In the winter of 2001, I was a sophomore at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

As a freshman, I had become part of a ministry called Campus Outreach. Its theology was called “Reformed,” which I did not grow up with. In my teens, I heard talk about God being “sovereign,” but I had never wrestled with the extent of his sovereignty — that he was sovereign over all, over good and evil, over angels and demons, over sunny days and natural disasters, over my good deeds and my sin, and (most uncomfortably) over my own will and choices. But once I saw the verses, dozens of them (if not hundreds), I couldn’t deny that the Bible taught that God’s sovereignty was absolute, over all, no exceptions.

But what I also knew from two decades of human life, and from dozens (if not hundreds) of verses, is that I was accountable. I had thoughts and feelings. I had a will and made real decisions that mattered and had consequences. So, how do I reconcile these two — not just my experience versus what the Bible says, but what the Bible says versus what the Bible says?

So, that winter of 2001, a pastor from Minnesota, named John Piper, spoke at our Campus Outreach New Year’s conference in Atlanta, and not long after that event, I visited desiringGod.org to look for more messages.

There I listened to a sermon he had preached that Christmas Eve. And this one message put together for me — so clearly and memorably — how these major theological truths of God’s sovereignty and my human responsibility come together in my everyday Christian life and experience. The sermon was on the end of Romans 6 (verses 22–23), but at a key moment, Piper flipped over to Philippians 2:12–13 to explain this real-life dynamic. As he did so, lights went on for me one after another.

So, 23 years later, it’s personally significant for me to be assigned these verses, and I pray that for some in this room, new lights might go on like they did for me in those days. How the truth of God’s sovereignty and his choices relates to my responsibility and my choices, in fighting against sin and for Christlikeness, doesn’t all come together at once. Much of it is a lifetime journey. Yet, for me, there was a particular sermon, and a particular text — Philippians 2:12–13 — where new categories were created that have deeply affected my everyday life.

Humbled and Exalted

Last Sunday, we stood in awe at the foot of the mountain of Christ’s accomplishment for us in Philippians 2:5–11. First, he chose to become man. He did not cling to the comforts of heaven, but he emptied himself of that privilege. Precisely because he was God, gracious and merciful, full of steadfast love and faithfulness, he took on our creatureliness and limitations, and the pains and frustrations of our fallen world. His emptying himself was not an emptying of his deity, as if that were possible, but it was a taking, as verse 7 says. His emptying came through addition of humanity, not subtraction of deity. He

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. (verses 7–8)

Then came that amazing “therefore” in verse 9: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” In the biblical pattern of self-humbling from Exodus to the Epistles, Jesus stands at the center as our greatest example: he humbled himself, and therefore God exalted him. Jesus went down, down, down: human, death, the cross. And his Father brought him up: up from the grave, up in the ascension, up to the very throne of heaven. So we walked through three truths about the example of Jesus.

Which leads us right into verses 12–18, and how Paul turns from Jesus’s obedience and his reward to ours. So this morning, we look at three truths about our following his example. Or how we become like Jesus.

1. We follow the one who obeyed and was rewarded.

There is a second huge “therefore” in Philippians 2. The first one was verse 9. Jesus humbled himself; therefore God exalted him. Now, verse 12: in light of Jesus’s self-humbling and God’s exalting him, therefore . . .

I can see at least two ways this “therefore” works in verse 12. One is the straightforward charge He is Lord; therefore obey. God has highly exalted Jesus. Now his name is above every name, and at his name every knee should bow and every tongue confess he is Lord. Therefore, Christians, obey. Simple as that. He is Lord; we are servants. He says it; we do it. Children obey their parents; servants obey their masters; and all the more, creatures, obey your Creator, and Christians, your Lord.

But there’s also another way this “therefore” works: as an appeal to desire, as a pattern and promise of reward. I say that because the word “obedient” just appeared in verse 8 (and “obey” in verse 12). Jesus was “obedient to the point of death,” and because he obeyed, he was rewarded. Therefore, Christians, obey like Jesus so that you might be rewarded like Jesus. Humble yourself, like he did, that you too might be exalted.

Which is crazy countercultural for self-exalting sinners! We want to be exalted, so what do we do? Exalt ourselves: in our own minds, in our words and humble brags, in what we post online, in how we angle for opportunities. And God says to us in our folly, “No, sinners. I do the exalting. Exalt yourself, and I’ll humble you. But humble yourself, and I will exalt you.”

So, “therefore” in verse 12 is an appeal to desire and a profound glimpse into what it meant for Jesus to endure the cross “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). As man, Jesus humbled himself, obeying to the point of death, by looking to the joy of being exalted by his Father. And so too for us as we obey him. Christian obedience is not from sheer duty and force of will. We obey for the joy set before us.

And Paul puts his own joy on display in verses 17–18. Jump down there:

Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering [this is his self-humbling obedience] upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.

Paul calls the Philippians’ obedience “the sacrificial offering of your faith.” This is like Romans 12:1: the Christian life of faith “as a living sacrifice.” God’s people no longer offer slaughtered animals as sacrifices, as they did under the first covenant, but offer themselves, all they are, their whole lives, in obedience to him. This is what Paul is giving his life to: that Christians — like the saints in Philippi, and like us — would be living sacrifices, obedient to Christ.

“Don’t presume that God will defeat your sins while you’re passive. And don’t presume to fight sin on your own.”

And Paul, in prison in Rome for his labor, says to them, “Even if I die in this prison, I rejoice.” The pursuit of joy got him into prison, and joy will be his if he never makes it out of prison — because he looks forward to the reward of being with Christ and having worked for others’ joy in Christ. And in this joy, Paul casts his work in self-humbling terms. The Philippians’ lives of obedience are the main sacrifice, and his labor is just the drink offering, the side offering, the supplement to their healthy, obedient Christian lives.

So, first, like Paul and like Jesus, we obey our Lord in joy, anticipating reward. We follow the one who obeyed and was rewarded.

2. We work out the salvation he worked for.

Now, the rest of verse 12:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .

So, the obedience that Christ, through Paul, is calling for here is “work out your own salvation.” I realize that sounds like nails on a chalkboard for some ears. If so, perhaps I could just warn you: this might feel uncomfortable for a few minutes. Remember, we’re praying for biblical categories. And to get there, we may need to sit in the challenge of this “work out your own salvation.” It’s in the Bible. And this is a good translation. The Greek doesn’t fix our discomfort but might only make us cringe a little bit more. What if we said, “produce your own salvation,” or “give rise to your own salvation,” or “grind out your own salvation”?

As we sit in this tension, it’s okay to remember Christ’s obedience on the front end and underneath — and in just a few minutes, we’ll see that we have even more help on the back end. But we need to linger here. Just because there’s help in front and back doesn’t mean our lives in the middle aren’t real. We need to stay here in the call and dignity of the Christian life to be, to think, to feel, to will, to act. God is sovereign, and we are responsible.

This word for “work out” is a typical word for “work” but with an intensifying prefix. The kind of work we’re getting at here is not just overflow. Some work feels effortless. But this work means expending effort. It’s the kind of work that requires effort to move inward desires into outward acts. In other places, this word is translated “produce” or “accomplish” or “perform.”

So, this is not just overflow. It requires counting, reckoning, considering (as in verses 3, 5, and 6). There is effort to be given, energy to be expended, work to be done. “Work out your salvation,” Paul says. Not “work for” — Jesus uniquely worked for our salvation in verses 5–11 — but now we “work it out.”

Our Gift and Duty

An important question to ask at this point is, Salvation from what? Paul implies the Philippians need deliverance, but from what? Well, what’s clearly at stake in chapter 2, going back to 1:27, is their unity (their fellowship, their relationships in the church). Paul says he longs to hear that they “are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.” And 2:2: “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” He’s saying that because, at present, they’re not that. Then verse 3: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit.” Note that: two specific sins from which the Philippians and we need deliverance — selfish ambition and conceit.

And Paul has more specifics to give in verse 14: “Do all things without grumbling or disputing.” Okay, so now we have at least four specific sins from which Paul says to “work out your salvation.” Want it, will it, act it, produce it. Christ died to save you from grumbling — from constant complaining and criticizing and scoffing and wallowing. He died to deliver you from petty disputes. So, trust him and don’t grumble. Trust him and be free from disputing.

The new category this leads to is this: the Christian life is both gift and duty. Fighting sin is both a gift from God and a duty we act. Increasing holiness is both gift and duty. It is a gift of grace we receive from Jesus, and the way we receive a grace that involves our own thoughts and desires and actions is by having the thoughts and desires and doing the actions. That is, living out the gift, or working out your salvation.

Look over to Philippians 3:12. Two of the best texts for getting this dynamic of the Christian life as both gift and duty are right here in Philippians. So, first 2:12–13. Now 3:12:

Not that I have already obtained this [resurrection to eternal life] or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

This is so important in getting the order right between God’s working and ours. Paul says, “I press on to make it my own” — I count, I will, I act, I choose righteousness, I fight sin, I press on. Why? “Because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Mark this: I don’t become his by pressing on. Rather, because I am his, because he already took hold of me, I strive and strain and press on. He worked for my salvation. Now I work it out over sin. (Other key texts that show this gift-and-duty dynamic: Hebrews 13:20–21; Romans 15:18; 1 Corinthians 15:10.)

The Christian life is grace from beginning to end. Some graces we receive instead of our effort and action (justification), and some graces we receive as our effort and action.

Look, Trust, Pray, Act

This leads us to verse 13. But let me first try to make this more practical. Let me take you back to my time at Furman University. Now it’s the fall of 2002, my senior year, and I’m trying to figure out what to do after graduation. And I am awash in anxiety. I didn’t remember being so anxious in my life before then, and I don’t remember being as anxious since.

So, I needed deliverance from anxiety. What do I do? Just wait? How do you seek to be free from oppressive anxiety when God is sovereign and you are responsible? As one who is justified by faith in Jesus, how do I work out my salvation? First, I need truth to work with. I need a specific word to believe. So I found three biblical promises about anxiety:

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:34)

Humble yourselves . . . under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6–7)

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)

I printed them out, posted them next to my bed, and reviewed them every morning when I woke up and every night when I went to sleep. And (with Christ before me and his Spirit in me), I worked out the grace of my deliverance from anxiety. God gave me the gift of deliverance from the dominance of anxiety in that season. And that doesn’t mean I don’t still fight anxiety as it comes in new ways in new times and seasons of life. But I know how to fight: recognize it, address it with promises of reward, pray for help, and act.

So whether it’s sinful anxiety, selfish ambition and conceit, grumbling and disputing, or sinful anger or lust or greed, work out the deliverance Christ has worked for you. Don’t presume that God will defeat your sins while you’re passive. And don’t presume to fight sin on your own. Look to the sovereign Christ, trust his promises, pray for his help, and act the miracle you seek to have from him.

Shining Unity

And just to comment very quickly on verses 15–16: I think Paul has in mind the relationship between unity in the church and witness in the world like he did in 1:27–28. There he said that our “standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” leads to the church “not [being] frightened in anything by your opponents” — and this is “a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation.” In working out our salvation against the relationship-killing sins of selfish ambition, conceit, grumbling, and disputing, we come to stand out “in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.” Unified in Jesus, we “shine as lights in the world.” How? “Holding fast to the word of life,” that is, the message about true life, eternal life — the life and death of Jesus in place of our death to give us life.

So, if ever you find yourself discouraged about the “crooked and twisted generation” in which you find yourself, remember two truths from Philippians 2: (1) this is nothing new for Christianity (this is how it usually is in this age), and (2) grumbling and disputing are not the Christian response. But exactly the opposite. The Christian response is this: hold fast to our word of life, work out our salvation from grumbling and disputing, and shine as lights in the world, not as more of the same darkness.

What about that last phrase in verse 12, “with fear and trembling”? Now our third and final truth.

3. We have his Spirit at work in us.

We finish with the end of verse 12 and with verse 13:

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

What in the world could Paul mean here by “with fear and trembling”? Perhaps “fear and trembling” sounds only negative in your ears. Fear and trembling — yikes. How about “with hope and joy”? Why fear and trembling?

Scripture has a broader vision for inward fear and outward trembling than modern people do. Throughout the Bible, “fear and trembling” is what wise, in-touch, healthy humans do when they find themselves in the presence of God almighty. Like Moses at Mount Sinai, as we saw in Hebrews 12:21: “I tremble with fear.” And Paul talks about how the Corinthians received Titus as a messenger from Christ “with fear and trembling” (2 Corinthians 7:15).

Or perhaps most instructive of all is the way the Gospel of Mark ends: with the women who found the tomb empty and heard from the angel, “He has risen; he is not here.” Mark 16:8: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them.” Or, as Matthew 28:8 reports, “They departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy.”

“Fear and trembling” is not only the response of someone taken aback by great horror, but also of someone struck with great joy. It’s the response of a believing heart in the presence of God himself — and it’s the appropriate response of a Christian who learns that God himself has come to dwell in me.

Verse 13 provides, essentially, a threefold confidence for us as we expend energy and effort to obey our Lord and live the Christian life. So, as we close, let me turn to verse 13 and address it to you.

First, brothers and sisters in Christ, you have God in you! How awesome to have the Holy Spirit, poured out on us, sent into our hearts, dwelling in us, leading us, working in us. You are not on your own to fight against sin and for Christlikeness. You have God in you! This is no standard joy. This is cause for fear and trembling.

Second, he is in you not only to will but even to work. God works in us to (will and) work our work. He gives us new desires and willing, and even then, he doesn’t leave us to ourselves. He is in us to prompt, to lead, to empower, to execute our working out those holy desires through the exertion of effort.

Third, all this stands on the rock of God’s own joy, his delight, his good pleasure. He is not reluctant in helping us fight sin and pursue Christlikeness. He is happy to do it, thrilled to do it. He delights to do it. He works in us, in our willing, in our working, for his good pleasure. We work with the grain of God’s own joy when we work out our deliverance from sin.

So, we close with this question: What sin or sins came to mind this morning in our time of silent confession? Or, what do you most often confess week after week? Brothers and sisters, don’t just say it again, move on, continue in sin, and make empty confession again and again. Work out your salvation. Act the miracle. With Jesus before you and beneath you, and his Spirit in you and through you — hemmed in on every side by his grace — work out your salvation. Will it, work it, act it, do it — with prayerful dependence in every step.

Jesus Willed and Worked

What makes possible our having the Holy Spirit at work in us to will and work is that first the Spirit was at work in Christ to will and to work. How he worked for the joy set before him is an example we follow. How he worked by the Spirit is imitable. But what he accomplished at the cross for us is inimitable.

At this Table, we do not mainly remember Jesus as our example but as the one who worked for us in a way in which we could not work for ourselves.

Oh, the paradox of this human body. How wonderful — and how terrible.

For those with eyes to see, our Creator’s brilliance will be on unusual display next month at the Summer Olympics as the world’s fastest, strongest, and best-conditioned bodies compete for the gold. For some, it will be the apex of their human glory. For others will come massive letdown, even humiliation.

The rest of us also know our bodies as instruments of both glory and humiliation. Apart from athletic achievement, many of us live in the glories of sight and taste, of bodily movement, of balance and coordination, of acquiring and honing new skills. Our bodily abilities may not be Olympic, but they can be stunning in their diversity and precision, especially when compared to the far more limited and focused abilities of animals — and in view of the sorrow of disability.

At the same time, however, how familiar we are with bodily weakness, shame, and humiliation.

God Made Brother Ass

When C.S. Lewis quotes Saint Francis on the human body, he too speaks of glory and humiliation:

Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those . . . who called it the prison or the “tomb” of the soul, [those] to whom it was a “sack of dung,” food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are [others], to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body “Brother Ass.”

Lewis then comments, “All three may be . . . defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.” He continues,

Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now a stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. (Four Loves, 93)

Long before Lewis, the apostle Paul also spoke of our present “body of humiliation” (sōma tēs tapeinōseōs) as well as our coming “body of glory” (Philippians 3:21). What Scripture teaches about the human body is not simple but textured. The Creator’s design is magnificent, even in this present age with its layers of sin and the curse. We can only imagine how able and beautiful were those first two bodies God made, before they fell into sin. We do not reside in Eden. Nor have we Christians yet reached our final homeland in the Zion that is to come.

Story of the Body

For those in Christ, we view our bodies in layers — layers of a redemptive history. Our bodies are not only fearfully and wonderfully complex but vitally en-storied. Understanding our past (as human), our future (in Christ), and our present (in the Spirit) is critical for duly appreciating, chastening, and making the most of our bodies in this life. So let’s rehearse the story.

1. Sin has seized our bodies.

After remembering that God designed and made our bodies, and that “the body is . . . for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13), the next truth to recall is that we, and our bodies with us, are fallen.

Sin wracks our bodies, not only in the effects of the curse into which we’re born, but also in our own culpable desiring and doing of evil. The bodies God gave us to image him as we move about his created world have become bodies of sin and death (Romans 6:6; 7:24; 8:10). No longer the original unfallen creations, nor yet the coming imperishable bodies, they are now “mortal bodies” (Romans 6:12; 8:11), dishonored in our sin (Romans 1:24). We will be judged for what we do in the body (2 Corinthians 5:10) — and apart from God’s redemptive provision, we will be thrown, soul and body, into hell (Matthew 5:29, 30; 10:28).

2. God himself took a body.

That redemptive provision, stunning in so many ways, begins with the incarnation, when God himself took a human body in the person of his eternal Son — and not only took on the full flesh and blood of our human bodies but also gave up his human body to death on a cross to cover our sin and rescue us (Philippians 2:8).

If you come to the Christian Scriptures with questions about your own body, one of the first surprises will be how much the New Testament talks about the physical body of Jesus Christ (Romans 7:4; 1 Corinthians 10:16; 11:24, 27, 29). His human body is the turning point in the story of our bodies. Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). And Hebrews 10, so memorably, puts Psalm 40 on the lips of Jesus, when he came into the world as man: “A body have you prepared for me. . . . Behold, I have come to do your will, O God” (Hebrews 10:5–7; Psalm 40:6–8). Hebrews 10:10 then comments, “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

Because sin, its curse, and death have infected us in both soul and body, the divine Son assumed both human soul and body, and gave his body up in sacrificial death to rescue us, soul and body, who are joined to him by faith.

3. God himself dwells in our bodies.

Next, and perhaps the part of the body’s story most often overlooked, is that God himself not only became human in Christ but also now dwells in his people by his Holy Spirit. When 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God,” the emphasis is not on how impressive our bodies are. Rather, the focus is the spectacular reality that God himself, in his Holy Spirit, has taken up residence, as it were, “within you” — that you have the Spirit. This is almost too good to be true. It is news to receive with the kind of pulsating joy that comes “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

Paul makes it plainest in Romans 8:9–11. If you are in Christ,

the Spirit of God dwells in you. . . . [And] if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

“You not only have indwelling sin, but now also have the indwelling Spirit.”

In case you missed it, if you are in Christ, “Christ is in you” — his Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, “dwells in you” (as Paul says three times). You not only have indwelling sin, but now you also have the indwelling Spirit. Our human bodies have become temples, dwelling places for God, whom we have in the person of his Spirit.

4. We glorify God now in our bodies.

Now, because of Christ’s work outside of us, in his human body — and because of his Spirit’s work in our own souls and bodies — we live to the glory of God. So 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 says to us in Christ: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Our bodies of humiliation already, though not yet fully, have become instruments for God’s glory. And they are being redeemed both as we (positively) magnify God in our affections and actions of love for him and neighbor, and as we (negatively) “by the Spirit . . . put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13).

So, we pray like Paul that “Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). Given the depth and pervasive effects of sin in our bodies, we might think we need to get out of these bodies in order to glorify God, but because of Christ’s body, and the dwelling of his Spirit in our bodies, we can now honor Christ and glorify God in our bodies. So, in Christ, we realize how our bodies are “for the Lord” (1 Corinthians 6:13).

