http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15595258/does-god-or-satan-send-affliction
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Habits of Grit: Athletics, Grace, and the Christian Work Ethic
Not many of us are farmers. Not anymore. And relatively few of us have served as soldiers in combat. But perhaps some of us have tried our hands at competitive athletics — the kind you train for, and not just show up to play.
You may not have been aware of it at the time, but if you have been a soldier, an athlete, or a farmer, you have been challenged, like increasingly few modern people, to learn how to really work. That is, you were presented with some objective, concrete challenge — train for battle, till the field, practice for gameday — and you either put in the required effort to be successful on the field, or you grew weary, cut corners, and soon gave up. You either demonstrated you didn’t have it in you to keep straining forward, against the obstacles, to persevere and achieve the goal; or you found it, doubtless with help from coaches or teammates.
However firsthand your experience as a soldier, athlete, or farmer, Scripture stands ready to fill in, supplement, recast, or override our personal experiences (or lack thereof) and teach us a Christian work ethic — for our own joy, the good of others, and the glory of Christ. And one of the classic places to anchor in Scripture to ponder our work ethic mentions the very concrete and objective occupations of soldiering, athletics, and farming.
Like the Apostle
What Paul has in view in 2 Timothy 2:1–7 is gospel advance through disciple-making. The gospel he has entrusted to his disciple, he now charges Timothy to “entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). That’s four generations in a blink: Paul to Timothy to “faithful men” to “others also” — and implied is that the “others also” will disciple still others also.
But simple as the plan for gospel multiplication may sound, the work will not be easy. It will be opposed by the world, the flesh, and the devil, almost constantly, and often at the most inconvenient times. Paul himself writes from prison. Timothy can read the writing on the wall: if such efforts dedicated to gospel advance landed Paul in jail, how long until it catches up with Timothy? But rather than shy away from the task, Paul calls his protégé to “share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” Then verses 4–6:
No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.
Consider first, and together, the requirements of soldiers and farmers; then we’ll turn at greater length to athletics.
Like Soldiers and Farmers
Even if soldiering and farming are foreign to you, as they are to me, the broad nature of the work is plain enough.
Soldiers are men “under authority” (Matthew 8:9; Luke 7:8), who do not serve alone but alongside other soldiers (in bands or battalions). A single trained champion with a weapon may be a formidable foe — until met by hundreds or thousands trained to act as one. The power in soldiering comes from this collective force: men trained together, to act together, under the authority and clear direction of an able commander. And to do so — to both get battle-ready and stay ready — soldiers must overcome the temptation of getting “entangled in civilian pursuits.”
The soldier is one who has been called out of normal civilian life, and received into a new company, to train and stand ready to act to defend civilians. And good soldiers, Paul says, aim “to please the one who enlisted” them. They deny themselves the immediate appeals and comforts of civilian life to endure in their calling and, in the end, enjoy greater, more enduring satisfaction than abandoning their mission for trivialities.
“Maturity comes through training, not through coasting or indulging desires for comfort.”
Similarly, though distinctly, farming requires the hard work of both foresight and physical labor. Farmers plan, till and sow, weed, wait with patience for rain and growth, and in the end, engage in the arduous labor of harvesting. And in doing so, the farmer holds in his hands, and enjoys, the reward, as he ought: “the first share of the crops.” Farmers have much to teach us, not only about hard work, and anticipating rewards, but also patience: “See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient” (James 5:7–8).
Like Athletes
Paul in particular may have more to teach us through athletics than we first expect. In addition to 2 Timothy 2:5, he takes up athletic imagery in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27; Philippians 3:13–14; 1 Timothy 4:7–8; and 2 Timothy 4:7. Hebrews also (not written by Paul but someone in his circle like Luke) draws on athletic imagery (Hebrews 5:13–14; 12:1–2, 11–13). The lesson in 2 Timothy 2 is consistent with the portrait of athletics elsewhere in Paul’s letters and in Hebrews.
