Few saw as much as Peter did.

One of the first disciples, and chief among them, he heard Jesus’s public teaching, and his private explanations. He saw Jesus heal, raise the dead, and feed thousands with a few loaves and fish. He walked Galilee with Jesus, on land and sea.

Along with James and John, Peter witnessed the transfiguration, and accompanied Jesus deep into Gethsemane to pray on the night before he died. Then, watching from a distance on Good Friday, Peter saw what Jesus did, and did not do. Jesus’s enemies mocked him, slandered him, insulted him, maligned him, reviled him — as verbal thrusts of contempt conspired with nails and spear.

How Jesus handled it left an indelible stamp on Peter. And it came to mark his letter to insulted, maligned Christians, tempted to respond in kind to their revilers. In short, “When [Jesus] was reviled, he did not revile in return” (1 Peter 2:23).

Mindful of God

The holy composure that Jesus showed when mistreated, and while dying in agony, was not only truly divine, but like Christ himself, fully human.

“Not reviling in return” didn’t just happen. This is not how humanity naturally responds when verbally attacked. No, for years Jesus prepared for it. He trained his soul for these trials. Through rhythms of communion with his Father and compassion for immature sheep, through seasons of prayer and ceaselessly rehearsing what “is written” in Scripture, through shaping his own pliable human soul with habits of Godward praise and glad obedience, Jesus had long readied himself for the gauntlet of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Christ was not caught off guard when they first flogged him with words. Jesus knew that mocking would come, and warned his men of it ahead of time. He would be “mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon” (Luke 18:32). “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be . . . mocked and flogged and crucified” (Matthew 20:18–19; also Mark 10:34). Not only flogging and crucifixion, but also mocking would be a genuine trial, requiring his readiness.

How did he prepare for the onslaught? In the words of his watching disciple, Jesus entrusted himself “to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). He lived “mindful of God” (1 Peter 2:19), not just fellow man. He readied himself for the assault of spoken and acted evil by becoming the kind of man who would not respond in kind.

Mocked and Maligned

Preparation was one thing. Many are willing to talk theory. But when mocking words begin to fly, they often sting and disorient far more than anticipated. After his arrest,

the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him. (Luke 22:63–65)

They shuffled him off to the puppet king Herod, who “with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him” (Luke 23:11). Then back to Pilate, and Mark reports in more detail what shape the mocking took: they clothed him in purple, put a crown of thorns on him, and saluted him in jest, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spit on him, and knelt down in sneering homage (Mark 15:17–19; also Matthew 27:28–31). Once they had nailed him to the cross, the soldiers came by for another round; they “mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine” (Luke 23:36).

Now that he seemed safely affixed to the cross, his own countrymen unleashed the barrage they had waiting. Passersby “derided him, wagging their heads” (Matthew 27:39). Even as he writhed in agony, and public humiliation, they taunted him: “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself!” “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40).

Even the dignitaries of Israel could not hold their tongues but descended into the same cowardly insults: “He saved others; he cannot save himself.” “He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him” (Matthew 27:42). “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him” (Matthew 27:43). Never one to exaggerate, Luke simply reports that “the rulers scoffed at him” (Luke 23:35).

Even the two criminals crucified to his left and right “reviled him in the same way” (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32).

Reviled, Keep Trusting

How, then, did Jesus respond?

Clearly, he was capable of putting it all right back in their face with some perfectly crafted reply. No one had a way with words like Jesus. When he chose to speak, even foes confessed that “no one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46). None could silence the proud with one simple word like Jesus. Yet hear it from eyewitness testimony: “When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).

Jesus had cultivated a life of trust in his Father. He was ever “mindful of God.” Then, even when the thrusts of reviling and mocking came, he did not let the hurt pierce his heart, and he did not respond to evil with evil. Instead, he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Mindful of his Father, he could trust that justice would come in due time, and at least in this moment, it was not his own to enact. The wicked words of man would not unseat his own obedience to God. If we only had such wherewithal today.

This, of course, was not raw willpower, without joy. When pummeled by spoken contempt, Jesus would not fail to practice what he had preached: “Rejoice and be glad . . . when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you” (Matthew 5:11–12). He was a man of sorrows, but not joyless. In the whole horrible enterprise, says Hebrews 12:2, Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him.”

Joy does not mean fun. There was nothing fun about the odium and shame of the cross, nor its nails, nor its blasphemies. Nor was it without the deep joy that could sustain him.