Whereas we once presented our bodies to sin, we now present them to God as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1). We do not sacrifice our bodies for Christ in the way he sacrificed his body for us — that is, redemptively. He died (and rose again) to rescue us. We live for him (which could lead to dying) as those rescued by him. His sacrificial death is the cause; our sacrificial living is the effect. And to that end, we discipline our bodies (1 Corinthians 9:27), refuse to let sin reign in our mortal bodies (Romans 6:12), and so pray and act that our bodies “be kept blameless” till the day of Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

5. We await a spectacular bodily upgrade.

Our future, forever, will be embodied — beyond our best imagining. At that coming day of Christ, he “will transform our lowly body [literally, “the body of our humiliation”] to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).

Here we live, as Jesus did, in a state of humiliation. Even as we experience some of the original glories of our human bodies, they are short-lived. Soon enough, we age, or suffer tragedies and losses, and we realize more and more what a state of humiliation this life is for our bodies. And if Christ does not return first, we soon endure the humiliation of death.

But for those in Christ, the dishonor of death will give way to the glory of resurrection. Our natural bodies will be sown, in death, like seeds that will spring up and blossom, through Christ’s resurrection power, into bodies of glory like his risen body.

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. (1 Corinthians 15:42–44)

Note: this will be a spiritual body. Not merely a spirit, like a ghost, but a spiritual body fit for the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the rock-solid world of the new heavens and new earth.

Praise the Man of Heaven

If you are in Christ, your resurrection body will be spectacular. No more aches and pains. No more colds and COVID. No more sprains, contusions, and broken bones. No more heart attacks and strokes and cancer. No more devastating physical and mental disabilities.

Soon enough, you will shine like the sun in your perfected, strong, imperishable, glorified human body. And the best part of it all isn’t what your body will be like, but whom our imperishable bodies and souls will help us to know and enjoy and be near and praise: “the man of heaven.”

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven [Jesus Christ]. (1 Corinthians 15:49)

Our focus in the new heavens and new earth won’t be our bodies. Our perfected bodies will get the many distractions of our previous humiliations out of the way. They will enhance and support our making much of our King. But the focus in glory will be the one that we as Christians eagerly await right now — the man of heaven.

Do you remember your first conscious “favorite song” as a child? Maybe it was a single, or an album, or a specific artist.

I remember hearing a particular song on the radio as a four- or five-year-old and saying out loud to my parents, “That’s my favorite song.”

Now, I realize I’m one of the older people in the room. So, I’ll ask, but I don’t expect many to raise a hand. Does anyone know the name Larnelle Harris?

Hands down, gospel singer Larnelle Harris was my first favorite singer. In January of 1985, Larnelle released an album called “I’ve Just Seen Jesus,” and the first song on the cassette was called “How Excellent Is Thy Name.” I loved that song.

The reason I mention Larnelle is that two years later, in 1987, he released another album, and tucked away fifth on the cassette was a song based on Philippians 3 called “I Want to Know Christ.” Still today, this song moves me deeply. Something about this song captured my six-year-old heart. I could tell its subject matter was unsurpassed. A song about “knowing Christ” felt so much bigger than your standard-fare Christian music of the 80s — or any decade. It went so clearly to the very heart of what God made us for.

I’ll read you the chorus, and you can hear our text this morning, as well as the “pressing on” we’ll look at next week in verses 12–14:

I want to know ChristI keep Him before meI lift up my eyesI drink in His gloryI press toward the goalHis goodness unfoldsMarch on, O my soulI want to knowI want to know Christ

Deep, Personal Knowing

At the end of the sermon last Sunday, Jonathan set the table so well for us for today. In fact, I hope this message will simply flesh out what he said near the end — that Philippians 3 doesn’t just want us to be right with God (which is penultimate) but to know Jesus. Knowing Christ is the final goal, the ultimate goal; it’s what makes heaven to be heaven:

Jesus is not just the means to get you what you want, but Jesus also becomes what you want. Jesus is means and end. To know Jesus is of surpassing worth. That is what is most valuable — to know “Christ Jesus my Lord.” . . . This is a deep, personal knowing. It’s real experience in real relationship. Intimacy.

I see three pieces here that map onto what we might call a (kind of) past aspect in verse 9, and a present aspect in verse 10, and a future aspect in verse 11.

So, here’s how we’ll proceed this morning: we’ll start by rehearsing what we saw last week in verse 9 (the penultimate), then jump to verse 11 and the future, and then come back to verse 10 and linger over what it means to “know Christ,” even now in this life, in the present. I hope to shoot as straight as I can about what it means to know Christ, and what that experience is like, and how we go about seeking to know him and enjoy him in our everyday Christian lives.

So, we start with the penultimate in verse 9.

1. We are fully accepted by God in Jesus.

I’m not sure we used the word “justification” in the last two weeks, but this is the reality we’ve been talking about. Verse 3 mentions “boasting in Christ Jesus” and “putting no confidence in the flesh.” This is justification talk. It raises the question, What is the grounds of your right-standing with God, your acceptance before God? How can an unrighteous sinner get right, and stay right, with the righteous, holy God?

Justification is God’s declaration over sinners like us, “You are righteous in my sight. I declare you to be in the right with me, fully accepted in my presence.” How? Not because of anything we’ve done to deserve God’s favor. But rather, because of what Jesus has done to win for us God’s favor and the verdict “Righteous!”

Start back in verse 7, and get the flow of thought into verse 9:

Whatever gain I had [and remember his amazing list of Jewish gains in verses 5–6], I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Three pieces here help us get clarity on this justification by faith alone.

First, what is not the grounds of Paul’s justification, and ours, before God: our own merit. He says, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.” The problem is not the law; it is holy, righteous, and good. The problem is us. We are sinners through and through. We are not holy, righteous, and good, and so even our very best efforts at obeying God’s holy, righteous, and good law cannot win his righteous favor and get us right with him.

Second, then, what is the grounds of our justification? Answer: having the righteousness that “comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Faith in whom? Faith in Christ. Righteousness from whom? Righteousness from God, through our believing in Jesus.

But still, one piece is missing, and it’s easy to overlook, at the beginning of verse 9: “found in him.” This is relational language, and it’s part of an interaction or an exchange. Paul has been talking about gaining Christ, getting Christ, and now he talks about Christ getting him, his being found in Christ. It’s almost like, “I am my beloved’s, and he is mine,” from the Song of Solomon. I get Christ because he got me.

Which means the ground of our justification is Christ alone, not our doing. And the instrument that connects us to Jesus is faith alone, again not our doing. And the context or the location of that faith is our being “found in him,” our being united to him, by the Spirit, through faith.

So, justification, in verse 9, is our being fully accepted by God in Christ. United to Jesus by faith, his righteousness is ours, and the Father’s full acceptance of him is ours.

Brothers and sisters, to know, really know, the grace of justification by faith alone will make you want to stand on your head for joy — and remember, verse 9 is penultimate. Justification is not the end. It’s not the final goal or reality. Justification, amazing as it is, is the means — the means to knowing the one in whom we are justified.

So, number one, we are fully accepted by God in Jesus. Now bounce ahead to verse 11 and the ultimate goal.

2. One day we will fully know Jesus and be satisfied in him forever.

That is, we will live forever, together, in ever-increasing bliss, in the unobstructed presence of and ever-deepening relationship with Jesus.

“Justification, amazing as it is, is the means to knowing the one in whom we are justified.”

We call this “glorification.” One day soon, when we see Jesus — the risen, glorified God-man — face-to-face, we too, like him, will be glorified. In that day, says verse 21, Jesus “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.”

Let’s read verse 10 to verse 11. As we’ve seen, Paul is celebrating being united to Christ by faith and declared righteous in him:

. . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

So, verse 11 speaks to a future reality: our attaining, our reaching, our arriving at, our coming to the resurrection from the dead. Just like Jesus rose again bodily to a new indestructible, risen, glorified body — the same temporal earthly body that went into the grave, then raised and transformed into an eternal heavenly body — so we too who are in Christ will one day rise again bodily to glorified, transfigured resurrection bodies.

And in these perfected, indestructible bodies, we will live eternally with Jesus, experiencing to the full the life God made us to live. We will have eternal life, which won’t only mean living in the same new world as the risen Christ, but it will mean knowing him. Union with him by faith now leads to communion with him forever. This, at its heart, is what eternal life is, like Jesus said in John 17:3:

This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Note two stunning moves in this statement: (1) Jesus puts knowing God at the heart of eternal life; then (2) he puts himself at the center of knowing God: “and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Remember the new-covenant prophecy that we saw in Hebrews 8, from Jeremiah 31, that “they shall all know me”? The coming of Jesus, God himself taking human flesh, dying for us, and rising again as the glorified God-man forever, is how God draws near to us that we might know him — “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

So, with Christ’s perfect work finished, justification by faith alone is the ground beneath our feet; and seeing him face-to-face is ahead of us, when we will be in the same space with the God-man — no distance, no obstructions, no remoteness, no more knowing in part but then knowing in full. But what about in the meantime? What about now, between our justification and glorification?

3. We know Jesus even now and want to know him more.

We’ve seen penultimate and ultimate, and so finally we come to “deep, personal knowing, real experience in real relationship,” even in this life. Verse 10:

. . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death . . .

What does it mean to know Jesus — not just know about him but know him, right now, the living Christ on the throne of heaven? Do you know him?

What does it mean to know Jesus, when, unlike his disciples, you’ve never seen him with your own eyes, or touched him with your own hands, or heard his human voice with your own ears? How do you know a person who is at present physically inaccessible? How can you know him?

One thing to make clear about Paul’s expressed desire “to know him” is that Paul is pressing way beyond minimal saving knowledge to maximal satisfying knowing. He’s not asking, What’s the least I need to know to be saved? Rather, he’s talking about maximally knowing and enjoying a real, living, breathing person, who has made himself knowable both as God and as man. This is maximal personal-knowing, not minimal information-knowing.

Struggle as we might to capture in words what it means to know Jesus, we all know experientially as persons what it’s like to know another living person. You don’t know a person simply by being in the same room. Two people can sit in silence in the doctor’s office waiting room and not know each other at all. Or two people thousands of miles away can know each other profoundly through the sequenced exchange of words. Shared space is not the essence of how we come to know each other, but interaction. Communication. Self-revelation. Exchanging words is typically the main channel through which persons know each other.

Our words reveal the unseen inner person, and so words heard and responded to in kind enable us to dialogue and interact and so know each other in and through the exchange. We come to know a person by listening to him and then, in the rhythms of relational interaction, speaking back to him with questions or our own self-revelation.

And don’t miss this: getting to know a person well also involves other people. You see more, and hear more, and know a person more by enjoying him with others. Other people draw out previously unknown aspects of the person. Also knowing someone deepens as you experience life with him, and especially life’s ups and downs, both triumphs and defeats.

As we get to know a living person, it often happens first in big chunks and then through endless refinements over time. You never exhaust knowing a living person. Yet over time we can genuinely say that we come to know a person’s heart, their essence, who they really are. So, when someone else talks about a person you know, “Yes, that’s him.” Or you might say, “No, I know him, and that doesn’t sound like him.”

And of course, Jesus is no ordinary person, so there’s a special note to strike here: vital to our knowing him, and coming to know him more, is something unique compared to every mere human person we know. Those whom Jesus knows, he puts in them his own Spirit. If you are in Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in you, and (as we’ve seen in Philippians 2:13 and 3:3) he is “the Spirit of Christ” (1:19). We hear Jesus’s voice in his word by the Spirit, and we pray to him in the Spirit, and we come together as his people through the Spirit. Which leads to Paul’s next phrase in verse 10.

Resurrection Power

What does it mean, then, to “know him and the power of his resurrection”? Jesus not only died in our place to forgive our sins; he rose again, and he is alive. He is alive to know, right now, as a living person, as the God-man seated on heaven’s throne, because of the power of the resurrection. So, to know the living Christ is to know him in the power of his resurrection.

But it also means to experience his resurrection power in our own person by his Spirit and be changed by him. It means to interact with him and so be transformed by him.

In knowing Christ, in being united to him and communing with him, his resurrection power doesn’t leave us unchanged. We are sanctified. We become more like him.

Which means in coming to know Christ better, in his holiness and grace, we also come to know ourselves better in our sin and need. Knowing Jesus has major life entailments. Knowing Jesus will change us. In fact, knowing Jesus is the engine of true Christian change. But — get this straight — we don’t change in order to know him; we know him and his resurrection power and so begin to change.

Knowing Christ transforms the fight against sin and our striving to be like him by putting it in the right perspective. When you know Christ and want to know him more, reading the Bible and meditating on Scripture is not a chore to be completed but a means of God’s grace in the pursuit of knowing Jesus more. Prayer is not a box to check, but speaking back to the one we know, in the power of his Spirit, having heard his voice in his word. And fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ becomes a precious corporate context in which to see and hear what fresh glories they bring out about Jesus in their words and prayers and obedience to him.

But we close with one more striking and unexpected means in verse 10 for how we know Jesus and come to know him more.

Fellowship of Sufferings

Look at verse 10 one last time:

. . . that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death . . .

Now, what we’ve said so far about knowing Christ is true, but the accent Paul adds here is suffering. How we come to know most deeply the risen Christ — his nearness, his pattern, his obedience, his holiness, his heart, his grace — is not in life’s easiest times and our most comfortable moments but in our sufferings.

What Paul has in mind here relates to what he’s just said about Christ’s example in chapter 2: “He humbled himself” (2:8). I don’t think that “becoming like him in his death” means that Paul anticipates a crucifixion for himself, or for us, but that he wants to know Christ by echoing Christ’s heart and “mind” (2:5):

[Being] in the form of God, he 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. (2:6–8)

That’s the pattern Paul wants to be conformed to. He wants to know Christ by sharing in his sufferings, walking in the footsteps of his self-humbling, and experiencing Jesus’s help and fellowship and nearness and resurrection power on the path of obedience when it’s hardest.

We know Jesus not only as we walk with him in triumph but also — and typically all the more — as we cling to him in our suffering and find that he draws especially nearer to us in our suffering.

So, we might sum it up like this. There are two big parts to knowing him: Sunny days and stormy days. Bright days and dark days. Happy seasons and heavy seasons.

In the bright, sunny, happy seasons, we establish the steps of our lives. We learn to walk with him and get to know him as we walk with him. We cultivate habits for hearing his voice in his word by the Spirit and speaking to him in prayer in the fellowship of others who know him. Oh my, how vital are our fellows in Christ for knowing more of Jesus!

What we’re doing in those bright and sunny days is establishing trust and getting to know Jesus better so that when the rainy, stormy, dark, difficult days come, then we go especially deep with him. As many in this room know, it is often the times when we know him in our sufferings that we really know him best and come to know him more.

Supper Together

And we know him through eating with him at this Table. Here we know ourselves afresh as sinners, desperate, condemned apart from him. And we know his grace here — not just know about grace, but know grace, experience his grace. And through his grace, we know Christ himself.

So, while this Table is by no means the only practical avenue of knowing him, it is a vital one as we come here together week after week and eat and drink in faith. Which is why another name for the Lord’s Supper is Communion. We don’t just come here to eat and drink the grace he provides; we come here to encounter him. To know him.

The phrase “Ten Commandments” does not appear in the New Testament. Not once. Which might be surprising for Gentile believers today who have been steeped in a Judeo-Christian heritage, and have come to adopt a distinctively Judeo way of thinking.

Travel through all the precious words and teachings we have in the New Testament — through the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles, addressing such a variety of circumstances and needs — and Jesus and his inspired spokesmen never make the appeal that’s become instinctive for some Christians today: keep the Ten Commandments. If “obeying the Ten” were essential to Christian morality, or even an expressly important component of it, then Jesus and his men seem to have done us a great disservice. Imagine how differently the whole New Testament would read, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, if the Ten Commandments, as they appear in Exodus 20 (or Deuteronomy 5), were to be adopted as is into the lives of new-covenant Christians.

Moreover, the phrase “Ten Commandments” (or “Ten Words”) appears just three times in the Old Testament (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; 10:4), which might clue us in that the Ten have assumed a place in the minds of some that is not only foreign to the Christian aspect of our heritage but even the Judeo part.

Perfect Ten

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we find a few further references to the two “tablets” on which the Ten were written, but not much more — and not at the level of hermeneutical prominence we might assume. And when we turn to the New Testament, we find Paul stating, in very clear terms, that Christians as Christians do not live by these tablets, carved in letters on stone, but by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:3, 6–7; also Romans 2:27–29). He could hardly speak plainer than he does in Romans 7:6: “We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.”

In such passages, the contrast between old and new appears so stark that we might ask, How could such a dramatic shift happen from Moses and the letter, to Christ and the Spirit? The short answer is that the climax of history came. Messiah himself, not only David’s son but the divine Son, came among us in fully human flesh and blood, taught and discipled, and died and rose again.

Jesus came to fulfill what “the old” anticipated and to usher in a new covenant and fundamentally new era of history. His followers would not be under the previous administration that had guarded God’s people since Moses. Jesus himself says he did not come to destroy the Law and Prophets, but to do something even more striking: fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). That is, fulfill like prophecy. Not simply keep the Ten in place, or remain under them, or leave them untouched, but fulfill them — first in his own person, and then by his Spirit in his church. He came not to cast off Moses, but to fulfill Jeremiah, and in doing so, he accomplished what is even more radical: establishing himself as the supreme authority, putting God’s law within his people (rather than on tablets), writing it on their hearts (rather than stone), and making all his people to know him (Jeremiah 31:31–34).

Because Jesus lived and taught at the climax of history, in this once-for-all transition from old to new, from the age of Israel to the age of the church, we need to carefully observe the fresh and sometimes subtle differences in emphasis in his ministry and teaching, and confirm our readings in the teachings of his apostles.

As a piece of this larger picture, let’s here take up the limited focus of how Jesus handles the Ten Commandments. Granted, he does not refer to them as a package called “the Ten Commandments,” but he does, at various key points in his teaching, refer to individual commands from the Ten, and so we get a sense of his larger orientation through pondering his various treatments.

1. But I Say to You (Commands 6, 7, and 9)

We turn first to the Sermon on the Mount and the so-called “six antitheses” of Matthew 5:21–48. This is Jesus’s most programmatic teaching related to commandments from the Ten, in the sweeping context of “the Law and the Prophets.”

Doubtlessly, Jesus’s early listeners could sense the winds of change in his message, as he taught “as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28–29). So, in his most celebrated sermon, Jesus clarifies that he has not come to destroy the old or jettison the commandments, per se. Rather, he has come to fulfill what the Law and Prophets have long anticipated, and that fulfillment in himself (as we’ll see) will bring a salvation-historical maturation and completion, not devolution.

In fact, Jesus’s new-covenant people will come to live with the help of such spiritual power that they all will surpass those who were considered the elites of the previous era: “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Jesus echoes this epochal development in the concluding claim of the antitheses: “You therefore must be perfect [complete, teleioi], as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The previous era embodied a real but modulated expression of God’s standards; the new will, in some sense, raise the standards (Matthew 5:31–32; 19:7–9; Mark 10:4–9; Luke 16:18) and provide far greater Help (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7).

Of the six antitheses that follow, the first four are tied to one of the Ten Commandments. First is command 6, “You shall not murder” (Matthew 5:21). The note Jesus strikes is not continuity but completion: “But I say to you [the I is emphatic] that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:22). Here, we might say, he escalates, deepens, or draws out of the negative command (“you shall not”) a timeless moral entailment that God’s own character enjoins on his creatures. Previously, God had expressed in a more accommodated form the moral implications of his character; now, with the coming of Christ, the standards of righteousness, anticipated by the law, come into full flower. And critically, Jesus does not draw it out by appealing to previous Scripture, but he declares it on his own authority: “I say to you.”

“Jesus neither bows to the law, nor burns it down, but draws attention to himself as the surpassing authority.”

Similarly, the second antithesis begins with command 7: “You shall not commit adultery.” Again, Jesus says, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). It may seem at this point that Jesus is simply “deepening” the law, but the remaining antitheses do not fit so easily into this pattern. In the third, he expounds the law: “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you . . .” (Matthew 5:31–32).

Both “deepening” and “expounding” are inadequate descriptions of the fourth antithesis, which summarizes several Old Testament texts that expand command 9. Again he says, “But I say to you . . .” and in doing so, he “simply sweeps away the whole system of vows and oaths that was described and regulated in the Old Testament” (Douglas Moo, “The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses,” 349). The fifth and sixth antitheses cast the net even wider, showing that Jesus is prepared to speak with authority over a mixture of old-covenant law and popular interpretation in his day.