First, maturity comes through training, not through coasting or indulging desires for immediate comfort. That is, even before the competition, even before the discomfort of enduring on race day, is the obstacle of training. Effective training requires discomfort (Hebrews 12:11). The body is not conditioned by leisure but by stress and strain, and especially through persisting in discomfort. Both body and mind are “trained by constant practice” (Hebrews 5:14), leading to maturity. “Those of us who are mature,” Paul writes, “straining forward to what lies ahead . . . press on toward the goal for the prize” (Philippians 3:13–15). All training, whether bodily or spiritual, requires some measure of toil and striving (1 Timothy 4:7–10).
Second, then, in the competition itself, athletes press on through weariness, frustration, discouragement, and pain. Learning to press through and endure discomfort in training readies the body, and will, to press on through resistance on race day. Verse 5 highlights a specific temptation to overcome: cutting corners. “An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.” Whether in training or competition, the successful athlete knows that his subjective desires do not rule over the objective rules of the contest. He is not bigger than the race or the game. He cannot train or compete as he pleases, according to his momentary wishes, but must exercise self-control. This is Paul’s own testimony in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Third, and most significantly, across the New Testament passages, the key to enduring discomfort is looking to the reward. Whether in training or in the event itself, Paul and Hebrews emphasize the reward, the crown, the prize — a vital element that makes the lesson for work ethic particularly Christian. Paul explicitly commends the prize: “So run that you may obtain it” (1 Corinthians 9:24). The imperishable crown that awaits is not icing on the cake but the reward to be kept in mind, and remembered, to keep us going when met with obstacles and resistance. Paul himself, as he comes to the end of his “race,” is not ashamed (but intentional) to draw attention to the reward, which, through anticipation, has fueled his perseverance:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7–8)
But not only Paul. Where did he learn it? No one teaches us to look to the reward like Jesus, in his teaching, his example, and more.
Like Jesus
In his teaching, Jesus again and again draws our attention to the reward that is “from your Father” and “great in heaven.” In Matthew 5–6 alone, he explicitly mentions the reward some nine times (and then does so again in 10:41–42; see also Mark 9:41 and Luke 6:23, 35). Perhaps it was this plain, almost hedonistic thread that prompted Paul to capture an aspect of Christ’s teaching as “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
Yet every bit as clear as Jesus’s teaching is the power of his example. The climactic eleventh chapter of Hebrews turns our attention, several times, to the coming reward (10:35; 11:6, 26) and then presents Christ himself as the paradigm of pressing on, and persisting through pain, by looking to the reward:
Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)
“Christ’s perfect grit comes first, which then makes our imperfect but growing effort possible.”
When we look to Jesus, we look to one who himself endured the greatest of pain and shame — the cross — by looking to his reward: for the joy that was set before him, that is, being seated at his Father’s right hand. He finished his course, looking to the reward. And so too, in like fashion, and looking to him, Hebrews would have us run our race with endurance, not grow weary or fainthearted, but lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees (Hebrews 12:1, 3, 12).
Like a Christian
But Jesus not only taught us to look to the reward, and then practiced what he taught. In finishing his course, and achieving the victory of the cross, he secured us, who have faith in him, as his own. Mark this: we do not earn him with our holy grit, but he earned us with his. We press on, as Paul did, “because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). Don’t reverse the order. Slavery or freedom hangs on the sequence. Christ’s perfect grit comes first, which then makes our imperfect but growing effort possible. Or, you might say, Christ’s full acceptance comes first; then he goes to work on our work ethic.
So, a common thread links the work ethic of soldiers, athletes, farmers, Christ himself, and Christians alike: we recognize and own the particulars of our calling; we exercise self-control to overcome the immediate desires of the flesh; we endure in discomfort, with God’s help, for the reward, the greater joy promised at the end, which streams into the present to give meaning and strength to keep straining and striving.
And what makes it particularly Christian, and not simply human, is this: we do all our pressing on, from fullness and security of soul, not emptiness and insecurity, knowing that Christ Jesus has made me his own.
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Pray Your Way into Thanksgiving
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast on this holiday week. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving for us here in the United States and in Canada. We like to take these moments to take up the theme of thanksgiving in the apostle Paul’s letters, which is a major theme for him. Last Thanksgiving, I mentioned that the apostle Paul mentions “thanks” about fifty times in his epistles. This leads to one of my favorite quotes, a claim by New Testament scholar David Pao, who once wrote (quoting Paul Schubert), “The apostle Paul mentions the subject of thanksgiving more frequently per page than any other Hellenistic author, pagan or Christian” (Thanksgiving, 15).
