We ended the first session, and Look #5, with why Jesus was despised, rejected, and crushed to death at the cross: for us, for “the many,” for those who receive him through faith (Isaiah 53:4–6). I noted there, at the end, “the joy set before him.” That, as Isaiah 53:11 foretold, “out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.” In other words, it pleased him. He delighted to be put to death. His willing was not an empty willing but a full, satisfied willing — full enough to sustain him in horrifying agony and suffering.

But what such joy requires is resurrection. If Jesus stays dead, there is no joy, no delight, no God-honoring and church-loving willingness. But resurrection is right there in Isaiah 53:10–12:

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;     he has put him to grief;when his soul makes an offering for guilt,     he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,     make many to be accounted righteous,     and he shall bear their iniquities.Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,     and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,because he poured out his soul to death     and was numbered with the transgressors;yet he bore the sin of many,     and makes intercession for the transgressors.

So much there: substitution, willing submission, intercession (which we’ll come to). But for now, amazingly, resurrection:

Verse 10: “He shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”
Verse 11: “He shall see [his offspring] and be satisfied.”
Verse 12: “I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death.”

The resurrection is not icing on the cake of Christianity. With Christ’s life and his death, it is the cake. If he did not rise, then he is dead — and it all falls apart. Unlike with sacrificial animals, appointed as a temporary provision, the once-for-all salvation is not accomplished without the resurrection of the suffering servant.

So before we go on, here are our five looks at Jesus so far:

He delighted his Father before creation.
He became man.
He lived for his Father’s glory.
He humbled himself.
He died for sins not his own.

Now, to the rest of our ten looks at Christ.

Look #6: He rose again.

Colossians 1:15–20 might be the most important six consecutive verses in the Bible. Here we find both creation and salvation cast in utterly Christ-centered terms:

[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Jesus is “the firstborn from the dead.” During his life, all those he restored to life died again. But when Jesus rose again, he rose never to die again.

Our key term for Look #6 is resurrection. Which means not to be restored to your fallen, human body to die again, but to rise in your body to the indomitable life of the next age. It is a real body. In fact, we might even say a more real body. What will be true of us was true of Christ’s human body first. 1 Corinthians 15:42–44:

What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body [not a spirit but a spiritual body]. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

So resurrection refers first to Jesus’s human body, then also, in him, to ours. And the resurrection of Christ not only made good on God’s word, and not only vindicated Christ’s sinless life, and not only confirmed the achievement of his death, and not only gives us access to his work, but the resurrection means he is alive to know and enjoy forever.

There is no final good news if our Treasure and Pearl of Great Price is dead. Even if our sins could be paid for, righteousness provided and applied to us, and heaven secured, but Jesus were still dead, there would be no great salvation in the end. At the very center of Christ’s resurrection is not what he saves us from, but what he saves us to — better, whom he saves us to: himself.

Look #7: He ascended into heaven.

Twice Luke writes about Jesus’s ascension. The first time at the end of his Gospel, Luke 24:50–51:

[Jesus] led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.

Then, in more detail, at the beginning of Acts:

When [the disciples] had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:6–11)

So, Luke 24 says, “He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” And Acts 1 says, “He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” Then the angel says, “Jesus . . . was taken up from you into heaven.”

Jesus — in his risen human body — was lifted up, carried up, taken up, until a cloud shielded the sight of his apostles, and he was gone. And this was no novelty act. This was crucial for the presentation of his finished work in the very presence of the Father and for the fulfilling of the ancient prophesies of his sitting on David’s throne and ruling as sovereign over the nations.

Christ’s Coronation

Luke 24 and Acts 1 give us the earthly vantage of his ascension. But we also get a glimpse from the other side in Hebrews 1. His ascension, human body and all, brings him to heaven, and Hebrews 1 captures something of this great moment of his processing to the throne and being crowned king of the universe. Hebrews 1:3 says,

After making purification for sins [that is, through his death, and being raised and ascending], he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Hebrews 1:5 then takes the great coronation hymn of Psalm 2 and applies its Messianic declaration to Jesus as the heir of David: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” And Hebrews 1:6 says that “when he brings [carries, lifts up, takes up] the firstborn into the world [that is, “the world to come,” Hebrews 2:5], he says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship him.’”

All this to set the scene for Psalm 110 in Hebrews 1:13: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” Not a full account, by any means, but a taste of that climactic moment of coronation on the other side of the ascension.

Enthroned as Man

There are two critical realities worth mentioning with his enthronement and sitting down. (1) In taking his seat on the very throne of heaven, he comes into the fullness of divine sovereignty, and now as man. As he says at the end of Matthew, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). It always was his as God. But now, he has come into full possession of the divine rule over the universe and all nations as man, sitting as the climactic human king on the throne of heaven.

“From heaven’s throne, the risen Christ pours out his Holy Spirit in new measure on his people.”

Which leads then to (2) his pouring out his Spirit (Acts 1:8: “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you . . .”). From heaven’s throne, the risen Christ pours out his Holy Spirit in new measure on his people for the accomplishing of his ongoing work in the world of applying his salvation to his people.

Perhaps you know from the Apostles’ Creed: “He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.” Now as we move from Look #7 to Look #8, we move from past to present, from ascended and enthroned to is seated and is interceding.

Look #8: He intercedes for us.

Present tense. This is what Jesus is doing right now — interceding. Until now, we’ve rehearsed seven past-tense verbs: delighted, became, devoted, humbled, died, rose, ascended. But now: intercedes.

Now he “is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty,” and as Isaiah 53:12 says, he “makes intercession for the transgressors.” As Romans 8:34 celebrates, “Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” But our main text for Look #8 is Hebrews 7:25:

He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

Our key term: intercession. So what does it mean in general and specifically, as it relates to what Jesus is doing right now? In general, to intercede means to go between two parties in an effort (1) to reconcile them to each other or (2) to advocate for one with the other. We often talk about interceding in prayer when we pray on another’s behalf, but the specific kind of interceding Jesus does for his people, with the Father, is distinct from our praying for each other.

“There is one God,” says 1 Timothy 2:5, “and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” So Jesus’s intercession for us is not an asking on our behalf based on the mediation of another. Jesus is the mediator. He himself is the intercession. And so Hebrews 7:25 says, “He always lives to make intercession [for us].”

Which means that with his every breath, with every beat of his indestructible new-creation heart, he is our living, indissoluble link to God. I don’t think we’re to picture Christ in heaven as our intercessor, on his knees, begging the Father, “Please, don’t destroy him — I’m asking for that one.” No, he ever lives to make intercession for his people. How does he do it? He lives. If we are his, and he is alive, then his very life, his very breath, the very beating of his glorified human heart (that will never stop beating), intercedes for all those joined to him by faith.

Seated in heaven, Jesus is not anxious or uncertain. He is not scurrying around heaven’s throne room. He lives. He sits on heaven’s throne, secure and utterly stable, in perfect heavenly equanimity and composure, interceding for his people with God almighty by his very life and breath. And as the Apostles’ Creed confesses, “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.”

Look #9: He will come again.

Now to the future: his second coming, and with it, the final judgment. This is the next distinct step in history. He will return and bring with him the fullness of mercy and grace to his people, and at long last perfect and final justice to the world. “He comes on that day,” says Paul in 2 Thessalonians 1:10, “to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed.”

“Jesus is coming back. And those who reject him will stand in terror. And those who love him will thrill at his coming.”

Jesus is coming back. And those who despise and reject him — whether through apathy or outright hatred — will stand in terror. And those who love him will thrill at his coming and marvel at him, which will glorify him, and receive rewards from him, the righteous judge.

One of the great glories of Christ is that God will judge the world through him. When Peter opens his mouth to proclaim the message of Christ to the Gentiles for the first time, he not only recounts Christ’s death and resurrection and the witnesses “who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:39–41). But he also says that Jesus commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that “he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42).

And Paul preached in Acts 17, God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). Let’s consider five distinct aspects of this coming justice (our key word for Look #9).

1. He will come in glory.

First and foremost, this second coming, as final judge, is very much about the glory of Christ. His saints will marvel; his enemies will cower. “The Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father” (Matthew 16:27), and “the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him” (Matthew 25:31). No eye will miss this (Revelation 1:7). No corner of the earth will be unaware. All else will stop. Every eye will see him — in his glory.

2. All will stand before him.

But not only will every eye see him. Every person will stand before him. “Each person,” says Jesus (Matthew 16:27). “Each one,” says the apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 5:10). And not just those alive at the time but “the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42; Romans 14:9; 2 Timothy 4:1; 1 Peter 4:5). “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10). And whom will we see seated on that throne? “Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead” (2 Timothy 4:1).

3. He will separate wheat and weeds.

Then, for those who are in him by faith, there will come a glorious and perfect discrimination:

Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. (Matthew 25:32)

In this glorious and horrifying moment, all human pretenses and illusions will be stripped away, and one thing will matter: Are you wheat or weed? As the Judge had said in his first coming, “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Matthew 13:30) — and it will be a spectacular barn.

4. He will remedy every wrong.

First the weeds, he said, will be bundled and burned. And in that day, every just cry for justice will be answered, and far more fully and finally than we are able to answer pleas for justice in this age. We will put our hands over our mouths as the risen, omnipotent Lamb executes perfect justice in his perfect righteousness, with no excess and no compromise.

How many seemingly irreconcilable conflicts in this age, which our judges and judicial systems stumble over again and again, await the day when the Judge finally comes and sets all to rights? And we will marvel at his justice.

5. He will reward the righteous.

Finally, he will gather the wheat into his barn. Having remedied every wrong, he will reward every cup of cold water given in his name (Matthew 10:42). He will reward the righteous — those who are righteous ultimately by faith but also in true measure by the Spirit.

In his extravagant generosity, grace, and mercy, he will lavish his people not only with entrance to a new heavens and new earth, where righteousness dwells, but on top of it all, he will reward his people for what good they have done “in the body” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

On that great day, we will see it with our own eyes — and feel its full effects as recipients of his great mercy by faith: our advocate will stand supreme as final judge and complete the arc of his glories as the God-man.

And so one last Look remains: eternity future.

Look #10: We will enjoy him forever.

In an important sense, Look #10 is not the end but a new beginning. Now, and till then, “we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now [we] know in part; then [we] shall know fully, even as [we] have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). “When he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). To see him, face to face, in his glory — with all history complete — will be not only to know him but to enjoy him, in that great climactic moment, and increasingly forever.

In Revelation 5, the scene is set in heaven. The apostle John sees a scroll in the hand of the one seated on the throne. In verse 2, an angel lifts up his voice and asks, “Who is worthy to open the scroll?” And heaven goes quiet. No one is worthy. And John says he began to weep because none were found worthy. Then one of the elders of heaven turns and says to him,

“Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” (Revelation 5:5)

Then John reports, “I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, . . . they sang a new song, saying,

Worthy are you to take the scroll     and to open its seals,for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God     from every tribe and language and people and nation,and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,     and they shall reign on the earth.

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne . . . the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice,

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,to receive power and wealth and wisdom and mightand honor and glory and blessing! (Revelation 5:5–12)

So, John sees a Lamb who is the Lion. He sees one who had been slain now standing, risen. He sees one who is worthy, like no one else is worthy, to take the scroll of history from the hand of God almighty and open it. He sees a lion-like Lamb and a lamb-like Lion who in the very presence of God almighty in heaven receives the praises of heaven’s angels and myriads of myriads.

“Our sight of Christ and nearness to him and enjoyment of him will not be momentary, but eternal.”

Our last key term is beatific vision, which means literally “the sight that makes happy.” This is the great Happiness to come, the final happiness for which our souls have longed our whole human lives. And as much as we long for that coming first instance, our sight of Christ and nearness to him and enjoyment of him will not be momentary, or static, but eternal and dynamic — ever increasing, ever progressing, ever clearer, ever deeper, ever sweeter.

The one who once, in his state of humiliation, “had no form or majesty that we should look at him” (Isaiah 53:2), will be the supremely Majestic One from whom we will never want to turn away our gaze. We, his people, will be his bride, and he will be our Groom to enjoy forever. Not only will we have him as ours, but he will have us as his. Then we will delight in, and increasingly so forever, “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus [our] Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

One Look at Yourself?