What emerges, then, is not a common principle for what Jesus is doing to old-covenant commands to put his followers under them, but the radical authority he claims for himself over both human traditions and old-covenant commandments alike. This is, after all, what Matthew reports (and teaches us) at the close of the Sermon:

When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. (7:28–29)

The scribes appeal to the authority of Scripture, but Jesus, daringly, asserts his own authority again and again. The key assertion is “I say to you.” The prevailing effect is Jesus’s new supremacy over all other commandments (“you have heard that it was said of old”), be they the seemingly authoritative maxims of the day or even the genuinely authoritative commands of God as expressed in the previous era.

By no means does the rise of Jesus’s authority mean the destruction of the old, such that Jesus’s followers are now turned loose to murder, commit adultery, and bear false witness. Rather, now, with the coming of Christ, he surpasses Moses and becomes the personal channel of God’s moral authority for his people in the new era and covenant. This he will declare climactically in the Great Commission, on the basis of his having “all authority,” and the standard of worldwide disciple-making being “all that I [not Moses!] have commanded you” (Matthew 28:18–20).

2. Out of the Heart (Commands 8 and 10)

In Mark 7, Jesus makes passing reference to commands 8 and 10 (along with 6, 7, and 9). In verses 1–13, he answers the challenge of the scribes about his disciples eating with unwashed hands and so not living “according to the tradition of the elders” (verse 5). After rebuking their “fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish [their] tradition” (verse 9), he gathers a wider audience to speak with his authority to a related issue:

Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. (Mark 7:14–15)

Related to the Ten, this is a double-edged sword. First, as Mark comments, Jesus thus “declared all foods clean” (verse 19), another astounding revelation of his authority, which, as the God-man’s, surpasses even the divine commands issued in the previous era. Second, Jesus clarifies, “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting [that is, commands 6, 7, 8, and 10], wickedness, deceit [command 9], sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (verses 21–22). Disobedience to commandments 6 through 10 — and eight other sins besides — reveals the unseen heart, which Jesus comes to address, convict, and transform.

The coming of Christ, with his supreme authority, brings the end of Israel’s peculiar food laws, but it does not undo the timeless standards of morality based on the character of God. In fact, now the inner person, “the heart of man,” comes more clearly in view as the source of full obedience to commandments 6 through 10, as well as in areas unaddressed by the Ten. And all this with Christ himself in the position of supreme Lawgiver, not as mere teacher of Moses.

3. The First and a Second (Commands 1 and 2)

We will look in vain for precisely commands 1 and 2 (Exodus 20:3–6) in the ministry of Jesus; however, we find him mentioning a “great and first commandment” and a “second.” Yet remarkably, Jesus goes outside the Ten when he makes such superlative claims.

During his Passion week, when a lawyer from among the Pharisees asks him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” Jesus replies not with Exodus 20 but Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37–40)

Relevant to our focus, Jesus does not elevate the Ten above the larger Torah, but actually, he elevates other parts of the Torah over the Ten! Jesus dares to make the interpretive judgment that Deuteronomy 6:5 represents God’s first and foremost requirement of his people, even better than the first commandment of the Ten. Then, on his own authority, to name the second as an obscurely placed Leviticus 19:18 really should make us shake our heads. Jesus thus demonstrates (1) a wholeness in his approach to the Torah, which does not elevate the Ten above the rest of Scripture, but actually (2) identifies the defining realities as best expressed elsewhere, and all this (3) on the basis of his own authority, not an exegetical argument based on Moses’s authority.

4. Live Long in the Land (Command 5)

Now we come to the first of the three individual commands that remain: command 5, “honor your father and your mother” — which comes not only with a promise, but also a specific context: “that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12).

This gives us an opportunity to recognize how plainly the Ten are embedded in a particular historical moment and generation: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). The Ten go on to mention male and female servants, livestock, sojourners, city gates, and your neighbor’s ox or donkey. Command 5 refers to “the land” to which these newly liberated slaves in the wilderness are heading: Canaan. To be sure, the applications to later periods of history are intuitive enough (as Paul demonstrates in Ephesians 6:1–3), but we still note that Exodus 20 is unapologetically embedded in a certain moment and does not pretend to be otherwise.

Command 5 also gives us the chance to revisit Jesus’s exchange with one of his most famous interlocutors: the rich young ruler. He approaches Jesus and asks, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16). We expect Jesus to quickly correct the obvious error: a sinful human cannot secure eternal life with any good deed! Yet, like the antitheses in Matthew 5, Jesus turns the encounter masterfully toward his own person. First, explicitly: “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Then, implicitly: “There is only one who is good” (verse 17).

Then Jesus comes at the man’s error through commands 6, 7, 8, 9, and 5 — and through Leviticus 19:18 (verses 18–19). With shocking presumption, and perhaps endearing honesty, the man answers, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” (verse 20). Now Jesus circles back to where the exchange began, and the prevailing lesson of his Sermon on the Mount: me. “If you would be perfect [complete, teleios, same as 5:48], go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (verse 21). Jesus is the first and final answer to the man’s query, and to open his hand to take hold of Jesus, the rich young man must release his grasp on his many possessions.

Here Jesus shows the inadequacy of the commandments to save. The man claims to have kept all the commandments, but that is not sufficient. One thing he lacks: Jesus himself.

5. Hallowed Be His Name (Command 3)

Finding command 3 (“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” Exodus 20:7) in Jesus’s teaching seems difficult at first. No exact quotation appears, though we might see a connection to the fourth antithesis. But when we broaden our lens to Jesus’s concern with “the name of the Lord,” we find the associations pervasive. We are hard pressed to find many words more frequently on the lips of Jesus than name. Most memorable of all is the opening request of Jesus’s model prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).

Jesus clearly reverences the divine name, and in his life and ministry he not only “takes the name of the Lord” without vanity, but even fills it up completely in his own person. On Jesus, “the name” is not received as an empty shell, but filled with all the fullness of deity in full humanity. He is the first to take up the name without any vanity or lack whatsoever, and so, remarkably, he speaks not only of his Father’s name but also, inimitably, and even more often, of his own. He warns his disciples that they will leave “houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake” (19:29) and “will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (10:22; 24:9). “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (18:5), and “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (18:20). Examples could be multiplied from the Gospels, especially John.

Most provocatively, Jesus puts himself, as Son, alongside his Father and the Spirit, as sharing in the singular divine name in his Great Commission: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

6. Lord of the Sabbath (Command 4)

Finally, and most scandalously, is command 4: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8, including verses 9–11). Of the Ten, this one is most conspicuous in the tenor of its New Testament handling, including in the ministry of Jesus, as well as in the wrestling of the church for twenty centuries. Essentially, you will not find careful, reasonable Christian arguments in such tension with any of the other Ten in their central moral thrust. Many of us are eager to affirm a six-and-one principle in creation, even if command 4, in its Mosaic expression, is not binding on the new-covenant believer.

Here, we need not tackle the question “Should Christians Keep the Sabbath?,” addressed ably elsewhere. Instead, we emphasize the astonishing way in which Jesus handles command 4 and, like the antitheses and the Great Commission, freshly declares his supremacy over all that came before — and in the strongest terms of all.

Having just captured the beloved invitation, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden” (11:28), Matthew reports, “At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath . . .” (12:1). As Scott Hubbard observes, “The seventh day marks the setting of so many clashes between Jesus and the Pharisees that when we read something like, ‘Now it was a Sabbath day . . .’ (John 9:14), we expect trouble.” And so it begins.

The hungry disciples pluck and eat some heads of grain, and true to form, the Pharisees, while somehow keeping Sabbath themselves, are right there on the spot to register their disapproval: “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath” (12:2). Jesus replies magnificently at multiple levels. David’s men were exempt on the basis of their being with God’s anointed. So too, in the law itself (Numbers 28:9–10), “the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath” — performing a burnt offering every Saturday — “and are guiltless” (Matthew 12:5).

“Jesus is indeed Lord — Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all.”

Jesus then does what we now might have come to expect: he neither bows to the law, nor burns it down, but draws attention to himself as the surpassing authority. And he does so twice. Both are partially veiled expressions in the moment, and boldly conspicuous in retrospect. Verse 6: “I tell you [note that language again], something greater than the temple is here.” Verse 8: “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Far from Sabbath’s servant, or its saboteur, Jesus is its Lord. He is Lord of the temple, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all that came before (whether divine commands or human traditions), and all that will follow. And so, we see how his invitation in Matthew 11:28–30 leads smoothly into this episode “at that time” (12:1):

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Christ himself is and gives the climactic rest. Command 4, and commands 1 through 10, indeed all the Law and Prophets, prophesied (Matthew 11:13) of this greater one to come — greater than the temple, than David, than Solomon, than Jonah, and greater than Moses, the Sabbath, and the Ten.

Lord of All

Those of us raised with a heightened appreciation for the Ten, or perhaps with a diminished view of the rest of Scripture, and even Christ himself, may feel ourselves in moral freefall to first ponder the implications of Jesus’s lordship over the Ten. But the unsettled feeling passes quickly, and soon we find our feet, and moral stability, on even firmer ground, and our admiration for Jesus increased besides. And in that increase is our appreciation for Jesus’s authority and his words.

Jesus not only outshone the Pharisees in his understanding of Moses, but he himself generously issued commands, and commissioned his church “to observe all that I have commanded you.”

He is indeed Lord — Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of the Ten, and Lord of all.

Here’s our overview for this section, and this is the way I like to talk about it. It’s about hearing God’s voice, having his ear, and belonging to his body, the church. And here, I want to emphasize enjoying the gift. This is a gift that we often do not enjoy like we can. So I hope to remind myself and remind all of us here this evening, what a gift we have in prayer. And perhaps we would enjoy this gift a little bit more, incrementally more because of our focus here this evening.

To take a little half step back and do a little bigger review, and then come into prayer, we’re going to talk about Jesus’s habits first. I love talking about this. I don’t see a lot of people talking about this. I find this really exciting and life-giving. So we’ll talk about Jesus’s habits.

Then, we’ll talk in some more nitty-gritty and practicals about our habits of prayer. We’re going to break those up into prayer in secret (personal prayer), prayer constant (prayer that’s on the go and doesn’t cease), and then prayer together in company. And then finally, we’ll talk about fasting. Several years ago, to talk about fasting people would turn their heads. There was not a lot of interest in fasting. And then all of a sudden in recent years, there’s a lot of talk about fasting, intermittent fasting. We’re going to talk about Christian fasting, fasting for a spiritual purpose. So there’s our overview here for tonight’s session.

As a review, let me go to this J.C. Ryle quote again. I just love it. I wanted to come back to it to make sure that everyone hears it. I’m sure there’s somebody here who hasn’t been to the other sessions, so here’s a chance to hear it. Ryle says:

The means of grace are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in church, wherein one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them (the means of grace, including prayer). They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul, and strengthens the work which he has begun in the inward man . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.

So may we not pretend to be so high and spiritual as to get on without these glorious means. That is our focus tonight.

The Habits of Jesus

So first, let’s take a look at Jesus’s habits. Here’s a disclaimer: The Gospels are not intended just to teach us Jesus’s spiritual practices so we can imitate them. At the very heart of the Gospels is something Jesus does for us that we cannot imitate precisely. We cannot die for others, and definitely for the sins of the world. However, even in his death on the cross and resurrection at the very climax of the Gospels, there is something to imitate, just as he has washed our feet and died for us, so we are to love and serve each other in a cruciform pattern. There’s so much in the Gospels we can pick up from the life of Jesus, the God-man, and I think his spiritual habits are worth observing. Granted though, they are not the main point of the Gospels; that would be the gospel, Jesus.

But we have far more about Jesus’s personal spiritual rhythms than we do about anyone else in Scripture. Part of the reason for this is that we have four Gospels, and the Gospels are given in half of their space at least to tracking his life, especially his ministry, until he came to that final week. We have a lot about his movements and his patterns, but we don’t have that about Paul or Isaiah or Moses or even David. Many of these figures in the Bible that we have a lot of text about, we don’t get anything like some of these spiritual movements and rhythms like we have in the Gospels with Jesus. Let me show you.

Return and Retreat

First, let me give you the big picture about his rhythms of return and retreat, then we’ll talk about how he handled the word, then we’ll talk about prayer, and that moves us into the prayer topic for tonight. The word piece is a little bit of review, but it’s important because there’s this relationship between God speaking in his word and our response in prayer that we step on that foot again.

Here are some of Jesus’s rhythms of retreat and return. See how he draws back from the crowd and communes with his Father, and then that fills him and feeds him and strengthens him to then move back to the needs of others, back to the crowd to bless others. Mark 1:35 comes after a very busy day in Capernaum. They’re healing all sorts of people and they’re beating down the door outside Peter’s house.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

That’s going to be key language. We’ll see this “desolate place” again and again. That could be translated as “wilderness place.” He’s getting out of the town. He’s getting alone. He’s getting some solitary space to meet with his Father. So he gets out to a desolate place, and there he prays. This is really an amazing moment. The whole town, Peter’s hometown, is all excited about this guy that Peter has been following. So Peter has to be thrilled, thinking, “My whole town is wanting to hear from this Jesus that I’ve given my life to follow.” And Peter wakes up the next morning and is like, “Uh oh, where’s Jesus? He’s gone.” Peter must’ve been in a panic. They’re looking for him. Where is Jesus? They find that he’s gone out to pray, and when they get there to him, they’re like, “Jesus, where have you been?” He says, “I came out to pray. I need to move on to the next town” (Mark 1:38).

It must have been very difficult for Peter, but he had a mission and he moved out. He was filled up by his Father and he was ready to move on to the next town to spread the word. Next is Matthew 9:36–38. Now you see his approach to the crowds. It’s not that Jesus disdains people, humans, crowds.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

He’s going to be that, paradigmatically, in being sent out from heaven to die for us. And he prays for the disciples to be sent out and for others to be sent out that there be labor. There is this movement where he goes away to commune and then comes back to the crowds. Luke 5:15–16 says:

But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

This pattern emerges. The crowd swells. They want to know more about him and he doesn’t hate them. He ministers to them, he blesses them, and he finds his time to withdraw and to pray.

The Son of God’s Daily Bread

Now quickly, consider the place of Scripture in Jesus’s life, because I don’t want to give the impression that he’s just a man who prayed and that prayer was not a kind of rhythm or response or relationship with the word from his Father. So here’s the place of Scripture in the life of Christ.

First, consider the wilderness where he faced temptations. Satan says, “If you are the Son of God, command the stone to become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3). And Jesus answers, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). So Satan comes back to try to match him. He says, “All right, I hear that. Let me learn from it.” He’s clever. He’s going to try to match it. He says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written . . .” (Matthew 4:6). In other words, “If you want to quote the Writings, I’ll quote the Writings.” He says, “It is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone’” (Matthew 4:6). Jesus is going to fight fire with fire. He says to him, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:7).

Then Satan says, “All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). Then Jesus says, “Be gone, Satan, for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (Matthew 4:10). So even the Son of God among us, God himself among us, bases his “Be gone, Satan,” not merely on his own authority with respect to his humanity, but he bases it on the revelation of God’s word. He says, “Be gone, Satan, for it is written.”

Continual Appeals to Scripture

Here’s Jesus in his hometown when he comes back from the wilderness. He comes to Nazareth where he was brought up. And it says “as was his custom” (Luke 4:16). This is habit language. He’s making a custom here to gather with the body. That belongs to last night, the habit of gathering. It says:

He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written . . . (Luke 4:16–17).

He’s handling Scripture, reading it aloud. Then he reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4:17–19), and he reads the quote. Then it says:

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:20–21).

He begins his ministry in coming back from the wilderness, coming to his hometown (Nazareth), by quoting Scripture. This is the fulfillment of Scripture. This is how he identifies his cousin, John the Baptist. He says:

This is he of whom it is written, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you” (Matthew 11:10).

And when Jesus clears the temple, he uses Scripture:

Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers” (Matthew 21:12–13).

The Word Applied, the Word Fulfilled

This is also how he rebukes the proud. Mark 7:5–9 says:

And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!”

He’s a man who is soaked in Scripture, in what is written. Again and again, he’s referring to Isaiah and to what is written. He’s quoting Scripture. He’s referring to the commandments of God and holding those up against the traditions of men. He is saying, “That tradition is not in the word, that’s not in Scripture. But this is in Scripture.”

In Luke 20:16–18, it says:

When they heard [the parable of the wicked tenant], they said, “Surely not!” But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

Here are some other examples:

On the way to Calvary in John’s Gospel, as he turns the corner and heads with intentionality to Jerusalem, it is pronounced, “It is written in the Prophets. . .” (John 6:45).
In John 8, he says, “In your Law it is written . . .” (John 8:17)
In John 10, he says, “Is it not written in your law?” (John 10:34).
In John 12, it says, “Just as it is written . . .” (John 12:14),
In John 15, he says, “The word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled” (John 15:25).
He says, “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him” (Matthew 26:24).
In Luke 18, he says, “We are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written about the Son of man by the prophets will be accomplished” (Luke 18:31).

Living by What Is Written

So here’s my summary about the function of the written word, Scripture, in the life of Jesus. Jesus didn’t have his own print Bible to page through in private. You get this, right? They didn’t have the printing press until 500 years ago. To produce books was a great cost. People didn’t have personal copies of books. So it’s almost certain Jesus just doesn’t have a personal copy of Scripture. He heard it read at the synagogue, he heard it in his mother’s singing. He could rehearse what he himself had memorized. Even though he didn’t have his own print Bible to page through, let there be no confusion about the central place of God’s written word in his life. God himself in human flesh lived by what was written.

I came across this quote from Sinclair Ferguson recently. This comes from his book, The Holy Spirit, and he’s talking about the role of the Holy Spirit in the earthly life of Jesus. And he makes this comment relative to Scripture:

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.

“God himself in human flesh lived by what was written.”

This is what it means for God himself to be among us as a human. Hebrews 5:8 talks about him learning obedience through what he suffered. Luke 2:52 talks about him growing in wisdom and knowledge, and this is the wisdom and knowledge he grew in. It was God’s written word in Scripture, which then formed a life of prayer.

The Place of Prayer in the Life of Christ

The place of prayer then. So given that picture of how Scripture functions in the life of Jesus, what’s the place of prayer in the life of Christ? This is really rich. Let’s start with Jesus and his prayer alone. I’ll put the cards on the table. I want you to hear the application here. Hear echoing and imitation as we talk about his prayer alone, his prayer with others, and what he’s teaching his disciples about prayer. This is all very relevant and applicable to us.

Jesus and Private Prayer

We already saw Mark 1:35. This is Matthew 14:23, which says:

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone . . .

Even though he has these 12 and they were with him essentially all the time. Here it’s said in particular that he went up alone. This time, not even Peter, James, or John are coming with him. He goes alone to commune with his Father in prayer. Mark 6:46–47 says:

And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land.

And you know there’s a great miracle coming. John 6:15 says:

Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

I’m suspecting he goes there to pray. And as one who is quoting regularly what is written, when he prays to his Father, he prays in light of what he knows to have been revealed in Scripture. Luke 6:12 says:

In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.

Now this context here is him choosing the disciples. Jesus didn’t have one night a week where he always missed sleep for prayer. I’m aware of two occasions. It happened at the beginning of his ministry when he was choosing his disciples, and at the end of his ministry the night before he died when the disciples were all ready to sleep and he was praying in the garden of Gethsemane. I don’t know that Jesus had any sleep that night before he died. So Jesus did have a regular pattern of sleep, and yet he was ready to miss sleep if he needed to for communion with his Father. It wasn’t all the time, but it was on some particularly pressing occasions. That was Jesus praying alone.

Jesus and Public Prayer

Now, how about praying with his men, or as his disciples hear him praying? And this occurs regularly in his ministry. Luke 6:21 says:

When Jesus also had been baptized and was praying . . .