Thanksgiving was always on Paul’s lips. And it was on his lips when he was talking about prayer and anxiety. In Philippians 4:6, Paul writes this: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Pray your way past anxiety. And pray your way into thanksgiving. Here’s Pastor John to explain.
Let’s go to Philippians 4:6–7. It’s very famous, very precious, and more embedded in the big picture of this letter than you may have thought. I want to draw out how Philippians 4:6–7 relates to the big things Paul is trying to do in this letter.
So now, finally, for the first time, he exhorts them to pray. I think that’s been implicit so far, but now it’s explicit. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything . . .” (Philippians 4:6). That’s a big word. Do you pray about everything? Everything? When Paul says, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), that probably is connected to “pray about everything.” Do you walk in a spirit of communion with God that — sometimes consciously, sometimes less so — is constantly offering up thanks, but especially sending up need? “I need help in this conversation. I can barely understand that person’s accent, and my hearing is bad. I need help right now at the dining-room table.” Do you live like that?
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)
Broad and Narrow Prayer
In one sense, this command to pray is all-encompassing because of the words in everything. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything” pray. Do you see the connection there? Don’t be anxious in anything because in everything you’re praying for what you need in the anxious moment, and you’re trusting God because of his promise to be there and help — and so, anxiety lifts. That’s the way prayer is supposed to work to take away anxiety.
In another sense, it’s not broad and all-encompassing. It’s very narrow and very focused because instead of saying the hundred things that God does in answer to prayer, he simply focuses on two things, which are really two sides of the same coin. “Do not be anxious” is one result of prayer. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). So the first thing that happens when you pray about everything is that anxiety is lifted. “Cast all your anxieties on me because I care for you.” That’s Peter’s way of saying it (1 Peter 5:7).
“Negatively, aim by prayer to be done with anxiety. And positively, aim by prayer to enjoy constant peace.”
And the second thing is that the “peace of God” — which is the opposite of anxiety, right? — that passes all understanding comes in and takes over and protects, guards, your hearts and minds. So negatively, aim by prayer to be done with anxiety. And positively, aim by prayer, in everything, to enjoy constant peace.
Walk through the world of trouble — ministry troubles, family troubles, European troubles, refugee troubles, political troubles, financial troubles — in the protection of the peace of God that cannot be accounted for by human reason. It cannot. It goes beyond, it surpasses what human reasoning can do. When Paul is saying, “Enjoy peace through prayer,” if somebody says, “Yeah, but how could you have peace when that’s happening?” well, that word how has no answer humanly. That’s why it says, “beyond human understanding.” Human understanding will not be able to come up with an answer to how you enjoy peace in this circumstance. It is suprarational. Reasoning doesn’t make the peace happen; God makes the peace happen, and he does it in answer to prayer. It’s a wonderful experience.
Key to Philippians
Now let’s ask this: How do those two halves of verse 6 and 7 — get rid of anxiety by prayer; enjoy peace with God by prayer — how do those two results of praying in everything relate to the big picture of Philippians, which we’ve been seeing?
“Living or dying, make Christ look great. That’s the reason you’re on the planet.”
The first day, I argued from Philippians 1:20–21: “My eager expectation and hope [is] that I might not at all be ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live as Christ, and to die is gain.” That’s the big goal of this letter: Christ magnified in your bodily existence. Living or dying, make him look great. That’s the reason you’re on the planet. That’s the reason your family exists, your ministry exists. Make Christ look magnificent because that’s what he is. That’s what this big picture is in Philippians.
And we saw that Paul gets very specific. Another way of describing “make Christ look great” is “lead lives worthy of the gospel.” That’s Philippians 1:27–28. Live a life that is fearless before the adversary and united, arm in arm, in love with other believers. Unity in love and fearlessness, he says, become a sign to the world of “their destruction” and of “your salvation” (Philippians 1:28).