So, ten Looks at Christ. Seven past, one present, two future:

Preexistence: He delighted his Father before creation.
Incarnation: He became man.
Devotion: He lived to His Father’s glory.
Submission: He humbled himself.
Substitution: He died for others’ sins.
6 Resurrection: He rose again to eternal, glorified human life.
Ascension: He was lifted up to heaven (and sat down as king).
Intercession: He intercedes for us.
Justice: He will come again to right every wrong and reward.
Beatific Vision: He will be our delight forever.

For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. And after these ten looks at Jesus, might we end with one look at ourselves? I won’t pretend to know what the particular need is for you.

Perhaps here tonight you’ve heard Jesus’s whole story, from beginning to end, for the first time.

Or perhaps you’ve heard it before, at least in bits and pieces, but it’s never been compelling until, strangely, somehow, tonight. Maybe your looks at Jesus have been few and far between. But ten looks kept your eyes on him longer than ever before, and your heart is swelling with admiration.

Or perhaps you’ve heard his story before, you know it well, and now you’re encountering him again tonight.

And there is so much more to behold. So let me end where we began, and make Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s counsel to a friend a happy exhortation to us:

Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in His beams. Feel His all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and [rest] in His almighty arms.

Sadly, a few professing Christians today seem only to see their God as fearsome. Meanwhile, and far more sadly, countless unbelievers seem not to fear their God at all.

This is a tragic reversal in our fallen age: that a few, who could feel safe, do not — while many, who should be frightened, are not. This tragedy will be remedied in the end, but those of us who know ourselves secure in Christ want to help, when we’re able, bring genuine emotional comfort, or appropriate discomfort. Perhaps recovering an often-overlooked attribute of God — that of his majesty — could help us unsettle sinners and freshly settle true saints.

Greatness of His Majesty

Scripture’s first explicit mention of God in his majesty came with what was the world’s greatest deliverance until Calvary. After ten horrible plagues, Egypt’s pharaoh had finally acquiesced and let the Israelites go. But then he changed his mind, made ready his chariot (with hundreds more, Exodus 14:6–7), pursued God’s people into the wilderness, and came upon them with their backs to the sea, and seemingly nowhere to flee. Then, to the astonishment of both Israel and Egypt — and all who would hear the account far and wide, for thousands of years — God parted the sea. The Israelites walked through on dry ground, and when the Egyptians followed, God brought the waters back upon them to their destruction. As Exodus 14 ends,

Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses. (Exodus 14:30–31)

Exodus 15 then breaks into a song of praise to God for his stunning rescue — and here, for the first time in Scripture, God’s people praise him for his majesty:

Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries . . . .Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?Who is like you, majestic in holiness,awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:6–7, 11)

The choice of the word majesty says something profound about the worshipers. Majesty attributes to God not only great size (verses 7, 16) and strength (verses 2, 6) but expresses awe and wonder in the mouths of his people.

God’s foes flee in terror, but his friends declare his majesty.

Through Two Sets of Eyes

Here, on the shores of the sea, a great distinction between “my people” and “not my people” emerges: God is “awesome” in the eyes of his chosen (Exodus 15:11), and awful in the eyes of their foes.

As early as the fifth plague, God had specified to Moses that he would “make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die” (Exodus 9:4). God then reiterated this distinction when forecasting the tenth and final plague: “But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel” (Exodus 11:7).

So too, Moses himself, in the months to come, would plead this very distinction when interceding for the people, face to face with God on Mount Sinai: “Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:16). This “distinguish[ing] between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean” would be institutionalized for centuries in the old-covenant tabernacle, sacrificial system, and priestly service of the nation (Leviticus 10:10; also Ezekiel 44:23).

Fearsome: For Them, Against Us

In Exodus 14, the Egyptians were the aggressors, hunting down Israel in the wilderness and charging into the sea after God’s people — until “the angel of God,” that is, the pillar of fire and of cloud, pivoted on them to their horror.

The pillar had “moved and went behind” Israel to protect the nation from the onslaught of Egypt (Exodus 14:19–20). But when God’s people had gone into the sea on dry ground, and the Egyptians pursued and went in after them, the pillar then “looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic” (Exodus 14:23–24). Now the tide turns, just before God releases the tides. In terror, the Egyptians turn to flee. But it is too late.

“Divine majesty terrifies those at odds with the one true God.”

Not only does God burn with frightening strength to scare Egypt, but the song of worship in chapter 15 celebrates that news of this event will soon spread to make all Israel’s foes tremble: Philistia, Edom, Moab, and Canaan (Exodus 15:14–16). Divine majesty terrifies those at odds with the one true God. Even as his people praise his majesty, so they mention the terror of those arrayed against him, or pondering flight from him. “Will not his majesty terrify you,” asks Job, “and the dread of him fall upon you?” (Job 13:11, see also 31:23).

So too in the early prophecy of Isaiah. Three times in short space, he tells of those, set against God, who soon will seek to hide “from before the terror of the Lord, and from the splendor of his majesty” (Isaiah 2:10, 19, 21). The one who is “majestic in holiness” to his prophet will be threatening, indeed terrifying, to any who have set themselves against them, if they would only open their eyes and see.

Awesome: Against Them, For Us

As imposing and awful as this majesty will appear to his enemies, so it inspires a comforting and reassuring awe in those whom he protects. As Moses declares to Israel, who is on God’s side, seeking his help and protection, God will wield his strength for their good:

There is none like God . . . ,who rides through the heavens to your help,through the skies in his majesty. (Deuteronomy 33:26)

Again, his redeemed ask, “Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11). For them, the same imposing size and strength that incites horror in their foes is majestic love and comfort. “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed” (Exodus 15:13). For his people, God’s majestic power inspires the awe of worship:

Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him. Praise the Lord! (Psalm 148:13–14)

For his own, in his city, “there the Lord in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams . . . . the Lord is our king; he will save us” (Isaiah 33:21–22). The largesse [laar·zhes] of God which throws his foes into a panic means safety and salvation in the mouths of his friends.

More majestic still is Psalm 45:4, which speaks not only to a Davidic king on his wedding day, but also anticipates David’s greater descendant to come, the long-awaited Christ:

In your majesty ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness; let your right hand teach you awesome deeds!

It is the king’s own people — those who know him as their sovereign, and themselves as his people — who see their Anointed ruler as majestic. Majesty is a word of awe in the mouth of his redeemed.

Holy Fear to Holy Awe

What about those few professing saints today who seem only to see their God as fearsome? And what about the many unbelievers who don’t seem to fear God at all?

For both, time will tell. The unbelieving Egyptians didn’t exhibit any fear, until, all of a sudden, in an instant, the pillar of fire pivoted on them. Then they panicked. So will it be one day soon with all who set themselves against the majestic God. Then they will fear.

“Holy fear leads to holy awe.”

But for his saints, who claim the name of Christ, and yet find themselves dogged by seemingly intractable fear, rather than awe, when they think of God almighty, we end with good news. The holy awe of worshiping his majesty is not at odds with a holy fear of his size and strength. In fact, such holy fear leads to holy awe. Exodus 14 ends with holy fear: “Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord . . .” But knowing themselves to be his covenant people, this fear did not lead to panic, but faith: “. . . and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31). So Exodus 15 begins with praise.

When we glimpse the greatness, power, and glory of God’s majesty, we should indeed fear ever turning our back on, and fleeing from, such a God. And that is a holy fear we seek not to banish but follow its leading to faith, which leans into him, receives his stunning provision of safety in Christ, and enjoys his majestic final protection against any and every foe.

For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.

Those are the words of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a pastor in Scotland in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was born in Edinburgh in 1813, and what’s striking about his life (and that some still remember him today) is that he lived only twenty-nine years. He died of typhus fever in 1843.

Two years later, his friend and a fellow minister Andrew Bonar published Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M’Cheyne, which in time came to be published in over a hundred English editions. In Memoir and Remains appears a letter M’Cheyne wrote to a friend:

Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in His beams. Feel His all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and [rest] in His almighty arms . . .

Let your soul be filled with a heart-ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in Him. Let the Holy Spirit fill every chamber of your heart; and so there will be no room for folly, or the world, or Satan, or the flesh. (293)

Ten looks at Christ for every one look at self. I suspect M’Cheyne’s counsel was striking in his day. But now, some 180 years later, what are we to make of it, living in an age so saturated in, so dominated by the ruse of the almighty self?

Ten looks at Christ for every one look at self was a countercultural word in M’Cheyne’s day. And how much more so for us now? And what healing might there be for us in heeding his counsel? How impoverished are we for our subtle and overt fixations on and fascinations with self, dwelling in a generation that both nourishes the love of self in us and conditions us for greater and deeper attention to self than we otherwise might dare venture?

So I want to ask you to come with me on a journey. I invite you in these moments — as much as you’re able — to put self aside, and together let’s take ten looks at Jesus. In this first session, we’ll take five looks at him from eternity past to the cross, and then in the second session, from his resurrection to eternity future. And with each look, we’ll anchor our glance at his glory in at least one key biblical text and also a key theological term that seeks to capture some of the majesty we find in Christ. So, ten looks at Jesus.

Look #1: He delighted his Father before creation.

Not only did he exist before creation — with all its implications for his deity — but, as divine Son, he delighted his Father, as we’ll see. First, John 1:1–3:

In the beginning was the Word [that is, the divine Son, who would come as Christ], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

“What was Christ doing for the endless ages of eternity past before there was time itself? He delighted his Father.”

Jesus — the divine Son, who would, in time, become man — existed in the beginning with God the Father. John says (1) he was with God (literally, “toward God,” as in face to face) and (2) he was himself God. Before anything was created, he was. “All things were made through him, and [if that’s not clear enough, then] without him was not anything made that was made.” The Word, the divine Son, was not made. He was not created. He himself is God — God’s own fellow and God’s own self.

Our key term for Look #1 is preexistence. The divine Son, the second person of the Trinity, who we now know as Jesus of Nazareth and as the Christ, preexisted his human life (and all creation as well). Which we see deeply embedded in various ways throughout the New Testament:

First, he came. Mark 10:45: “The Son of Man came . . . to give his life as ransom of many.” John 3:13: “The Son of Man descended from heaven.” Hebrews 10:5: “Christ came into the world.” 1 Timothy 1:15: “Christ came into the world to save sinners.”
Second, he was sent. Galatians 4:4: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman.” The owner of the vineyard sent his Beloved Son (Mark 12:6).
Third, he was given. John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 8:32: God the Father “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all.”

So, fully God himself, Christ was given, he was sent, he came. And he preexisted not only his coming but the whole creation. So what was he doing for the endless ages of eternity past before there was time itself? He delighted his Father. And Proverbs 8:22–31 personifies God’s wisdom in such a way that for two thousand years Christians can’t help but see the preexistent Christ here. Divine wisdom speaks,

The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work,     the first of his acts of old.Ages ago I was set up,     at the first, before the beginning of the earth. . . .When he marked out the foundations of the earth,     then I was beside him, like a master workman,and I was daily his delight,     rejoicing before him always,rejoicing in his inhabited world     and delighting in the children of man.

Divine wisdom rejoiced in God, and God delighted in his wisdom. Or, Son rejoiced in Father, and Father delighted in Son. And this delight of the Father in his Son, before creation ever was, helps to explain the amazing claim of Hebrews 1:1–2:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

Did you catch that? The Father appointed the Son “heir of all things,” and then Hebrews adds “through whom also he created the world.” First, the Father, delighting in his Son, before creation, appoints him to be “heir of all things.” Then, with that appointment in view, God makes the world in order to fulfill his plan. Which means God made the world, and all its history, to give it as a gift to his Son.

“God made the world, and all its history, to give it as a gift to his Son.”

So, Look #1, the eternal Son delighted his Father before creation, and from that delight, the Father appointed to make a world and a story that would make much of his beloved Son, that would have him as its center and climax.

Look #2: He became man.

The preexistent Son — eternally begotten, not made — became man. So not only was he sent and given and came, but he became. John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The eternal Word, whom we heard about in John 1:1, “became flesh.” Meaning, he became man. He took on our flesh and blood, our humanity. 2 Corinthians 8:9: “Though he was rich [as God], he became poor [as man].”

But his becoming might pose a problem to our minds, depending on how we think about “becoming.” Does his becoming man mean that he ceases, somehow, to be God? Does he somehow empty himself of some of his deity, as if that were possible, so that he might become human? Do humanity and deity operate on the same level of reality, so to speak, as a zero-sum game?