This is when he was being baptized. This is being observed by his disciples. They’re hearing that he’s praying. Or consider Matthew 6:5–13 when he taught them how to pray. This is the Lord’s prayer. In Matthew 6, it’s part of the teaching during the Sermon on the Mount, but in Luke 11:1–4 the disciples came to him after hearing his prayers, and they wanted to learn. They asked him to teach them. We’ll get to that.

Matthew 19:13 says that children are brought to him that he may lay his hands on them and pray. So the word is going out and people think, “Hey, this is Jesus!” He was the one who would lay his hands on your children and bless your children and pray for your children. He’s a man of prayer. He’s a man who loves children. He’s a man who will pray for them. So they brought children to him because he was known this way. Mark 9:29 says:

And he said to them, “This kind [demon oppression] cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

Luke 9:18 says:

Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him.

That’s how much he was with his men, how much he invested in these guys. Even at times when he was praying alone, the disciples were with him. So how does that work? Is it that he kind of goes off to the side and has a prayer time? Or is he so used to these guys that it feels like being alone compared to the crowd and others?

Lord, Teach Us to Pray

This is a time when his men are observing him or hearing him pray. The disciples were with him, and because they see the kind of man of prayer he is and these rhythms of prayer he has, they ask him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). He’s praying in a certain place. And when he finished — somehow they knew he finished, either he raised his head or they heard him praying and he stopped — they said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” They’ve heard him pray. It’s winsome, it’s contagious. They want to pray like this man. And they ask him for his instruction. Luke 9:28 says:

Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.

The night before he died, he said to Peter, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32). The God-man prays for his disciples that their faith will not fail. John 17 may be the deepest chapter in all the Bible, and it’s Jesus praying. It says:

He lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come . . .” (John 17:1).

All of John 17 is Jesus’s prayer. Lastly, Matthew 26 is in the garden of Gethsemane. It says:

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray” (Matthew 26:36) . . . And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39) . . . Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41).

And again, for the second time, he went away and prayed. He was leaving them again. And he went away and prayed for a third time. This is how he waits for the events to begin to transpire when he’s taken into custody. These are the last few moments when he could run. This is the moment to feel the weight, to suffer beforehand with the weight of what it will be like to be at the cross, to ponder what he’s doing. This doesn’t catch him off guard. There would be less virtue and power in the cross if it caught him off guard. The cross doesn’t catch him off guard. He knows exactly what’s happening and he wrestles with it. He owns it. He solidifies his will for the joy set before him and he does that through prayer.

Jesus and Fasting

Jesus also talks about fasting and there are two key texts on fasting, both are in Matthew’s Gospel, which will accompany prayer as we’ll talk about. He says:

And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:16–18).

This pairs with his talk about praying in secret, as we’ll see in just a minute. And he says “when you fast.” This is not an if to his disciples. He expects there to be occurrences of fasting. Matthew 9:15 says:

Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

So Jesus says we will fast. When they fast, he assumes we’ll fast and he says we will. The bridegroom, Jesus, will be taken away and then they will fast.

Instructions on Seclusion

So far we have seen Jesus’s pattern of retreat and return, how Jesus shaped his life with the word, how Jesus prayed alone with his disciples, how Jesus taught his disciples to pray, and then Jesus also teaches his disciples the same kind of pattern of withdrawing at appropriate times for communion and rest and then going back to the crowds to minister. Jesus withdrew with his disciples, bringing them with him. He’s teaching them this pattern. Luke 9:10 says:

On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida.

Mark 6:31–32 is more direct. He says:

And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

In John 11, it says:

Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.

Matthew 6:11 says:

When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Here’s my summary. In receiving his Father’s voice in Scripture, in praying alone and with company, and at times when faced with particularly pressing concerns, adding the tool of fasting, Jesus sought communion with his Father. His habits were not demonstrations of sheer will and discipline. His acts of receiving the word and responding in prayer were not ends in themselves. In these blessed means, he pursued the end of knowing and enjoying his Father, communing with his Father in prayer.

The God Who Speaks and Listens

We’ve been talking implicitly all along, but now let’s talk explicitly about our habits of prayer. There are three foundational truths here before a few concrete specifics and suggestions. First, our God is not only communicative but listens. The speaking God is also the God who listens. “God Who Listens” is a good song by Chris Tomlin. Now, he doesn’t only listen, he first speaks. Sometimes we can get this thing back and forth in our modern day. It’s spoken of in therapeutic, psychological terms. People say, “I just need somebody to listen to me. If God will just listen. If people just listen to me. I need listening.” Yes, and you need teaching and divine revelation along with listening.

There are two things that are happening. He speaks and he listens. Our God is a God who listens and he listens in light of his speech. Prayer is a conversation we didn’t start. God speaks first. We respond in light of his word. We talked yesterday about dialing up. Who’s going to dial up? Well, actually we’re not going to dial up. God has dialed up. So let’s pray to him together in light of his revelation. And the great purpose of prayer is that God would be our joy. We pray for things and we pray for help. We pray for assistance and we pray for blessing. At the end of the day, we pray to God himself. We want more of him. He is the greatest gift he gives. His Son is the greatest gift he gives. And so we pray to know him, enjoy him, and have him even as we want to have and see him through blessings he may give.

We’ll talk in just a minute about how we would work things into our prayer life other than just asking. This is C.S. Lewis on prayer, and it’s about the asking part of prayer, which is where the word “pray” comes from. We think of asking things from God and we should be careful not to only ask stuff from him as if he’s a big gift dispenser in the sky. Lewis says:

Prayer, in the sense of asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine.

Our Habits of Prayer

Let me break these out with various texts and concepts as our prayer in secret (private prayer), as in the Ryle quote. Then, we will talk about the language in the New Testament that you’re probably familiar with, “praying without ceasing.” What is that? And then, we’ll focus on praying with company with a few suggestions on how to pray together with company in ways that might be most effective in the life of the church.

Praying in Secret

Here’s prayer in secret again, as we saw:

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:5–6).

This does not mean never ever pray in public. That’s part of what we do as a church. It would be a blessed thing to pray for someone. It’s very good for others to hear your prayers all the time in our families. People should be hearing our prayers all the time. But don’t let prayer become something that is only heard by others so that there’s never this prayer in secret. And don’t let it just be prayer on the go, but have a particular time set aside where nobody else is listening and you’re not just begging for help on the way as you go through life, but you have time set aside to commune with God, as we saw in this pattern in Jesus’s life.

It’s great to find a space where you can pray out loud. This has been something that’s fresh recently in my life that the kids have gotten old enough now. They’re in school five days a week. I have some work from home days now because on the other side of COVID there are some fresh patterns, and we have a blended office, so some days you’re home. There are times I’m just at home by myself and I can kneel in our living room and I can just pray out loud. For me, it helps me to pray it out loud so I don’t kind of trail off. Sometimes when I’m just in my head praying, I kind of trail off. I don’t finish sentences and thoughts, or my prayers can begin to wander into thoughts because they were thoughts to begin with. I find it very helpful to be able to pray out loud and in secret. We need to find space for that.

My suggestion here, as I mentioned yesterday, is this pattern of beginning with the Bible, moving to meditation, and then polishing with prayer. The thought there being, we want to hear from God first and reading is moving at the typical pace of a written text. So begin by reading his word. And then meditation is about pausing, pondering, and seeking to feel the weight and significance of a particular part of that text on the soul. And then, instead of doing a hard pivot to praying what you want to pray for the day, let what God has been speaking through his word and you’ve been meditating on be the theme, the inspiration, and the catalyst for your prayers.

You could say, “God, I’ve seen your Son is glorious in this text. I pray that you would help me to continue seeing that, help my wife to see it, help my kids to see it, help my coworkers to see it, and help the nations see it.” I typically move in a pattern from self to wife to kids and family, then coworkers in church and the Twin Cities, and then to the nations. I kind of move out in concentric circles. But you find your way and what makes sense to you as you think about circles of prayer. I love to have that prayer time come out of being freshly inspired by time in the word.

Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication

Then there is the ACTS acronym. This is not proprietary or special. You’ve probably heard of this. I think it’s very helpful. I think we tend to forget without reminders like this about the other aspects of prayer other than petition. Lewis is talking about petition being a small part of prayer. So here’s what ACTS refers to: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Supplication is there. It’s part of prayer, it’s important.

Come into a prayer time and begin by adoring God. There is something so right, so precious, so enjoyable about adoring God. It’s fitting and he’s worthy of it, for us to pause and adore him and then move from that adoration as we rehearse his glory, his attributes, and his worth to a sense of self and the need for the confession of our sins, and how we are not living up to the standard, and how we have we have sinned against him. Then we move to thanking him. Thank him that he’s drawn near in Christ. Thank him for the many blessings in our lives. And then we ask, if you want to go through this pattern of ACTS.

I get asked this question a lot, but I think the general pattern in Scripture and in the New Testament in particular for Christian prayer is to the Father through the Son — that is, in Jesus’s name — and by the Spirit. So prayer is Trinitarian, but it’s not necessarily symmetrical.

We don’t pray to the Spirit through the Father by the Son. You pray to the Father through the Son by the Spirit. And all three persons of the Godhead are God in their own right. So it is fitting and wonderful to pray to particular members of the Trinity. You don’t have to only address the Father, you can pray Jesus prayers where you pray to him. You can pray to the Spirit. And in particular that can be fitting where there’s certain times where we know of the roles that the persons of the Godhead take in the economy of salvation. So if we’re praying for a particular thing, you may want to pray to that particular person. However, the general pattern is to the Father through the Son, the one person of the Trinity who became human and died for us, and doing that by the power of the Spirit who dwells in us. Don’t be shackled into thinking you need to pray the same number of prayers and spend the same number of minutes praying to each person in the Trinity.

Prayer and Fasting

And then, prayer is to be accompanied on occasion with fasting. We’ll say more about this in a few minutes, but let me just say there are normal daily prayers and there are times in our lives where we feel a particular desperation. Fasting is a tool for the desperate. You cannot fast all the time, you’d die. You can pray every day. Prayer goes with the breath. You have to keep breathing and keep praying. You can go without food for a little bit, not all the time.

So fasting is a special measure. When you have a particular burden, some particular desperation, and you want to say, “Oh Father, I’m so desperate here,” more than just the typical prayer — which is wonderful and blessed and prayed in confidence because of Jesus — then you can add a particular demonstration of desperation in fasting. We’ll say more about fasting here in just a moment.

Praying Without Ceasing

I have four texts that talk about praying without ceasing or being constant or continual in prayer:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16–17).
Be constant in prayer (Romans 12:12).
Continue steadfastly in prayer (Colossians 4:2).
Praying at all times in the Spirit . . . (Ephesians 6:18).

I don’t think this means you stay on your knees all day and you never stop praying. I think it means don’t give up praying. Don’t have trials come into your life where you forget to pray or become so discouraged that you don’t pray. Continuing it, persevere in prayer. And as you go throughout the day, as you live, develop patterns of prayer or anchor points of prayer.

Maybe you think about your car as being a reminder on your commute in the morning, getting in the car in the morning. This is a reminder to pray as you start out on the commute. Or there could be other ways. We do this with meals as we sit down. We take that as an occasion to pray. That’s a good thing. That’s a good habit. There could be other habits of prayer like that so that we would have this sense of ongoing prayer, constant prayer in our life, which doesn’t mean that we don’t ever do our work or don’t ever give any focus somewhere else. Be freed from that burden.

There can be a spirit of dependence, yes, as you go throughout the day, and your attention is limited. You can only really focus on a thing at a time. And God means for you to do your work and your calling and your parenting and interact with your spouse and do what you’re called to do. And we can develop these rhythms that are such that it would be as if we never stop praying. We pray without ceasing. We’re constant in prayer because it marks our life like it did for Jesus.

Praying with Company

Before we finish with fasting let’s focus here on praying with company. I call praying with company the high point of prayer, which is in no way to minimize private prayer or prayer on the go. But again, as we talked about with fellowship, when God’s people come together, there is a power. God loves to brood by his Spirit on the gathering of his people. And when we sync up our schedules and our lives and our habits to pray together, it is significant. There is multiplying blessings to us and through the gathering in praying together.

Jesus does this, and we see it in the life of the early church where they gather to pray. My recommendation is to make it regular with spouse, with family, and with people in a small group or Bible study. There can be prayer gatherings in the rhythms of the church. An idea with a time that’s set aside as a prayer time is to begin with a brief word of Scripture. It might just be a single verse that someone reads. If there’s a prayer leader for the gathering, they could just say, “Let me read this paragraph and let’s pray together.” That could be one way to get into prayer time to remember that we’re not the one dialing up, we’re praying in response to God’s word. Some word of Scripture can be the catalyst for our group gathering in prayer.

I also recommend limiting your share time. I try to do this in our community group. We will gather in our time to pray and people will start sharing. Are there any prayer requests? People start sharing and the clock is ticking and they are sharing so well, and we are just bearing down on the time when they’ve got to go because they have to have kids in bed for school the next day. One strategy, if you’re leading a prayer time, is to start with a little Scripture and then say, “Does anybody have a really pressing request you need to talk to us about, or can we just talk to the Lord in prayer about these things?” And you know what, in all our prayers, God already knows it.

So if you want to give some extra information in your prayer to him so that other people understand what you’re praying for, God is really fine with that. I’m pretty sure about that. So for us to get into prayer time and go ahead and go directly Godward and be able to share as we pray can be a good thing in our praying with company.

Utilize Short Prayers

At times, I love to remind folks you don’t have to pray long. Jesus commends short prayers. When he gave us the model prayer, it’s only 50 words. Feel free to hop around. You can pray for something in a focused way and none of us here are going to think you’re unspiritual if you pray too short. In fact, we may think you’re unspiritual if you pray too long, depending on the setting.

Pray without show and with others in mind. This is the last tension in corporate prayer. We don’t want to pray for show and yet when it’s corporate prayer, you’re praying for other people. So there’s no need to pretend it’s just you and God. It’s not. It’s corporate prayer. The very nature of corporate prayer is that we’re doing this together, so it’s appropriate to both seek to be authentic and real before him, and at the same time, you know others are listening and you’re leading them together with you Godward in prayer.

Inducements to Communal Prayer

I’ll just end with some incentives here about the benefits of praying with company. Why not just make all your prayer, private prayer? In praying with company, I think there are answers to prayer that we get in praying with each other that we may not get otherwise if we didn’t do so in company. I think there’s growth in our prayers. When we hear others pray, we grow in the way that we pray. It’s a wonderful thing to pray in private.

We have to pray in private, but I think there’s more growth that happens as we hear others, as we hear their perspective, as we hear how they’re wording it, the angles of approach to God, what they say to God, their concepts. We get to know those persons well too in the fellowship of the church as we hear their heart in prayer. That draws out something in that person you may not hear otherwise when they come before God’s face in prayer. We get to know them better. And then, most of all, you get to know Jesus better.

I think there are aspects of our Savior that God means for us to know through hearing those in the prayers of others in the corporate gatherings. As we know others, we get to see aspects of Jesus, his grace, how he’s drawn near to them, how he’s blessed them, how he’s shown them grace upon grace.

And then lastly, the great purpose of prayer in secret, prayer on the go, and prayer with company is that God in Christ would be our reward.

Questions and Answers

Are there any questions here on prayer before I finish up with some brief thoughts about fasting? Any burning questions on prayer? If it’s not burning, you don’t have to make one up.

Do you have a favorite resource on prayer?

Yes, my favorite is Tim Keller’s book on prayer. I think it’s Tim Keller’s best book. It’s at a different level from his other stuff. It is so well done. It’s so steeped in John Owen and the Puritans. I love Keller’s book. Years ago, I loved Paul Miller’s book called A Praying Life. It was so good. There’s an old Spurgeon book called The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Life. It’s really good. I know that people recommend E.M. Bounds. Actually I haven’t heard people talk about E.M. Bounds recently, but go look up E.M. Bounds for a lot of resources on prayer.

The Place of Fasting

The last point is on fasting. At no place in all his 13 letters, does the apostle Paul command Christians to fast. Neither does Peter in his letters, nor John, nor any other book in the New Testament. There are no commands to fast. And yet, for 2,000 years Christians have fasted. One expression among others of healthy, vibrant Christians and churches has been the practice of fasting. However much it may seem to be a lost art today, fasting has endured for two millennia as a means of Christ’s ongoing grace for his church. So why then, if Christians are not commanded to fast, do we still fast?

There’s Jesus’s example as we’ve already seen. He fasted in the wilderness. He said, not if you fast, but when. And Jesus promised, “then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15). So the words of Christ have an effect on the church, though it’s not a direct command to fast because they will, and he says “when you fast.” The early Christians fasted. They fulfilled what Jesus said would happen. Acts 13:1–3 says:

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

It’s a pattern in the early church. Acts 14:23 says:

And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting (notice the pairing) they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

Inward Fasting

Overall, the New Testament may have little to say about fasting, but what it does say is important. And what it doesn’t say, I think it’s leaning heavily on the Old Testament. The Hebrew Scriptures do not speak the final word on fasting, but they’re vital in preparing us to hear the final word from Christ. I have a summary for you of three groups of passages on fasting in the Old Testament. I count about 25 references to fasting, situations of fasting, or narratives about fasting. Let me summarize them for you in three groups.

First, there is inward fasting. There’s an inward focus in fasting to express repentance. God’s people fast to express a heart of repentance before him. They realize their sin, typically not small indiscretions or lapses in judgment, but deep and prolonged rebellion, and they come seeking his forgiveness. This happens in 1 Samuel 7:3, which says:

And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” So the people of Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they served the Lord only. Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel at Mizpah, and I will pray to the Lord for you.” So they gathered at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted on that day and said there, “We have sinned against the Lord” (1 Samuel 7:3–7).

I’m not going to go through all these texts, but this is the first scenario: to express repentance. And you can see fasts expressing repentance in 1 Kings 21, Nehemiah 9, Daniel 9, Jonah 3, Joel 1–2. Old Testament saints often expressed an inward heart of repentance to God, not only in words, but with the exclamation point of fasting. It’s kind of a declaration of particular repentance. Such fasting did not earn God’s forgiveness but demonstrated the genuineness of their contrition. It’s like they’ve reached for some extra help to express the intensity of their repentance.

Outward Fasting

Then there is outward fasting. Then there’s an outward kind of fasting, in order to grieve hard providences. You can see this on several occasions. Fasting can give voice to mourning, grieving, or lamenting difficult providences. This is the end of 1 Samuel when the first anointed king, Saul, dies:

And they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh and fasted seven days (1 Samuel 31:13).

They were mourning for the death of their king. 2 Samuel 1 is the next chapter here:

Then David took hold of his clothes and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him. And they mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword (2 Samuel 1:11–12).

“Fasting expresses to God our pointed need for God.”

Hard providences call for fasting. Esther fasts when the king’s decree goes out. In Psalm 35:13, David talks about wearing sackcloth and afflicting himself with fasting in his grieving. Psalm 69:10 says, “He humbled his soul with fasting.” Fasting gave voice to the pain and sorrow of sudden and severe outward circumstances and represented a heart of faith toward God in the midst of great tragedies.

Forward Fasting

So there is inward fasting (repentance), outward fasting (hard providences), and then the last one here is fasting forward, to seek God’s favor like traveling mercies, or something like that. But it’s with a particularly acute sense. Fasting can have a kind of forward orientation in seeking God’s guidance or future favor. This is like Acts 13:2, when they’re worshiping the Lord and fasting and the Spirit says to set them apart, and they pray and fast to send them out and send them forward.

Ezra is an example of this. He proclaims the fast:

Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods . . . So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty (Ezra 8:21–23).

It’s similar for Nehemiah. Fasting often served as an intensifier alongside forward prayers for God’s guidance, traveling mercies, and special favors. So let me bring it all to a close here with the thread that comes together in fasting.

A Prayer Amplifier

This is not all the Old Testament has to say about fasting. For instance, there are correctives to fasting in Isaiah 58 and Jeremiah 14 and Zechariah 7–8. But the three general categories hold. Fasting expresses inward repentance, grieves outward tragedies, or seeks God’s forward favor. And a common thread holds all true fasting together. Fasting, like prayer, is always Godward. Faithful fasting, whatever the conditions of its origin, is rooted in human lack and need for God. We need his help, his favor, his guidance. We need his rescue and comfort from trouble. We need his forgiveness and grace because we have sinned.

