Audio Transcript

We end the week with a question from Isaac, who listens to us in his hometown of Nairobi, Kenya: “Pastor John, thank you for your encouragements in APJ 1611, “How Does Chronic Pain Glorify God?” I resonate with this episode deeply, and I carry those promises for myself.

“I have a question concerning the story, or parable, of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31 — specifically about Lazarus. Please help me make at least some sense of his life. He lived all of it poor. He died poor. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I carry neurological, physical, and mental disabilities, and have for many years as an invalid, unable to create any life for myself. I’m now thirty. I feel I should have become a productive, self-reliant man by now. I’m not, and may never be. But we also don’t see a definite purpose or self-will or self-drive in Lazarus’s life either. I also lack those very same things. How would you motivate a disabled man — disabled nearly to the degree of Lazarus — to not waste his life as his physical life wastes away?”

Well, of course, this is a dangerous thing for me to do — to venture to give counsel to someone whose condition I know so little about, especially when he says, “I carry neurological, physical, and mental disabilities.” So, please understand, Isaac, that what I say here is tentative as far as its specific applications to you go, even though I do want to stand by the biblical things I’m going to say. So, a warning, and I want to defer to you to know yourself.

Accountable According to Capacity

First, I would remind you of the parable of the talents, in Matthew 25:14–15. “It will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants” — and he represents Christ. “To one he gave five talents” — now you know that a talent is an amount of money in those days, not an ability to do something, but I think it does represent any kind of resource that we have as a gift from God that he expects us to use for his honor. “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one” (Matthew 25:15). And when came back, he called them to account to see whether they had wasted their lives and his resources.

“God will call you to account in accord with what he’s made you capable of.”

Now, two things seem relevant from this parable for your situation, Isaac. One is that God clearly recognizes that different disciples have different capacities. Five, two, one — that’s a great difference. He doesn’t expect that the person with fewer resources will produce the same amount as the one with the greater resources. He says, “Well done” to the man who turns five into ten, and he says the same “Well done” to the man who turns two into four. So, you should infer from this that God will call you to account, not to be as productive as someone with a different set of gifts and limitations, but simply in accord with what he’s made you capable of.

Hard to Satisfy, Easy to Please

The second thing that this parable says to your situation is that the third man who basically did nothing with his single talent was not scolded because he didn’t turn one into two. He was scolded because he didn’t even put it in the bank. In other words, it sounds like the master is saying, “Look, you say I’m a hard man — hard to please. I’m not the hard taskmaster you think. All you had to do was put it in the bank and get interest for it, and then tell me that I had it with my interest and why you put it in the bank.”

He would’ve been commended, I think, for that. I think C.S. Lewis is right when he said that God is hard to satisfy but easy to please. So don’t feel helpless that you are going to be judged by a standard beyond what God has equipped you to do.

Grace in Weakness

The next thing I would point out in Scripture is that Paul was given a thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10. And the point of giving him a thorn in the flesh was to weaken him. You might say that he gave him a disability. He pleaded with Christ to take it away, and Christ said, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

“God is not mainly looking for powerful people who can lend him their strengths. God needs nobody’s strength.”

Now that is an amazing statement. God is not mainly looking for powerful people who can lend him their strengths. God needs nobody’s strength. He gives and he takes according to his will. All strength is from him, through him, and to him. What he’s looking for is trust and a deep contentment in his fellowship in the situation that he gives us, because that will make him look more precious in our lives than any health, or any wealth, or anything else.

That’s what he’s after: “Make my power, my sufficiency, look great. If I have to make you weak in order to make me look strong, I will.” So, don’t measure the usefulness of your life by productive capacities. God has given you what he has given you in order that in your weakness you might rely upon his strength, and in that way magnify his worth.

Strength for Every Good Work

Then I would mention, Isaac, 2 Corinthians 9:8: “God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you [Isaac] may abound in every good work.” Now, what I take away from this verse is that every good work that God expects me or you to do, he will give us grace to do it. That’s what he says.

For some, that will be a lot of productive activity. For others it will be less — far less. And the older and the weaker we get, the less productive we are going to be. Some are assigned to be weak all their lives, but what this verse implies is that you and I should wake up in the morning and ask God to grant us the grace, the promised grace, to do just those good works that he calls us to do. Now that may be a smile directed to a passerby, or a quiet freedom from murmuring in the midst of misery, or a healthy performance of some technical task. God decides what good works we are assigned to do, and he promises to give grace to do them.

