly
Churches want happy pastors. Not dutiful clergy. Not groaning ministers. The kind of pastors our people want are pastors who want to do the work, and labor with joy for their joy. They want pastors who serve “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have them” (1 Peter 5:2).
That is, God himself wants pastors who labor willingly, from the heart, not under compulsion. He wants us to aspire to the work (1 Timothy 3:1), and do it with joy (Hebrews 13:17). Not dutifully, or under obligation, but willingly, eagerly, and happily. And not just “as God would have you” because he’s requiring something of us that is different than his own character and actions. But “as God would have you” meaning “as God himself is” and does — literally “according to God” (Greek: kata theon).
It says something about our God that he would have it this way. He is the infinitely happy “blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11) who acts from the boundless, immeasurable bliss of the eternal Godhead. He wants pastors to work with joy because he works this way. He acts from fullness of joy. He is a God most glorified not by heartless duty, but by our eagerness and enjoyment, and he himself cares for his people willingly, eagerly, and happily.
Happy pastors and elders, not groaning pastors and elders, make for happy churches, and a glorified Savior. Pastors who enjoy the work, and work with joy, are a benefit and an advantage, to their people (Hebrews 13:17).
Two Ways Toward Joy
Let me close with just two practical manifestations of this vision for what it might mean for you, as a pastor-elder (or aspiring pastor-elder), to be a worker with your people for their joy in Christ. One private, early morning one. One corporate, late-night one (at least late-night for us, as we do our pastors’ meetings every other Thursday night after our kids’ bedtimes). There are countless implications of this vision, whether for discipling, or counseling, or your scheduling and calendar, or sermon prep, or husbanding and fathering, or sleep and exercise, on and on. But let me start with just two.
What does it look like for me to pursue my joy in the joy of our people (to the glory of God)?
Alone Each Morning
In the words of George Mueller, my “first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day” is “to have my soul happy in the Lord.” Don’t hear this as an obligation but an opportunity — not first and foremost a “have to” but a “get to.” To feed on God, get our souls happy in him, not with the accent on us but on him. He gives, we receive. He speaks, we listen. We come hungry, and he says I am the bread of life. We come thirsty, and he says, Ho, everyone who thirsts come to the waters. Mueller says, “The first thing to be concerned about [is] not how much I might serve the Lord [what I might do for others’ joy] . . . but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished.”
How did he pursue this? Mueller’s focus, in his words, was “the reading of the word of God and . . . meditation on it” — oh the joys of unhurried, even leisurely, meditation on the words of God himself — “that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, while meditating, my heart might be brought into experiential communion with the Lord.”
How did he go about approaching God’s word? He would meditate, he said, “searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of public ministry of the word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul.”
He asks, “Now what is the food for the inner man?” He answers “the word of God,” and adds, “here again, not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts” — in other words, meditation. He says at the end, “How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning.”
So apprenticing yourself to God’s own joy, through his word, feeding on him, enjoying him, letting him satisfy your soul, and warm your heart — not for sermon prep, but food for your own soul — is the well from which we draw in pastoring from joy, for their joy.
Together as Pastors
How often in our call to govern, to lead through prayer and collective wisdom and decision-making for the church, do we find two (or more) options lying before us? This is a good moment to check ourselves. What is our framework for the decisions of leadership? It can be easy to slip into a selfish mindset: what is easiest, what’s most convenient for those of us sitting around the table. Without saying it, or thinking it explicitly, how might our preferences and comforts shape this church? How might church life be more convenient for us? Rather than asking, Which path, so far as we can tell, will be best for our people’s true joy in Christ?
But beware: when you ask a question like this, and answer in light of it, you find that it’s often the path that is more costly to the pastors and elders. But this is the work to which we are called, as workers for their joy. If our team of pastors and elders trends toward the personal preferences and conveniences of the pastors and elders, then we are not loving our people well. We are not working with them for their joy. We are using them for ours.
But when we are “workers for their joy” — knowing that Christ is most glorified in his church, when his church is most satisfied in him — then, from joy, we set aside our own convenience and personal preferences and together we labor for the joy of our people in Jesus.
