http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16554576/the-failure-of-careless-worship
Part 3 Episode 212
Genuine worship treasures God above all things and fuels God-centered passion in people. What if our worship doesn’t look or feel like that? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper addresses this still relevant question from Malachi 1:6–14.
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What Does Disunity Say? Three Common Types of Division
Things fall apart. It’s the second law of thermodynamics. It’s Romans 8:20 happening all around us. It’s a reality I increasingly experience in my body as I pass through the second half of middle age. Cracks permeate everything — including every church I’ve known.
Christian relationships encounter all the temptations common to man. That’s why Christian churches will rarely experience a kind of unity that knows no conflict or struggle.
But an absence of conflict and struggle is not what God has in mind for Christian unity in this age. As I’ve explained more thoroughly elsewhere, God gives unity as part of our inheritance in Christ (Ephesians 1:5, 11), but Christian oneness has a participatory dimension through which God accomplishes some glorious work in us and the world. So when God, through Paul, commands us to eagerly “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3), he intends for this endeavor to be hard — for some very good reasons.
But more than that, God intends our churches to experience seasons of noticeable disunity. In fact, these seasons are necessary, because they bring to light some very important realities. The old hymn pinpoints it well:
Tho’ with a scornful wonderThe world sees her oppressed,By schisms rent asunder,By heresies distressed.Yet saints their watch are keeping;Their cry goes up, “How long?”And soon the night of weepingShall be the morn of song.
“An absence of conflict and struggle is not what God has in mind for Christian unity in this age.”
When it comes to Christian unity in this age of things falling apart, the reality we experience is “sorrowful” over our frequent factions, “yet always rejoicing” over the future grace of perfected unity set before us (2 Corinthians 6:10).
By Schisms Rent Asunder
Church schisms happen, as we all know. And they get a lot of bad press from Christians and non-Christians — often much deserved, as we also know. But schisms perform necessary functions in the church by revealing numerous areas requiring attention. Let me address three types of division in the church.
1. Fleshly Schisms
Paul illustrates the first type of schism in his blunt reproof of the Corinthian church:
I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? (1 Corinthians 3:1–3)
Fleshly schisms plagued this church. They were divided into partisan loyalties and impressed by worldly wisdom and rhetoric (chapters 1–3), easily swayed by those who slandered Paul in his absence (chapter 4), tolerating shocking sexual immorality (chapter 5), suing each other in civil court (chapter 6), damaging each other’s faith over issues of Christian freedom (chapter 8), and more. Paul didn’t call them false Christians; he called them fleshly Christians — people governed more by carnal discernment and desires than by the Spirit in numerous areas.
“True Christian unity can be experienced and maintained only where Christlike love governs.”
True Christian unity can be experienced and maintained only where Christlike love governs — the kind Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. Therefore, it’s a much-needed mercy to bring our unity-killing fleshliness into the light so we can see it and repent. And church schisms often perform that function.
2. Maturity Schisms
A second type of schism overlaps with the first, but its function is distinct enough to highlight. I call them maturity schisms.
Any healthy, evangelizing, disciple-making church will have differing levels of maturity among its members. And when people of diverse maturity levels come together, conflicts will erupt. Different life experiences, scriptural knowledge, and overall sanctification will stretch the church.
Differences in maturity run many different ways. A younger person might have more life experience in a certain area than an older person. Or someone who’s been a Christian a long time might be more governed by the flesh than a newer convert. Or a less formally trained saint might have a more profound, life-transforming grasp of Scripture than a seminary-trained saint. On top of that, some members who “ought to be teachers” may have regressed in maturity by habitually indulging sin, and so they need milk again (Hebrews 5:12).
Here’s my point: the maturity diversity that’s part of normal, healthy church life produces a complex relational recipe for a lot of misunderstanding and plenty of pride-fueled conflicts. Positively, this gives us all opportunities to learn from each other and grow in grace. Negatively, we don’t always seize these opportunities, and sometimes they grow into various schisms.
3. Necessary Schisms
Paul also addresses a third type of church schism in 1 Corinthians 11:19:
There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.