We need God. He, not human circumstances or activity, is the common denominator of fasting. Fasting expresses to God our pointed need for God. We have daily needs and we have unusual needs. We pray for daily bread, and in times of special need, we reach for the prayer amplifier called fasting.

Christian fasting is also unique. I don’t want to give the wrong impression by going back to the Old Testament for background that we’re going back to the Old Testament for our fasting. Christians have one final and essential piece to add: the depth and clarity and surety we now have in Christ. As we express to God our special needs for him, whether in repentance or in grief or for his favor, we do so with granite under our feet. When our painful sense of lack tempts us to focus on what we do not have, fasting reminds us now of what we do. Already, God has come for us in Christ. Already, Christ has died and risen. Already, we are his by faith. Already, we have his Spirit in us, through us and for us. Already, our future is secure. Already, we have a home.

In fasting, we confess we are not home yet and remember that we are not homeless. In fasting, we cry out for our groom and remember that we have his covenant promises. In fasting, we confess our lack and remember that the one with every resource has pledged his help in his perfect timing. John Piper says:

Christian fasting is unique among all the fasting of the world. It is unique in that it expresses more than longing for Christ or hunger for Christ’s presence. It is a hunger that is rooted in — based on — an already present, experienced reality of Christ in history and in our hearts.

In Christ, fasting is not just a Godward expression of our need. It is not just an admission that we’re not full; fasting is a statement in the very midst of our need that we’re not empty. In both prayer and fasting, God himself in Christ is our reward.

Questions and Answers

Are there any questions about prayer or fasting as we wrap up?

I get the sense from what you’re saying here that fasting is more withdrawn and alone and purposeful. Yet often, I’ve heard from church, if you fast, you’re just going to quit eating and go about your business. I see that as two different perspectives, am I right or wrong?

Well, as you were asking the question, it made me think. What I don’t talk about here is our fasting together. Fasting can be done as a fellowship aspect. We know Jesus’s words about fixing yourself up when you fast and not making it obvious that you’re fasting so that you have your righteousness exercised before others. But there can be communal fast. That’s very biblical as well. A church can call a fast for a particular need, like finishing the building program, or getting another pastor or elder, or meeting the financial gap, or whatever it may be. A church can call a fast together. Elders often do this. We’ve done this as pastors together with our church, feeling some particular needs and saying, “Brothers, we’re going to fast together.” A corporate fast is not something you keep secret from each other. You’re doing it together.

On the question you have about whether it’s withdrawn or you go about your business, I maybe have two things to say to that. On the one hand, I think what I’m advocating here is mostly that you go about your normal life. However, it’s also good to think about what you’re going to do at the time you’re not eating. We spend a lot of time eating. It happens three times a day for many of us and the time adds up. So in wanting your fast to be spiritual and not just going hungry, it is really important.

A lot of times the fasting that is talked about nowadays is trending and it’s a hot topic on Google or whatever, like intermittent fasting. That’s about weight management and it’s about health. It’s not spiritually-intended fasting. So you might do some form of Christian intermittent fasting if there’s Christian purpose in it, if there’s a particular prayer, if there’s desperation to God. But if it’s just weight management, like a diet or exercise, then that’s not really the essence of what we’re talking about here with Christian fasting.

Christian fasting has a Christian purpose. One way you might express that is setting aside some time when you’re not eating to have some reflection over God’s word, to spend that time in prayer. In fasting, being accompaniment to prayer, it would sure be a shame to fast and not pray. And when we’re not eating, hunger should be a reminder for us to pray, to take the ache in the stomach and turn that into a spoken ache Godward. That’s the kind of fittingness between prayer and fasting. We’re cultivating or giving space to a physical ache that corresponds to the kind of ache in the soul, the desperation for God’s help, God’s deliverance, and God himself in the circumstance.

I get how we don’t want to do this for like bodily improvement, but what about those people that maybe have a job that is very physically exerting and it’s very difficult to go without food? Or what about the person who has anemia or other health issues that really wants to fast in light of all of the things you talked about but isn’t able to? Are there times where you have to really look at bodily circumstances? Do you have anything to say to that?

That’s a great question. I should have accounted for that in my slides. There’s a great quote by Martin Lloyd Jones where he talks about how the impulse for fasting can be applied to many other good things. There may be particular health conditions. I’m not a doctor, I don’t know them. There may be particular health conditions that you need to be aware of and you can’t go without food for whatever reason. God knows that. He’s aware of that and you can go without other good things. So some people talk about fasting from social media or fasting from television or fasting from some other good gift, some entertainment or some blessing you normally would have and it’s going to be part of your life, but you’re going without it for spiritual purpose in seeking God’s particular help, or in desperation, or even in putting some good pattern into your life.

Maybe someone says, “I don’t want to be leaning so heavily on my phone all the time, so I’m going to set aside time for a phone fast.” So there are other manifestations of the principle of fasting from something good for the sake of something better, to turn the lack of a good thing into a Godward ache. So it would not have to be going without food. But the reason in Christianity that fasting is going without food and that the principle doesn’t start as picking your good thing and going without your good thing is that food is such a basic part of this life. It’s such an obvious good thing. “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). It’s such a regular part of our lives and we feel that ache in the stomach when we go without food for a while. So there may be medical conditions where you simply cannot.

Also, it might be worth asking ourselves if the abundance of food that we have has made it so that we have conditioned our system in a way to always get food. There’s potential resilience that humans may have — that I think humans do have in normal circumstances — if we trained ourselves to go a little bit longer without food. So there could be some who feel like, “Oh man, three hours into my fast, I can’t do it any longer.” I would say, “Well, that’s great you did three hours. What if you tried four hours next time and five hours the next time? What if you tried to build up resilience?” Some of us may need to build up metabolic resilience or something like that.

But in Scripture it only talks about fasting from food?

Correct, so far as I am aware.

Can you draw out the difference between the Pharisee praying on the corner and public prayer in our gallery, because both are public. What is the difference between those?

The potential danger is that it could be similar. Our hope is that it’s not. I think the picture there of the Pharisee praying on the corner is that Jesus saying they are praying to be seen by others. That’s the motivation. That’s what is leading to it. That’s the heart and that’s bringing about the prayer on the corner in public. This is a good reminder for all of us who not only pray in gatherings of the church and pray from the front here, but in our prayer times as a family, if it’s with a spouse, if it’s in a community group or a class, that we check our hearts on that.

Are we just praying to be heard by others? Even if it’s a really small circle and it’s not on a public street where there are dozens or hundreds, I really want to impress these few people right here. That’s a good thing to check in our hearts. I know our motivations are rarely digital, that it’s either this or not that, but Jesus’s teaching and his reminder is good for us there. It’s a particularly thorny issue to do public prayer in the sense that our hearts might drift into wanting to impress people. So check that, pray against that, and then focus on God. Pray in the context of other people for their good and blessing and trust that the blood of the Lamb covers a lot of our indiscretions and mistakes and tainted hearts.

He grew up a preacher’s son. Which means he experienced the church’s warts from the inside.

We might have anticipated that he would become a skeptic, after seeing so many hurts and disappointments, and so painfully up close. Later in life, he would write publicly, and honestly, about the challenges the church faces in this age — many of them of her own making.

But this preacher’s son also became a pastor himself, one still remembered not only for his way with words but also for his hopeful spirit.

Amid the simplistic assumptions and distortions of our times, we might steady our souls with the rich, resilient theology of Samuel Stone (1839–1900). In his most famous hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation” (1866), Stone recognized the church’s many trials, from both without and within:

. . . with a scornful wonder,men see her sore oppressed,by schisms rent asunder,by heresies distressed . . .

Yet mingled with her present troubles is the anticipation of a stunning perfection, a glory, to come:

Mid toil and tribulation,And tumult of her war,She waits the consummationOf peace forevermore.

We tend to resist this complexity and reduce it. With little patience for the church’s long story of redemption, we default to oversimple assumptions — whether of a church immaculate or a church miserable. But the already and not yet of the church age is not so simple. On the one hand, every redeemed saint endures indwelling sin; on the other, perfect righteousness is already ours in Christ — and the perfecting Spirit has come to dwell in us.

Soon enough, this embattled age will give way to the church’s perfected beauty, without spot or wrinkle or any defect. In that day, says Ephesians 5:27, Christ will “present the church to himself in splendor.”

Majesty and Splendor

In English, “splendor” fits well the church’s coming glory — a glory that corresponds to, and complements, her Groom’s.

This “splendor” to which the church is destined shines out in conjunction with divine “majesty,” an often overlooked divine attribute. Israel encountered God’s awesome and fearsome majesty at the Red Sea; King David praised God’s royal majesty over all the earth (Psalm 8). Climactically, God the Son came as both long-awaited Christ and as one with no majesty, yet through the accomplishment of his mission, he now reigns over all in heavenly majesty. So, the supremely Majestic One, who once veiled his majesty, now displays it — through rescuing an unsplendid people and remaking them to be his resplendent bride.

The Old Testament’s frequent pairing of “majesty” (hôd) and “splendor” (hādār) presents us with overlapping excellencies, often bound together. Psalm 104:1 blesses God in his greatness as “clothed with splendor and majesty.” Such a Lord magnifies the glory of his anointed king, bestowing “splendor and majesty . . . on him” (Psalm 21:5). At a royal wedding, the regal son, heir to the throne, is celebrated with the charge, “Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty!” (Psalm 45:3). So too is God himself worshiped as one whose acts display these twin excellencies:

Great are the works of the Lord,     studied by all who delight in them.Full of splendor and majesty is his work,     and his righteousness endures forever. (Psalm 111:2–3)

Majesty and splendor are complementary manifestations of glory that, when paired together, convey fullness of glory (Job 40:10; Psalm 111:3; Daniel 4:36). So, Psalm 145 heaps together the language of majesty and splendor to reveal layers and richness to the divine glory. Verse 5 says the psalmist will meditate, literally, “on the splendor of the glory of [God’s] majesty” — praise we find to be carefully worded as we explore these concepts across the canon.

Yet while “majesty and splendor” are often paired with rich effect, they also demonstrate distinct connotations in other texts, and contribute to the distinct glories of Christ and his church.

Strength and Beauty

The high praise of Psalm 96 may contain the couplet that best captures the discrete shades of “majesty” and “splendor”:

Splendor and majesty are before him;     strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. (Psalm 96:6)

Here “strength” echoes “majesty,” while “beauty” accents “splendor.” Given how the ESV translates the Hebrew (hôd and hādār) elsewhere, a more consistent rendering would be “majesty and splendor,” rather than “splendor and majesty.” The precise phrase appears in several other texts, always with the more masculine “majesty” (hôd) first, followed by the more feminine “splendor” (hādār). So too in the parallel praises of 1 Chronicles 16:27, “strength” echoes “majesty,” and this time “joy” (feminine in Hebrew, as in Greek) accents “splendor”:

[Majesty and splendor, hôd and hādār] are before him;     strength and joy are in his place.

To develop this complementary relationship further, we might say more, first, about majesty, and then reflect on splendor.

Masculine Majesty

In addition to imposing size and strength, “majesty” frequently has regal overtones. Its various contexts refer to ruling authority (Numbers 27:20; Daniel 11:21), being “above” others (Psalm 8:1; 148:13; 1 Chronicles 29:11), issuing judgments (Isaiah 30:30; Habakkuk 3:3; Zechariah 10:3), and possessing royal honor and the kingly throne (Jeremiah 22:18; Zechariah 6:13). Job 37, a veritable meditation on divine majesty, speaks in warrior-like terms of God’s “awesome majesty” (verse 22). According to 1 Chronicles 29:25, “The Lord made Solomon very great in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel.” In text after text, the associations are not only royal, but kingly, and masculine.

Significantly, when the regal sage of Proverbs speaks wisdom to his royal son about being master of his domain, he takes up the language of majesty:

Keep your way far from [a forbidden woman],     and do not go near the door of her house,lest you give your honor [hôd] to others     and your years to the merciless. (Proverbs 5:8–9)

“Honor” here is not only generically human, but kingly and masculine — majesty.

In the New Testament, even with fewer thrones and monarchs, the language of majesty endures, with connotations no less regal, ascribing glory to the King of kings (Luke 9:43; 2 Peter 1:16–17; Jude 25). Most memorably, Hebrews identifies Jesus’s ascension and session on heaven’s throne as his sitting “down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3; 8:1).

Feminine Splendor

Splendor, as a helper fit for majesty, typically has more feminine associations: especially of beauty and clothing, but also in reference to God’s people as his daughter or bride (Lamentations 1:6; Micah 2:9). Which brings us back to Christ’s church, God’s new-covenant people, and why splendor is fitting for her coming glory.

Splendid Clothing

As for beautification through apparel and adornment, when God answers Job out of the whirlwind, he challenges him to “clothe yourself with glory and splendor” (Job 40:10). In Ezekiel 27:10, “Persia and Lud and Put . . . gave [Tyre] splendor” by making her beautiful with the spoils of war (verses 4 and 11 say they “made perfect your beauty”). In the New Testament, one expression of “splendor” (lampros) is tied to beautiful adornment in the repeated phrase “splendid clothing” (Luke 23:11; Acts 10:30; James 2:2–3).

Splendid People

Even more pronounced are connections with a king’s people, city, or kingdom. The king himself is majestic; his kingdom accents his glory with its splendor. Psalm 145:12, a song of praise, refers to “the glory of the splendor of [God’s] kingdom.” In Daniel 11:20, the ESV mentions “the glory of the kingdom,” which is a particular kind of glory (hādār), a feminine glory, that of beauty. And in Lamentations 1:6, in grieving the destruction of the city, in a plainly feminine context (verse 1 refers to Jerusalem as “widow” and “princess”), we find the language we might now expect:

From the daughter of Zion     all her [splendor, hādār] has departed.

Most significant for our focus is the relationship between a people and their splendor. Again, Proverbs is instructive:

In a multitude of people is the [splendor, hādār] of a king,     but without people a prince is ruined. (Proverbs 14:28)

“Majesty and splendor are complementary manifestations of glory that, when paired together, convey fullness of glory.”

Vital to the majestic glory of a king is the splendid glory of his people. When the king’s people “offer themselves freely on the day of [his] power,” they do so, literally, “with the splendor [hādār] of holiness” (Psalm 110:3), which is not only (and finally) holy attire but good deeds (more below). They adorn themselves, and their king, with their holy acts and initiatives. So it is in Psalm 149: for God’s people, “the godly” (verses 4–5), even as they take warlike actions under his kingly charge (verses 6–8), their glory is that of splendor: “This is [splendor, hādār] for all his godly ones” (verse 9).

Splendid Bride

Given what we’ve seen so far, we might anticipate that splendor would be the fitting attribution of glory to the wife of Proverbs 31:

Strength and [splendor, hādār] are her clothing,     and she laughs at the time to come. (Proverbs 31:25)

Now several strands come together. We find a splendid woman, along with the image of clothing, as well as the complementary pairing with strength, an expression of the fullness of her glory. As in Psalm 96:6, strength and beauty, in our English, holds as the distinguishing connotations of the overlapping majesty and splendor.

Yet all this now prepares us to freshly appreciate the two most important splendor texts in Scripture, one in the Old Testament, one in the New, and the two are linked: Ezekiel 16:14 and Ephesians 5:27.

Splendor of the Queen

Scripture’s classic text on marriage, Ephesians 5:22–33, is often rehearsed today, and for good reason, but with little explanation about its Old Testament background. One piece is more obvious, and less overlooked, as Paul quotes explicitly from Genesis 2:24 in verse 31. But more subtle is his allusion to Ezekiel 16. We might see his reference to the cross in verse 25, and yet find verses 26–27 to be the most enigmatic in the passage:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her [at the cross], that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Ezekiel 16 is the prophet’s longest and most notorious oracle. Before this metaphorical account of Israel’s history turns tragic in verse 15 (“But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore . . .”), it tells the surprising story of the people’s ascent to queenly splendor. The nation was not of noble birth, or in any respect deserving of God’s favor, but was like an infant unpitied and abhorred at birth — cord uncut, unwashed, unclothed, cast into an open field and left for dead (verses 1–5). But God passed by and

saw you wallowing in your blood, [and] I said to you in your blood, “Live!” I said to you in your blood, “Live!” (verse 6)

God raised up Israel, made her to flourish, nurtured her to full adornment (verse 7), and entered into covenant with her (verse 8). “Then,” says verse 9, “I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil.” He also clothed and adorned her (verses 10–11, 13), such that she

grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor [hādār] that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God. (verses 13–14)

Fittingly, the ESV has splendor in both Ezekiel 16:14 as well as Ephesians 5:27 (Greek endoxos, which refers to “splendid clothing” in Luke 7:25). Paul’s “washing of water with the word,” then, focuses not on baptism, but on the spiritual cleansing Christ achieved once for all at the cross and ongoingly applies through his Spirit and word.

Putting it all together, then, Ephesians 5 draws on Ezekiel’s account of God rescuing, beautifying, and raising up to royalty his first-covenant people as a type of what Christ is now doing, in this age, for his new-covenant people from among all the nations. He rescues an unloved, unwashed, unclothed bride, left for dead, that he might love her, give his own life for her, make her holy, wash her, and perfect her beauty even to the heights of royalty — that she, as his queen, in feminine splendor, might share with her husband and king in the glory of his majesty.

Clothed in Splendid Deeds

For now, we find ourselves in the middle of the church’s story. She has been loved and died for. Her Groom has acted definitively to set his people apart. Now, in the present, he ongoingly works to build and beautify his bride. She is not yet perfect. Often her spots and wrinkles and blemishes are all too obvious and embarrassingly public. But a future presentation is coming.

One day, at long last, she suddenly will appear in perfection. Like Adam enduring the long parade of every living creature before awaking, in an instant, to the helper fit for him, the universe will say, “This at last!” In that day, writes Peter O’Brien,

Not even the smallest spot or pucker that spoils the smoothness of the skin will mar the unsurpassed beauty of Christ’s bride when he presents her to himself. Hers will be a splendor that is exquisite, unsurpassed, matchless. For the present the church on earth is “often in rags and tatters, stained and ugly, despised and rejected.” Christ’s people may rightly be accused of many shortcomings and failures. But God’s gracious intention is that the church should be holy and blameless, language which speaks of a beauty which is moral and spiritual. (The Letter to the Ephesians, 425)

This is a splendor not only reckoned to the church through union with her Groom, but realized in her own body through his cleansing and beautifying power. Which means that the glory of splendor will not only be the garment of Christ’s righteousness covering her own unwashed flesh (Isaiah 61:10), but she will shine with “the righteous deeds of the saints” (Revelation 19:8), worked in and through her by his own Spirit.

The stunning promise of a sure and beautiful future awaits Christ’s church. Soon, “the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder,” will sound and declare, “The marriage of the Lamb has come” — and with it will come this great announcement: “and his Bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:6–7). Not only has she been made ready. She has. But also the King gives her the dignity of rising, with his help, into the splendor of cosmic queenship: “It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure,” which verse 8 then explains: “for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

Majestic Christ, Resplendent Church

Such a promise of the church’s coming glory, almost too good to be true, hopefully will help us weather the griefs and challenges of our ongoing warts and wrinkles. It also gives us, as Christ’s people, the dignity of holy agency, indwelt by his Spirit, washed with his word. He taught us, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16) — and he means to produce in us what he commands.

These complementary categories of majesty and splendor help us to understand, and humbly receive, and strive to embody, the weight of his glory, imparted to us now in degrees (2 Corinthians 3:18) and finally at the Supper to come. It helps us acknowledge and aim to live out the otherwise perplexing parallel in the doxology of Ephesians 3:21: “To [God] be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus.”

“Majesty and splendor” are the glory of king and queen, man and wife, sun and moon, as Francis of Assisi celebrated these complementary lights, distinct in power and beauty:

Thou burning sun with golden beam,thou silver moon with softer gleam . . .

To the bride is the glory of splendor, reflecting the majesty of her King. One is the glory of grandeur, imposing size, attractive strength, the golden beam. The other gleams softer, though no less genuinely, and invites the eyes to linger — a beauty to behold and enjoy, even now, as a reflection of the original light and warmth.