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Does Science Really Contradict Scripture? Eleven Principles for Apparent Tensions
ABSTRACT: Thoughtful Christians familiar with the claims of modern science recognize apparent disagreements between the Bible and scientific claims. Many of the biggest tensions, however, arise not from the findings of science but from the philosophical assumptions of non-Christian scientists. For the tensions that remain, Scripture offers principles for wisely navigating them in ways that honor God’s revelation. In the end, because God is consistent with himself, all apparent disagreements are just that: apparent. And until we find their resolution, God has told us all we need to know in order to trust him.
For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Vern Poythress, distinguished professor of New Testament, biblical interpretation, and systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, to offer principles for navigating apparent disagreements between Scripture and science.
Apparent disagreements between the Bible and scientific claims trouble some people, and understandably so. Three areas of apparent tension quickly come to mind.
What about evolution?
What about the days of creation?
What about miracles?How do we tackle these questions?
Question of Miracles
The third area of tension, about miracles, can serve as a useful place to start. Did God speak in an audible voice from the top of Mount Sinai, as described in Exodus 19–20? Did Jesus multiply the loaves and the fish to feed five thousand men (Matthew 14:13–21)? Did Jesus cast out an unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue at Capernaum (Mark 1:21–28)? Do evil spirits even exist? Did Jesus raise Jairus’s daughter from the dead (Matthew 9:18–26; Mark 5:21–43)? Did Jesus himself rise from the dead (Matthew 16:21; 28:1–10)?
Quite a few people in our day would say that “science has shown us” that miracles are impossible. It is true that some scientists would claim that miracles are impossible. But other scientists, especially scientists who are Christians, would say that miracles are possible and that the miracles described in the Bible actually happened.
The difference in viewpoint here is not due to the results of scientific investigation. It is due to differences in people’s view of God and the world — to differences in worldview, we might say. If you believe in a personal God who can do whatever he wishes, you also believe that he can work in an exceptional way any time he wants. In other words, he can work a miracle. On the other hand, if you do not believe in God at all, you probably expect that there are no exceptions. You think that the laws of the universe are just mechanical and impersonal.
So the deepest question is about the nature of the world. Are the roots of the world ultimately personal or impersonal? God is personal. He made the world with personal purposes. And every day he continues to govern the world with personal purposes, even down to every detail (Psalm 104:14; Proverbs 16:33; Matthew 10:29–30).
Regularities (‘Law’)
The regular processes that scientists study are processes controlled by God. The regularities exist only because God exists. “He makes his sun rise” (Matthew 5:45; see Genesis 8:22). He causes “the grass to grow for the livestock” (Psalm 104:14). Science is possible only because there are regularities. And the regularities are there because God is consistent with himself. He has a plan, and he is faithful day by day in carrying it out.
But because God is personal, there may also be exceptional cases, which are due to his personal purposes. For example, the resurrection of Christ is highly exceptional. People in the first century did not have the findings of modern science that we have, but they knew just as clearly as we do that people do not rise from the dead. In other words, they knew right away that the resurrection of Jesus was an exception to normal experience.
So how is such an event possible? If God is God, he can make exceptions. No one can say to him, “Oh, by the way, you are not allowed to do that!” And in the case of the resurrection of Christ, we can see some reasons why God did it. It was not an irrational, meaningless exception. No. Through the resurrection of Christ, God not only brought the body of Christ to resurrection life, but accomplished deliverance from death and damnation for all who belong to Christ (Romans 4:25; 1 Corinthians 15:45–49). The whole of it makes sense, provided that you believe in God.
Let us consider God’s rule over the world in greater detail. God governs the world by speaking. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). It is God who spoke and specified that plants reproduce “according to their kinds” (Genesis 1:11–12). It is God who rules the weather by speaking: “He sends out his word, and melts [the snow and ice]” (Psalm 147:18). When scientists seek to discover scientific laws, they are actually looking for the word of God that governs the processes they are studying. If they think they understand a specific regularity, they may call it a “law”: Newton’s laws of motion, Newton’s law of gravitation, Kirchhoff’s laws for electric circuits. These laws are human summaries of the actual law — namely, God’s word, his speech, which governs motion and gravity and electric circuits and everything else.
“Scientific investigation depends on God, day by day.”