Learning from Lazarus?

The last thing I would say is a comment on Lazarus and the rich man. This is not a parable about the character of Lazarus. We know virtually nothing about his state of mind or heart. He’s not held up as a person of faith, though we can infer that he was a person of faith in God, in Jesus, because he goes to heaven while the rich man goes to Hades.

But Jesus never mentions his faith. We do not know how resourceful Lazarus was. Be careful. You say he didn’t have any resourcefulness. Well, I don’t know that. It says in Luke 16:20 that he was laid at the rich man’s gate. So someone is carrying him from where he lives, maybe out in shantytown. Someone’s carrying him and putting him down at a spot where there might be some hope of crumbs.

Now, did Lazarus arrange for that? Did he use the little tiny bit of resourcefulness that he had to arrange each day to be put in the place where there might be some little bit of food for him from the rich man’s table? We don’t know. It’s all speculation. So don’t use Lazarus as a model either way. He may have been a great model of resourcefulness.

I have seen great resourcefulness in mentally ill people in my neighborhood who make a living and live in their car. No matter how I try to help them, they want to live in their car because they have proved their resourcefulness to make it by a certain kind of panhandling, a certain check from the government, and a certain use of a dinged-up old truck. I’ve sent them to every conceivable manner of helping institution, and they just want to prove their own resourcefulness. In other words, it’s just not simple to know when you look at a poor person what measure of resourcefulness they may be exercising.

Limitations are No Mistake

So, Isaac, the sum of the matter is that God knows your neurological, physical, and mental limitations. You are not a mistake. There is a reason for your existence as you are. Join the Christians around you by seeking God’s wisdom for what that reason is — your reason for being. Then, as much as lies within you, by grace give yourself to that.

And I wonder, Isaac, if you are aware of the great poet from the 1600s named John Milton. He wrote the most famous poem in the English language, probably: Paradise Lost. And in the midst of his amazing, productive life, he went blind, and he felt that God had taken away from him the one gift that he had to be useful. But eventually he wrote a sonnet about his loss, and he called it “On His Blindness.” I want to close by just reading it to you because of how encouraging it’s been to me over the years and to others who feel their limits and their fading powers.

When I consider how my light is spent,Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide;“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, “God doth not needEither man’s work or his own gifts; who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs kingly: thousands at his bidding speedAnd post o’er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait.”

If you could articulate what you want to see in the world, what would you say? In other words, what is your vision? Before we answer, perhaps we should ask a preliminary question: What is Jesus’s vision? What does he want to see in this world?

When Jesus began his earthly ministry, he preached, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He taught his disciples to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). And he told his disciples, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). What does Jesus see? He sees the coming of the kingdom of God. His vision is that the gospel will spread throughout the world, the church will grow, Satan’s kingdom will be destroyed, and his own reign will extend to the ends of the earth. For those who have been radically changed by Jesus and the good news of his kingdom, shouldn’t Jesus’s vision be ours as well?

If our vision is what we want to see, what is our mission? What we are called to do? Jesus our King gives us our mission: “Go . . . and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). Do you see how this mission is tied to our vision? The more we make disciples among the nations, the more we will see the reign of Christ extend to the ends of the earth as people from every tribe, tongue, and nation bow the knee to King Jesus and live out his kingdom ethics.

How Crisis Fuels Missions

Maybe you’re thinking, “This is a crazy time to think about missions! We have been navigating a global COVID-19 pandemic, there is a war in Ukraine, and the world seems more divided than ever. What in the world is going on?” This is precisely the question to address. Put in a different way, What is God doing in his world today? Let’s focus specifically on answering this question: How is God using all the effects of COVID-19 to accomplish his purposes in the world?

Let’s remind ourselves that God is not surprised by these world events. In fact, as we look back on the history of modern missions, we see that he has launched many missions movements following major crises. The 1980s AIDS epidemic in Africa led to many missionaries going to Africa. The fall of communism in the late eighties and early nineties brought many missionaries to Germany and Eastern Europe. The September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States sparked a great interest in reaching Muslims. The Arab Spring uprisings in the early 2010s and the subsequent refugee crisis drew more missionaries to the Middle East and Europe to reach those displaced by war.