Addition, Not Subtraction

Philippians 2:5–7 is the key text about his emptying:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, [being] in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. [We’ll come back to verse 8 in a few minutes.]

What does it mean that he “emptied himself”? Three observations:

Note his deity. “In the form of God” coordinates with “equality with God.” He shared in the Godhead, as one divine person among others, and as God in his own right.
This emptying of himself related to prerogative, we might say, not divine power. He did not grasp or cling to divine rights that might have kept him from entering into the finitude and limitations of humanity, and our fallen world, and the suffering that would come to him by virtue of his being human and coming as a creature.
This emptying, then — as Paul clarifies in the next line — was a taking, not a losing. He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

So, in becoming man, he did not jettison his deity, as if that were even possible, but he took our humanity — not subtracting deity, but adding humanity to his person — and thus he became man as well as God. Without ceasing to be God, he added humanity. He became the God-man.

Wholly Human

Our key word for Look #2 is incarnation. Which means the “in-fleshing” or putting on or the adding of human flesh, human nature, to his eternal divine person. He took on a human body. He was born. He “was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.” He grew, and grew tired. He got hungry and thirsty. He experienced physical weakness. He suffered. And as Colossians 2:9 says, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

But humanity is not only body. It’s also soul. To be fully man, he took on our full humanity, both body and soul. He displayed human emotions: sorrow, compassion, anger, joy. He groaned. He was distressed and troubled. He wept. He prayed “with loud cries and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). As John Calvin summed it up, Christ “has put on our feelings as well as our flesh.”

But a human soul means not only emotions, but also a human mind. He increased, as Luke 2:52 says, not only in stature but in wisdom. And how else, but with respect to a finite human mind, might Jesus say in Mark 13:32 about his second coming, “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”? As God he knew all; as man he did not.

So too, we also can identify a human will in the God-man in addition to the divine will he shared with his Father with respect to his deity. So he can say in John 6:38, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

And then, when it mattered most, he chose with that human will to embrace the divine will, rather than the life-preserving impulse to which the human will is naturally given, when he said in Gethsemane, “My Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). (More on his human will to come.)

So, he became man, and so fully so that to the human eye and ear he was utterly, manifestly human. What a condescension, and what a dignifying of humanity as God’s crowning creature, that God himself would become one of us.

Look #3: He lived to his Father’s glory.

Here our key term is devotion. He devoted his human life on earth to his Father’s glory. At his birth, the angels announced, “Glory to God!” and at his death, a Roman centurion who stood by and saw him breathe his last, caught a glimpse of divine glory, and “praised God” (Luke 23:47).

Jesus consecrated his life to the honor and praise of his Father. Over and over again in the Gospels, the reported effect of his ministry is not that the crowds praised him but that they glorified God (Mark 2:12; Matthew 9:8; Luke 5:25–26). In fact, glorifying God is Matthew’s summary effect of all Jesus’s miracle-working:

The crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel. (Matthew 15:31)

So the effect of his life was glory to his Father. But what about Jesus’s own intent? Jesus says in John 5:43 that he comes not in his own name, but his Father’s. And he sums up his life in John 8:49 by saying, “I honor my Father.” And his intent to glorify his Father gets even more explicit as he approaches the cross. Three times in his high priestly prayer the night before he died, he prays,

I glorified you on earth. (John 17:4)

I have manifested your name. (John 17:6)

I made known to them your name. (John 17:26)

His ministry of healing, his teaching, his patience, his disciple-making, all stemmed from his utter devotion to the glory and honor and praise of his Father. And this both led to, and flowed from, various daily habits of devotion which fed his human soul on his Father and shaped his mind and heart for the work his Father had given him to do.

One way to capture it, which is both manifestly true in Jesus’s life and applicable to ours, is that he devoted himself to his Father’s word (in Scripture), his Father’s ear (in prayer), and his Father’s body (in the fellowship of the faithful).

It is striking to rehearse the place of the Father’s word in the earthly life of his incarnate Son. He was a man who was captivated first personally, and then in his teaching, by “what is written.”

In the wilderness testing, three times he quoted Scripture to combat the devil’s temptations.
In his hometown, he read from the scroll of Isaiah and spoke of its fulfillment in their midst.
He spoke of his cousin John as “he of whom it is written.”
He quoted Scripture as he cleared the temple of moneychangers and when he rebuked proud Pharisees.
Every step toward Calvary came, he said, “as it is written.”

The word of his Father, in Scripture, played a markedly central role in his life.

But also striking was Jesus’s pattern of retreat (for prayer) and return (for ministry). He was a man of prayer, who availed himself of his Father’s ear, often withdrawing from the daily patterns of city and town life to meet with his Father in the wilderness. Again and again he went to desolate places to pray, often alone.

But also, at times, he took his men. He says to his disciples in Mark 6:31: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” And in such times, as well as his daily investment in his disciples, he availed himself of the fellowship, of the corporate body of the faithful. Jesus too drew holy strength, and experienced holy shaping, through the lives of the faithful.

“Even the God-man availed himself of God’s daily means of grace for the good of his soul.”

And so, in looking at his life of devotion to his Father, we find, at bottom, a man of the word and prayer. Even the God-man availed himself of God’s daily means of grace for the good of his soul through habits of accessing and rehearsing God’s word, and approaching him in prayer, living in the fellowship of those also devoted to God.

Look #4: He humbled himself.

We return to Philippians 2, this time picking up verse 8:

. . . [being] in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6–8)

Jesus’s humbling himself not only had a climactic moment, but it was a life of obedience to his Father. So for Look #4, our key term is submission. To submit means to “accept or yield to the will or authority of another.”

Before His Parents

First, in becoming human, he submitted as a child to the authority of his human parents. Luke 2:51, after his visit to the temple at age twelve, says that “he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.” By virtue of becoming human, he entered into various human relationships, and contexts, in which he was to have a disposition to yield.

There is nothing dehumanizing in such God-designed submission; in fact, nothing unbecoming of God himself in human flesh! Submission, then, we might say, is actually humanizing. Acknowledging the limits of our human knowledge and strength and abilities, and the God-ordained callings to which he gives us in variation, is to embrace our humanity and (for us) not to pretend we are God.

For Christ, though he was God, he also was human, and with respect to his human life, he righteously accepted and yielded to the will of those to whom he was assigned (by his Father) to submit, beginning with his parents.

To His Father’s Will

But of course his greatest and most defining submission came directly to the will of his Father. As we’ve already seen, in John 6:38 he says, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Throughout his life, and culminating in Gethsemane, he chose to submit his natural human will to the divine will of his Father.

He was, in a sense, training his whole life for this. He was training his human will not only away from sin but toward his Father. And as he prays in the garden, “Father, . . . not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), he completes the lifelong project of humbling himself, and now at this most critical moment. He has humbled himself, and now, in unjust custody, he will be utterly humiliated — slandered, false accused, unjust beaten, flogged, and crucified. Yet not against his will, but chosen. He humbled himself.

In at least three distinct settings, the Gospels quote Jesus saying, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12; Luke 18:14; Luke 14:11). It is one of his most repeated teachings. And he not only taught it, but lived it. Jesus’s human life is the supreme manifestation of his teaching. He humbled himself and waited for his Father to exalt him.

Look #5: He died for sins not his own.

At this point we might ask, Why was such a man executed? He did not deserve to die. In fact, this is the only human life in the history of the world that did not deserve death — the only sinless human life.

Now our key term is substitution. His death, like the sacrificial system in Israel, going back to Moses, was substitutionary. An innocent party without blemish served as a substitute for the guilty and blemished. In ancient Israel, God ordained and permitted that under the terms of the first covenant, sacrificial animals, who did not themselves deserve death, might stand in — that is, might be substitutes — for God’s people who had sinned.

The reality of sin demanded reckoning. Sin is an assault on the glory of God. Sin, at its heart, is a preferring of other things to God, which profoundly dishonors him. Sin cannot simply be swept under the rug without God himself despising his own glory and worth.

So God designed, in his grace, a temporary measure whereby his people’s sin might be dealt with, without they themselves incurring the death they deserved. For centuries, God’s people knew this provision both as amazing grace and as anticipating something greater. After all, in the final count, as Hebrews 10:4 says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Human blood would be necessary.

Our Sins Laid on Him

And so for centuries, the shedding of sacrificial blood in Israel had anticipated one unimaginably great once-for-all sacrifice that would secure God’s full acceptance of his sinful people forever. It would have been one thing for Jesus himself, before the cross, to say that he would “give his life as a ransom for many” and then for his apostles Peter and John and Paul to explain it in greater detail. But remarkably this revelation that a single human sacrifice might somehow suffice for the sins of many came seven centuries before Christ in the mouth of Isaiah.

Telling of a coming suffering servant, Isaiah says, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). Why was he despised and rejected? Not for any failures of his own, as we might assume. Isaiah then dares to tread where Moses had only pointed:

Surely he has borne our griefs     and carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken,     smitten by God, and afflicted.But he was pierced for our transgressions;     he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,     and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray;     we have turned — every one — to his own way;and the Lord has laid on him     the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4–6)

It was our sorrows that made him a man of sorrows. Our griefs acquainted him with grief. He was pierced, he bled, for our transgressions. He was crushed, he died, for our iniquities. He was wounded by men so that believing souls might be healed before God. We whom he saves are the sinners, not the Savior. Yet on the righteous, unblemished one, God laid our iniquities. This is substitution. God condemned our sin in the flesh of Christ.

Willful, Blood-Bought Joy

As we close this first session, remember that Jesus chose it. His submission was not without joy. His was not obedience without willingness. He did not just endure death for those who believe; he embraced it.

Hebrews 12:2 says, “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross.” And I would not be surprised if Hebrews leaned on Isaiah 53:11 to make such a stunning claim: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”

What sustained Jesus on that dark Friday we now call “Good,” on the single most horrible day in the history of the world? Joy. He saw ahead and was satisfied enough that what joy he tasted even then sustained him through the agony, distress, and anguish.

Unlike the animals who stood in temporarily as substitutes for God’s people in the old covenant, Jesus willed it, with his human will. He embraced it. It pleased him to give his own life as a substitute for sinners — for the joy of the many who would believe and the glory of his Father. What wondrous love is this.

I was in the spring semester of my freshman year at Furman University when I first encountered, and began to engage, the claim that God is happy. I don’t think I had ever thought about God being happy — truly, deeply, richly, infinitely happy as God — and not sullen, disappointed, nervous, or constantly frustrated by all the mess of this world and sinful humans.

At the time I was not a reader, but a college junior, living at the end of our freshman hall, started a Bible study with a handful of us midyear, and when spring semester came, he said we would read the book Desiring God and discuss.

At first, I was not happy about the plan, but I acquiesced to be part of the group. And in due course, my vision of God and the Christian life was radically changed. In particular, it was the chapter titled “The Happiness of God” that turned my world upside down. There I read on the opening page of the chapter:

Redemption, salvation, and restoration are not God’s ultimate goal. These he performs for the sake of something greater: namely, the enjoyment he has in glorifying himself. (33)

A few pages later, I read about the “two lenses” and the “mosaic”:

The infinite complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses . . . When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. . . . But when God looks . . . through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. . . . This mosaic in all its parts — good and evil — brings him delight. . . . [God] has designed from all eternity, and is infallibly forming with every event, a magnificent mosaic of redemptive history. The contemplation of this mosaic (with both its dark and bright tiles) fills his heart with joy. (40–41)

The whole book was life-changing, but far and away, it was chapter 1, on the happiness of God — that is, on the pleasures of God — that was the great catalyst.

In the months that followed, I took up The Pleasures of God, and it deepened and expanded and solidified such glorious, subterranean, bedrock truths like the infinite bliss and blessedness of God — and the good news that there is a chance that I could be truly happy forever. Because the pleasures of God, as he has revealed them in his word, are the great foundation and possibility for our happiness.

So thank you, John, for preaching on the pleasures of God in 1987 and for writing the book, first published in 1991. And thank you, God, for putting it in John’s head, while reading a line from Henry Scougal, to ask: What about God? “Is it not also the case that the worth and excellency of God’s soul is to be measured by the object of his love?” (18).