It should be clear, then, that scientific investigation depends on God, day by day. It could never show the impossibility of miracles. Scientists discover what some of the regularities are. But they cannot tell God that he cannot act exceptionally.
Science Then and Now
The history of the rise of modern science confirms this principle. Many of the early scientists, like Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton, were Christian believers themselves, or were heavily influenced by a Christian worldview. It was the Christian worldview that gave them the incentive to study the world and look for regularities. Because they believed in one God, who was the source of all rationality, they knew that the world itself was governed rationally. There was hope for understanding it. This hopeful situation contrasts with what happens in polytheistic religions. If there are many gods and if they fight with each other, the world itself is semi-chaotic. It may seem to be hopeless to find in it a consistent order.
The early scientists also knew that man was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27). So there was hope that the human mind could be fundamentally in tune with the mind of God. Even though our minds are limited, there was hope that, with God’s help, we could begin to understand some of his ways in governing the world.
By contrast, in our day many people understand science as a discipline radically at odds with God. Scientific laws are thought to be an impersonal mechanism. It is this assumption about an impersonal origin, rather than the details of scientific experiments, that is the source of religious skepticism. In other words, when some people do work in science, they bring in an assumption about an impersonal origin, before they ever start. They bring that assumption into whatever science they study. Even Christians who engage in science may unconsciously absorb the assumption. It is inevitable, if they follow that assumption consistently, that they will not allow exceptions. They will deny the possibility of miracles.
This assumption of impersonalism helps to explain why there is so much conflict about evolution and the days of creation. The standard mainstream approach to evolution says that new plants and animals originate only by very gradual, unguided processes that go back to the first cell, and even before that (so-called “chemical evolution”). The framework of assumptions includes the assumption that God did not in a sudden way miraculously create any new species or any family of living things. People also hold this assumption when they come to the subject of the origin of humanity. Before ever looking at genetic information or fossil bones from apes, the mainstream scientist assumes, as a given, that humanity must have originated by gradual processes from earlier kinds of creatures. And the most likely predecessors are apes. (Even before the rise of Darwin’s theory, biologists who classified animals into larger groups saw that on anatomical grounds the natural larger group for human beings was the primates.)
Origin of the Universe
Similar influences from assumptions confront us when we look at scientific theories for the origin of the universe. The usual mainstream approach assumes from the beginning that there are no miracles, no discontinuities in the normal operation of physical causes. The reconstruction of the past history of the universe assumes that the past history operates in line with the same system of physical regularities that scientists can test today in the laboratory. It is an assumption. No one proves it. Indeed, no one can prove it, because we cannot literally transport ourselves into the past with a time machine. For all we know, God may have governed the universe differently in the past. God is a personal God, not a set of mechanical rules.
The key role of assumption becomes vividly evident if we consider briefly one of the theories that Christians have suggested, to show the possibility of harmony between the Bible and the current state of the universe. There are a number of such theories, and several of them have some merit. This particular theory, called the theory of “mature creation,” observes that God created Adam and Eve as mature (Genesis 2:7, 21–22). Neither of them was a helpless baby when God first created them. But if God created them mature, is it not possible that he created the entire universe mature? And could it not have been coherently mature, so that it coherently looked billions of years old? Let us suppose that Adam looked about 24 years old. So the universe could have looked 14 billion years old, at the end of the period of six days during which God created it and brought it to maturity.
Not everyone is fond of this theory. To some, it may feel like a trick. But it illustrates the fact that scientists do not actually know for sure how old the universe is. They cannot say to God, “You can’t do it that way.” God is God.
Difficulties with Mindless Evolution
Ironically, severe difficulties for scientific explanation arise not in a Christian approach, but in an atheistic approach. How? Most forms of modern atheism say that human beings arose by mindless evolution from random motions of atoms and molecules. According to these conceptions, we are a cosmic accident. Our origin is thoroughly impersonal. There is no personal plan from God. There is no special reason for expecting that human beings with their distinctly personal qualities would arise from the evolutionary goo. In the end, we are just blobs of goo. We just happen to have some peculiar and unaccountable abilities to be conscious and to think about truth.
“The theory of evolution fails to provide a basis for believing that it is true.”