Gethsemane and Golgotha were not yet the time, but they prepared the way. The day would come to “leap for joy” (Luke 6:23). Which leads to Peter’s emphasis on what Jesus did not do.

Do Not Respond in Kind

Jesus did not descend into the very sin that had been sinned against him. He did not give in to evil by repeating it. “He did not revile in return” (1 Peter 2:23).

On such authority, Peter says to his embattled readers, “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling” (1 Peter 3:9). No matter what terrible evil has been uttered against you, keep your tongue from speaking evil (1 Peter 3:10). Have you been slandered? “Put away . . . all slander” (1 Peter 2:1). The kingdom-disqualifying sins of others, including reviling (1 Corinthians 5:11; 6:9–10), are no excuse to give ourselves to sin. Would you too go to hell because the hell-bound scoff at you?

On the one hand, Peter should not have been surprised to see Jesus’s response to reviling. This very concept of not responding in kind had been one of the hallmarks of Christ’s teaching. Turn the other cheek. Go another mile. Give him your cloak as well. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Still, Peter marveled to see the Christian ethic in its first and greatest act. It’s one thing to hear of a miracle; another to see it for yourself. And he would see still more.

Bless Your Revilers

Remarkably, Jesus didn’t stop at holding his tongue, magnificent as that was. He spoke blessing, rather than curse. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Human, he could find the impulse to respond in kind. But holy, he acted the miracle of not reviling in return, and then went even further. The joy that led him not to respond in kind held his peace and filled his mouth with words of blessing for his foes.

So Peter writes, “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless” (1 Peter 3:9). Who would dare venture such an ethic without the teaching and example of Christ? Christians are constrained not to silence, but to righteousness. Peter would have us be ready, in fact, to speak with grace and truth: “Always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” And however well-meaning or slanderous their talk, do so “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).

Paul also got the message, and gave it: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. . . . Repay no one evil for evil” (Romans 12:14, 17).

Blessed and Vindicated

In the end, Jesus not only blessed but he was blessed.

God did not leave him in utter humiliation, but exalted him. He did not abandon him to the tomb, but raised him. God counted to three, and fully vindicated Jesus with resurrection life, then counted to forty, and raised him up to heaven, and then seated him on heaven’s very throne. And in his threefold rising, Jesus looked in triumph over his enemies and saw them put to shame.

So too, “you will be blessed,” writes Peter (1 Peter 3:14). In fact, you already have a down payment: “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Peter 4:14). True, insults will not first strike us as blessings. But then, like Jesus, we go to work on them by the Spirit, mindful of God. With the calculus of heaven, which is never flippant, but ever earnest, we learn to live what Jesus taught and realized:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. (Matthew 5:11–12; also Luke 6:22)

When mocked, maligned, reviled, we follow in Jesus’s steps (1 Peter 2:21). In him, we do not sin in response to sin. And one day soon, if not already in this life, the folly of our revilers will be exposed. “When you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame” (1 Peter 3:16).

When Reviled, We Bless

Make no mistake, we do not take reviling lightly. We do not celebrate opposition to Jesus, in and of itself. And true reviling is unavoidably painful. We don’t seek it, try to provoke it, or enjoy it. Not eager for it, yet we are willing for Jesus’s sake to endure it — when it comes.

In times when talk is cheap and unbelievers are prone to take aim, we look to our Lord, admire his magnanimity, and, when attacked, we seek to walk in his steps.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4:12, “When reviled, we bless.”

I count this a great honor and joy to speak to you about the man I was named after, even though I haven’t always loved it. David is a fairly common name in my generation; sometimes I wished for something more distinctive. But as I’ve aged, I’ve grown to appreciate that first David. He has his clear failures, and yet he is such a compelling and genuinely good king and man. And it’s his manhood we’ll focus on in this session — not humanity, but masculinity.

To encounter the life of David some three thousand years later can be a challenge for modern men. We might find in it a call to cultivate some reasonable Davidic strength of body and soul. Whether as king or father or husband or friend, our people don’t want men with limp wrists, but with strong arms. Yet not with strong arms alone, as we’ll see.

Expert at War?

Perhaps one reason I haven’t always thrilled at being named David is that I long misunderstood him. Maybe I didn’t realize that David and Goliath were not to scale on the felt boards and as pictured in children’s books. At least well into adulthood, I had a pretty one-dimensional and domesticated idea of David.