I mentioned briefly this morning that fellowship is often overlooked as a means of grace. I understand why, because when we talk about fellowship, we’re talking about a lot of stuff that you don’t control. With Bible reading we think, “I can set my watch. I can get up in the morning. I can find my quiet space. I can have a plan. I feel like I’m in the driver’s seat.” Or with prayer, we might think, “I can decide when I’m going to pray. I can pray in the car, or I can pray after reading the word.”

It seems like there’s the kind of agency with prayer and with Bible reading that when we’re talking about fellowship, somebody else has to consent with you. A group of people have to gather. Even if you’re doing one-on-one coffee, you can’t just make someone else show up for coffee. You have to arrange that. You have to schedule that. There have to be rhythms and patterns in the life of a local church.

Yet in those things, even though they’re not these personal things we can just make happen like other activities, they’re vital for our spiritual health. In one sense maybe they are all the more important because there’s more involved in setting them up and setting up good rhythms and patterns in church life. I’m excited to talk with you about this, the middle child of the spiritual disciplines. The forgotten means of grace in fellowship is our focus this evening. Then, you get to share together at the Table, and that’s really sweet. We’ll talk about belonging to the body. This morning our summary was hearing God’s voice in his word, having his ear in prayer, and belonging to his body in the fellowship of the local church. We focused on the word this morning, and tomorrow night, God willing, we will focus on prayer and fasting.

Belonging to the Body

Tonight on belonging to the body, we start with a statement: Life and health and perseverance in the Christian faith is a community project. We don’t do this as individuals. This gets at the essence of it being a means of grace. Our hearts harden. Our faith fails as we distance ourselves from the fellowship. It was one thing to go about saying these things three or four years ago. Now, after what we went through in 2020 and 2021, maybe some of you would resonate particularly with that statement.

As you think back to what it was like when all of a sudden this pandemic was going around and we didn’t know the extent of it, there was a lot of fear. There are good reasons to be cautious when you don’t know the full extent of something and when all the data is. I assume with your church as with ours, there was a brief break in your gathering together. We met outside instead of indoor spaces. We were trying to figure this whole thing out.

As a pastor now on the other side of COVID, I can see the effects. We as a church are still dealing with the effects of people who were part of our body and during the time away a vital means of grace was removed from their life, and they haven’t quite been the same since. For some we have barely seen them since. There are others whose means of grace were in place. There were still ways to keep going.

More healthy Christian lives were able to endure those few weeks or even months, but that had effects on our churches. We saw the impact of not meeting together, and that there is an important, not only accountability, but distribution of God’s grace through each other mutually in our lives for the Christian life. I’m excited to look at that here this evening.

Essential for Our Sanctification

By way of review from this morning, I’m going back to that Ryle quote. Maybe it’s my favorite quote on spiritual disciplines outside the Bible. Ryle, over a hundred years ago, was talking about the means of grace. He says:

They include things such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in church wherein one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper.

My little tweak is about Bible reading. I really like the way Don Whitney talks about Bible intake. It’s not just reading. We talked this morning about reading and study and meditation and hearing the word and all these different ways to try to engage the phrase “Bible intake.” This is not just an individual thing but a corporate thing. And he says “private prayer,” but I don’t think he has to say “private” because we should be praying together.

As you’ll see tomorrow night, it is a very critical means of grace and part of fellowship as these disciplines overlap. Then, he says “regularly worshiping God in church wherein one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper.” That’s our aim tonight. Ryle continues:

I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things (the means of grace) must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul . . .

Does anybody want that in their life? Do you want fresh supplies of grace? Are you good with yesterday’s grace, or grace from 10 years ago? Let me tell you, I want fresh supplies of grace. Ryle says:

The Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul, and strengthens the work which He has begun in the inward man . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them (the means of grace).

We talk tonight about the major category of means that may be most neglected. I don’t know if I mentioned this morning that I like to call these the twin texts on fellowship. My life changed 13 years ago when we had twins. I see twins now all over. When there’s two things together, there’s twins. I’m sure I’ll cheer for the Twins baseball team too. I like to see twins and this is the twin texts of fellowship. I’ll focus on Hebrews 3 and then in a minute here we will go to Hebrews 10. This is where we’ll spend the main chunk of our time on fellowship. I have a few observations here. I’ll explain them as we go through them and we’ll look at these twin texts on fellowship.

A Command for Mutual Care

This is Hebrews 3:12–13:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Let me point out a few things here about Hebrews 3:12–13, which I find so interesting and helpful as a means of grace. Notice that the command here comes to the brothers not just to look after themselves. There’s a place for that like, “Keep a close watch on yourself” (1 Timothy 4:6). But here he says, “Take care, lest there be in any of you . . .” This is not just a charge to individuals. He’s not just saying, “Hey, all of you look at your own hearts.” He’s actually saying, “Hey, church, take care that there not be an evil unbelieving heart in your midst.”

In other words, don’t let the person fall through the cracks. Look for any of you like that. This language of “some” will be in the other passage. It’s the same thing in the original. It’s the “any” or the “some.” There are folks at the margins. The hope is that the bulk of the church will be healthy in strengthening each other, and will be solid enough to be able to look out for those on the margins who are struggling, who need help, who may have an evil unbelieving heart growing in them.

The first observation here is that we are our brother’s keeper. Cain said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). The answer for Christians is, yes we are. It’s part of the faith. We look out for each other. We take care lest there be an evil unbelieving heart in our midst. In a fellowship of this size, you can’t know everyone to the extent that you can see the slow encroachments of an evil unbelieving heart. So it’s important to have a smaller life together so that we can know each other better, that we would know a few at depth and they would know us at depth to be able to speak into each other’s lives.

Then this morning we saw as it was introduced initially in that Psalm 95 quotation that he applies right to his listeners today. Grace is being offered today. Today if you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts (Hebrews 3:15). He’s saying, “Exhort one another every day as long as it is called today,” picking up on that emphasis from Psalm 95:7–8. I think the point here is what I would call regular attentiveness. I don’t think it’s a literal command that whatever names are in your accountability groups, you must check in on each other every single day. However, daily and weekly is probably a lot better than monthly.

I think there’s a regularity here that is implied in keeping short accounts, in staying on it right now. If you see some encroachments of evil you should speak into them, to exhort one another on that kind of regular basis. You should not let it go on for a long time and let it become some big thing, but keep an eye on it and speak to each other’s lives.

The Words We Need

Then, notice the power of words in Christian perseverance. This is going to come back again. This morning we saw how our God is communicative, how he uses the power of words, so it should make sense that God would have us also use the power of words. I mean, there’s no mention here of any sword or gun that would be used to keep each other accountable in the life of the church. This involves words, the power of words. This is how we hope to speak grace into each other’s lives, to help keep each other accountable. This is about the power of words in Christian perseverance. You exhort to treat an evil unbelieving heart and preempt hardening. I love thinking of it this way: We put grace into the heart through the ear hole. Isn’t this strange?

We have these holes in the side of our heads. We get used to looking at them, so you don’t think about it that much. If you stop and think about it, it’s strange. We have holes in the sides of our heads. What’s that for? When you speak words, your breath brings those with your vocal cords out into the air, it goes through the air, and the ears can take that in.

It is so amazing. We take this for granted how words work, how God has set up the world. But for you to have a thought or a feeling or a word in you and to be able to speak that into the air and have it go into the side of someone’s head so that it goes down into their heart, it’s amazing. I’m changing the metaphor here. It goes down into their heart (figuratively) and is a measure of God’s grace. That’s an extraordinary thing.

It often happens in the Christian life where those (the “any”) that need our help are maybe not in the best position to feed themselves or enter into this rich time of prayer on their own. What they need is somebody to come in and put a word in their ear. If a brother is struggling, probably simply giving him a list of to-dos won’t help, as if to say, “Hey, you’re struggling. I can tell you’re pretty spiritually weak right now. Here’s a bunch of things to read.” Well, he may not have the energy to engage and read like that. What might really help is that right there in that moment that you use the airspace between you to say something that goes in his ear and is the kind of word of appropriate encouragement or correction for you to, in a sense, be the voice of God in that moment for what needs to be said. You could be that act of grace toward his soul through the ear so that he would hear God’s voice.

This is summarizing what we’re doing in fellowship. We’re hearing God’s voice in our brothers and in fellowship. And now, there’s this reciprocity part that we want to be God’s voice to our brother. Again, we have no pretenses of doing this perfectly. We’re not playing prophet, or saying, “Thus saith the Lord.” You might say something like, “God prompted me to think this,” or, “I think God prompted me to say this,” or something like that. We’re not speaking infallibly for God. We mess up all the time. When somebody’s speaking into our lives, you don’t need to take that as either infallible or error. You can hear it, bring it in, and take that for your spiritual benefit and blessing.

Questions and Answers

Let me pause right here and see if there are any questions. In Sunday school this morning and in the sermon we didn’t do any. I don’t really do a lot of questions during sermons. This is Sunday night, and it’s a great time for questions. Any questions? It could be a question about this morning too if you wanted.

One of the questions I had was about these three aspects of the means of grace. Is there a linear flow to them or is it symbiotically happening at the same time?

Good question. I don’t necessarily think of a linear flow, but I do think of a relationship of priority between the word, and then fellowship and prayer. I’m a student of John Frame. Some of you guys know Frame. He loves to do things in triangles. He loves to see oneness and threeness. He says, “Our God is Trinitarian, so there are a lot of ones and threes in the world.” He draws a lot of triangles. One thing the triangles do is that they show relationships between three different things. Sometimes in three dimensions, sometimes not. I would think of the word as normative. Word has a priority. It’s the chief means of grace. It’s the action of God. He speaks first, so the word is the basis of our responding to him in prayer. Let me put that on one side of the triangle. Prayer would be the existential part of the triangle. Then fellowship, the community of the church, would be what you call the situational aspect of the triangle, that by his word he creates a church and the church prays and the church receives the word. We pray in reception of his word.

We also pray together as part of the church. All three of these dynamics relate to each other, but there’s a priority with the word as the initiative, the first action before prayer and fellowship. That’s a good question. If you think of a good way to make it linear, let me know.

The Grace of Good Provocation

Let’s come back to Ephesians 4 from a place in Hebrews 10:24–25. This is the other twin text on fellowship:

Let us consider how to stir up one another . . . (Hebrews 10:24).

I put in the word provoke here for “stir up.” I thought it was provocative. That’s one of the meanings of this verb; it means “to provoke” or to “stir up.” You can use this word in positive or negative ways. Scripture says, “Fathers do not provoke your children to anger” (Ephesians 6:4), and, “Church, provoke each other to love in good deeds.” This is a good provocation. The passage says:

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Now, this is the only mention of “habit” in the ESV, and that’s the text I’ve been using. This is the only occurrence of “habit” in the New Testament and this is a negative one. This says, “Don’t do this habit.” There’s a positive encouragement then to do another habit in its place. He is saying, “Do a positive habit instead of the negative habit of not meeting together.” Let’s see what this positive habit is.

Again, we have this language of the many watching out for the some, as is the habit of some. This is the same language as the “any” in Hebrews 3:12–13. It’s just translated differently than the English, but it’s the same. There are the “any” you’re watching out for, and here we read there are “some” you’re watching out for. The many are watching out for the “some.” Again, like Hebrews 3, there’s this charge to look past your own needs and help the needs of others.

When the turbulence happens and the masks fall in the plane, you don’t just put your own mask on and go, “Well, I’m glad I can breathe.” You look around and think, “Can I help somebody else secure their mask?” They give you the instructions to first secure your own mask and then help somebody else because you don’t want to pass out while you’re helping somebody else. Put your own mask on so you don’t pass out and then help somebody with their mask. That’s what is going on in the Christian life. There are many watching out for the “some.” Look past our own noses. Look past our own needs to see the needs of others.

Consider One Another

Now it’s interesting here in the original there’s no how. In the ESV, the translation is bringing this word how. The way the construction works in the original is literally like this: “Consider one another unto the provoking of love and good works.” Here’s what I hear in that. Don’t just consider how to stir up one another but consider one another. At least the point of emphasis I want to put on it is that this is not a charge to just think generically about humanity, as if he were saying, “Here are ways to motivate humans to do good things. I can speak this to anybody in general as a human.”

Rather, he is saying to consider each other. It’s not mainly the consideration of the method or how you would do it; it’s a consideration of others. Consider one another. It’s that person that you’re concerned with, that person that you know well, that person that you love, that you might speak to them. Be the voice of God to them in a way that you wouldn’t to somebody else you know because you know them. This is a call to a depth of community, a depth of relationship that is increasingly difficult in our times. It’s to know each other with the kind of detail that you would say this word to exhort or encourage this brother or sister that you wouldn’t necessarily say to somebody else because of the context of your relationship and because of how you know this person.

The Right Words for the Right Moment

This is where I want to go back here to Ephesians 4:29. I saved Ephesians 4 because it says this so well. It is talking about the importance of our words to each other and how critical it is. Christians should be very careful with our words because we’re Christians, and because God’s careful with his words. It should be all the more when we post them online.

Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15–16).

This idea of speaking the truth is so important to the life and health of the body. How we talk to each other is so important in our health as a church. Then he says:

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only (now here’s the positive) such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4:29).

There’s our concept again of the distribution, the ongoing grace in our lives that is happening through our speech to each other. That building up is happening as fits the occasion. I wanted to relate it to Hebrews 10. As fits the occasion you should consider one another. You can ask, “What’s the need right now for this brother? What’s the need right now for this sister? Is there a need for a word of encouragement? Is there a need for a word of correction? Is there a need for clarity, that would provoke them?” The language of provoking is strong here. I mean, it’s risky language because we often think of provoking as a negative thing, though if you put it in a clearly positive context, provoking can be a positive thing. Here’s the point where provoking is positive.

You’re provoking them to love and good deeds, not just using gentle, calm, comforting, smooth words, but words that would help bring about love and good deeds in the lives of others. Consider them, and provoke them to love and good deeds with your words. Note again, the power of words here.

Where the Means of Grace Convene

Then finally, we have the language of not neglecting to meet together. This is the assembly of the church, the gathering of the church. I want to say here as a church together this is our single most important habit: that we would gather. Why would I call fellowship and gathering together to worship the single most important habit? Well, in light of our means of grace, hearing God’s voice in his word, having his ear in prayer, and belonging to his body in the fellowship of the local church, this is when all three happen.

This is the conspiracy of all three. This is when we go three dimensional because in the gathering we gather together to hear from God and then we respond to him in prayer. Most good worship services are going to have this kind of rhythm between hearing from God and responding to him. We hear from him in the call to worship, we respond to him in praise. We hear from him in Scripture reading, we respond to him in prayer. We hear from him over the word, we respond to him and take the Table. There’s this back and forth between hearing him together as a body and responding to him in prayer. All that happens together where we see each other beforehand and afterwards and we provoke each other to love and good deeds. Our gathering together is I think the single most important habit for us as Christians.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore private prayer or family prayer or private time in God’s word. However, it does mean this is really important. I know this like speaking of the choir. Here we are Sunday night and you’re here. The people who aren’t here on Sunday night need to hear this, but you’re here. At least hear this for building fellowship into the habits and patterns of your life as a Christian. Like no other single habit, corporate worship combines all three essential principles of God’s ongoing supply of grace for the Christian life.

“Life and health and perseverance in the Christian faith is a community project.”

In corporate worship we hear from God in the pastor’s call of worship, in the reading of Scripture, in the faithful preaching of the gospel, in the words of institution at the Table, and in the Commission to be lights in the world. In corporate worship we respond to God in prayer, in confession, in singing, in thanksgiving, in recitation and petitions, and in taking the elements in faith. In corporate worship we do all that together.

My encouragement to you is to settle it now and make it a habit. Harness the power of habit to rescue our souls from empty excuses that keep us from spiritual riches and increasing joy.

Negligence and chronic minimizing of the importance of corporate worship and church life reveals something unhealthy and dangerous in our souls. Fellowship, as an irreplaceable means of grace in the Christian life, offers us two priceless joys among others. We receive God’s grace through the helping words of others, which is my way to try to summarize this emphasis on speaking the truth in love, exhorting one another, and encouraging one another. This focuses on the importance of our helping words depending on the situation and the person we’re speaking to. We receive God’s grace, and we give his grace to others through our own helping words and to their lives. Jesus does not call us to hold fast alone as if we didn’t need the fellows he gives, but we help each other hold fast and thrive.

Questions and Answers

Do you have any questions here at this point? Is there anything regarding what we’ve looked at so far in these last few texts, or regarding the role of fellowship in the Christian life?

I have a big question that comes up a lot. We live out in a rural area. A lot of rural people say, “How do I find a good church?” The necessity and the essentiality of fellowship is very clear. What about believers that are out in the middle of nowhere? Or what about those today that are in a rural area where there’s a choice between a couple of churches that are not good?

I can’t imagine making any sort of desert island recommendations to any Christian. Fellowship is such an essential part of the Christian faith that I would encourage anyone to move so that they are not alone. I think these are really important decisions to make when we’re looking for where to live. I would love it if more Christians considered fellowship when getting into the housing market. Sometimes people say, “We’re looking for a new house.” The next thing you know they say, “We put a down payment on a house and it’s 30 minutes from here. We’ll be finding a new church and we don’t know anybody out there.” I’m scratching my head going, “That is so sad.” Some people move to a new city without even asking about the church scene or the landscape, trying to find out where there might be a place to go. I think fellowship is vital enough in the Christian life to consider those things. It is something we should always consider regarding where we’re going to live to have people nearby.

Now, there’s no prescription that you need to have a church of 200, 2,000, or 20. It could be a small number. It might be a large family that is almost like your church, and that’s your fellowship. I sure would want to encourage believers to think carefully about that. As a Christian, I don’t want to take the location of my house as the given. I want to take the reality of the Christian faith as the given. If I need to change my address because I don’t have adequate fellowship, then that’s a very small decision in light of eternity. I would much rather be a healthy Christian who has relationships that would help in the faith rather than think, “Well, this was the open land I needed.”

That would be my encouragement to those situations when they come up. I wouldn’t necessarily push somebody and say, “Well, we have to solve this tonight,” or, “We have to solve it this week.” I’d want to speak in and say, “Hey, what’s the value of the body of Christ? Is it worth having where you live be secondary to that rather than that being the primary thing?” That’s a good question, it’s really relevant.

Do you find that in the churches today the fellowship itself has taken on a different look? Especially in the society that we live in right now with wokeness and other stuff where fellowship is supposed to be either having fun or just approving of one another. It seems like often now the exhorting part is being lost to being afraid to hurt feelings. If you look at Hebrews 10:24–25, the very last part of that sentence says “and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” There seems to be a pressing urgency that we relook at the way God defines fellowship and stop defining it ourselves. What are your comments on that?

Well, I can give you this illustration. We’re going through renovations at our church. The building was built in 1913. The Episcopal Church that was there died in 2013 and it sat empty for a while. We started meeting there and renting it, and we bought it in 2020. We just inherited this room called the fellowship hall. Recently as we were going through the renovation, we had to decide on the name plaques for all of the rooms in the church. We decided that we didn’t want to call it the fellowship hall. The reason we didn’t was that we felt like people just use the word fellowship all the time in very casual ways. If it’s people from work and it’s a Super Bowl party, then it’s just a party. But if Christians get together and watch the Super Bowl, that’s fellowship. There was no Bible, no prayer, no spiritual conversation. It was just Christians who happened to be having fun together, and so it’s fellowship. The word is suffering from being emptied of its meaning.

I think you can hear so far in my presentation what I think, so you’re serving me up a beach ball here. Fellowship is an electric reality in the New Testament. It’s the koinonia, the commonness, the partnership. It’s a partnership of something that needs to be done. We’re all in, we’re all making personal sacrifices to be all in collectively into the common fellowship to have this partnership to get the job done.