But then can we trust our own minds? All that an atheistic theory of evolution requires is that we would be fit to survive. It cannot guarantee that our consciousness makes any difference (because survival is all about the proper firing of neurons, not consciousness). So there is no reason to believe that our minds are in contact with the truth. And if that is so, there is no reason to believe that the theory of evolution, which is a product of our minds, is in contact with the truth. The theory of evolution fails to provide a basis for believing that it is true.1
Guiding Principles for Dealing with Difficulties
Now, let us begin to list some of the guiding principles that can help us deal with apparent discrepancies between the Bible and science. In such a short space, of course, these principles are not a comprehensive treatment of such a large topic. For readers interested in learning more about the relationship between Scripture, science, and how God works in the world, I would recommend Reijer Hooykaas’s Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, John Piper’s Providence, and my own books Redeeming Science and Interpreting Eden.2
Principle 1
Our basic assumption: God rules the world.
We need as our basic assumption the truth that God created the world and that he rules it. God is our personal God, not a set of mechanical rules. God can act in exceptional ways (“miracles”) if he chooses. This assumption sets the stage for all the detailed study of the Bible and of the world.
Principle 2
God is consistent.
“There is no actual discrepancy between the Bible and the facts about the world.”
God is consistent with himself. Since he is consistent with himself, what he says in the Bible and what he does in ruling the world are consistent. There is no actual discrepancy between the Bible and the facts about the world. The discrepancies that come up are apparent. Because we are finite and God is infinite, we do not know everything. We cannot guarantee that, within one lifetime or many lifetimes on earth, we will be able to solve completely to our own satisfaction all the apparent discrepancies. There is hope that we might solve at least some of them, if not many of them, because the discrepancies are only apparent. But we cannot guarantee beforehand when a solution will arise.
We must be patient and trust God. He knows what he is doing, even when we do not. These are fundamental aspects of Christian living. Everyone in his individual life confronts events that seem inexplicable and frustrating and painful. The events may seem to be incompatible with God’s goodness and with what we expect him to do. (Think of Job.) The same kind of dissonance that happens in our personal life can also happen when we try to compare the claims in the Bible with the claims made by modern scientists.
Principle 3
The Bible is the word of God.
The Bible is what God says. God has put his word in writing, through human authors whom he raised up and directed. So what the Bible says is fully trustworthy. What the Bible says is true.
Whole books are devoted to showing that the Bible is the word of God.3 We cannot repeat all the arguments here. Let us mention only a few verses, in order to remember that the Bible makes this claim for itself. The most famous verse for showing that the Bible is the word of God is 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” Similarly, 2 Peter 1:21 says, “No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Jesus affirms the divine authority of the Old Testament in a number of places (Matthew 5:17–20; 19:4; John 10:35). These verses are the tip of the iceberg.
Principle 4
God gave human beings dominion, so scientific investigation is legitimate.
As we saw earlier, the people responsible for the early steps in the growth of modern science operated with assumptions in tune with a biblical worldview. The truths about God and about their being made in the image of God actually encouraged their scientific explorations. The same should be true today. Scientists work more robustly if they can come back to serving a personal God, rather than imagining that laws are impersonal mechanisms.
Principle 5
Scientists’ formulations are not the word of God, but human reflections concerning evidence in the world.
Scientific formulations are not parallel to the Bible. The Bible is infallible, because it is the word of God. It is composed of words and sentences that God crafted (through human authors) in order to express the truth and communicate it to us. We can trust what it says.
By contrast, all the work of modern scientists is human work. God gives them gifts. God gives them insights. God gives them energy for their labors. But it is all fallible. Scientists may say many true things, but because they are fallible, we cannot merely assume that what they say is true. It has to be tested. And of course, when sciences are operating in a healthy way, the first line of testing is through other scientists. Experiments may be repeated, under varying conditions. Alternative hypotheses may be tried out.
Sometimes a particular scientific theory settles in. Scientists have growing confidence in a single theory, which the majority see as the right explanation, fruitful in further research. Newton’s theory of gravity became one such theory. It seemed to many scientists that it was a kind of final answer about the working of gravity. Knowledgeable people felt that it was destined never to be superseded. But it turned out, even then, that it was not the final theory. It was eventually superseded by Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity and theory of general relativity.