I thought of him as the shepherd who became king and “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Samuel 23:1). And so he was. Of course, we all know David killed Goliath as a youth, but I assumed that came from one lucky shot, rather than any skill in battle or as any reflection of his manhood. I didn’t think of David as particularly masculine. (It may also betray my mistaken idea of shepherds, who I thought to be more like mothers than warriors. Only later did I realize those guys carried a rod and staff, both to protect the sheep and to strike wolves. Ancient shepherds had to be fighters, not just feeders.)

But a specific scene near the end of David’s reign began to pop that bubble for me and give me a glimpse into the masculinity of David, and see him as more than just the singer-songwriter.

In 2 Samuel 17, when David’s son Absalom has rebelled against his father, marched on Jerusalem, and sent David retreating, David’s loyal friend Hushai pretends to have swapped sides to Absalom in order to defeat the rebel counsel. As Hushai makes his case, which ends up carrying the day, he characterizes David in terms that all the wise men of the day agreed with. Hushai says to Absalom,

You know that your father and his men are mighty men, and that they are enraged, like a bear robbed of her cubs in the field. Besides, your father is expert in war. (2 Samuel 17:8)

Not just his men, but David himself is mighty — and David in particular is expert in war.

Man of Valor, Man of War

In fact, the first time Scripture speaks of David, even before the Goliath account, he is introduced by one of Saul’s servants not only as “skillful in playing” but as “a man of valor, a man of war” and “a man of good presence.”

Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him. (1 Samuel 16:18)

In the following chapter, we learn that David, though still a youth, has already killed lions and bears (1 Samuel 17:34–36).1 And based on such preparation, and his faith in God’s help, David has the courage to step forward and face Goliath. Though he does not intend to fight Goliath hand to hand, he will engage him in personal battle as a projectile warrior, putting his own life at stake if he is unable to land the death blow.2 And once David has struck him, this youth is at least strong enough to draw Goliath’s massive sword from its sheath and cut through his giant neck to take off his head (1 Samuel 17:51).

Soon the imposing Saul, Israel’s lead warrior, who stood head and shoulders above the rest, hears women dancing in the streets, singing of the strength they see in David: “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7; 21:11; 29:5).

And this David does not stay a youth but grows up to be a fierce warrior. So, Saul sets David over the men of war. And to win Saul’s daughter as his bride, David brings the king two hundred Philistine foreskins. Later we hear of David leading thirty thousand warriors in battle (2 Samuel 6:1) and being victorious wherever he goes (2 Samuel 8:6). At the end of his life, the reason God gives for why David will not be the one to build the temple is that he is “a man of war” (1 Chronicles 28:3; also 22:8).3

What Made David Great?

Then comes Psalm 18, which appears in 2 Samuel 22 at the end of David’s life as a celebration of God’s deliverance from all his enemies. The psalm represents the physical strength and skill that God gave to David:

He “can run against a troop,” he says, and “leap over a wall” (verse 29).
He writes that God “equipped me with strength” (verse 32) and “made my feet like the feet of a deer” (verse 33).
God “[trained] my hands for war,” he adds, making his arms strong enough to “bend a bow of bronze” (verse 34).

David, it seems, is a physical specimen and all-around warrior: He runs with speed and agility. He can climb and leap. His arms are strong enough to wield weapons, and his hands have been trained, over long years, in the skills of battle.

Yet right here, in Psalm 18, as he celebrates God’s good provision of physical, manly prowess, David makes a striking claim in verse 35. This takes David’s manhood to a new level, and surpasses the glory of slaying a giant in his youth. He says to God in 2 Samuel 22:36 (and Psalm 18:35), “Your gentleness made me great.”

Physical strength and skill, with proven valor and combat experience, may have made David “expert at war,” but that’s not what made him great. These are good things: strong arms, quick feet, skilled hands, military triumph. But those physical manifestations of manliness are not what made him great, he says. It was God’s gentleness that made David great.

What does it mean that God’s gentleness made him great? We might understand this in two ways. One, God had been gentle with David. David had flaws, many failures and sins. God could have rejected him and cut him off from the throne at any point. Yet God was gentle with him; he was gracious with him. David did not deserve it, and God was not exacting with his anointed, but gentle with him.