As Jesus taught in the parable of the weeds in the wheat (Matthew 13:24–30), our churches in this age will remain a mixture of Christians and non-Christians, no matter how seriously we take membership. Some weeds, thankfully, will become wheat by the end. But some are weeds, and often it’s schisms — factions — that reveal them.
And some of these weeds grow into a league of their own, as we know from urgent apostolic warnings of false teachers:
I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. (Romans 16:17–18)
You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. (Jude 17–19)
These false Christians are “fierce wolves” that prey on the flock of God, “men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:30), causing distress in our churches by their heresies. And one clear way we can recognize that they are not genuine is by the disunity they create due to “contrary doctrine” and “ungodly passions.”
Gifted Unifiers
In addressing church unity, Paul explains why godly, mature, loving, wise, Scripture-soaked, straight-talking leaders in various roles are such valuable gifts to any church. They
equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11–13)
This is a hard calling, requiring proven character, wisdom, knowledge, and a track record of “walk[ing] by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16). Therefore, church leaders must not be spiritually immature (1 Timothy 3:1–7) lest they pour the gasoline of fleshliness on the flames of emerging church schisms rather than the water of sacrificial love and godly wisdom.
Mature leaders foster cultures in their churches that help saints pursue “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” And they’re not naive. They know that factors like fleshliness, maturity diversity, and false Christians make this corporate pursuit hard. But they also know it’s necessarily hard. In this age.
‘How Long?’
But this age isn’t forever. An age approaches when weeds will not grow among the wheat, when our sinful flesh will no longer influence us, and when whatever different maturity levels may exist will no longer result in conflicts. “We [will] all [finally] attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). We will all experience the unity that is our inheritance in Christ, and all be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one (John 17:21).
Till then, let’s not give up the fight to be one. In this fight for unity, we experience numerous aspects of the Father’s varied grace. Forced to wrestle with our own sin as we pursue unity, we experience much-needed sanctification by the Spirit. And as we struggle to attain and maintain unity, we discover and experience priceless dimensions of the love of Christ and display it for the world (John 13:35).
And our desire to experience the “not yet” promise of the completed, perfected, harmonious oneness of the body of Christ causes us to long, groan, and pray for the age to come. It keeps us saints watching and crying out, “How long, O Lord?” And the promised joy of perfected unity set before us fuels our hope that “soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.”
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When Life Shrinks to the Size of Our Problems
Audio Transcript
We’ve all been there. Maybe you’re there right now. You see problems in every direction. As you look at your life, all you can see are troubles. You see your sins, your shortcomings, your challenges, your relationship struggles, and all those places in life that have been long neglected and now need your focused attention. It all adds up. And now you find yourself in that place, tempted to live a life that has shrunk down to the size of your problems.
Pastor John has been there. It’s why he took a leave of absence in 2010, eight months away from ministry for what he called a “soul check” — months spent scrutinizing the problems he saw in his life, his marriage, his worship, his fathering, his pastoring, his public life, all of it. During these searching months, he pinpointed five besetting sins within himself, problem areas that needed attention. He named them, isolated them, and confessed them. He would come to call them an “ugly cluster” of sins that included selfishness, anger, self-pity, quickness to blame, and sullenness. We have talked about this season and his personal discoveries on the podcast, back in APJ 220, APJ 1227, and APJ 1501. It was a significant season in his life.
That leave ended at the end of 2010. On January 9, 2011, he preached for the very first time in those many months. He preached on the Lord’s Prayer, in a sermon titled, “Our Deepest Prayer: Hallowed Be Your Name.” In the Lord’s Prayer, our Savior teaches us to ask for several things. We ask for our daily needs. We ask for food, for personal forgiveness from our sin tendencies, for a forgiving spirit to forgive those who sin against us, and to be kept from sin. Our loving Father cares that we pray for all these daily needs. But before those requests, we first pray for greater things: that God’s name would be hallowed, his kingdom come, and his will be done (Matthew 6:9–13). From this, Pastor John took another important lesson from his leave. To explain, here he is, in that first sermon back, coming off his leave, referencing his journaled reflections from his time away.