God’s Pleasure Conundrum

We turn in this final session to “the pleasure of God in the gospel.” Now, we could approach this topic in a more general sense or a more particular sense. Gospel can be an expansive word. We could stretch its meaning broadly and catalogue some of God’s many pleasures in the fullness and expanse of his reality we call “the gospel,” the good news that Jesus saves sinners. There is much we could say in general about God’s pleasure in the gospel. Like Luke 12:32: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

However, more specifically, at the very heart of the gospel is a pleasure conundrum. If “Jesus saves sinners” is a simple, general summary of the gospel, then the simple, straightforward answer to how he saves sinners is, in the words of 1 Corinthians 15:3, “Christ died for our sins.”

So Jesus died. Did that give God pleasure? Did the Father delight in the death of his Son? How can the God who does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11) delight in the death of his own righteous Son? Where shall we go for guidance on the pleasure of God in the death of his Son?

Gospel According to Isaiah

Turn with me to “the fifth Gospel,” as some call it: the prophecy of Isaiah. In the high point of all his prophecy, Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12, the great passage about the Suffering Servant (who is Jesus), Isaiah deals head-on with our pleasure conundrum, and he does so seven centuries before the climactic events transpired in history.

Twice in this prophecy we have explicit mention of the pleasures of God. We also have mention of the pleasures of two other parties, as we’ll see. But before we focus on the desires and delights in this solemn passage, let me note a couple items not to miss in what is essentially the preamble to 53:2–12. Look at Isaiah 52:13–53:1:

Behold, my servant shall act wisely;     he shall be high and lifted up,     and shall be exalted.As many were astonished at you —     his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,     and his form beyond that of the children of mankind —so shall he sprinkle many nations.     Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,for that which has not been told them they see,     and that which they have not heard they understand.Who has believed what he has heard from us?     And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

First, note the opening declaration of the servant’s success and exaltation in verse 13: “Behold, my servant shall act wisely [literally, he shall succeed]; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.” So before we hear of his jarring humiliation and marring and piercing and crushing, we first hear that he will succeed, and be exalted.

Second, note that, given this declaration in verse 13, a banner of astonishment is unfurled in verse 14 and flies over the rest of the passage:

“As many as were astonished at you . . .” (Isaiah 52:14)
“Kings shall shut their mouths” in amazement. (Isaiah 52:15)
“Who has believed what he has heard from us?” he asks, because it is so surprising, so seemingly upside down. (Isaiah 53:1)
“ . . . who considered . . . ?” (Isaiah 53:8)

The whole of the vision foretells of an astonishing, startling, almost unbelievable work that “the arm of the Lord” will perform. This servant (God’s own Arm) will have his appearance marred beyond human semblance. And perhaps what’s most striking of all is not just that it will happen, but that this is God’s doing. This is God himself at work. In other words, the astonishment comes from the story of the servant being an expression not of human wisdom, but divine.

This is the same God who confounds human wisdom by saying “the older shall serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23); this is the same God who will say, through Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways . . . For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9).” This is the same God who will one day inspire another commentary after these forecasted events that reads,

The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. . . . Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:18–21).

God not only does it this way — confounding human wisdom and expectation — but he takes pleasure in it. He delights to astonish. As Jesus prays in Matthew 11:25–26, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will [literally, it was pleasing before you].”

So then, what is this enigma? What’s so astonishing, startling, unbelievable? Isaiah 52:2–12 unfolds the astonishing story, from the servant’s quiet birth and upbringing, to his unimpressive appearance, to the puzzle of his being rejected and despised, to his astounding conduct when treated unjustly (and that, shockingly, all the way to the grave). And finally, climactically, in Isaiah 53:10–12, most astonishing of all, through death comes delight — God’s greatest pleasures through, and because of, this unjust, horrific death of the righteous, undeserving servant.

Let’s unfold the astonishing action of God’s Arm, through the lens of the pleasures of three parties. Our focus here is the pleasures of God, and we’ll linger there longest, but this vision speaks to desires and delights beyond his, shedding light on the pleasures of God in the death of his Son.

1. The Pleasures of Natural Man

The preamble in Isaiah 52:13–53:1 might have us anticipate some big splash. We might expect such a servant will start his career by descending from heaven in glory. But then it all comes about so unexpectedly, so quietly. “For,” as we read in Isaiah 53:2, “he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground.”

So, no glorious descent (though there was a private angelic announcement to a small party of lowly shepherds), but the servant came from the womb as an infant and grew up as a boy. Verse 2 goes on to explain how, as man, he was not the kind to attract an Instagram following: “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire [or take pleasure] in him.”

Rather, given his quiet upbringing and unimpressive appearance, the story takes another unexpected turn in Isaiah 53:3: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces [!] he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

Sinful Man Would Tell Another Story

The first pleasures mentioned in the vision are the desires of natural man. And they are not the same as God’s. The pleasures of natural man would have led to a very different story for the servant.

He would have a celebrated birth and celebrity childhood. Perhaps he would be the visible, well-known and well-discussed son of a beloved monarch. Or maybe he would acquire his fame through athletic achievement, or great triumphs as a warrior. Or even better, all three. And he would be tall, strong, and handsome. He would be both nobly born and accomplished in his own right. So are the desires of natural man.

But this vision of the servant and his story as astonishing points to a critical truth about natural man, that will come front and center in Isaiah 53:6: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way.”

The essence of this “going astray,” this turning — what we call “sin” — is preferring other things to glory of God (The Pleasures of God, 158). Which means that natural man, and his human wisdom, does not see the world aright. His wisdom, even as it seems wise, leads to folly.

Human Versus Divine Wisdom

If you ask, What is the fundamental difference between divine wisdom and human wisdom? I might point you forward a few pages in The Pleasures of God to the chapter on God’s pleasure in hiding himself from the wise and revealing himself to infants:

God’s wisdom has the supremacy of God’s glory as the beginning, middle, and end of it, but man’s wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self-determining, and not utterly dependent on God’s free grace. Divine wisdom begins consciously with God (“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” Psalm 111:10), is consciously sustained by God, and has the glory of God as its conscious goal. When divine wisdom is revealed to humans, its effect is to humble us and give us the same God-orientation that God himself has. (278)

Such human wisdom leads not only to overlooking the quiet, humble beginnings of divine wisdom (and to eventually being surprised by it), but also, in time, to despising and rejecting God’s wisdom. Sin is an assault on God, however much it may not seem like that at first. It may pretend to simply ignore him, but at bottom it is a despising and rejecting of him, and in time that will be manifest.

2. The Pleasures of God in Crushing His Son

First, we have the backdrop of the desires of thin, fleeting pleasures of natural man in verses 2–3. Now we come to our main focus, as we go to the culminating paragraph in Isaiah 53:10–12 and the greatest surprises of all.

Twice the ESV has the phrase “the will of the Lord” in verse 10. I don’t think that’s a wrong translation, but I suspect that the idea of “willing” in English is lost on many of us today. Many of us hear “willing” with a sense of acquiescence. “Well, I don’t want to do that, but I’m willing” (like when I agreed as a college freshman to read Desiring God).

But the Hebrew here implies more. It is a desirous willing — a wanting. This same root is translated delight elsewhere. Like in Isaiah 62:4: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.”

That’s the same word here in Isaiah 53:10: “It was the delight of the Lord to crush him.” The KJV reads: “It pleased the Lord.” Interestingly, the KJV has “bruised” and “pleased,” while the ESV has “crushed” and “will.” Verse 10 is so shocking — that it delighted Yahweh to crush him — it’s easy to imagine translators feeling the pressure to soften it. (Admittedly, the verse is so striking that it’s difficult to translate without being able to teach on it and provide context.)

Astonishing Delight

Let’s read Isaiah 53:10–12, in the ESV, and then ask how this text might help us approach our pleasure conundrum:

Yet it was the will [delight] of the Lord to crush him;     he has put him to grief;when his soul makes an offering for guilt,     he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;the will [delight] of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,     make many to be accounted righteous,     and he shall bear their iniquities.Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,     and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,because he poured out his soul to death     and was numbered with the transgressors;yet he bore the sin of many,     and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Remember our banner of astonishment. The shock of the servant’s story continues, through verses 4–9, as we’ll see, but now it hits a new register in verse 10. God himself did this, and he was pleased to do it. He didn’t do it by accident or acquiesce. He delighted to do it.

Which not only raises our question today, but also functions for Isaiah to confirm that this did indeed satisfy God’s demands. Our iniquities and transgressions and guilt were against God. It matters very little what this servant does if it does not please or satisfy God.

Happy to Save

So, God’s pleasure in the death of his Son might raise our pleasure conundrum, but let it not be lost on us what great assurance his settled delight provides for saved sinners. Brothers and sisters in Christ, God doesn’t just save sinners; he delights to save us. He doesn’t just go through the motions at Calvary. He doesn’t bite his lip. He doesn’t hold his nose with his people at arm’s length.

As Jesus says in John 16:27, “the Father himself loves you.” God doesn’t only accomplish the gospel and apply it through his Son, but it pleases him to do so. The happy God is happy about his own Son dying to save us. The gospel is not a divine concession. It is a divine delight.

Salvation in Christ is not based on a whim or accident. God designed it, and did it, and it pleased him to do it. And neither Satan nor sinful man can change that! Regardless of what questions it raises, God’s settled pleasure in this gospel gives us great confidence in the solidity of our salvation in Christ.

So, let’s linger here and consider three aspects of God’s pleasure in the crushing (to death) of his Son in this culminating paragraph. (As verse 12 makes clear, this crushing was a crushing to death: “He poured out his soul to death.”)

First, the pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in substitution.

Isaiah 53:10 tell us, “His soul makes an offering for guilt.” And then we read in Isaiah 53:12: “He bore the sin of many.” Which leads us to consider the very heart of the passage in verses 4–6. And here’s how it flows under the banner of astonishment: Why was such a servant a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? Because his sorrows and griefs were not his own but ours!

Surely he has borne our griefs     and carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken,     smitten by God, and afflicted.But he was pierced for our transgressions;     he was crushed for our iniquities;upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,     and with his wounds we are healed.All we like sheep have gone astray;     we have turned — every one — to his own way;and the Lord has laid on him     the iniquity of us all.

Our griefs. Our sorrows. Our transgressions. Our iniquities. Our chastisement, our punishment, laid on him. There is no getting around this being “substitution.” This is unmistakably Levitical language. These are the categories of the sacrificial system. The animal, albeit imperfectly and temporarily, stands in (by God’s gracious provision) as a substitute for the chastisement sinners deserve.

Yet here in Isaiah 53, the substitute is manifestly human. Isaiah dares to tread where Moses only pointed. The whole sacrificial system hinted at this and inevitably anticipated something like this, but the arm of the Lord is not yet revealed until Isaiah — and then not yet enacted for another seven centuries.

Second, the pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in justification.

Isaiah 53:11 declares, “The righteous one, my servant, [shall] make many to be accounted righteous.” The servant not only bears the griefs of others and carries their sorrows, but he literally “will provide righteousness for the many” (Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 442).

“Justification” refers to God’s declaration of “Righteous!” over the sinner on the basis of the righteousness of Christ to whom the repentant sinner is joined by faith alone. In other words, the servant (Christ) will “provide righteousness” for the many joined to him by faith. This is an additional pleasure to substitution. The servant (Jesus) not only “bears their iniquities,” but also “provides righteousness.”

But what about “the many” that’s repeated in this text? This is one of the most important questions in the vision because it appears over and over: “Many were astonished” (Isaiah 52:14); “He bore the sin of many” (Isaiah 53:12); “Many to be accounted righteous” (Isaiah 53:11); and he will share his “portion with the many” (Isaiah 53:12). And this repetition of “the many” leads to a third pleasure of God.

Third, the pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of definite atonement.

“The many” who are astonished in Isaiah 52:14 become the witnesses who speak in Isaiah 53:1 (“us”) and Isaiah 53:2 (“we”). “The many,” then, is “my people” in Isaiah 53:8. “The many” is “his offspring” in Isaiah 53:10. And it’s these “many” who now say, in Isaiah 53:4–5:

“He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
“He was pierced for our transgressions . . . crushed [to death] for our iniquities.”
“[He] brought us peace.”
“With his wounds we are healed.”