While that’s true, I think David is saying even more here. Not only had the omnipotent God been gentle with David, but God’s own gentleness with David had changed David. God’s own gentleness had come to take root in David’s heart and characterize his own life and leadership. As he came to the throne and wielded the powers of kingship, he did so with gentleness. David has been gentle with others.4

But this is such a quick and passing statement in Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22. How might we increase our confidence that we’re reading David correctly? How might we confirm that his own self-understanding of what made him great was not his manly physique and martial abilities but his godly gentleness?

Several key episodes in the life of David accent his gentleness, tenderness, or grace as greatness, not tragic flaw.

Saul and Nabal

First, at the end of 1 Samuel, David exercises a form of Godlike gentleness even before becoming king.

The second half of 1 Samuel chronicles his journey into the wilderness to elude Saul’s desire to kill him. In chapter 24 and then again in chapter 26, David happens upon a vulnerable Saul and could have ended Saul’s life violently. Yet David (himself God’s anointed, 1 Samuel 16:12–13) chooses not to reach out his hand against God’s anointed to seize the kingdom (1 Samuel 24:6, 10; 26:9, 11, 23; 2 Samuel 1:14, 16). Rather, he waits for years on end for the kingship to fall to him. Trusting in God and his timing, in manly humility and the godly gentleness that flows from it, David lets Saul go.

Right in the middle of those two accounts, in chapter 25, David almost avenges himself. A fool named Nabal insults him. The warrior-prince reacts in a very natural way: he tells his men to strap on their swords. But then a wise woman, Nabal’s own wife, Abigail, intervenes, and pleads for David to be gentle — and be the bigger man. Rather than stretch out his own hand to avenge himself, David deals gently with the fool, whom God strikes down just ten days later.

“Gentleness is not the absence of strength but the addition of Christlike grace to cushion power to life-giving ends.”

Later, after Saul’s death, David takes initiative to show kindness to the house of Saul (2 Samuel 9:1, 9), which (similar to gentleness) he calls “the kindness of God” (verse 3). In time, he will show such kindness and gentleness to Amnon and to Shimei, and even to his ruthless and severe cousins Joab and Abishai. It’s a striking pattern in David’s life once you see it. David, for his flaws, is serious about his own sin, and he, wielding the power of the kingship, is gentle with others in their sin and failures.

So, we have some reason to see his godly gentleness as what made him great. But we haven’t yet mentioned the two clearest and most important places, both in David’s own words in 2 Samuel and both set in opposition to his cousin and commander of the army, Joab, who serves as a masculine foil for seeing the greatness of David.

Gentle with an Enemy

First, in chapter 3, after the death of Saul, Joab avenges in peacetime the death of his brother Asahel in wartime.

Saul’s commander Abner had struck down Asahel as he pursued Abner in battle. Abner warned him to turn aside, but Asahel would not, so Abner struck him through in the stomach. In time, Abner sought peace with David and delivered the rest of the kingdom to him. David and Abner feasted together, and David sent him away in peace.

However, Joab heard of it and drew Abner aside, under the pretense of peace, “to speak with him privately, and there he struck him in the stomach [revenge], so that he died, for the blood of Asahel his brother” (2 Samuel 3:27).

Here a contrast begins to emerge between David and Joab. Both can be fearsome in battle. Both are strong, brave, experts at war, mighty men. But Joab, while an asset in war, is a liability in peace. It is great to have Joab on your side in the wilderness, and it could be terrible to have him nearby in the city.

Joab’s unrighteous slaughter of Abner, Saul’s former commander, now threatens the consolidation of the nation under David’s rule. So David takes public action in mourning the death of Abner, so that “all the people and all Israel understood that day that it had not been the king’s will to put to death Abner” (2 Samuel 3:37). David then speaks to his servants to make clear the difference between himself and Joab, the son of Zeruiah:

Do you not know that a prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel? And I was gentle today, though anointed king. These men, the sons of Zeruiah, are more severe than I. The Lord repay the evildoer according to his wickedness! (2 Samuel 3:38–39)5

“Sons of Zeruiah” refers to Joab and his other brother, Abishai. They are manifestly manly men; they are men of war, oozing with testosterone. Second Samuel 10:11–12 shows us Joab and Abishai at their best. The Syrians and Ammonites have surrounded them in the front and the rear. So, Joab says to Abishai,

If the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come and help you. Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.

Glorious. What great assets in battle. But then, as we’ll continue to see, what great liabilities at home.