There’s something unique about petition number one — it’s one of a kind in these six petitions. “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). In this petition, we get the one specific, named subjective response of the human heart that God wants everybody to give: hallowing. That is, you reverence, you sanctify, you treasure, you esteem, you respect, you stand in awe. Something goes on in the heart. It’s the one request that names what’s supposed to go on in the heart toward God. “Name” is who he is. When you say, “Hallowed be your name,” you mean, “Hallowed be you.” I’m hallowing, treasuring, esteeming, reverencing, honoring Yahweh, and he’s in, and signified by, his name.
One Great Purpose
Here’s another journal entry. October 9: “My One Great Passion! Nothing” — and I remember writing this sentence. I mean, sometimes I read it now and it just doesn’t have the same clout that it did then. God just says things to you, and you feel like a moment of clarity has happened, and all the clouds have been blown away, and you know something with such crystal clarity that you wish it would always be that way.
“Nothing is more clear to me than that the purpose of the universe is for the hallowing of God’s name.”
Here’s what I wrote: “Nothing is more clear and unmistakable to me than that the purpose of the universe is for the hallowing of God’s name. His kingdom comes for that. His will is done for that. Humans have bread-sustained life for that. Sins are forgiven for that. Temptation is escaped for that.”
If you press up as far as you can go into the mind and the intention and the purpose of God for all things, then petition one nails it. You can’t go any higher. You don’t hallow God’s name because something else better, higher, more important should happen. The hallowing of God’s name is the termination of everything. He starts with the biggest request of all: pray that that happen in everything.
Overwhelming Pressures and Problems
So, one last journal entry, October 10 — you can see the sequence going here as day after day I’m thinking about this. I just wrote this prayer: “Lord, grant that I would, in all my weaknesses and limitations, remain close to the one clear, grand theme of my life: your magnificence.”
Sooner or later in your life — young people, heads up; old people know this — pressures and problems become almost overwhelming. Physical problems: “Give me bread.” Relational and mental problems: “Please forgive me.” Moral problems: “Don’t let me go into that temptation again.” What I want you to see is this: You have a Father. He’s a thousand times better than any earthly good father or bad father.
“You can’t pray about a problem he doesn’t know and care about. None. No matter how small they are.”
You have a Father, and this Father cares about every one of us. You can’t pray about a problem he doesn’t know and care about. None. No matter how small they are. And he beckons you to come to him and to talk to him in prayer about them, because he knows what you need, and he’s not surprised by anything.
Now that’s the usual way we attack our problems — directly. “God, help me! I’ve got a problem.” And all the attention begins to focus on the problem. And yes, God, you’re saying “Come,” but your life is starting to shrink up around the problem or the set of problems. You wake up thinking about them, you go to bed thinking about them, and your life is shrinking little by little down around this cluster of pain and problems. Marriage problems, or kid problems, or health problems, or work problems. Your life is just shrinking down, and all the while you’re calling on the last three petitions, “God, help me. I need some bread. I need some money. I need some forgiveness. I need some help morally.” You’re crying out, and your life is just shrinking down.
Ballast of God’s Supremacy
Now, when I say it that way, I don’t mean, “Stop doing that.” I do not mean, “Stop crying out to God.” I don’t mean, “Stop knowing your problems are there and saying, ‘I need help.’” I want you to see that God offers you another strategy of victory. It’s not different; that is, it’s not contradictory. It doesn’t replace what I just described. But it is indirect. There’s a direct way — I’ve got a problem, and I’m going after it — and then there’s something indirect, and here I’m thinking about the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.
God made you to be a part of something big. He made you to be a part of something spectacular and magnificent, and you’re allowing, perhaps, your life to just shrink down around these problems. God’s in it, and he’s patient, and he’s loving, and he provides help, but I’m just saying that there’s another strategy. There’s another way to add. It’s a supplemental remedy for life. Namely, to be drawn up. Let yourself be drawn up into the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.
God made you to be a part of hallowing his name, and extending his kingdom, and seeing his will be done. He made you for something magnificent. Something mundane as well. Oh yes, he made that. He cares about that. He wants you to live there. But what we fail to see — I speak from experience — is that when we lose our grip on the greatness of God, and his name, and his kingdom, and his global will, we lose a divine equilibrium in life, and we become increasingly vulnerable to those problems overwhelming us.