In other words, when you are fearless before your adversary, and you are full of love, driven by humility, counting others more significant than yourself, putting others’ interests before your own — when that’s the source of the loving unity and the fearlessness, it’s a sign. It’s a sign to the world that Christ is all-satisfying to these people. Christ will meet every need that they have. Christ is all they need. “I want to know about this because I don’t get it.” That’s the big picture.
How does that relate to the praying of Philippians 4:6? The answer is that “do not be anxious about anything” is the fearlessness of Philippians 1:27–28. The fearlessness before the adversary in Philippians 1:28 is another word for “don’t be anxious.” When you stand before the authorities in the university or the authorities in the capitol, when you stand before people who don’t like your position on this or that, don’t be afraid. Or to use the words of Philippians 4:6, “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, let him know what you need.” All of which goes to say, prayer is the key to this book.
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Only Jesus Knows the Full Force of Temptation
Audio Transcript
Jesus was sinless. “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth,” says Peter (1 Peter 2:22). And he remains sinless today. “In him there is no sin,” says John (1 John 3:5). This glorious truth forms the basis of his substitutionary atoning work for sinners. But his sinlessness also forms the basis of why he is qualified to sympathize with us as sinners. And on that point comes a controversy. If Jesus is sinless, doesn’t that mean he never really tasted the power of temptation? How can a perfect man who never sinned — a man who never struggled to get free from a sin habit — how can he truly feel the power of temptation?
This line of thinking is wrong. It’s wrong because you’re not struggling with sin if you’re continually giving in to sin. In other words, the pressure of temptation is felt most strongly by those who most earnestly resist giving in to the sin. And if that point sounds familiar, it should. We covered that theme several times on the podcast already, particularly in episodes on lust like APJ episodes 291, 804, and 963. The pressure of temptation is felt most strongly by those who most earnestly resist giving in to the sin. Pastor John explains in this clip, from a 1996 sermon.
I apologize for about a minute of static in the middle of it. But the clip is too good, and the point too important, not to share here on the podcast. Here’s Pastor John, 25 years ago, preaching on Hebrews 4:15, a text that tells us our high priest can sympathize with our weakness, because he never sinned.
Now, look at verse 15. In spite of the fact that verse 14 presents a magnificent and lofty great high priest, verse 15 describes him in another way.
We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Notice three things: (1) he was tempted like you are; (2) he never gave into temptation, never sinned; and (3) he is very sympathetic with us in our weaknesses.
Temptation’s Full Force
Fifty years ago, C.S. Lewis was pondering this text, and he heard an objection raised by a scoffer, and the objection went like this: “If Jesus never sinned, he can’t know what real temptation is like. He can’t sympathize, he can’t empathize with me because he’s never tasted the full force of temptation.” And this is what C.S. Lewis wrote in response:
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. . . . A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.
And I might add: or a lifetime later — like hanging in there with a tough marriage and resisting the temptation to bail out, or hanging in there against sexual temptation and resisting the temptation, not just five minutes or one hour, but year in and year out, decade in and decade out, until Jesus comes or calls. Talk about knowing the force and power of temptation — only those who do that know the full force. Lewis continues,
That is why bad people in one sense know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. . . . Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist. (Mere Christianity, 142)
“Jesus was ‘tempted as we are, yet without sin,’ and therefore he knows the full force of what it is to be tempted.”
Don’t you ever think that because you have lived a life of sin that you know more about temptation than the godly person who has walked that razor’s edge of the straight and narrow, gritting his teeth in the power of the Holy Spirit and saying, “No, no, no, no, no,” and fighting his way through every day with righteousness, and laying his head down, and feeling the force of evil upon him day after day after day, and triumphing over it in God. Don’t you ever think that you know more of evil than that person, or that you know more of evil than Jesus Christ. Jesus was “tempted as we are, yet without sin,” and therefore he knows the full force of what it is to be tempted.
In Every Way as We Are
Let me illustrate for you.
Jesus was tempted to lie to save his life. Would you not, surrounded by soldiers, spears, a cross in the corner, nails on the floor, hammers over there, having seen what it was like when they asked you, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the living God?” be tempted to lie?