You Sons of Zeruiah

For instance, when David is retreating from Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 16, a man named Shimei, from the extended family of Saul, comes out and curses David and throws stones at him and his mighty men as they walk. Abishai speaks up: “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and take off his head” (verse 9). To this David replies, “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? . . . Behold, my own son seeks my life; how much more now may this Benjaminite! Leave him alone, and let him curse” (verses 10–11).

Once Absalom is dead, and David returns to the city, Shimei comes cowering on his knees, begging,

Let not my lord hold me guilty or remember how your servant did wrong on the day my lord the king left Jerusalem. Do not let the king take it to heart. For your servant knows that I have sinned. Therefore, behold, I have come this day, the first of all the house of Joseph to come down to meet my lord the king. (2 Samuel 19:19–20)

Abishai speaks up again: “Shall not Shimei be put to death for this, because he cursed the Lord’s anointed?” Again, David will be the bigger man. This is becoming a refrain: “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah, that you should this day be as an adversary to me? Shall anyone be put to death in Israel this day?” (verses 21–22).

The refrain “you sons of Zeruiah” reflects David becoming exasperated with Joab’s and Abishai’s unbending severity and violence and inability to restrain their strength and aggression. They are great to have on your side in war, and they do not know how to control their strength.

Which leads to David’s other mention of gentleness, leading up to chapter 22.

Gentle with a Traitor

In chapter 18, Absalom has rebelled against him, Hushai has bought him time, and now David sends Joab and the army into battle. In keeping with his pattern of exercising strength and adding to it the virtue of gentleness, David orders Joab, in the presence of witnesses, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom” (2 Samuel 18:5).

Some commentators see weakness and indiscretion in David at this point. However, others see the gentleness that made him great.6 Remember, David is sending out his army. Peter Leithart defends David’s directions to Joab:

These instructions were consistent with David’s treatment of all his enemies; he had treated Saul well, and just recently he had restrained Abishai from cutting down Shimei. He knew what Joab was capable of, and he wanted all his men to know that he treated enemies with kindness and compassion. David’s behavior again provided an Old Testament illustration of Jesus’s teaching about loving enemies.7

Joab, of course, defies David’s will and himself thrusts three javelins through the heart of Absalom, again accenting the difference between David and Joab. Both are strong, but only one is great. Both are warriors, but only one knows the moment when, and has the ability, to exercise gentleness.

Joab Versus David

Joab is the one-dimensional man of war — strong, tenacious, courageous in battle, willing to risk it all. Yet he is a caricature of mature masculinity, not the full expression. He can fight, but he is unable to curb his aggression when it is no longer called for. He is tough, but he is unable to cushion his strength or control his tenacity when wisdom calls for gentleness.

And a growing number in the manosphere today eagerly offer their counsel on how to be more like Joab. In many circles (some clearly unbelieving but others under the banner of Christ), voices advocate, in essence, for men to rebel against feminizing in our world, and the church, by being more like Joab: “Society has made you soft; now it’s time to man up” — and the vision ends up being little more than a caricature of manly strength and backbone. They seem to see the pendulum swing to Joab as the necessary reaction.

But brothers, Joab and effeminacy aren’t the only options. David, man of war and giant slayer that he is, offers us the more mature vision of manhood. And note well, David is not a mean between the two extremes, but one who is every bit as manly as Joab — and then, with added abilities, even more so.

In terms of strength, speed, skill with a weapon, and ability to strategize and conquer in battle, we should not assume that Joab has much, if anything, on David, the giant slayer. David is every bit the man of war Joab is, but David surpasses Joab as a man not by being more severe, but by adding to his manly strength the virtue of manly gentleness. David is the bigger man and better model. David had learned gentleness from God himself, and so David can thrive in all contexts, not just in battle. He does not have less strength than Joab, but more.

David’s abilities are multidimensional. Both strong and gentle, he can wield his strength when the moment calls for it, or with admirable restraint he can walk in gentleness. David can lead a nation, not just an army.

And David, not Joab, is the Lord’s anointed, and the man who is the type of the Anointed One to come.

High and Exalted, Gentle and Lowly

While Psalm 18 serves as a great tribute to God’s work in and through David, there is much in the psalm, writes John Calvin in his commentary, that “agrees better with Christ” than with David.

And when the apostle John, on the isle of Patmos, caught his glimpses of the glory of Christ, he too saw the exemplar of mature masculinity, strong and gentle, capable and compassionate. In Jesus he saw not only man but “the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8). He turned to hear a voice “like the roar of many waters,” and “from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength” (Revelation 1:15–16). Later John would see this Lion of a man, sitting on a white horse, as the one who “judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11).