“The many,” then, is the “we” in Isaiah 53:6 who say, “All we like sheep have gone astray . . . and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” — that is, all “the many.” The “we” talking in verse 6 are “the many,” the “offspring,” the “my people” — all those whom God has moved from seeing the servant with the desires of natural man, to seeing him with the pleasures of God.

So, the “alls” of verse 6 are constrained by the “we” of verse 6, which goes back to the “we” and “us” of verses 1–2. As Alec Motyer argued at length in his contribution to From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: “The intended recipients and the actual beneficiaries of the Servant’s atoning death are one and the same group” (266).

That is, the servant’s work is definite. It is particular. Which means that the servant can say, as Jesus does in John 19:30, “It is finished.” He doesn’t say, “Well, I did my part.” He says, “It is finished.” The servant does not leave the work undone. Nothing here in Isaiah 53 is open-ended. And this finality, this completeness, this definiteness, this particularity is all part and parcel of the achievement of the incarnate Son that delights his Father.

One more quote from Motyer:

The “we” of these crucial verses were locked into a failure to grasp what the Servant was all about, but our iniquities were laid by Yahweh on his Servant; and this is what led to our “seeing.” The theological implications are profound: the atonement itself, and not something outside of the atonement [like the human will], is the cause for any conversion. The resources for conversion are found in the Servant’s death; they flow from it. Thus, it is the atonement that activates conversion, not vice versa. (261–62)

“The pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in substitution, justification, and definite atonement.”

The pleasure of God in the gospel is the pleasure of God in substitution, in justification, and in definite atonement — but still our problem remains, however layered and multi-dimensional these pleasures: Why does God delight in the death of his Son?

Four Reasons for the Father’s Pleasure

Here are four reasons (and the fourth leads us to the third and final party to whom Isaiah attributes pleasure) that answer the question, Why does God delight in the death of his Son?

First, God delights in the magnitude of his Son’s achievement — and his death is an achievement. In fact, it is the single greatest achievement in the history of the world: the eternal Son of God became man, lived sinlessly for more than three decades, and with silence and without violence, willfully submitted himself to unjust arrest, torture, and even death to rescue a chosen multitude from every tongue and tribe and nation. And then he rose again in triumph over sin and death and Satan.

This is the singular achievement for which the world was made and set up. This is an achievement of which we have only begun to grasp its magnitude. We will celebrate it forever. When God delights in the death of his Son for sinners, he delights in his Son achieving the single greatest feat in history.

Second, God delights in the pleasure of “the many” rescued by his Son. He takes pleasure in once natural men now born again to delight in him. And nothing produces holy delight in his redeemed people like the achievement of his Son at the cross.

To be accounted righteous, and to be apportioned to the Son — what does that produce? Obligation? Duty? Joy! Real pleasure, not thin and shallow, but the kind that endures forever! And note, the joy of “the many” here is not our getting the Son’s portion as much as our being the Son’s portion (“all are yours, and you are Christ’s,” 1 Corinthians 3:22–23).

If you wonder, Am I among “the many”? here’s the question for you: Do you see the servant and his work as folly or wisdom? Do you see him as nonsensical or glorious, embarrassing or delightful? Does your soul find pleasure in him, or despise him?

At bottom, what do you do with Jesus? There’s no finding out if you’re included in “the many” apart from him and how you orient on him. Those whom God has been pleased to move from despising and rejecting Jesus to worshipful astonishment of Jesus can count themselves among “the many.”

Third, God delights in the Son’s love for God and his glory. The Son “acts wisely”; he does the Father’s will; he lives, and dies, to glorify his Father. He does not take sin — as the preferring of other things to God — lightly. Rather, he takes it with utter seriousness by going to the cross to die for the sins of “the many.” Back to Piper in The Pleasures of God:

The depth of the Son’s suffering was the measure of his love for the Father’s glory. It was the Father’s righteous allegiance to his own name that made recompense for sin necessary. So when the Son willfully took the suffering of that recompense on himself, every footfall on the way to Calvary echoed through the universe with this message: The glory of God is of infinite value! The glory of God is of infinite value! (176)

“Nothing magnifies the glory of God like the Son of God embracing the cross.”

Or, we might say, God is most glorified in his Son when he is most satisfied in his Father. God is most glorified in his incarnate Son when, “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2), he endures the suffering and shame of the cross, for his Father’s sake. Nothing magnifies the glory of God like the Son of God embracing (willingly, gladly) the incomparable suffering and shame of the cross.

Which leads both to a fourth reason for the Father’s pleasure and, at the same time, the third and final personal mention of pleasure in Isaiah 53: the pleasure of the servant himself.

3. The Pleasures of the Son in Being Crushed (53:11–12)

This is critical: the pleasure of God in crushing his Son is not apart from the pleasure of the Son in being crushed. That the Son was pleased to be crushed — that in the agony, he endured for the joy set before him — does not mean it was easy. This is not pleasure light. This is pleasure deep, deep enough to sustain and animate the soul against the greatest of earthly deterrents. Consider two aspects of the Son’s pleasure.

One, consider how he went: willfully. Not kicking and screaming, but voluntarily — that is, he tasted enough pleasure in the moment to embrace the cross. We stand in awe of Isaiah 53:7–9:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,     yet he opened not his mouth;like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,     and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,     so he opened not his mouth.By oppression and judgment he was taken away;     and as for his generation, who considered [astonished!]that he was cut off out of the land of the living,     stricken for the transgression of my people?And they made his grave with the wicked     and with a rich man in his death,although he had done no violence,     and there was no deceit in his mouth.

This, again, all under the banner of escalating astonishment. Verses 4–6 gave us the unexpected reason for his sorrow and grief. Verses 7–9 give us the unexpected conduct of the servant. He could have called ten thousand angels. But in the garden, the holy hesitations of his human will gave way to glad submission to the divine will, which — as the God-man — was also his will. He prays, “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42), and in doing so, his human will embraces the divine.

So, he offered himself voluntarily. He consented. He did not just acquiesce. He willed it. He embraced it. He owned it. He “let himself be brutalized.” It was his pleasure — not a thin, shallow immediate human pleasure, but a deep, divine, supernatural pleasure — to be crushed for the glory of his Father, and his own joy, through saving many sinners.

Then, consider the source of the joy that sustained him. Isaiah 53:11 says, “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.” In the agony of the cross, he looked forward to the pleasure he would enjoy on the other side, and tasted enough of it in the moment, to keep going. And this requires resurrection.

No Resurrection, No Delight

This is essential for God’s pleasure in the death of his Son, and the Son’s pleasure, and our pleasure in him. If there is no resurrection, there is no divine pleasure in the death of the divine Son. And no pleasure in the Son in being crushed. But the resurrection turns death upside down. And God’s pleasure in the death of his Son is always pleasure that has the resurrection in view.

“If there is no resurrection, there is no divine pleasure in the death of the divine Son.”

Isaiah 53:10 tells us that the Lord “shall prolong his days.” And the pleasure of the Lord “shall prosper in his hand.” God’s pleasure in the death of his Son is a pleasure in prospering his Son after death. Through the achievement of the cross, and by the resurrection, Jesus enjoys the reward of his achievement, “the many” as his portion. The Groom receives his bride.

And the one who once had no majesty that we should look upon him, becomes the majestic one, upon whom the redeemed gaze as the one who died to bear their sins and lives to be their greatest delight. Which brings us back to the first line of the vision in Isaiah 52:13: “He shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.”

God’s pleasure in the crushing of his Son is the pleasure of God in lifting up his Son — both at the cross and in the resurrection (as in John 12:32). Just as God the Son delights in the glory of his Father, so God the Father delights in the glory of his Son.

And just as nothing moves the born-again human heart like the exaltation and glory of Christ, so nothing moves the divine heart like the exaltation and glory of his incarnate, perfect, crucified, risen, reigning Son.

Some churches plant “staff-light.” That’s what we did in early 2015.

Our mother church sent us out with four founding pastors, all of us working full-time jobs elsewhere. The arrangement gave us remarkable flexibility in our first year. Our ongoing costs were very low — essentially just renting a high school auditorium, buying bread and wine for weekly communion, and providing the lead planter with a modest stipend (since he shouldered more responsibility than the other three).

However, as we grew, we soon realized our fledging church was developing needs that four unpaid pastors were struggling to cover. We needed at least one of us to put aside his day job and be our first full-time paid pastor — that is, make it his breadwinning vocation. We needed at least one man, at this stage, to give his primary work time and attention to our young church for it to be healthy. Thankfully, the risen Christ provided. And in time, as the church has grown and needs have changed, we’ve received additional staff pastors to fill out and strengthen our pastoral team.

Three years after we launched, a dear sister church of ours planted “staff-heavy,” with three founding pastors, all paid. It was a financial load to carry at launch. They were more strapped for funds than a staff-light model, but their young congregation received unusual deposits of pastoral time and attention. They’ve made it too. And along the way, Christ has added to their number non-staff pastors to fill out and strengthen their pastoral team.

“Most churches discover, in time, the need for a healthy blend of both paid and unpaid leaders.”

Whether staff-heavy or staff-light initially, most churches discover, in time, the need for a healthy blend of both paid and unpaid leaders. The nature of the church lends itself to needing both in due course — not only plants and young churches, but also older and more established congregations. Even churches with staff-only polities learn to lean heavily on key laymen who come to function in various pastoral capacities (even if they’re never called “pastor,” “elder,” or “overseer”). In any case, these pastor-teachers, Ephesians 4:11 says, are gifts from the risen Christ for the good of his church: “he gave . . . the shepherds-teachers.” And these gifts come in two basic kinds.

Some Paid, Some Unpaid

Search the New Testament, and you will not find two types of pastor-elders according to function (that is, say, teaching versus ruling). But you will find two sources of pastoral revenue (from the church or from other work) and, with it, comes the greater or lesser investment of time and energy. All pastor-elders feed (teach) and lead (govern), but some give part (or all) of their revenue-generating “work life” to the church, while others formally “labor” in vocations outside the church. Both can prove vital to healthy churches in the long run.

We should clarify that, in the New Testament, pastor = elder = overseer. These are three names for the one lead or teaching office in the local church (flanked by a second, assisting office called “deacon,” Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:8–13). Elder is the same office often called “pastor” today (based on the noun pastor or shepherd in Ephesians 4:11 and its verb forms in Acts 20:28 and 1 Peter 5:2). This same lead office is also called overseer in four places (Acts 20:28; Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:1–2; Titus 1:7).

Within that group of pastor-elder-overseers, we find “two kinds of pastors,” we might say. Two texts in Paul’s letters in particular, both leaning on the words of Christ, establish the categories for these two types of leaders: some paid, some not.

Laborers Deserve Their Wages

First, leaning on Jesus, Paul establishes in 1 Corinthians 9 a “right” for other gospel workers to receive pay (while not claiming it for himself, which is vintage Paul). It’s fitting that a tentmaker construct the argument; neither Christian maturity nor love insists on its own rights, and so Paul lays out the case for others, for pastors in his day and ours. He writes, “The Lord [Jesus] commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14). Where did Jesus say that? We have it in Luke 10:7 (and Matthew 10:10): “the laborer deserves his wages.”

In the second key text, Paul quotes the same words again (alongside Deuteronomy 25:4) in 1 Timothy 5:17–18:

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”

Observe carefully, because this is often missed, that the distinction among elders here is labor, not teaching. Paul does not say that all elders “rule” but only some teach. Rather, the emphasis is labor, that is, in context, working full-time or making a living as elders. We know from elsewhere that ruling (leading) and teaching (feeding) are the two main tasks of the pastor-elders (1 Timothy 2:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:12). All elders rule and teach, but not all “labor” at this calling, as Paul makes plain in the explanation that follows: “For . . . the laborer deserves his wages.”

What Is ‘Double Honor’?

What, then, is this “double honor” that is especially for those who labor (that is, professionally) at the ruling and teaching work of pastoral ministry? “Double honor” means both (1) the honor of deserved respect as faithful leaders and (2) the honor of deserved remuneration or payment for the work. (From this second sense, we get the word honoraria.)

Good pastors are worthy not only of the church’s respect (1 Thessalonians 5:12–13), but also of financial support, and especially if they are doing this labor and not other breadwinning work. Paul’s language here is precise: being “considered worthy” means some elders may receive pay from the church and others not. Neither he nor Christ require that all pastor-elders be paid (or all unpaid), but he does establish a principle that is applicable to churches and pastors everywhere.