Let’s say you have this magic ring and you need to get it to Mordor, to Mount Doom. That would be a time to have a fellowship. Tolkien used the word right. When you think of fellowship, don’t think of a Super Bowl party with Christians. Think more like in the huddle on the field with blood and sweat. We have to advance the ball. Or you could think that we’re in Rivendell but we’re not going to stay in Rivendell. We’re going to gather together the best of men and elves and dwarves and help these hobbits take the ring to Mordor. There’s a mission. That’s a big part of the fellowship. We’re on a mission together. We’re not only watching out for each other’s lives and trying to purge each other of sin. That’s secondary. We have this mission together first and foremost by the very nature of the fellowship.

We would do well to take care with the use of our language to apply fellowship to our more missional and more intentional times of speaking truth into each other’s lives and exhorting one another. I looked at the text here for speaking the truth in love. That is just really good language in every season. In every generation, in every place, in every person there is often a bent in this toward the love without the truth or the truth without the love. We need to hear that phrase “speaking the truth in love.” We can’t do that without love, and we can’t do it without truth.

So what did you end up calling it?

We called it the chapel. Instead of the fellowship hall, we have the chapel, though I’m not condemning the use of fellowship hall.

The One Percent

I have two truths about the one percent here before we talk about the Lord’s Supper. By one percent, I’m talking about the fact that one percent of our waking hours is typically what Christians spend in corporate worship. If you have the habit of not breaking from being in corporate worship, then corporate worship is about one percent of our waking hours each week. If you take it as a little over an hour, your waking hours are a little over a hundred. That’s where I’m getting the round number. The first truth is that this is our most important hour together as a church. It really is important when the people of God gather to worship our God. That’s our most important hour. Most weeks there could be other hours in some certain circumstances.

The second truth relates to church life, and this is what I want to emphasize. Because the one hour on Sunday morning is so important, we might be prone to identify the entirety or the most of church life with the one hour. It’s the most important hour, but it’s only one percent. Being the church is not a 60-to-75-minute weekly event. We are not only the church when we gather, we are the church as we scatter into our families, into our jobs, into the other kinds of interaction we would have together in the week. This is a common error today. We assume that the main way to serve and do good in the church is to be upfront on Sunday morning.

I hope it’s not as bad here in Burnsville. Among young urbanites in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, there is the sense that you’re not a leader or you’re not serving the church if you’re not visible and upfront. We deal with this frequently in our church. It’s about being upfront on Sunday morning, whether that’s speaking or singing or reading or praying or preaching or passing plates. All the demographics and constituency groups need to have the representation. This is one hour. It’s a very important hour, but it’s one hour in the life of the church. This one hour is very important, and it’s only one hour, only one percent. What we are doing in serving each other, blessing each other, caring for each other throughout the week is so vital in church life.

Regular, meaningful engagement in the church’s most important hour of the week changes how we live as the church for the rest of the week, and how we live as the church in our 120 waking hours shapes our engagement in the one percent event. A church that genuinely, faithfully worships Jesus together each week is all the more prepared to live as the church each hour. A church that lives as the church all week enjoys the sweetest worship together on Sunday mornings. In emphasizing fellowship as a means of grace, I don’t only want to emphasize the one hour (though that’s important), but also our life together throughout the week.

Corporate Habits of Grace

I’ll summarize here about corporate habits, and then I’ll give a word about the Lord’s Supper. The first one is corporate worship, which is the most important hour. Then comes covenant membership, which is a faithful and helpful application of the reality they dealt with in the New Testament to know who the particular members are and to have some kind of covenant together with each other to say, “I’ll be the church for you, and you be the church for me.” I think that’s been applicable for a long time, but especially in modern life where we can move so quickly with automobiles and planes and in modern mega cities.

The Twin Cities are far bigger than any city in the ancient world. Ephesus was the second largest city in the ancient world and it was like 40,000 people or something like that. I mean, here we are in the Twin Cities and it’s almost 10 times that big, and that was the second largest city 2,000 years ago. We’re living in a reality now of urbanization. With the massive reality of these cities and how many people are around, people can just float in and out and it is so helpful that we make commitments to each other, that pastors and elders know who our people are and who our people aren’t.

In the hard times, there are people that have pledged to say, “I’m going to be the church to you when it’s not easy.” Anybody can be the church to each other when it’s easy. We don’t make covenant promises for the times that are easy. We make them when times are hard, when we would rather not or it’s difficult. But we’re going to stay in this. We’re going to be committed to this church, these people, as we’ve committed together. We’re going to be the church to each other. Covenant membership is vital.

Then comes cultivating and keeping up relationships in which we put grace in each other’s hearts through words that fit the occasion. Ask yourself, what few friends, whether it’s in some formal structure here of church life, or relationships that you put energy into to maintain, can speak into your life? Who does speak into your life? And who else ’s life in Christ do you know well enough to speak into with a well-timed, fitting word? A word that fits the occasion is vital in our corporate habits.

Improve Your Baptism

We finish here with the Lord’s Supper and baptism, which are part of our corporate life together in the local church. First, here’s a word about baptism. We don’t usually think about baptism as a means of grace. Maybe you might think, “I guess working through the categories here baptism can be a means of grace for the one who’s being baptized.” They’re having that one-time experience where they’ve expressed faith and now they’re covenanting to have faith in Jesus and to renounce Satan in all his ways and to live in obedience. To be baptized is to stand in front of the congregation. Yes, that must be a means of grace for the person. What about the rest of us? Are the rest of us just sitting around watching the means of grace for this person? Well, yes, but not just watching.

This is an old thing that I love reminding people about. It’s called “improving your baptism.” The language of improvement here is used slightly differently. Here’s a paragraph from the Westminster Confession I found helpful. This is for the next time there’s a baptism, so that you don’t think of yourself just as a bystander. You’re not just a spectator at baptism. Think through these categories about how someone else’s baptism might be a means of grace to you as you watch by faith.

The needful and much neglected duty of improving our baptism is to be performed by us all our lifelong, especially in the time of temptation.

This is amazing. You’re being tempted and you’re saying to the devil, “I’m baptized. Get behind me, Satan. Jesus’s name is on me. They put water on me. I remember it. I have a baptism certificate. This happened. Jesus’s name is on me. You get away from me, Satan.”

Martin Luther did this, but the ironic thing is that he was baptized as an infant. He didn’t remember his baptism. This is all the better for Baptist believers because we should remember our baptism. That’s part of how these sacraments are supposed to work and how the means of grace work. They’re to be remembered. This is really good for Baptists. Thank you, Westminster. It continues:

The needful but much neglected duty of improving our baptism, is to be performed by us all our life long, especially in the time of temptation, and when we are present at the administration of it to others (it’s a chance to rehearse our identity in Christ); by serious and thankful consideration of the nature of it, and of the ends for which Christ instituted it, the privileges and benefits conferred and sealed thereby, and our solemn vow made therein . . .

Westminster is great. In baptism, you’re believing and making a solemn vow. Amen. Don’t do that to children until they believe. Remember that your whole lifelong that in your baptism the name of Jesus has been put on you.

As you see someone else being baptized, that’s a chance again to receive his grace and to rehearse his grace. There’s a similar way in the Lord’s Supper, but we are participants in that.

The Lord’s Supper

In the Lord’s Supper, I’ll read the passage and come back to these four summaries as we finish. First Corinthians 11:17–34 is our key passage on the Lord’s Supper. Let me mention that he’s talking about the gathering. This is important. They’re coming together. Paul says:

But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

Instead of divisions and instead of despising each other and humiliating each other, this should be an act that brings together God’s people, an act of unity. We are eating together at the table. He continues in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

This is an amazing thing to think about. We’ve talked so much about words and speech and declaring and proclaiming and exhorting and warning, and in the taking of the Table we are proclaiming his death and its significance, and we’re identifying with it in him until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner (maybe without faith) will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body . . .

I think Paul probably intended double meaning here. I think “discerning the body” means the body of Christ crucified and the body of Christ, the church. Both of these things should be happening. We’re discerning each other. We’re coming together in unity and we’re discerning. This represents Jesus. This is a solemn moment. I’m exercising faith here in receiving Jesus’s benefits for me at the Table. He continues:

Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another — if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home — so that when you come together it will not be for judgment (1 Corinthians 11:29–34).

But for what? Blessing. Come together for blessing, for strengthening, and for nurturing.

The Significance of the Table

I have four summary statements here on the Lord’s Supper. First, this is ordained by Jesus. He put it in place the night before he died. He took bread, he took the cup, and he said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Jesus ordained this act, however frequently we come and take it in the life of the church. He wants us to be part of our fellowship. To talk about means of grace and fellowship, we should talk about the Lord’s Supper. This is part of that.

Second, it’s for his gathered church. That’s what we see again and again. He says, “When you come together.” There’s nothing here about a private Lord’s Supper at a wedding, or a private time in the hospital, or a private time at the youth retreat, or a private segment of the body, or individuals. This is a coming together meal for the gathering of the church. Part of the significance of it is that we are celebrating our unity together in Jesus when we come together as a church. Different churches work this out in different ways and there’s space for that. For me, because of the strong emphasis on “when you come together,” I wouldn’t be eager for us at our church to do this anytime when not everyone’s welcome, when not everyone in the congregation could be there and be a part.

If any are excluded by certain demographics or the nature of it being at a wedding or whatever it seems like, then it doesn’t quite seem fitting to the meal. This is a unity meal for the family of God gathered together.

Third, we do this to remember him, which is very clear. It’s to remember what he has accomplished for us. This is the very important reality in the Christian life that we would regularly remember who Jesus is and what he has accomplished for us, the gospel message. This is not just something that we communicate to non-believers that tips them into the kingdom, but this is at the heart of the faith that we remember who our Savior is and what he’s accomplished for us. He initiated this rite in the life of the church that we might remember.

Then fourth, we do this to nourish our souls. This is a kind of an implication of the text where he’s talked over and over here about the judgment that comes from those eating unworthily. My question is, what happens when somebody eats worthily? What happens when they eat in faith? What happens then? I don’t think the answer is nothing; I think the answer is blessing. It’s a means of grace. There’s a nourishing of the soul. It does not happen automatically.

That’s the error of Catholicism in communion at the Table. They said that just by eating (ex opere operato), by the working of the work itself, grace is communicated to the soul. No, grace is communicated by receiving and eating in faith. There’s a strengthening, a nurturing of the soul. To eat without faith is to subject yourself to judgment and to eat with faith is like hearing the word preached with faith. It’s to soften the soul, benefit the soul, strengthen the soul, and nourish the soul.

On Worthy Receivers

Let me finish here with the statement of one of our great Baptist confessions. This is the Second London Confession from 1689. This is chapter 30, paragraph 7, and it talks positively about the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace. It has some paragraphs warning about not eating apart from faith, nor apart from self-examination. It’s saying, “Don’t drink judgment upon yourself.” Then it says, “How about worthy receivers?” By “worthy receivers” we’re not talking about being blameless in order to eat tonight. You don’t have to be blameless. You don’t have to be sinless. You would be blameless because you took your sin to Jesus like you should take your sin to Jesus.

If you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. In that sense, you would be blameless or above reproach. You’d be a worthy eater to eat in faith.

Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible Elements in this Ordinance (the bread and the cup), do then also inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally, and corporally, but spiritually receive, and feed upon Christ crucified & all the benefits of his death: the Body and Blood of Christ, being then not corporally, or carnally, but spiritually present to the faith of Believers, in that Ordinance, as the Elements themselves are to their outward senses.

I have one comment here about this. It says, “The elements themselves are to the outward senses.” This is part of the grace to us in Jesus ordaining the Lord’s supper because sometimes we can just get in our head with our faith. We think, “Do I believe, or don’t I believe? Jesus is not right here bodily and I’m struggling with this temptation.” Or someone might think, “I’m confused. I have friends who aren’t believing and that has a contagious effect in my life,” or whatever it might be. It’s in your head.

To have a visible representation is good for us. As surely as this is bread and tastes like bread, and as surely as you can taste this cup, Jesus is offering himself to you. He’s saying, “I’m here for your reception by faith. I offer myself to you. Take the bread, take the cup. This is me.” It’s not him really as though it changed into his body and blood. This is an offer. It represents him. He’s offering himself to you by faith at the Table.

There’s a real nourishing of our soul at the table, which gives a seriousness and a kind of joy to doing this together as the body of Christ. He is here spiritually and he means to offer himself to us at the Table as he does through the preaching of the word.

Questions and Answers

Are there any closing questions here as we finish up?

How often should we partake in the Lord’s Supper?

Good question. That’s loaded too. For me to be a guest and be at your church, you probably have your rhythms. He says, “Do this as often as you drink it.” Using the word “often,” I think my one little piece there would be more often is probably better than less often, or something like that. I don’t see any biblical injunction for a particular timeframe. It’s left up to particular communities led by duly appointed leaders in their wisdom to set the rhythms and the patterns for a life of the church. That’s part of the rhythms of our corporate life together, but “often” is a good word.

As a sinner saved by grace, when I know that I’ve sinned and I come before the Lord, and I abstain from the Table when I know that there’s sin in my life. Is that wrong? I’m praying that the Lord forgive me of my sins, but I don’t also want to bring judgment on myself because I know during this past week or whatever I have sinned.

That’s a very good question. I think a lot of folks think through that and struggle through that, though maybe they never asked the question and never have anybody speaking any counsel into it. Without pretending to have the last word on it, here’s how I take it and how I would encourage others to do it. If there’s a pattern of sin that you are refusing to renounce and you are not willing to open your hands and say, “Jesus, I’m done with that. I repent. I will get accountability,” then I would say that it’s good to abstain from the Table and not eat judgment upon yourself. However, I think in the normal process of preparing for the Table, the assumption is that you’ve sinned this afternoon. You’ve sinned many times this week.

This is a time to examine yourself and to come afresh to appropriate faith afresh to say, “Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner. I cast myself upon your mercy. I don’t hold onto any sin here. I know I’m a sinner and I’m still someone in the midst of my own sanctification process, by your grace. I renounce my sins and I come before you and I receive your grace afresh.” I think the Table should have that function in our lives as a church and can be a very good place to come in and have that moment of re-consecration and receive the Table. It’s not because you are worthy of it, but you’re receiving it worthily because you’re receiving it how he means for sinners to receive it, which is with repentance, exercising faith in Jesus, and trusting in the work of his cross.

Here’s a little outline of where we’ll be going in these sessions. In this first one for the Sunday School hour, we’re just going to talk about the idea of means of grace. First of all, that God is gracious and that he has his particular, chosen, appointed means for our lives to live in the supply of his grace. Then the sermon this morning will focus on God’s word as a means of grace. Jonathan Edwards called the word of God the “chief” and “soul” of the means of grace.

Tonight the topic is fellowship, and we’ll also have a special accent on the Lord’s Supper as part of the means of grace that are related to the fellowship of the local church. And I believe we get to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together tonight. Then tomorrow night will be a focus on prayer and on fasting. Fasting in particular is an accent to prayer.

My heart for these sessions is that I would love to clarify, simplify, and inspire, and here’s what I mean by that. I want to clarify the source of the Christian life as God’s ongoing grace. Christianity is not to encounter grace in the past and then live in your own strength; Christianity is to live on God’s ongoing supply of grace. So we want to talk about those means. What are the means that God himself calls us into, to live on the ongoing supply of his grace?

Then I want to simplify the pursuit of his grace. Sometimes we think about spiritual disciplines and we make a long list, like, “Oh, there’s 12 things you need to do, or actually 18, or more like 24.” Think of your full list of spiritual disciplines. If you were to try to do those disciplines at all times in your life, it would be your full-time job. So what I want to do is simplify that list and ask, what are the main principles? What does God want us to know about his ongoing means of grace? And then how might we, in our various seasons of life, with our particular bent and our particular calling, see the principles of God’s grace be operative in our lives without just checking off somebody else’s boxes from some long list of spiritual disciplines?

Then lastly, I want to inspire you to cultivate habits of grace through varying seasons of life, and to do so for a lifetime. So I’ll speak about the grace of God, then the means of grace, and then “habits of grace” is my way of talking about our own lives, our own application, and the ways in which we access God’s timeless means of grace in our various seasons of life, so that we might know and enjoy him, and in enjoying him, we glorify him in our lives through our actions and words.

My hope is that I want to put and keep the gospel and the energy of God at the center of this whole pursuit of spiritual disciplines or means of grace. And as I hope we see tonight, by taking a full session to emphasize the corporate dynamics of the Christian life, I want to emphasize those corporate dynamics in a way that I think often gets overlooked in discussions about spiritual disciplines. Often spiritual disciplines are really focused on what I do and what I do alone, like Bible reading and prayer by myself. And I think a very important dynamic — we’ll see this in biblical texts and we’ll talk about it at length tonight because it’s critical in the Christian life — is the covenant fellowship of the local church that we are means of grace to each other. And then I want you, however old or young, to know, to enjoy, and to glorify Jesus, and to have some sense of how to do that for a lifetime.

It is my prayer that this seminar would help you make God’s means of grace, and your own habits that develop around his means, not just accessible and realistic but truly God’s means for your knowing and enjoying Jesus for a lifetime. And you see there how the connection is made between looking at Jesus (seeing him), as we prayed before with Bill and Dan, and savoring him. I love that language. We want to employ the means of grace as a means to that end.

Faucets and Light Switches

So here in session one then we want to talk about the means of grace. I love this encouragement from Jonathan Edwards. We’ll get to the quote in context here in a few minutes. He says, “Lay yourself in the way of allurement.”

When I talk about means of grace, it’s helpful for me to think about faucets and light switches, maybe because as I was teaching this material to college students, I was becoming a homeowner for the first time, and I was beginning to think about things for the first time that I hadn’t thought about before. You grow up and turn the faucet and the water comes on. With the light switch, somebody else takes care of that. If you have the problem of turning that faucet and no water comes out, somebody else is going to deal with that. When you’re a homeowner, ain’t nobody else going to deal with that. You have to take care of what’s going on there.

The main thing that’s helpful about faucets and light switches (though it’s not a perfect illustration) is that it helps to demonstrate what means of grace are like in the Christian life. Because for me, I don’t provide the water. For me, the city of Minneapolis does that, and I’m not a plumber. I didn’t put it in my house, and I don’t know how to fix it if it goes awry. Fortunately, I married into the family of a plumber. My father-in-law is a plumber, but he’s two hours north. If we start to have a problem, that’s a long time before he can get onsite. I feel this now as a homeowner.

When I turn that faucet on and water comes out, I don’t celebrate what I did, saying, “Look at me, I turned the water on.” As the kids go to the sink to get water, as they shower, as they do whatever they do in the house, I don’t say, “Look what your dad did. Your dad gave you water.” They turned on the faucet and they engaged the means, the appointed means. The water was there waiting, and the power, the electricity, was there waiting because somebody else is supplying the power and we need to just release that power in the appointed place. We don’t walk around the house saying, “Water,” and water comes out. No, if you want water, you turn the faucet. If you want electricity, you flip the switch, or tell Alexa to turn the light on. But you do the appointed means to release the supply of power.

There are similarities in the Christian life. We can be prone to think, “Oh, I want God’s power. I want to walk in the wilderness and have God give me his power.” But God has given us appointed means. He has provided water, and he has plumbed the house, and he has put in a faucet, and he has told you, “That’s where the water comes from.” He has provided the electricity and he tells us where the switch is, as if to say, “That’s where it happens.” And get this, it’s not automatic. Just because I flip the switch doesn’t mean the lights will always go on. But if I don’t flip the switch, the lights aren’t going to turn on. Likewise, with God’s means of grace he has given us his regular places where he wants us to go to access his ongoing supply, his ongoing grace for the Christian life.

The Grace of God

Here is our outline for session one. We want to talk briefly, but not just briefly, about the grace of God. I don’t want to skip over this. I don’t want to assume this. We don’t want to say, “Oh yeah, God is gracious, move on.” We want to linger over the God of all grace and his graciousness. That’s so important in coming to him, because our awareness, our consciousness matters to him. He doesn’t want to just supply grace anonymously. He loves to give donations of grace that are connected to the name of his Son. So we want to talk about his grace. Then we’ll look at his appointed means of grace. And then at the end, I’ll say something very briefly about our cultivation of habits to regularly access his means of grace. Then I have to talk about the end of the means again. We want to end with that.

I’ve already given you a glimpse of the end of the means, but let’s come back because we have means, and means are means to some end. Means means something, and it means going to some end, and we’ll rehearse that at the end.