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. (Revelation 19:15)

This is the one who is introduced in heaven with regal dignity and sovereign power: “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered” (Revelation 5:5).

Yet when the apostle looked between the angels and the throne of heaven, he “saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). A lamb-like Lion, and lion-like Lamb, awe-inspiring in his majestic strength, and seen to be truly great as the gentle and lowly, self-sacrificial, atoning Lamb of God.

To be clear, the risen Christ is not puny. He sits in power on the very throne of the universe, and all authority in heaven and on earth is his. He is not weak in the least. And in masculine glory, his gentleness cushions the application of his great power as he marshals it in the service of his weak people. Brothers and sisters, do not mistake his gentleness for weakness. Gentleness is not the absence of strength but the addition of Christlike grace to cushion power to life-giving ends.

The greatness of David is not that he slew the giant in his youth. The greatness of David is that as a man he slew the giants in his own warrior’s heart: arrogance and pride, selfishness, unrighteous anger, petty disputes, personal offenses, private comforts and preferences and luxuries.

David was the great king, and the type of the Anointed One to come, as a man who was not weak, but strong, brave, and more — he was kind, patient, and gentle. He did not reach out his hand to seize power, but he waited on his appointment and traveled the long path of self-humbling on the way to being exalted. Nor, once in power, did he always leverage his full force, but learning from God’s own gentleness with him, he learned how and when to be gentle with others.

Just last week it was a necklace.

My 6-year-old daughter brought me the tangled mess and pled for help. With a little effort and patience, it was like new in a few minutes.

The week before it was leather strings on a baseball glove. First we had to loosen two entrenched knots; then we could tighten up the space between the fingers.

Before that, it was a shoestring. And every winter, on repeat, it’s the laces on the kids’ ice skates.

As a father of four, I find myself working regularly at untying knots. I try to count it a privilege, rather than burden. Parents often undo knots for our children, not only because we have the required strength in our hands and the tips of our fingers, but also, let’s hope, because we have the required patience.

Whether repairing a ball glove or unlacing a shoestring, complex knots require both strength and strategy, both effort and patience. The task simultaneously makes two demands on us that create a certain tension: engage your attention and energy and, at the same time, exercise patience. If you dive right in and start pulling on strings, you will worsen the knot. Or, if you only observe the tangle, and reflect on strategy, but neglect to actually engage your fingers, the knot will only persist.

This duel demand for initiative and patience, for effort and composure, captures well what Christ often requires of local-church leaders in the complexities of church life. We regularly go to work on untying figurative knots, complex relational messes — and with the stakes raised. Here neglect won’t leave the knot as is, but only make it worse.

Knotty by Nature

The risen Christ calls pastor-elders to two main tasks in the local church: teaching and governing. To make it rhyme, we feed and we lead. We exercise abilities to teach God’s word, and we exercise oversight to lead the church. So, among other qualifications, pastor-elders must be both “able to teach” and “sober-minded.”

Strangely, some aspiring or current pastors would rather not teach. This is odd, and not ideal, and may reflect confusion about the nature of the office. Among other things, pastors are teachers, and as Don Carson captures it well,

A substantial part of the ruling/oversight function is discharged through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. This is where a great deal of the best leadership is exercised: “What does Scripture say?” means “What does God say?”

From the beginning, Christianity has been a teaching movement. Its best leaders teach, and its best teachers soon become leaders. Healthy churches thrive on ongoing, healthy preaching and teaching.

However, as vital as pastoral word-ministry is, this is not the entirety of the calling. Carson lands the other foot:

Oversight of the church is more than simply teaching and preaching. . . . [A] comprehensive vision of the ministry of the Word demands oversight . . . of the entire direction and priorities of the church. . . . [I]f [a man] shows no propensity for godly oversight, then no matter how good a teacher he may be, he is not qualified to be a pastor/teacher/overseer.

We not only feed and teach but also lead and govern. And in this exercise of oversight is the underserviced task of regularly untying some complicated knots — that is, seeking to bring order to the chaos of church life.

Order in the Church

Paul in particular writes about the need for “order” in church life and assumes this to be, in some measure, the work of Christian leaders.

“From the beginning, Christianity has been a teaching movement. Its best leaders teach, and its best teachers soon become leaders.”