God does not waste anything. And he seems to use the brokenness and darkness of this world, in particular, to shine the gospel of Jesus Christ most brightly.

Post-Pandemic Opportunities

What might gospel advance look like in this post-pandemic era? What are the greatest needs?

Though we all have been affected by COVID-19, the poor and destitute have suffered the most. For example, severe lockdowns have greatly affected day laborers. If they stay at home, they can’t earn money to provide food for their families; if they go to work, they are the most susceptible to getting the virus. The consequences of getting sick are grave for those who don’t have the means for medical care or who are the sole providers for their families. Many of these families are still recovering from their losses.

“There is a large overlap between the world’s poor and those who are unreached and unengaged by the gospel.”

At a macro level, COVID-19 as well as the war in Ukraine have increased global economic inequality. Importantly, there is a large overlap between the world’s poor and those who are unreached and unengaged by the gospel. This has created the opportunity for the church, especially in the developed world, to step in and demonstrate the love of God through acts of mercy and generosity, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom in word and deed.

For many others, these past years under a global pandemic have led to deeper existential questions about life, meaning, and purpose. Being confronted with our mortality, dissatisfaction with work, disillusionment with our governments, feelings of loneliness, and the need for relationships all have contributed to a spiritual hunger. COVID-19 has not been good for the overall physical, mental, and spiritual health of the world. But in this context, we are seeing greater openness to the gospel of Jesus Christ as it provides the answers to life’s most basic questions.

No Substitute for Missionaries

What about our missionaries? Like the rest of us, many missionaries are tired, stressed, lonely, and feeling isolated. Many have taken an early retirement. This has highlighted the need for more robust, accessible member care and counseling. Post-pandemic missions will be at its best when missionaries have support systems in place to care for them as they care for others.

Some may be wondering, “Why are we still sending missionaries? Can’t we just use Zoom and other electronic media to get the word out as we have been doing these past two years?” While we are grateful for technology that enables us to have virtual gatherings, worship services, and teaching opportunities, there simply is no substitute for face-to-face discipleship. Why? Because discipleship is more than transferring information. It is relational. It happens when you eat together, laugh together, and cry together in formal and informal settings. There simply is no substitute for being present.

We see this in the apostle Paul’s letters, where he expresses eager desire to see his brothers and sisters face-to-face (Romans 1:11–12; 1 Thessalonians 2:17–18). The apostle John even writes to the church, “I had much to write you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face” (3 John 13–14). Discipleship is more than imparting information.

Greatest Need for Missions

So then, what is the greatest need in seeing the gospel advance globally? The greatest need is a new generation of missionaries who will go and make disciples among the nations. Our Lord Jesus saw the crowds and had compassion for them “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). It was in this context that he said, “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” (Matthew 9:37–38).

What is the greatest need to reaching more sooner? Laborers for the harvest field.

“Could it be that COVID-19 is God’s means for preparing an army of laborers for his harvest field?”

Early in the pandemic, all the rules changed, and we were forced to live in a new reality, a new culture. Work, church, and life were all radically shaped by COVID-19. So, what did we do? We adapted, we endured, we worked through the emotions and grief, and most of us survived. This experience reminded me of our family’s first years on the mission field, which were crucial for our development and growth as missionaries. Could it be that COVID-19 is God’s means for preparing an army of laborers for his harvest field? Could it be that these past couple of years living under COVID-19 have trained a generation of more resilient, adaptable, and persevering saints for the purpose of God’s global mission?

Taste, See, Go, Disciple

What in the world is going on? God is opening opportunities for kingdom growth and advancement across the world, especially among the unreached and unengaged.

According to Joshua Project, there are still 7,415 unreached people groups, which make up 42.5 percent of the global population — about 3.34 billion people. Everyone has been affected by COVID-19 in one way or another. God is cracking open the door to people’s hearts and minds to hear the good news of the kingdom. And he is calling those who have tasted and seen the goodness of God to go and make disciples among the nations.

Perhaps God has been preparing you for his kingdom service. Perhaps you will be numbered among the many who answer the call to global missions. Maybe we will see in our generation a great movement of the Holy Spirit, leading many to repentance and faith in Christ, the growth and development of the church, and the gospel of the kingdom advancing throughout the world. May it be so, Lord Jesus!