When we lose our grip on his name, his kingdom, his will — the big, universal, global, glorious, awesome, magnificent purposes into which we have been caught up — when we lose our grip on that, and life begins to shrink down around even a God-pursued problem solving, we lose an equilibrium, a divine equilibrium. I’ve called it ballast before in life, in your boat. You have this little boat, and the waves are there, and your ballast is heavy, deep, and I’m just shifting images here to go up into those first three petitions.
Feet on the Ground, Eyes Up
I’m pleading with you as I close that you not lose your grip on the supremacy and centrality of hallowing the name of God in your life. I’m urging you, from the Lord’s Prayer and from experience, that you do go to God for bread, and you do go to God for forgiveness, and you do go to God for overcoming besetting sins, and you do go to God to advance his will and to seek his kingdom, and you do all of it for the hallowing of his name.
The great value in your life, in your marriage, in your parenting, in your single life, in your friendships, in your studies — the great value is that I will live so that both my heart and other hearts hallow, esteem, reverence, lift up, honor, value, treasure the name of God over all things.
Keep your feet on the ground. We live there. We will never not live on the ground, with its mundane aspects. But you may not see it clearly now, but I testify, and I say from Scripture, there is more deliverance, more healing, more joy in the hallowing of God’s name as your supreme goal and priority than you ever dreamed.
It’s so indirect that it just feels often irrelevant. I’ve got this massive problem and you’re telling me to hallow the name of God? Yeah, I am. It is a request. “Hallowed be thy name” means, “Let your name be hallowed.” And who needs to do it more? I do. It’s a global prayer, but it starts right here. When I wake up in the morning, I’m not hallowing the name of God most mornings. I’m thinking about my problems, and they seem to be bigger than God. So I pray this. This is a prayer. Isn’t that encouraging that Jesus would tell us, “Ask the Father to help you hallow him”?
I invite you, beckon you, in 2011, to go deep and go high in the Lord’s Prayer. Let him be a sweet, close, tender, warm, need-meeting, caring Father to you. And on that, rise up and join him through prayer and life in the seeking of his kingdom and the doing of his will — all to the end that his name be hallowed.
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Am I Confident or Arrogant?
Audio Transcript
Am I confident, or am I just arrogant? We get this question a lot, and we have to answer this question for ourselves. Lionheartedness and humility are not contradictions in God’s will, nor are they contradictions in the life of our Savior. He came to bring peace, and he came to bring a figurative sword too. But in our own lives, we must figure out the difference between confidence and arrogance, and that’s the challenge a listener named Max wants to figure out today.
“Hello, Pastor John!” Max writes in his email to us. “My question for you is this. Can we feel powerful or confident or have a high self-worth in who God has made us to be through Christ? How do you distinguish this from pride that leads to destruction? If so, how do we do this? How do we pursue the feeling of power or confidence or high self-worth in living out what God has created us to be, but humbly so? You seem like someone who does it well. Thank you!”
Well, I have to admit that I gag on the term “high self-worth.” The reason I do is because I have watched now for fifty years — yes, fifty years — that term (and its sister term “self-esteem”) be used by secular, godless culture as an explanation for most negative psychological conditions and as a remedy for how to make a person more useful and productive. Lack of self-esteem is the diagnosis for a thousand problems today. Higher self-esteem is the prescription for a thousand improvements.
And the reason for that, it seems to me, is pretty obvious. When God disappears, the next most likely focus for esteem and confidence and reliance and trust is me — self. I think that was exactly the temptation in the garden of Eden. I think that’s the biblical essence of sin — replacing God with self as our treasure, our trust, our esteem, our worth.
Okay, now I’ve got that off my chest.
‘Well Done’
The question is still valid, because I do know from the Bible that God intends for us to lead lives that are significant, effective, productive, joyful, confident, courageous, fearless, competent. The world would just default to interpret every one of those in terms of self-exaltation, and I don’t interpret any of them that way. The Bible worldview says all those words in a completely different view of things.