This is his explicit commission to Titus as his delegate: “I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town . . .” (Titus 1:5). Not only will Titus’s own teaching and oversight bring order to the disordered young church, but also the appointing of elders will bring about further order. Their very appointment will create clarity and structure in church life, and then the tangible effects of their work, over time, as they are faithful and fruitful, will bring more order.

This was true for Paul himself, as he saw it, in his apostolic teaching and governing. Speaking frankly to the Corinthians about marriage and divided interests, he writes, “I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:35). He would not be content with confusion and disarray in the household of God. Bringing order to the chaos would be a fitting summary of his work in both spoken and written word.

Perhaps Paul’s most memorable mention of “order” comes in the context of corporate worship, in the same letter to Corinth. Here he lays it down almost as a maxim: “all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40). If we ask why, Paul has given his reason already, in the context, grounding it in the nature of God himself: “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33).

The language of “decently” in verse 40 that Paul pairs with order (“decently and in order”) is the same as his charge to “walk properly” in Romans 13:13 and 1 Thessalonians 4:12. Beneath the collective order and decency of church life is the order and decency produced in individual Christian lives by the Spirit through steadfast faith: “though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ” (Colossians 2:5).

Sin brings chaos, disorder, and confusion to human lives and relationships, and so one critical aspect in Christian ministry is our envisioning restored order and seeking to move our people, from their hearts, toward that order. Increasing order and holy propriety, on God’s terms, characterizes the maturing Christian life, and maturing church. Which makes it very much a pastoral concern.

Order on the Way to Order

Such order not only means putting desires and words and behaviors in their proper places, but also having a sense of sequence, the steps in which the vision might be pursued — the order in which to pursue the order.

Some issues in church life are simple and can be addressed in single actions. These issues might appear on the pastors’ meeting agenda once, and in a manner of minutes, a next and final action becomes clear. This was no knot; just a need. The pastors gave it their brief focus, made a decision, and life moves on.

But other issues are complex and cannot be tackled all at once. They appear on the agenda meeting after meeting for a season. These thorny situations cannot be adequately addressed in a single discussion and action but require a sequence of actions — some particular wise arrangement of steps, in proper succession, toward the goal of restored order.

This sequence is the order on the way to order. This is the kind of order Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 15:22–24, where one item follows another in proper sequence:

in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end . . .

We see such ordered sequences particularly in Luke’s Gospel and its sequel. Luke explicitly set out “to write an orderly account” (Luke 1:3) and speaks of events in the life of Christ that followed after others (Luke 8:1). In Acts, Peter explains his story “in order” (Acts 11:4), specific prophets follow after others (Acts 3:24), and Paul moves “from one place to the next” in his missionary journeys (Acts 18:23).

In God’s ordered world, sequences matter — in biblical events, and in pastoral ministry — and especially when we encounter the most complex and convoluted of knots. Able oversight (“ruling well,” 1 Timothy 5:17) requires more than a single moment, meeting, action, or conversation, but humble and evolving multiple-step processes of pastoral attention, and the pastoral superpower called patience.

Call for Attention

First, gnarly pastoral knots demand our attention and engagement. Here the danger is neglect. We’d rather not deal with this complicated and emotionally draining issue: the divisive person, the troubled marriage, the flagging finances. We got into this work to preach and teach the Bible, and would rather not have to untangle all these thorny knots.

True, some potential ministry “black holes” might quickly drain far more energy and time from us than they are worth. We can consider that and set boundaries. But negligence is not the answer. Rather, as a team, we need to dedicate sufficient time to getting our minds together around enough of the details to make wise collective decisions that aren’t manifestly distorted by glaring unawareness.

Our tendency once briefed, especially as men, can be to get the problem fixed all at once. Again, some pastoral issues require only one step. But many need sequences. And when we come across these complicated knotty ones, we do well to identify one clear, worthwhile next step, even as we begin to envision some kind of sequence of actions toward resolution, whether it might take weeks or months or longer.

The need of the hour is to decide what step to take next, then gather further intel, and later identify the following step. All the while, the team keeps moving the issue forward, however deliberate the pace, and doesn’t let it stall out and go underground.

Call for Patience

It’s one thing to get up to speed and begin a sequence, one careful step at a time. But it’s another to walk the process with patience. And note well, true patience is not neglect. Patience is not slumber or naivety. Patience is wide awake and alert, with self-control.