Normally we have confidence in established theories, because they have borne the test of time. But even here, we should remind ourselves of several cautions.
Even well-established theories are fallible in principle.
Even well-established theories may have exceptions, because God is a personal God who can work miracles.
Even well-established theories, such as Newton’s theory of gravity, can be superseded in surprising ways by a later theory.
Even well-established theories can have deep difficulties and call for suspicion, if they rely on hidden assumptions that are false. For Darwinism, one such assumption is that biological development is unguided (purposeless).
Theories about the past require assumptions about the continuities of lawful regularities in the past. They are intrinsically on a less firm basis than theories that can be tested in the present (such as Newton’s theory of gravity, or Kirchhoff’s laws for electrical circuits).We must therefore distinguish two kinds of scientific investigation. Historical science tries to reconstruct the past. It includes theories about the origins of kinds of plants and animals; theories about the origins of the geologic strata; theories about the origin of the moon, the planets, the comets, and the asteroids; and theories about the origins of galaxies. Nomothetic science studies the regularities of processes that are currently taking place. Nomothetic science is more firmly established, because it rests on repeatable experiments. Historical science has to deal with one-of-a-kind events in the past. Some of these events may have been miraculous. Nomothetic science avoids the difficulties of the miraculous by relying on repetition. A single anomalous event would eventually be excluded from a formulation that describes regularities.
Principle 6
Though the Bible is infallible, all later human interpretations of the Bible are fallible.
We must distinguish what the Bible says from what we or other human interpreters think it says or implies. The basic teachings of the Bible concerning salvation are clear. But not all the details of its affirmations are equally clear. The Westminster Confession of Faith gives a balanced summary concerning the clarity of the Bible:
All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. (1.7)
Because not everything is equally clear, and because even the parts that are clear can be twisted in people’s minds because of sin, all merely human interpretations are fallible.
Principle 7
Apparent discrepancies between the Bible and science are discrepancies between fallible human interpretations of the Bible and fallible scientific pronouncements, based on fallible interpretations of evidence from the world.
The source of discrepancies lies in human fallibility, which extends both to interpretations of the Bible and to everything in modern sciences. There is no discrepancy in God himself. There is no discrepancy between what the Bible actually affirms and what is true concerning the world.
Principle 8
An apparent discrepancy needs further investigation.
When we find an apparent discrepancy, we do not immediately know whether it is due to a mistake in biblical interpretation, a mistake in scientific reasoning, or both. We should continue to trust that God is true, and wait patiently while we try to find the sources of mistakes.
Principle 9
The Bible has a practical priority, because of its design by God.
God designed the Bible to function as our guide in life (Psalm 19:7–11; 119:105). It is wisely tailored to our need for guidance and the need for a comprehensive remedy for sin. Moreover, it is completely true. It is a verbal expression, unlike the nonverbal evidence found in the created world. We should trust what it says. But we should also beware of trying to force it to provide answers about technical scientific details, which lie beyond what it actually says.
Principle 10
When there is an apparent discrepancy, we should see whether there are competing explanations from scientists or from Bible interpreters.
Scientific opinion is often divided. There is often one or even several minority opinions, as well as a majority opinion. Majority opinion tends to get amplified by social pressure and in the popular press.
People who are not scientists themselves may feel that they are not competent to evaluate the claims of specialists. But frequently, scientists make claims far outside of their specialty, and in that kind of case they have no special competence beyond anyone else. Even when they make claims within their specialty, there may be competing viewpoints and competing claims that they do not want to mention. We do well to be aware that the actual work of science has a social component, and that healthy science includes healthy disagreements, which sometimes extend even into the middle of major theories. (There are to this day competing interpretations of the meaning of quantum mechanics.)
If an ordinary person wants to be well-informed about a particular special issue, he should be careful not merely to do his reading within a single circle of opinion, even if it is a Christian circle (other Christians may disagree).
Principle 11
The Bible gives us sufficient instruction for the next practical step in obeying God, even when we have many unanswered questions about the apparent discrepancies.
God is faithful, and he understands the limitations of our knowledge. He has given us enough to know him, through Jesus Christ, and to walk in his way.