The Grace of Justification

First, let’s focus on the grace of God. It is so important that we duly acknowledge God and appreciate him in all his import, as he’s revealed himself to us as the God of all grace. That’s why I have 1 Peter 5:10 here. It says, “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace . . .” Brothers and sisters, this is the God who made you. This is the God who is, this is the God who sent his own Son, this is the God who has appointed means and wants to sustain you in the Christian life. He is the God of all grace. All true grace for your life, for your ongoing health, and for your ongoing survival as a Christian, is in him. He provides the grace. He’s the God of all grace. He has called you to his eternal glory in Christ. He himself will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you in suffering and in times of life that aren’t acutely difficult. In all seasons, he’s the God of all grace, supplying the grace of our Christian life.

But let’s say that with a little more specificity. We can do this big category of grace in general, but what are some of the specific manifestations of his grace in the Christian life? First and foremost, let’s rehearse the foundation of his grace. Before we do anything or participate in any way, he has a foundation of grace, and there is 100 percent acceptance of us apart from what we do in Christ Jesus. We call this the grace of justification by faith. We could go to many texts, but let me give you two and summarize the grace of justification by faith alone. This is Romans 4:4–5:

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due (we’re talking about a gift; wages are not the way to pursue acceptance with God). And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

We all need righteousness to stand before the living, holy God. We cannot, as sinners and as humans, provide that righteousness. But God sent his own Son to live out that righteousness in our human flesh, and die for us to cover our sins, so that being joined to him by faith we might have our sins paid for in him and have his righteousness in order to be fully, 100-percent accepted before his Father. This is the foundation of the Christian life in the grace of justification by faith. Before we do anything, before we act (we don’t deserve it in any way), he justifies us by faith by connecting us to his Son, in whom is righteousness.

Titus 3:4–7 says:

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness (hear the language of righteousness that is not by works and is the foundation of our acceptance), but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace (justification is a manifestation of God’s grace) we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

First and foremost, God’s grace meets us before we’re engaged. We receive by faith. Before we’re engaged with our will, our energy, our actions, and our works, he justifies us in Jesus. This is remarkable grace.

The Grace of Sanctification

Sometimes people stop there. It is amazing grace, the grace of forgiveness, the grace of justification by faith. May we no way ever minimize the grace of justification by faith. And God’s even more gracious than only to justify us and accept us fully based on the righteousness of Christ. Calvin and the Reformers had this Latin phrase: duplex gratia.

Anybody know what that means? It means double grace. It’s grace times two. We all want God’s grace and justification. Amen. Never minimize it. And, what Calvin emphasized — probably with Luther’s weakness in the background — is that we believe in double grace. He gives us the grace of full acceptance in Christ and the grace keeps going. He gives us the grace of being practically rescued from the misery of sin. It would be an amazing grace to have our sins covered and then still have to live with the misery. But the double grace of sanctification now begins to remove us from the misery of sin.

Sin is not a good thing. It’s not joyful in the end. Pleasurable as it may feel in the moment, it will not be good for you in the long run and for eternity. It is a double grace to be rescued from the power of sin, not only pardoned from your sin. This is the grace of sanctification, and I rehearse it because it relates to means. These means of grace, we locate them in the part of the Christian life that is about sanctification, about becoming more holy, about being engaged in the progress that the Holy Spirit is making in us. Justification is apart from works, apart from our means. We’re not doing anything. We’re not reading any Bibles or doing any prayers for justification. But in sanctification we have the dignity of being engaged, of discovering the joys of holiness.

Here’s Titus 2:11–12. The appearance language is very similar to Titus 3:4–7. Titus loves to talk like this. Before he said, “God our Savior appeared,” and down here we have, “the grace of God appeared in Jesus.” So grace for the Christian has a face. Grace came. The God of grace has come in grace incarnate in Jesus.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people . . . (Titus 2:11)

Think of how that corresponds with the aspects of grace that are in justification and forgiveness. He continues and says this grace is “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age . . .” (Titus 2:12). So grace not only receives us apart from our training to get us right with God, but grace also then begins to go to work on us. Grace trains. It’s like an athlete being trained. You engage, you work, and you train, and it changes shape over time. The person is changed. They become a better runner, a better player, or a better actor as they do the training. Likewise, grace begins to work on us, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright godly lives in the present age. There’s a double grace here — the grace of salvation coming and the grace going to work on us that trains us. Grace trains us.

A Holy Work Ethic

In 1 Corinthians 15:10, I love Paul’s expression of this training, changing, transforming grace. He says:

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them . . .

You know who the “them” is here? It’s not lazy Corinthians. The “them” are the other apostles. He says, “I worked harder than any of them,” and I’m assuming Paul is not prideful at this point. I’m assuming he had such an industrious, Herculean work ethic that the differences were manifest, so that he could talk about them with humility and not brag. Everyone knew Paul worked so much harder than Peter and John. That’s okay. That was Paul’s particular gift, whatever it was. He worked harder than all of them. But you know what? It was the grace of God. He says, “Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

So God’s grace not only met him on the road to Damascus, changed his heart, and saved him apart from him doing anything, but the grace of God went to work in him and he was a manifest worker. Paul’s a work ethic guy. He talks a lot about work, and that work is work that is done by the grace of God. So God’s grace not only saves, forgives, and justifies, but God’s grace trains and goes to work in and through us.

Philippians 2:12–13 is another place to show this dynamic of God working and our working. We need to have a place in our Christian life where we think of how God works and we don’t. That’s the place of justification. It’s a very important category to have in our reception of grace, and seeing God as the God of all grace. And we need to have a category for God working through our working. Philippians 2:12–13 says:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .

Then we’re given the reason why. Now, notice he doesn’t say “work for your salvation.” They’re justified. They’re accepted 100 percent, based on Christ alone and not their works. He is saying, “You’re accepted, now work that out.” Don’t work for it, work it out. And here’s why. Here’s why you work it out. It’s not in your own strength. He says:

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13)

God goes to work by the power of his Spirit in the Christian. He begins to change us, he begins to, by his word and by the Spirit, give us good desires and inspire us for holiness, and not sin. He gives us the will, and we want to work it out and do it in such a way that we’re not earning God’s favor. But because we have his favor, we are delighted to work it out with joy for his glory and the good of others.

The Grace of Glorification

Then finally, to bring this to a close in this parsing out his grace, we’ve spoken of the past grace in our experience of justification, present grace in sanctification, and now we have future grace in glorification. It’s amazing. I don’t know what the Latin phrase would be for triple grace. We should probably do triple grace too. The grace that is coming is the grace of glorification. Isn’t it crazy that we talk in that language, that God will glorify us? It’s amazing. Second Thessalonians 1:11 says:

May [God] fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power . . .

Just note here this idea of “work of faith.” Because there’s faith, the Christian works it out, and does so by his power, which is what we’re talking about in the means of grace, spiritual disciplines. And then Paul says, “So that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). Yes, it’s the glory of Christ. Amen. That’s what we’re for, the glory of Christ. May Jesus be glorified. And then Paul says, “and you in him” (2 Thessalonians 1:12). May he be glorified in you, and then you will be glorified in him. He will be glorified in you according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. So God’s grace accepts us apart from our works, goes to work in us, rescues us practically from the miseries of sin, and his grace will glorify us as we glorify Jesus.

The last text here on this section is Ephesians 2:4–7. This is about the ongoing grace of God into eternity. Don’t think that first and foremost we’re saying grace is a past thing. We don’t live the Christian life in gratitude for grace, as if grace happened in the past and now we live in gratitude. That’s not how it works. And even going into the future it will be ongoing grace, upon grace, upon grace. Paul says:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved (a reference to justification) — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages (this is future) he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

“Before we’re engaged with our energy, our actions, and our works, God justifies us in Jesus.”

It will take eternity for our God to continue to show us the bounty of his grace. That’s what’s coming. That’s a way to capture what’s going to happen in heaven, and in the new heavens and new earth. God is going to continue to show us the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Jesus Christ. He’s the God of all grace. First and foremost, we have to start with God being gracious. Don’t take that as a given or an assumption. Let’s love it and let’s rehearse it.

The Means of Grace

The second thing we will focus on is that he has appointed means. There are means of his grace. In the last generation or so, there has been a revival of this language of spiritual disciplines. Maybe it’s a revival, and maybe the first time the language has been used was in the late 1970s. Richard Foster had a book on the celebration of disciplines, and there have been many good books that have talked about spiritual disciplines. That is the subject we’re talking about here. This is about spiritual disciplines.

However, by starting with this accent on God’s grace and wanting to use that term “means of grace,” I think there’s some significance in it. I find this personally helpful. I found it helpful with college students and as I’ve talked with folks over the years. Casting it in terms of means of grace rather than spiritual disciplines puts the accent in some different places. It really helps how we think about the concept. D. A. Carson has said that “means of grace” is a lovely expression, and is less susceptible to misinterpretation than “spiritual disciplines.” You can interpret spiritual disciplines appropriately. It’s okay to have that in my subtitle. That’s the language people are using, but I really want to accent that these are means of grace.

Reading J. I. Packer was the first time I saw the connection between spiritual disciplines and means of grace. This is actually an endorsement for Don Whitney’s book, and remember that being a disciple means being a learner. J.I. Packer wrote:

The doctrine of the disciplines (disciplinae, meaning “courses of learning” or “training”) is really a restatement and extension of classical Protestant teaching on the means of grace.

Then he summarizes these means of grace in his parenthesis in an endorsement for a book. I love it. Packer endorsed many books. I think he saw these as teaching opportunities. He doesn’t typically just say, “Hey, I like this person. Get the book.” He usually sees it as a little teaching opportunity. He lists the means of grace as the word of God, prayer, fellowship, and the Lord’s Supper. I’ve already told you our outline. The word of God is the sermon this morning, prayer is tomorrow night, and fellowship and the Lord’s Supper I’m putting together tonight.

The Necessity of Means

We’ll see more about this phrase. I find that J. C. Ryle is particularly helpful here. I really like the way that Ryle talks about the means of grace and the categories he puts them together in. Here’s what Ryle has to say. We’ll probably come back to this tonight as a quick summary before talking more about fellowship. He’s writing over 100 years ago, so see the timelessness of this. This is not trendy. This isn’t a big means of grace trend. This is not trendy, this is timeless. He says:

The means of grace are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in church . . .

So at least here we have the word, prayer, and fellowship. And he talks about regularly worshiping, which is a corporate means of grace. He says, “Here, one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper.”

You have the word being taught, and the word is the Bible. Then there is this connection with Lord’s Supper. These guys keep wanting to mention the Lord’s Supper. We’ll see why in just a minute. Ryle continues, and this is a very important sentence:

I lay it down as a simple matter of fact, that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make progress in sanctification.

That’s amazing. He says, “No one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make progress in sanctification.” What are the “such things”? It’s the word, prayer, and fellowship (the local church, corporate worship). He continues:

I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul, and strengthens the work which he has begun in the inward man . . . Our God is a God who works by means and he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them (the means of grace).

A similar observation I’ve heard before and seen in my own life is that I’ve never met a strong leader in the church or a Christian (someone who’s strong in the faith and benefits others) who has ignored the means of grace — in particular, accessing God’s word on a regular basis, praying about it, and being part of the local church. Let any of these slip, any of these three, and the matrix of strength for the Christian life goes away. And barring unusual circumstances of suffering, anyone who’s just languishing in their faith, very rarely (or ever) have I spoken with someone like that who couldn’t identify some lapse or pattern of neglect related to the word, or prayer, or the local church.

I’m not saying there’s a precise relationship where if you miss a day of devotions and you’re doing terrible spiritually. However, over the patterns of our life, there is a remarkable correspondence between attending to the ways God has told us that he has appointed for ongoing grace and spiritual health. We’ll come back to the Ryle quote.

Laying in the Way of Allurement

Let me give Zacchaeus and Bartimaeus as an example of what I mean by positioning ourselves. The title here on “laying yourself in the way of allurement” is important. Sometimes spiritual disciplines to me seem like they accent my doing. I have to take the initiative and I have to make this happen. This is on me. I need to muster up the strength and make it happen.

With means of grace, I want to accent the positioning of ourselves and the posturing of ourselves. God is the God of all grace. He has told us the places in which his grace is flowing, so the responsible response on our part is to position ourselves and posture ourselves to receive his grace. This isn’t first and foremost a posture of action, it’s a posture of reception. See that here in these back-to-back stories in Luke’s gospel about Bartimaeus and Zacchaeus.

As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. (Luke 18:35)

This is interesting. Bartimaeus was not wandering in the wilderness, and lo and behold, the Savior of the world comes upon him in the wilderness. He was sitting by the roadside. There was a path, and he was sitting by the path. The passage continues:

And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. (Luke 18:36–43)

Now, we can emphasize several things in this passage. The reason I’m emphasizing the positioning or the place where Bartimaeus was for our purposes regarding means of grace is that the next story is also along the path.

Positioned in the Pathway of Grace

Now let’s focus on Zacchaeus, a wee little man, maybe you know the song. Zacchaeus illustrates this better than Bartimaeus.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. (Luke 19:1–3)

This comes upon Bartimaeus in a way he didn’t expect, but he’s along a path when it does. He’s the kind of guy who wants help. He’s blind and he needs help. So where do you go to get help? Where people are. Where are people? On the path. So there’s a reason Bartimaeus was there. But it’s all the more here in this passage because Zacchaeus is seeking Jesus. He wants to access grace. So how do you access the grace in Christ? You go to the path where he’s coming. The passage continues:

He was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. (Luke 19:3–4)

He postured himself and positioned himself along the path where the grace was passing. Then it says:

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. (Luke 19:5–6)

He positioned himself to receive the grace as it came. Here’s a quotation from Jonathan Edwards:

Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites.

Your desires for God, your holy desires for the one who made you and showed you himself in his Son, and rescued you, you need to put no bounds on those appetites. We need to put bounds on various earthly appetites, and yet in our spiritual appetites for Jesus and for God, put no bounds on them. Edwards continues on how to pursue it:

Rather, they ought to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and obtain more spiritual pleasures.

That’s what we’re after in means of grace. These are not mere duties to check the box, as if to say, “You must do this.” We want to inflame desire and obtain more holy, spiritual pleasure. And Edward continues on to say, “Endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement.”

Because of the nature of our God as a God of grace, and because he has given us his typical patterns, his appointed means of grace, the counsel is, “Do you want to know him? Do you want to enjoy him? Do you want to increase your spiritual pleasure? Lay yourself along those paths. Know what the paths are, and then cultivate habits of life that put you along those paths.”

The Lifeline of the Early Church

Here’s an example in the early church. This is Acts 2:42–47. What an amazing moment. It’s like the honeymoon moment of the local church before things get really bad with increasing persecution.

They devoted themselves (habitual language) to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)

The apostles were teaching the word, people were praying, and people were devoting themselves to the fellowship. In that context, there was the breaking of bread, which probably meant eating together. And in that eating together, they were taking the Lord’s supper together as well. We want this, and people want this. This is exciting:

And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:43–47)

We all want this effect, but do we want the means of grace? The wonder, the signs, the generosity, the sharing, and the adding to their number comes out of Acts 2:42. This is their patterns, their habits, and their devotion. It’s the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, and the prayers.

Historic Confessions and the Means of Grace

I’ll skip through this, but I just want to mention that means had such an important foundation in the Reformed and Baptistic confessions for centuries. This is why Packer referred to the classic Protestant doctrine of the means of grace. The language of “means” comes again and again in the New Hampshire Confession of 1833, which is a Baptist confession. It’s used over and over again. It also goes back to Westminster and the Belgic Confession, which is almost 100 years before Westminster. It talks about “our gracious God” — make sure to cast him in terms of grace — who “nourishes and strengthens our faith through the means where he works by the power of the Holy Spirit.” And Jesus Christ is presented as the true object of them.

The Canons of Dort from 1619 refers to means again and again, and the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1648. Again and again it speaks of “the use of means.” And so, we come back to Acts 2:42, where they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, and the breaking of bread, and the prayers. These are a means of God’s ongoing grace.

Hear His Voice, Have His Ear, Belong to His Body

So here’s how I summarize them. This is what we’ll be doing in the sermon tonight and tomorrow. How do we put ourselves, how do we position ourselves along the path of God’s grace? Number one, we hear his voice in his word. Number two, we have his ear in prayer. Number three, we belong to his body in the fellowship of the local church.

The reason I’m putting them in those terms is that I want to capture the personal nature of the Christian life, the personal nature of a relationship with God in Christ. We shouldn’t think of word, prayer, and fellowship as merely things, but aspects of relationship with God and with each other. So we hear his voice. You’ll see in the sermon here, I’m not going to accent hearing his voice apart from his word. The voice that’s in your head is you. Do you want to hear God speak? Open the book, hear the book, and hear him speak by the power of the Spirit in his book. I have to stop myself before I get into the sermon.

Then have his ear in prayer. It is amazing that we have the ear of God Almighty. The fact that he revealed himself is amazing, but even more the fact that he stops, and stoops, and listens, and says, “I want to hear your response to my word.” It is such a privilege we have in prayer that we’ll linger it over tomorrow night.

And then we belong to his body. We are means of grace to each other in the body of Christ. In particular, I’m going to linger in Hebrews. The sermon this morning will be Hebrews, and these will be the texts that I’ll use in the sermon. You can talk about having his ear in Hebrews through these two big exhortation passages that parallel each other. Do you want a nice Bible study? Take Hebrews 4:14–16 and Hebrews 10:19–23 and work through them together and see the connections, and be drawn into prayer. And then the main focus for tonight before we talk about the Lord’s Supper will be to look at Hebrews 10 and Hebrews 3 about being means of grace for each other.

Habits of Grace

Let me finish quickly with this. I told you the last two points are very brief. This is about our various habits of grace. What is a habit? It’s kind of a negative word. There’s been a kind of revival of the language and it’s becoming more positive. People talk about habit formation.

There were two books that were very popular to help bring about this idea of habits and tap the neuroscience of habit formation, which is really new in the last generation since MRIs were available. I mean, neuroscience has been huge in the last 25 years, and habit formation has been part of those discoveries. Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.

Now, here are a couple of things that are important in spiritual life related to that. I’ll summarize it in a second. The real key to habits is decision-making, and more accurately, the lack of decision-making. Part of this in trying to cultivate habits in our Christian life is to not drain down the power of decision-making that we could be putting toward God’s word, and prayer, and fellowship, and also not go through making the decision over and over again so that sometimes you decide not to make it. And then you choose other less valuable things than his word, prayer, and fellowship in their proper proportions and patterns.

Here’s a summary: Habits free our focus to give attention and be more fully aware in the moment. Habits protect what is most important; that is, they keep us persevering in the faith. And habits are person specific. I’m not trying to lay on you Saul’s armor, as if to say, “Here’s how I do my devotions and here’s how I pray. And here’s the patterns of Cities Church, and you should do the same ones.” This is not Saul’s armor. You’re not supposed to have somebody else’s armor on, but you can develop these in your season of life with your bent. And then, habits are also driven by desire and reward. Habits are formed because you are being rewarded in some way. You don’t form habits when there’s no reward, and all the more in the Christian life.

The End of the Means

So we end the morning session here with the end of the means. I want to put text with this. I don’t want to just say, “Jesus is the end, Jesus is the end.” Let’s put two texts on it, among others. We’re talking about means here. Means are means to some end. This is the end:

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

That’s the essence of eternal life, knowing the Father and the Son in him. And in our means of grace, we want to move toward that great end. That’s the goal. That’s the reward that would inform and cultivate our habits.

In Philippians 3:7–8, the apostle Paul says:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

So brothers and sisters, in talking about these spiritual disciplines (the means of grace) this morning, this evening, and tomorrow night, this is what we’re pursuing. It’s the surpassing value of Christ. It’s not the value of achievement, nor the value of feeling good about myself, nor checking boxes, nor the value of doing what somebody else told me to do, but the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord through his word, through a relationship with him in prayer where I respond to him based on who he’s revealed himself to be, and doing so in the body of Christ, in the covenanted local church community where we are means of grace to each other, so that we know more of Jesus in and through each other.