First Timothy 5:18 argues (“for”) that it is justice, not kindness or mercy, for a church to “doubly honor” its pastors with both respect and remuneration. Some will receive that right and bless the church through their willingness to give their work life (“career”) to the church’s needs. And others, like Paul himself, will forgo that right and bless the church by supporting themselves (and the church) through labors other than pastoral ministry.

In this healthy mix of both paid and unpaid, staff and non-staff pastors, we want to keep two truths in mind — truths that correspond to the two functions of pastor-elders in the New Testament.

All Pastors Lead and Feed

First, all pastor-elders are teachers. “Able to teach” is at the heart of the 1 Timothy 3 qualifications, and the culminating assertion of the Titus list. The Christian faith is a teaching movement, and its leaders are teachers — equipped, eager, and effective teachers — or the church languishes.

All elders are teachers — feeding the congregation through teaching in its various forms and settings — but some labor at their preaching (literally, “word”) and teaching. (We might here permit a practical distinction between teaching and preaching, such that some elders, while manifestly teachers, may not gravitate to preaching. Healthy churches need far more teaching than just a weekly sermon.) All elders teach, but not all labor full-time at pastoral ministry. The point is the amount of labor (and thus necessity of remuneration), not a division of gifting among the elders (as if some were able to teach and others not).

As this works out over time in the life of the church, it is often those who labor as a career in pastoral work who are most equipped through formal training, and have the time to adequately study and prepare, who therefore often carry more of the teaching and especially preaching demands. But this doesn’t mean that non-staff pastor-elders are not teachers. (If they have no interest in teaching, or no availability for it, then they are simply not good fits for the church’s lead office, which is a teaching office. But, if qualified, they may serve well in the assisting office, that of deacon.)

“Teaching remains at the heart of the pastoral calling, paid and unpaid.”

Teaching remains at the heart of the pastoral calling, paid and unpaid. And let this also be clear: the pastors are called to more than teaching — to overseeing, governing, prayer, and other critical aspects of local-church leadership. Pastor-elders are not only teachers but also overseers who do more than teach, yet without letting their teaching take a back seat. Such are the tensions we live in for this age. On the one hand, pastors should not give in to carnal pressures to do a thousand other tasks than preaching and teaching. On the other hand, it is naïve to think they can only preach and teach. Pastors are called neither to a thousand tasks nor to one alone.

But at the heart of the elder’s calling is teaching, whoever writes his regular paycheck.

Time and Attention, Not Gifting

To be sure, “laboring” outside the church doesn’t mean not laboring at all in the church through teaching and leading. But it does mean less labor.

Because good teaching and preaching make for emotionally difficult work, and require training and study and careful preparation, and because teaching is central to the pastoral calling, it makes sense that often paid pastors do more of the teaching (and perhaps especially the preaching in the context of worship).

However, we also observe that the paid pastors (because it’s their day job) do more of all the work. They also provide more oversight and contribute more the day-in, day-out aspects of the leading (“ruling”) in the life of the church. So, yes, it will often be the case that the paid pastors, who pastor for more hours, also do more teaching. However, correspond as it may, it would be a mistake to coordinate paid ministry with teaching and unpaid ministry with mere ruling.

The distinction, then, between two kinds of elders is not “gifting” but time and attention. An unpaid elder may be more “gifted” as a teacher than a full-time paid elder. Either way, as a pastor, neither is relieved of teaching or ruling. Paid and unpaid leadership may make for two kinds of pastors, but only one office of pastor-elder, and one pastor-elder team.

Paid and Unpaid Gifts

In the end, we see that both paid and unpaid pastor-elders are gifts from the risen Christ to his church. And he has his own particular blend for varying seasons in the lives of his churches. From my limited vantage, I doubt churches will thrive in the long haul with all their pastors paid (or all unpaid, for that matter). Given the nature of the church, pastoral teams function best, over time, when composed of some wise blend of both paid and unpaid leaders.

In the good times, the more staff pastors, the better. They are Christ’s gift to his church in giving their full-time work life and primary labor and energy to the church and its mission.

However, especially in leaner seasons, when there is tension within the church or even within the staff, the more unpaid pastors, the better. Because these men do not draw their livelihood from the church, they can be a stabilizing influence in conflicted times and (depending on the structure) less personally and vocationally beholden to the lead pastor. So too, when seasons of transition come, and paid pastors transition (particularly a senior leader), the balance of unpaid pastors can contribute greatly to stability during change.1

It is an amazing gift to a church when a man is willing, and eager, to give his life’s work, his “career,” to full-time Christian ministry. And it’s also an amazing gift that a man, in another line of work, would give himself to sufficient training and equipping, and then give many of his evenings and weekends (and often important moments during the work week) to unpaid Christian ministry.

Both kinds of pastors are gifts from Jesus to build and keep his church.

What a wonder that Jesus groaned.

It’s one of the more arresting glimpses into his humanity that we find in the Gospels. Like his flare of righteous anger at Pharisees in Mark 3:5. Or, after Lazarus’s death, his being “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (John 11:33). And then, remarkably, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). How many readers have been stopped in their tracks by his admission of the limits of his human knowledge? “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32).

We might overlook this remarkable moment in the human life of Christ — his groaning aloud in Mark 7:34 — if it didn’t happen again, and with more intensity, just a few verses later in Mark 8:12. That is, twice, just paragraphs apart — first before the feeding of the four thousand, then again immediately after — “Jesus sighed.” And the second instance was more dramatic than the first (“he sighed deeply in his spirit”). The Greek for sigh (stenazō) we translate groan elsewhere in the New Testament.

The emotional life of the sinless God-man might be more complex than we’re prone to assume.

What’s in a Groan?

Jesus’s sighing, his groaning, stands out all the more in Mark 7–8, because that’s not the tenor of his ministry elsewhere.

Yes, we know him as Isaiah’s “man of sorrows” not because he groaned his way through ministry, but because he came, in the end, to bear the cross for our sin. Typically, the Christ of the Gospels is conspicuously calm, composed, unnerved in the face of his foes, telling provocative parables, responding to hostile quips with grace and penetrating questions, exhibiting the equanimity that seems to be in shorter supply today.

But manifestly self-possessed as he may be in the Gospels, Jesus is fully human, with all that our nature entails — body, mind, will, and emotions. In particular moments, Jesus could be righteously angry and greatly troubled and even weep. And with each unexpected revelation of his full humanity, we mere humans have much to learn.

We might intuit some grace for us in glimpsing Christ’s groaning. Many keen observers, like J.C. Ryle, have anticipated “a deep meaning in that sigh!” (Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Mark, 115) — but what, then, is the deep meaning? What might there be for us, his people, in the groaning of our Lord?

Truly Man, Not Only God

For one, we see the realness of Christ’s humanity, and with it, his identification with our plight. Not only does he, in Mark 7–8 as elsewhere, show distinctively human emotions — which he has by virtue of his humanity, not deity — but we find him drawing near to us. His groaning is not only like ours in this fallen age, but also for ours — as it is particularly for the deaf and mute man of Mark 7:

And taking him aside from the crowd privately, [Jesus] put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. (Mark 7:33–35)

As William Lane observes, Jesus took the man aside from the distraction of the crowd, entered his world, and “openly expressed the strong emotion he seems to have always felt in the presence of the ravages of demonic [oppre]ession and disease” (Mark, 267).

We might mistake the wrong kind of calmness for spiritual maturity. Godliness does indeed bring calm and stability to a human soul, but not at the expense of deep, spontaneous groans over sin’s curse (holy groans that are, at heart, markedly different from the grumbling which Scripture uniformly condemns). This picture of Jesus is different than the one we might be prone to imagine or portray. The healthy, sinless emotional life is not as one-dimensional as we might think. Holy emotions in a fallen world may fall across a wider spectrum.

“We all have moments, if not extended seasons, where this age of not-yets wears on us. Jesus too.”

Biblically, sighing is not an expression of joy, but of grief. Paired with groaning (Job 3:24; Ezekiel 9:4), sorrow (Psalm 31:10; Isaiah 35:10; 51:11), and the longing for divine deliverance (Psalm 38:9), sighing expresses (audibly) a kind of inner languishing, the opposite of a merry heart (Isaiah 24:7). Sighing is a soft, more quiet form of mourning (Ezekiel 24:17). And it is a universal aspect of the human experience: we all have moments, if not extended seasons, where this age of not-yets wears on us. Jesus too. Jesus sighed.

In the first instance in Mark’s account, the prompt is sin’s curse, as Jesus sees its effects in the deaf-mute before his eyes. Then his groaning intensifies in Mark 8:12 as the focus sharpens to sin itself, in the unbelief of the Pharisees.

Truly God, Not Only Man

If his first groan endears him to us, his second unsettles us as sinners prone to unbelief:

The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” (Mark 8:11–12)

“Jesus did not explode with anger and lose control. Nor was he stoic in the face of unbelief.”

Note this: “he sighed deeply in his spirit,” but did not rage. He did not explode with anger and lose control. Nor was he stoic in face of unbelief. Previously, we might assume his sigh was audible. Now, it’s both more intense and apparently less audible: “deeply” and “in his spirit.” His next words are not an outraged attack on the Pharisees, but a composed, though condemning, refusal to give the sign for which their unbelief pines. “The emotion displayed in his deep sigh was an expression of indignation and grief,” comments Lane. “There is a note of exasperation in the question, Why does this generation seek a sign?” (277).

For us, Mark’s peek into Jesus’s groan, deep in his spirit, exposes our own human proneness to trifle with unbelief. Our age conditions us to take unbelief lightly. We cast a desperate father’s cry — “help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) — as a sanctifying of doubt, rather than as a plea for deliverance without delay. But doubt is never a badge of honor in the Bible. Jesus can indeed handle our doubts (and heal them), but he does not celebrate them. In fact, as his deep groaning in Mark 8:12 reveals, few things, if any, discourage him like unbelief.

To this, we might ask ourselves how much we groan as Jesus does. Do we sense, with him, the seriousness, the atrocity, of unbelief? Or do we soft-pedal it, in ourselves and in others? Our Savior may find not that we groan too much, but too little. We need Jesus not to banish such groanings but to right the ship of our hearts, to get them back on course. Like a vessel off course, we groan at what we shouldn’t and do not groan at what we should.

Over His Dead Body

Finally, in the sweep of the Gospel of Mark, we also find an anticipation of the coming cross in the groans of Christ. We do here peek at the griefs of the man of sorrows.

As his first groan of holy compassion escalates to a second groan of holy indignation, the weight on his shoulders grows with each step toward the cross. The curse he will own, the sin he will become, and the unbelief he will remedy are a growing weight as he owns the purpose of his coming. “I have a baptism to be baptized with,” he testifies in Luke 12:50, “and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” This heaviness was already there in his first sigh. As Tim Keller observes, when Jesus is about to heal the deaf-mute, he doesn’t grin and say, “Wait till you see what I’m going to do for you.” Because no healing, or faith, is free. Jesus will pay for it at the cross.

And the cross-ward solemnity is even more manifest in the second sigh, with the solemn tone of “Truly I say to you,” and his striking, implied self-imprecation. Jesus says, literally, “Truly I say to you, if a sign will be given to this generation . . .” (Mark 8:12) and then does not complete the statement. It’s an if without an explicit then. What’s implied is, “. . . may I be accursed.” Or, as we might say today, “Over my dead body.” Perhaps he trails off because the cross in the distance is becoming all so real. It’s one thing to say “Over my dead body” as a figure of speech; it’s another to own that death is indeed coming, and that he had not come to bring divine curse, but to bear it.

As much as we might hope to imitate our Lord in his holy groanings, we come to this great contrast as the hill in the distance draws near: the God-man went to the cross for the curse of sin and the unbelief he grieved. There were righteous groans in the mouth of Christ, on his way to Golgotha, that are not ours after Calvary.

Still, to groan is human — and Christian, for now. In this age of glorious alreadies and distressing not-yets, we groan, inevitably and even virtuously. And not only do we groan like our Lord, but we marvel that he groaned for us.

In this breakout session, I’m excited to speak to you about what I think is one of the most important practical life and ministry topics we could discuss.