“Do you love to see Christ made much of above all things, whether you get any recognition or not?”
When our lives are done, and we have trusted him for his enabling grace for every good work, God wants us to hear the words “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It’s not wrong to want to hear from Christ the words “Well done. You’ve been faithful.” The question is, Will he say, “Well done” to a person who had high self-worth, or to a person who has been a God-dependent, God-centered, God-reliant, Christ-exalting servant of others? That’s the question.
So, I would rephrase the question that I’m being asked to something like this: What’s the difference between acting in pride and acting so that our lives are significant, fruitful, fearless, competent, productive, happy, confident without pride?
Questions for Diagnosing Pride
Here are eight diagnostic questions to detect the rising of pride in our lives as we pursue those goals.
Question 1: Do I believe and happily embrace — and they’re both important, believing in your head and happily embracing in your heart, your will — the fact that my very existence and personality and gifting are owing to God, not me?
“By the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).
“What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).The question is not just “Do I believe this principle?” but “Do I love to have it so?” Do you delight and revel in the absolute dependence on God for who you are?
Question 2: Do you believe and happily embrace the fact that every one of your circumstances, in all of its details, is owing to God and not yourself?
“You ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil” (James 4:15–16). In other words, if something happens in life that takes you up or takes you down, it’s from the Lord. Are you glad that he’s in charge to that extent in your life?
Question 3: Do you believe, and are you happy to embrace, the fact that all your hard work and your personal effort and your willpower to accomplish things are owing to God?
Some people say, “Well, yes, God is in charge of my circumstances, but what I make of them, yeah, that’s owing to me, and that’s why I can be proud and boast. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps, while other people are languishing down there.” That’s not true. Paul said, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). So, Paul attributed to God’s grace not only his existence and his salvation and his circumstances, but also his willpower to work hard.
Are you glad that, when your day’s work is done, you can say of all your efforts, “Not I, but the grace of God that was with me”? Are you glad? Or does that feel like God is robbing you of something?
Question 4: Do you make it your aim to be consciously dependent on God in all you are doing in such a way that, when your service is complete, God will get the glory rather than you?
I’m thinking of 1 Peter 4:11. It’s been just a hallmark of my prayer as I move toward any ministry — like I’ll move toward a ministry midday today that I need help with. “Whoever serves, [let him serve] by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory . . . forever and ever. Amen.” So, what that says is this: it’s not only true that God gives me what I need; I actively trust him in doing it. I’m conscious of the fact that I’m nothing here. I can’t do anything on my own.
Question 5: Are you hungry for the praise of man, and do you try to position yourself so that people will see your good works and give you praise?
Jesus warned against those who love the praise of man. “Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces” (Luke 11:43). Oh, how we need to test our hearts — when we’re 25 and 75. Do I love and crave and angle for the praises and recognition of other people?
Question 6: Do you associate with the lowly, or do you always need to be hanging around with important people?
“Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight” (Romans 12:16).
Question 7: Do you feel entitled to recognition and comfort and respect so that you’re angry when you don’t get it instead of responding the way Jesus said to — namely, “Rejoice when people persecute you, speak evil of you, don’t give you the respect you deserve” (see Matthew 5:11–12)?
A sense of entitlement is one of the clearest signs of deeply rooted pride.
Question 8: Finally, and swimming among all the others, do you love to see Christ magnified? Do you love to see Christ made much of above all things, whether you get any recognition or not?
“God intends for us to lead lives that are significant, effective, productive, joyful, confident, courageous.”
“He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Paul said, “My eager expectation and hope [is] that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). I think that was one of the first sermons I preached when I came to Bethlehem. My goal, folks, my eager expectation, is that Christ be magnified. I want to preach in such a way, I want to write in such a way, I want to do podcasts in such a way so that Jesus looks great, and people come away saying, “Christ is great. God is great.”
To Him Be Glory
So, by all means — this is circling back now to the essence of the question that I think he was asking — use all your gifts and all your intelligence and all your circumstances and relationships and competence and courage to live the most productive, significant life possible. And do it all to make Christ look great and beautiful and precious by saying and by loving the truth that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever” (Romans 11:36).