Audio Transcript

Boredom and purpose are the two themes we’re talking about this week. They’re related. Last time, on Monday, we looked at God’s purpose in our boredom — basically, that God plans for human beings to be frustrated by their experience in this world until they realize that they were made for God. It’s a really helpful reminder.

And today we continue talking about purpose as we seek to find and follow God’s will for our lives. We’re on the topic because tomorrow, in the Navigator’s Bible Reading Plan that we’re reading together, we launch into Philippians and study one of the key, essential texts for learning to discern God’s will. I’m talking about Philippians 1:9–10. Read those verses especially carefully, because in them we learn that following God’s will requires that we “approve what is excellent.” In other words, we taste test our way to discerning God’s will. He intends that we have a faculty, a palate, for tasting what is true and what is pleasing.

The question today is from a podcast listener named Tenielle. She asks about another text, but Philippians 1:9–10 is going to factor in here. Here’s the question: “Pastor John, Romans 12:2 says, ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ Pastor John, what does Paul mean when he says ‘by testing’?”

That is a really, really good question. I love it because it means she is really paying attention. She is looking at the book, and she cares about the words, and I love people who care about the words of Scripture. And she is obviously reading from the English Standard Version, I think, because that phrase is translated in different ways. Let me just give it again: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.”

Spiritual Litmus Test

“By testing.” Now, that phrase — “by testing you may discern” — is the translation of one Greek word, dokimazō. The standard lexical definition goes like this: “to make a critical examination of something to determine genuineness, such as metals by fire.” And interestingly, it is used in 1 Corinthians 3:13, where it says, “Fire will test [and that is the word, dokimazō] what sort of work each one has done.” So, our works at the last day are going to be tested by fire.

The idea is that the genuineness of something — in this case, the will of God in Romans 12:2 — is found out by an appropriate test. For metals, it is often fire. For genuine ripeness in fruit, it would be like tasting. And for genuine health in a horse, you might look at his teeth. And here, interestingly, powerfully, in Romans 12:2, the thing to be recognized is the will of God — namely, “what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And the question is, So, what is the test? Do you look at the teeth of the will of God? Or do you put your tongue on the behavior you are testing? Do you put some match to it? What is the test? And Paul answers, “The renewal of your mind is the test. By the renewal of your mind, you will be able to discern by testing what is the will of God.”

Here is the picture I have in my mind: my renewed mind — renewed by the word of God, renewed by the Spirit of God, renewed by soaking in the revealed nature of God in Scripture — is litmus paper that turns green when the good and acceptable and perfect will touches it. Green: go for that. And it turns red when it considers some act that is not the will of God. It is not good. It is not acceptable. It is not perfect.

So, my mind is being shaped by God into the kind of mind that, when it contemplates a behavior or an attitude or a word, there is something that reflexively says no or yes to it, because of the way our mind has been formed.

Approve What Is Excellent

Here is a great example that shows you how the mind is being renewed for this very purpose. It is Philippians 1:9–10, where Paul is praying that this would happen. He prays like this: “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve [now, there is the word] what is excellent.”

“The renewed mind has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us.”

So, he is saying that what happens to your love is that love gets more knowledge in Scripture, and love gets more insight in Scripture, and love gets more of everything it needs to be the kind of litmus paper it needs to be, so that when you are out there in the world, and you are navigating at work every day, and you don’t have your little lists in your pocket to say, “Oh, where is a list I can consult?” — well, you can’t consult a list for every decision you have to make. I would say 90 percent of the decisions we make through the day don’t have a list that applies to them.

You have got to make judgment calls over and over again as to what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect. And that is why our minds are being renewed day by day.

Delightful Taste

Let me say one more thing that I think is crucial here. The translation “discern by testing” might give the impression that all that is implied is, well, you test, you discern, and you know that is the will of God. You don’t like it, but you do it anyway.

That is not what is going on. The word dokimazō doesn’t just mean to prove and discern. It means to prove, and then when something is found to be genuine — approve of it. We know that because in Romans 1:28, it says the sinners did not approve to have God in their knowledge. And that is the word, dokimazō. They didn’t want it. They didn’t love it.

And so, the renewed mind is the mind that not only has the mental or intellectual or knowledge or insight capacities to discern something that is good and acceptable and perfect, but it also has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us. We delight in it. We approve of it.