He was tempted to steal to help his mother when his father died, I do not doubt. There were at least five kids in that family. Widows don’t make it easy. Joseph disappears off the scene early. Jesus was tempted to steal. Jesus was tempted to covet all those things, those nice things that Zacchaeus had. Even after he gave away half his goods, he was a rich man, and Jesus walked out owning nothing. Do you think he was not tempted to covet a home for himself, a place to lay his head down every night?
He was tempted to dishonor his parents when they were tough on him and told him what was right and wrong and set limits, perhaps more than the other boys in Nazareth. He was tempted to take revenge when he was wrongly accused. So often they said lies about him. And with one word, he could have made fools out of them.
He was tempted to lust when Mary knelt down, leaned over, and wiped his feet with her hair. He was tempted to murmur at God’s sovereignty when his friend and colleague and brother, John the Baptist, was beheaded at the whim of a dancing girl. “Where are you, God?” He was tempted to gloat over his accusers when they couldn’t answer his questions.
He knew the battle, folks, and he triumphed over that monster every day, all day, for thirty-three years. And when it crescendoed at the end, he never ever gave in.
Who Will Help the Helpless?
Now, let me close by pointing you to verse 16. The conclusion that we draw from all of this — that we have a great high priest, that he is the Son of God, that he has passed through the heavens with God, that he is sympathetic with us — the conclusion to draw is that we can draw near to God for grace.
Let me pose a problem, as we close, that has kept many people away from Jesus. And I want to make sure nobody falls for this, because there are so many people — I’ve talked to so many. I’ve heard of so many who get to the crisis point of whether to embrace Christ as their high priest, their Savior, their Lord, their King, their guide, their friend, and they push it away.
Here’s why many of them do: everybody in this room knows that you need help.
We need help with our bodies.
We need help with our minds.
We need help with our jobs.
We need help with our spouses.
We need help with our kids.
We need help with our finances.
We need help with our choices.Everybody knows we need help. And there’s a second thing everybody in this room knows in your most honest moments: you don’t deserve help. John Piper doesn’t deserve any help from anybody. Why? I’m a sinner. I deserve one thing: judgment. I don’t deserve help. So here I am. I need help to live my life and cope with eternity, and I don’t deserve help.
Grace for the Least Deserving
Now, what are you going to do? This is the trap that keeps many people away from Christ. You’ve got maybe three or four options.
You can deny it all and say, “I’ll be a superman or superwoman and rise above my need for help.” And that might last a year, a decade, and then you’d break.
Or you could say, “I can’t deny it all, but I can drown it all,” and you throw your life into a pool of sensual pleasure.” That’s a possibility.
The third option is very common. It’s looking here: “I need help with my life. My life doesn’t work. I’m not in control. I especially can’t handle my sin and my eternity.” And over here: “I don’t deserve help. Nobody owes me anything, because I’m a sinner. I have wrecked things so many times, and my attitude stinks, and I don’t love God the way I should.” Paralysis and hopelessness. And when you present the gospel to a person like that, if they don’t have ears to hear, they just say, “There’s no way. There’s no hope for me.”
But now there’s a fourth option. And that’s what the Bible is about, that’s what the history of Israel is about, that’s what this text is about. And the option is this: There is a high priest who is the Son of God, who takes the blood of his own death into the presence of God. And he enables us to say, “Yes, I need help — and yes, I don’t deserve it. But no, I will not be paralyzed, because there’s a mediator, and Jesus came to give the undeserving help.”“The throne of grace is God meeting the need of undeserving people.”
What do you call that? The throne of grace. The throne of grace is God meeting the need of undeserving people. You’ve got to hear that now. I want you to take that out of here in about one minute. Grace comes into your life when you are paralyzed with the sense that you need help and you don’t deserve help, and therefore, you feel hopeless, and you’re either going to superman it out or drown it out or be paralyzed with depression.
And grace comes in and says, “Yes, you’ve analyzed that rightly: you need help. Yes, you’ve analyzed that rightly: you don’t deserve a thing from God. But no, you don’t need to be a superman. No, you don’t need to drown it. And no, you don’t need to be paralyzed. The fourth option is this: “I paid for that sin, and while you don’t deserve any help, God will give you help if you come through a high priest.”