For one, the “secret liturgies” of spiritual leaders is a timeless topic: these truths remain the same across generations. For another, this topic is crucial. You cannot minister well to others for long without yourself being relatively spiritually healthy. So Paul says to Timothy, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching” (1 Timothy 4:16); and to the Ephesian elders, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28).

Also, this topic of “secret liturgies” is perhaps especially important in our age — “the age of accelerations,” according Thomas Friedman, when many of us need “permission to just slow down.” Today, he says, “the pace of technology and scientific change outstrips the speed with which human beings and societies can usually adapt” (Thank You for Being Late, 39).

According to Friedman, “We are living through one of the greatest inflection points in history, perhaps unequaled since . . . Gutenberg, a German blacksmith and printer, launched the printing revolution in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation” (3). And the late Dallas Willard, who died in 2013, said near the end of his life that “hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.”

So for those reasons, and more, I’m eager to address the topic of the leader’s “secret liturgies” and focus, very practically, on what we might call “the private worship behind a public Christian leader.”

Needy for Repeat

I’m especially eager to address this topic with those of you who are music people because of one little word you know well from hymnbooks and the sheets of worship music: repeat. Of all people, you know the power of repetition in corporate singing, however much you might be able to explain it or not.

Now, to be sure, many modern church-goers are miffed by repetition in corporate worship. The Information Age is conditioning us for new content, fresh ideas, new data. Why re-read what we’ve already read, why rehearse what we’ve already heard, why re-sing lines we’ve already sung, when new information is available like never before?

But do we know what our unprecedented access to novelty is doing to us? Indications so far seem to be that it’s making us shallower, not wiser and more mature. Running our eyes across the page and mouthing words to a song are not the same as experiencing the reality in our hearts. Our hearts simply don’t move as quickly as our eyes and our mouths.

Which makes worship of the living God — both in public and “in secret” — such an important remedy for what is increasingly ailing us today. God made us to worship him. And we are shriveling without it.

Consider the Psalms

Take Psalm 136 as just one example of the power of repetition. The psalm is twenty-six verses, and each verse ends with “for his steadfast love endures forever.” It rehearses God’s goodness and supremacy, his wonder-working and world-creating, his delivery of his people from slavery and provision for them in a rich land.

Twenty-six times the psalm repeats this refrain — and not one of them is wasted. With each new verse, another attribute or rescue of God is celebrated, and then our souls are ushered deeper into his steadfast, ever-enduring love with each glorious repetition.

The goal of the song is not to make God’s steadfast love old and boring, but exactly the opposite: to help us feel it afresh and at new depth. The dance of each new verse, with each return to the refrain, is designed to bore the central truth about God’s resilient love deeper and deeper into our inner person.

The psalm is not a treatise on the unwavering, persistent love of God, but what we call a meditation — less linear and more circular, or spiral — crafted to help auger the reality of his love from information on our mental surface down to an experience and taste in our hearts.

Heart of Leadership

Our task in this session is to focus very practically on the private worship behind the public leader. So let me take you to Deuteronomy 17 as we consider the “secret liturgies” of those who would lead the public liturgies of corporate worship.

Long before Israel had a king, the nation’s first and greatest prophet left specific instructions for him, including where and how he would find his bearings each day as the leader of God’s people. In Deuteronomy 17:14–20, Moses describes a concession God would make one day, setting a human king over his people. As he does, he warns such kings about the dangers of “excessive silver and gold,” “many wives,” and “many horses” — that is, money, sex, and power (Deuteronomy 17:16–17).

Moses gives a specific reason for these cautions: “lest his heart turn away.” This is where the point of departure will be, humanly speaking, for regimes and generations to come: the heart of the leader. Look at verses 14–17:

“When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.”

“As goes the leader’s heart, so goes the leader, and so goes the people.”

So, we might say, as goes the leader’s heart, so goes the leader, and so goes the people. Will he heed the siren calls around him, the subtle temptations to the compromises of acclaim and special privilege? Will he take advantage of his willing and submissive followers who are eager to give him benefit of the doubt? Will he slowly construct his own reality around him that serves his own private comforts rather than the holy interests of the people?

Keys to the Leader’s Heart

The battle lines will first be drawn in the leader’s own heart — which explains why Moses’s next instructions turn where they do, unexpected and perhaps peripheral as they may seem to some. And what Moses writes next is all the more striking because it’s issued generations before the nation would have its first king.

When a new king ascends to the throne in Israel — with all the pomp and circumstance that will doubtless accompany such a coronation — as his first act, he is to take out a quill and write word for word, with in his own hand, his own copy of God’s law, and “read in it all the days of his life.”

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18–20)

Note again the emphasis on his heart. God’s plan for his leaders so that their hearts not turn away, is that their hearts be formed and fed daily by God’s word. Consider, then, three aspects of this simple yet profound plan, which is just as relevant for Christian leaders and churches today.

1. The Book Shapes the Leader

This book, copied longhand by the king himself, is not a journal. The new king is not recording his own feelings or preferences or decrees — not in this book. Rather, he is copying the book of God’s law — an objective, fixed text, not open to edits and adjustments. This hand-copied book, then, is to be reviewed and approved by the priests, to confirm that no changes have been introduced or anything omitted.

In other words, the leader doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the leader. However great he may be in the sight of his people, the king fundamentally does not shape the world (or even his own kingdom) through his words, but he is being shaped by God through God’s words.

2. The Book Keeps the Leader

God also designs that this book will keep the king, as he is bombarded by the world of privileges and temptations leadership can bring. As the king keeps the words of God in the book, the book will keep the king — that is, keep him from turning aside to the right or left, turning from the fear of God to fear of man, from faithfulness to God to the pursuit of his own private, sinful pleasures.

In shaping the king’s heart, the book keeps him from subtle daily migrations away from God, which is why Moses twice mentions the inner man, “the heart.” The unseen heart of the king will come, in time, into expression in his life and the nation’s. Self-humbling before God and his word will give rise to a whole trajectory of thoughts, feelings, words, and actions; pride, to another. And the greater the leader, the greater the effects, for good or ill.

3. The Book Calls Each Morning

Finally, the king’s hand-copied, priest-approved book, Moses says, “shall be with him . . . all the days of his life” (Deuteronomy 17:19). With him — that is, nearby, constantly within reach. Having completed this great hand-copying project, he is not to store the book away for future reference, but make it functional, accessible, active in his reign — increasingly in him through countless hours lingering over it.

This book is designed to be read daily. And not the sort of reading to which the pace and pixels of our modern lives have accustomed us: fast-break, hurried, distracted reading, with words coming out of the head almost as quickly as they went in.

Different Kind of Reading

Rather, the kind of reading God intends for his servant is meditative — slow, unhurried, enjoyable feeding on the text, at the pace of the text, rather than the pace of the world. Pondering God’s words. Rolling them around in the mind long enough to get a sense of them on the heart. Such daily meditation on the words of God is what God so memorably expects of Joshua as he becomes Israel’s new leader in Moses’s place:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. (Joshua 1:8)

So too, generations later, when Israel finally had its king, the first psalm celebrated where the godly king would find his sense and wisdom to rule: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). And not only the king, but every man of God: “Blessed is the man . . .” (Psalm 1:1).

So too, when the ultimate man, David’s great heir, came among us, his shaping and keeping and wisdom to live and lead grew out of regular feeding on the words of his Father: “Man shall not live by bread alone,” he said, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

In the words of Sinclair Ferguson, “Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture did not come [magically from heaven] during the period of his public ministry; it was grounded no doubt on his early education, but nourished by long years of personal meditation” (The Holy Spirit, 44).

His Father appointed means for his stability in his truly human life. And it was not some extraordinary means or special trick. It was the same great and modest, amazing and ordinary daily means heralded by Moses, tested by Joshua, embraced by David, and imitable by the godly today: daily meditation on the very words of God.

Let’s say more about meditation, which is increasingly a lost art in our age.

What Makes Meditation Christian?

Non-Christian forms of meditation seek to empty the mind and transcend concrete specifics into the ethereal, and experience some form of meaningless enlightenment. But Christian meditation fills the mind with biblical truth and chews on it, seeking to savor it appropriately.

Unlike mere reading, even slow reading, where our minds and eyes keep moving at some pace, meditation slows us down, way down. We pause and ponder. Reading keeps us marching in linear fashion, while meditation moves us into a more spiral pattern by limiting the information set and seeking to press and apply the truth to our hearts, to actually experience the truth and not just let it run on through our minds on our way to the next thing.

Meditating Together

One remarkable aspect of corporate worship is that it gives us the opportunity to meditate together. The pinnacle of a good sermon is typically a form of corporate meditation, led by the preacher, as he circles around his main point and verbally kneads its goodness into our hearts.

And the summits of our best praises together in song are essentially meditative. It’s not the discovery and delivery of an obscure stanza that binds our hearts and draws us highest together toward heaven, but returning to the refrain, which has been enriched with each additional verse.

The verses provide fresh content, but the refrain bores the truth even deeper into our souls. The verses and refrain together help us to know the reality even better, as we collectively digest the truth from our heads into our hearts. They help us actually experience and be affected by the truth in our inner person, not just rehearse the data on the surface.

Secret Meditation

But we need to say more about “secret meditation,” or private meditation. Meditation involves a process. It’s not a switch to flip on. You don’t just meditate. Meditation is the goal and apex of Bible intake, and as a middle (often forgotten) habit, it involves lead-up and follow-up. You move into it, and move out of it.

Biblically, we find two kinds of meditation. One is spontaneous. It’s the kind of meditation that happens as we live and go about the day. Psalm 19:14 prays, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight” (also Psalm 49:3). That could be during the day (“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day,” Psalm 119:97), or Psalm 63:6 speaks of remembering God and “meditat[ing] on [him] in the watches of the night” (also Psalm 77:3; 119:148).

Another kind of meditation, we might say, is more focused, or intentional, or guided by God’s words. Genesis 24:63 tells of Isaac going “out to meditate in the field toward evening.” Joshua 1:8, as we’ve already seen, says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night . . .”

So too say many psalms. Psalm 1:2: the wise man’s “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Psalm 119:48: “I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.” Psalm 119:15: “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.” This is word-guided meditation.

And while the New Testament may not use the same precise language of meditation, it does speak of setting the mind or fixing the mind (Matthew 16:23; Mark 8:33; Romans 8:5–7; Philippians 3:19). Perhaps most significant is Colossians 3:2: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

“What we choose to meditate on, we will gravitate toward meditating on in our spare moments.”

And these two kinds of meditation are related. Focused or intentional meditation — that is, meditation that we choose — leads to spontaneous meditation, the meditation that seems to happen to us as we go about our lives. What we choose to meditate on, we will gravitate toward meditating on in our spare moments.

Learning a Lost Art

Our focus here is on intentional, focused meditation. Having made time for such meditation, and found an undistracting place for such meditation, how might we go about pursuing it?

First is pace. By that, I mean read at the pace of the text and of understanding, and enjoyment. For most of us, this is a slower pace (perhaps a far slower pace) than we default to when reading other texts in our lives. In our age of accelerations, technology and society condition us to read faster and faster. But the Bible, as an ancient book, was written slowly and carefully to be read slowly and carefully. So we begin with an unhurried reading (and re-reading) of God’s word.

Second, then, is pause — or meditation proper. Having read the biblical text, we now pause over it to meditate on it. Without moving on, we want to go deep in this phrase or verse or idea, letting the words themselves lead us. That we not only have words in us, but we are in the words. Now what? Consider three encouragements about meditation.

1. God made us to meditate.

Meditation is a distinctively human trait; you know how to do this more than you think, like walking. And our souls were made for new mercies daily — to turn toward God. In meditation, we are fulfilling a vital aspect of how God made us: not just to do, but to think, ponder, reflect, to glorify him.

As Creator, he is glorified by his creatures doing what they do (tigers, cheetahs, eagles, whales). But he’s more glorified when his creatures acknowledge him. And he’s most glorified when they appreciate and adore him. As John Piper says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” So meditate in pursuit of satisfaction in God.

2. Meditation forms and shapes us.

Meditation changes us. We will meditate (that is, spontaneous meditation). Our minds will run somewhere. The question is not if, but on what. Sports? Image and physique? Job and money? Your children? Politics? Anxiety about society? News?

“We will meditate. Our minds will run somewhere. The question is not if, but on what.”

Ask yourself, What continually captures my attention? That will shape you. In fact, it is already shaping you. And especially so with what we choose to give our attention to: what we click. What you meditate on, in time, reformulates your desires. Christian meditation requires setting and resetting our minds, and in particular our hearts, on the greatest focuses possible.

3. Biblical meditation seeks joy in God today.

“Today” means right now (not just long-term formation). It aims to warm the heart, stir the affections, satisfy our souls right now in the one they were made for — as in these four statements about meditation from four seventeenth-century voices, back before meditation was a lost art:

*Thomas Watson (1620–1686): “Study is the finding out of a truth, meditation is the spiritual improvement of a truth.”
*Samuel Ward (1577–1640): “Stir up thy soul in [meditation] to converse with Christ. Look what promises and privileges thou dost habitually believe, now actually think of them, roll them under thy tongue, chew on them till thou feel some sweetness in the palate of thy soul.”
*Edmund Calamy (1600–1666): In meditation, be like “the Bee that dwells and abides upon the flower, to suck out all the sweetness.”
*William Bates (1625–1699): Since meditation often requires persistence, especially when you’re first learning the lost art, meditate “till thou dost find some sensible benefit conveyed to thy soul.” Many of us give up far too quickly and easily. Don’t let him go till he blesses you! Keep at it “till the flame doth so ascend.”

Practically, what kind of time might you set aside? I would say perhaps half an hour for beginners. And as you become familiar with reading the biblical text more slowly, and pausing to meditate on phrases and concepts that arrest your attention — and learn to find some sweetness, some sensible benefit to your soul — you’ll soon find yourself wanting more time and space, and perhaps grow it toward an hour.

We Pray to a Person

Moving toward meditation involves a certain pace — an unhurried reading of the text. Then meditation means pausing and going deep in, asking questions of, taking time to make connections and find insights. And finally, meditating leads to a third P: prayer. Prayer to God is “the proper issue,” the fitting completion of the process of meditating on him through his word. We hear from him in Scripture. We take it deep into ourselves in meditation. We speak back to him in prayer.

The way I like to say it is: begin with Bible, move to meditation, and polish with prayer. My encouragement is that once you have meditated on a verse or phrase or biblical concept for several minutes, turn it to prayer. Rather than pivoting to lists, pray through the text you’ve meditated on. Turn its concepts and promises and warnings into prayers for yourself, your spouse, your family, your church, your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors. Take God’s leading in meditation as his word to you that day, and invitation to prayer.

So: pace, pause, prayer — and if I could give you one more P, it would be Person. That is, Jesus. Bible reading is not just reading. It is God’s appointed medium, for now, by his Spirit, for our knowing and enjoying him through his Son. Remember in meditation: seek to enjoy the risen, living Christ, by his Spirit, through his word. Seek soul satisfaction in him.

Many of us expect too little when we come to the Bible and prayer. Christ is alive, seated on heaven’s throne. We have his word and his Spirit to make it alive to us. We are not just reading a book, but meeting with a living, divine Person. Jesus is real, and there, as we meet with him in meditation on his word.

Eat Like a King — and Sing!

Let me close by encouraging you to wake up each morning and eat like a king. That is, take the prescription of Deuteronomy 17 to heart, and take your cues from the commission to Joshua, and the celebration of Psalm 1, and the life of king David and king Jesus and linger in the words of God.

Steep in some specific text of Scripture. Feed your soul on the word of your Father. Come to the Bible not only to read and study, but to pause and ponder. Come to meditate on God’s word, in an unhurried, even leisurely, lingering and enjoying of God’s grace and truth in Christ.

And one last word for you as music leaders and choir members and soloists and accompanists, is this: sing. Sing! You know this better than most of us. This is what music and song are for — for slowing us down, for auguring soul-feeding and soul-sustaining truth down deep into the heart. For engaging our hearts, and shaping us, changing us, inspiring us, guiding us. Take your love of music, and your gifting in music, and put it to use in private, in secret, for the life and health of your soul.

Jesus said he’d build his church (Matthew 16:18). We might expect big tents and bombast, fanfare and fireworks. We might look for great winds, earthquakes, and fire, yet find Christ, as Elijah did, with a knack for the low whisper.

In giving his church on-the-ground spiritual leaders after his ascension and the death of his apostles, Jesus has a comparatively quiet plan, remarkably unremarkable, to show that the surpassing power belongs to him, not us.

Here’s the plan: local teams of sober-minded teachers. That’s a summary of the New Testament vision for church leadership. And it’s pretty unspectacular. It doesn’t sparkle like the dream of singular global entertainers. We might have expected dazzling celebrities, world-class intellects, and savvy executives. But Christ has this modest strategy — some might think it embarrassingly so. The same Christ who did not choose many for his church with worldly wisdom, power, and nobility — but rather the weak, despised, and seemingly foolish (1 Corinthians 1:26–28) — also planned for church leaders to be what few of us might naturally expect.

Consider, in turn, four surprising aspects of Christ’s countercultural design for his undershepherds.

Locality: Among, Not Remote

First of all, Christ’s church didn’t need a new global, international head. She already had one. And what a tragedy it would be if man would, in effect, try to replace the Bridegroom with some “pope.” Sheer madness. Christ himself is the global head of his church. And to physically instantiate and embody his leadership in local churches, “he gave . . . the shepherds and teachers” (Ephesians 4:11).

Both Paul and Peter strike the note of “among-ness” in particular localities, Paul in Ephesus as an example (“You yourselves know how I lived among you,” Acts 20:18), and Peter to the local elders in his audience: “I exhort the elders among you . . . shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Peter 5:1–2). The elders are among the people, and the people are among the elders. Such elders are first and foremost sheep, first and foremost members of the flock; then, secondarily, by the Spirit’s appointment and through the holy consent of the governed, they are undershepherds, under “the chief Shepherd” (1 Peter 5:4).

The pastor-elders are not remote, but near, so near as to be among the people, with the people among them. And such elders gladly receive the call to focus their attention and energies and time on a particular local church as their charge, not on the whole world, distracted by news of skirmishes from far, far away. The elders do not mistake the world for their parish, but own their specific local lot.

Plurality: Team, Not Solo

Second, and related, Christ’s plan includes flanking his own singular global headship of the church with a plurality of elders in local churches. In other words, he calls his undershepherds to teamwork. As his apostles, from the beginning, were plural, so too the pastor-elders. Even in rural settings, where the idea of a team of pastors may seem unrealistic, we still have the New Testament’s stubborn ideal of plurality. Twice Peter addresses the plural elders in 1 Peter 5:1–5; local church elders are plural in Acts (Acts 14:23; 20:17); so too in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy 4:14; 5:17; Titus 1:5), as in James 5:14. In fact, every instance we have in the New Testament implies teamwork.

Jesus gets the glory as the singular leader and head of his church; under him, plural apostles serve as his post-ascension mouthpiece, enduring in their extant writings, called the New Testament; and under Scripture, plural pastor-elders serve as the formal teachers of the apostolic word in local churches. But before addressing those pastor-elders specifically as teachers, let’s acknowledge the governing or overseeing aspect of their work, and the particular virtue it requires.

Acuity: Levelheaded, Not Imbalanced

Of the fifteen pastor-elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1–7, sober-mindedness might be the most underappreciated. Not only is teaching (with preaching) central to the pastors’ work, but also vital is “exercising oversight” (1 Peter 5:2). Pastor-elders not only “labor among you” as teachers but “are over you in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 5:12). The elder “must manage his own household well” because, as a team, the elders are charged with caring for God’s household, the church (1 Timothy 3:4–5, 15). Pastors are well worthy of honor not only as preachers and teachers — and worthy of “double honor” (remuneration) when laboring at the work as a breadwinning vocation — but also as governors, that is, “the elders who rule well” (1 Timothy 5:17). The pastors-elders teach and rule, that is, lead or govern. And to do so requires a kind of spiritual acuity the New Testament calls “sober-mindedness.”

“Men who are sober-minded are levelheaded and balanced. They are responsive, without being reactive.”

Men who are sober-minded are levelheaded and balanced. They are responsive, without being reactive. They are not given to extremes, not suckers for myths and speculation and conspiracy theories, and not dragged into silly controversies. They are able to discern what emphases and preoccupations would compromise the stewardship at the heart of their work (1 Timothy 1:4), and they stay grounded in what’s most important and enduring. Keeping the gospel “of first importance” as their center (1 Corinthians 15:3), they are able, like increasingly few modern adults, to “keep [their] head in all situations” (2 Timothy 4:5 NIV).

Such sober-mindedness, without doubt, is also critical for teaching — for determining what to teach and when and how — but such spiritual acuity especially maps on to the call to govern or lead, and the untiring vigilance it requires. “Be sober-minded; be watchful” (1 Peter 5:8; also 1 Thessalonians 5:6). “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). The pastor-elders are those who “are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17). So, they must be sober-minded (1 Timothy 3:2) — in fact, “always sober-minded” (2 Timothy 4:5).

Didacity: Teachers, Not Brawlers

Finally, mind if we coin a term? In English, we have the word didactic, built on the Greek didachē for “teaching.” The Greek adjective didaktikos means “able to teach” — that is, not only able in terms of skill but also eager in terms of proclivity. The pastor who is “able to teach” is not just “able if necessary,” but rather “eager when possible.” He’s bent to teach, a teacher at heart. Since we don’t have a single word in English that captures it, maybe we need something like didacity. Or we could say teachative — if talkative refers to someone who is “fond of or given to talking,” teachative would mean someone “fond of or given to teaching.”

“The pastor who is ‘able to teach’ is not just ‘able if necessary,’ but rather ‘eager when possible.’”

The point is that New Testament leaders — that is, the pastor-elders — are to be teachers. Christianity is a teaching movement. Jesus was the consummate teacher. He chose and discipled his men to be teachers who discipled others also (Matthew 28:19; 2 Timothy 2:2). After his ascension, the apostles spoke on Christ’s behalf and led the early church through teaching, and when their living voices died, their writings became the church’s ongoing polestar, with Old Testament Scripture, for teaching the churches. And so, fitting with the very nature of the Christian faith, Christ appoints men who are teachative, didaktikos (1 Timothy 3:2; 2 Timothy 2:24) — men who are not only trained in and sufficiently equipped in sound doctrine (1 Timothy 4:6), but also effective at teaching (so that wolves do not carry the day, Titus 1:9) and eager to do it.

Amazingly, the risen Christ, in building his church on his terms, not the world’s, is so audacious as to appoint teachers (pastor-elders) to lead, which is both surprising (because teachers, as a group, can be so idealistic and inefficient) and fitting (because Christianity is a teaching movement). That Christ made teachers to be pastors indicates that he may be far more interested in the church’s effectiveness than its efficiency.

Clothed with Humility

If we could end with one last -ity word that sums up the whole, it might be humility. Christ’s countercultural, counter-instinctive plan for locality, plurality, acuity, and didacity in church leaders requires humility in each of those four aspects:

humility to seek Christ’s global fame (not mine) through a faithful local focus, owning the limits of my own attention and energy;
humility to labor as a team with all its built-in curbs to personal comfort, convenience, and celebrity;
humility to submit our minds and hearts to Christ’s sovereignty, be shaped by his word, and exhibit an uncommon spiritual acuity that comes from having our feet firmly planted in the gospel “of first importance” rather than marginal and bizarre trends; and
humility to steward another’s word and message — and be seen as faithful rather than innovative.

In 1 Peter 5, the aging apostle calls his “fellow elders” not only to “shepherd the flock” and “exercise oversight” but, in doing so, to humble themselves before their congregation:

You who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another . . . (1 Peter 5:5)

Not only do the “youngers” subject themselves, in humility, to the leading of the “elders,” but the elders too clothe themselves (“all of you”!) in humility toward the flock, as they lead not by compulsion, but willingly; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not through domineering, but example (1 Peter 5:2–3). That is, they are joyful workers for the joy of their people (2 Corinthians 1:24; Hebrews 13:17).

Which will make such a local team of sober-minded teachers — subject to Christ’s authority and accountable to each other — just the kind of pastors we all want, and just the kind of men under whose lead we will soon enough find ourselves thriving.