Here the danger is hurry. We’ve assessed the problem and are ready to fix it right now. But complex knots can’t be expedited. We must untangle a thread at a time. Often these clusters are so layered that we cannot see all its sections at the outset. We need to first untangle a strand or two, or a few, to then get a line of sight deeper into the nub and discern what steps will follow.

Christian patience is not laxity. Nor is it weak, if rightly exercised, but a force for good. Spurgeon was speaking about his deacons, but might as well have been speaking of pastor-elders, when he said that such spiritually mature men “reduce chaos to order by the mere force of Christian patience” (Spurgeon the Pastor, 162). Even if we don’t smite the beast in one fell swoop, there is power in a band of godly men deliberately surrounding a nuisance, keeping their eyes on it, and moving slowly toward it together. We can be confident of resolution in due time.

After all, the pastor-elders should embody and exemplify normal, healthy Christian maturity, and be among the most patient souls in the church, and also the least resigned. They should be resolute about not being lazy or apathetic, and be assured of Christ’s commitment to build and bless his church.

We learn to roll our anxieties onto the broad shoulders of our chief Shepherd, and try to count it a privilege, rather than burden, to work at untying these knots.

“Tell Bud, ministry isn’t everything. Jesus is.”

Ray Ortlund Jr. tells the story of his father’s last words for him. Ray and his wife were overseas on July 22, 2007, when Ray Sr. awoke in his hospital room in Newport Beach, California, and realized that day would be his last. The rest of the family gathered to read Scripture and sing. Then the dying patriarch went around the room addressing his beloved with final blessings and admonitions.

“Bud” wasn’t in the room, so Ray Sr. left these memorable, and beautiful, last words to pass along to the son who had followed him into full-time ministry.

For two decades, beginning in the late fifties, Ray Sr. had been pastor of Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, where he had pastored a young seminarian named John Piper and convinced him that, despite the talk of the late sixties, the local church had a future, and always would. Ray Sr.’s name and signature are affixed to Piper’s ordination certificate dated June 8, 1975.

Ray Sr. loved the church, and gave decades of his life to full-time Christian ministry. So, on his deathbed in 2007, he was no armchair critic throwing shade on his beloved son. But he was a man who knew his own heart, and his son’s. He knew both the remarkable joys of pastoral work and the attendant dangers. And he knew where his final counsel should terminate: on the one who is the sovereign Joy.

Good Work, Great Joys

At the outset of the pastor-elder qualifications, the apostle talks joy: “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Timothy 3:1). This labor is bound up with aspiration, desire, joy.

“Noble task” here is literally “good work.” He desires a good work. Christian ministry is good work — and work to be done by those who desire it. Ministry is not for those who don’t really want to do it but can exercise their will to make the sacrifice for Jesus. Rather, in this calling, aspiration and the desire for joy are nonnegotiable.

In the pastoral vocation, as distinct from other callings, laboring from joy, with joy, and for joy is essential. According to Hebrews 13:17, pastors must labor “with joy and not with groaning” if they are to be an “advantage” to their people’s faith, rather than a disadvantage. So too Peter requires that pastor-elders work “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly” (1 Peter 5:2).

Christian ministry is good work, and often joyful, to be undertaken by those who desire and anticipate the joys that will make its many hardships sufferable. Yet in such good and joy-giving work lies a danger. It’s the good, more often than the overtly evil, that inches its way past Christ himself as foremost in the Christian minister’s heart.

Ministry Joys, Amen

Jesus himself puts his finger, and surpassingly powerful words, on this precise point in Luke 10:20.

“In the pastoral vocation, as distinct from other callings, laboring from joy, with joy, and for joy is essential.”

Jesus had sent six dozen “others,” beyond the twelve disciples, “on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go” (Luke 10:1). He commissioned these 72 with solemnity, warning them about rejection and being “as lambs in the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:2–16). Yet their training exercise proved far more fruitful than they might have anticipated, and they were thrilled. They return with joy, exclaiming, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” (Luke 10:17).

Jesus, the master teacher, seizes upon the importance of this moment. Here is an opportunity to leave an impression for a lifetime, and for the whole church age. To be sure, it is no evil to rejoice in ministry fruit, to find joy in what God Almighty graciously chooses to accomplish through his people in the lives of others, whether in preaching and teaching, or offering cold water, or dispatching demons.

Here the 72 marvel, in part, at “even the demons.” Their joys were not only those of steady-stream, ordinary ministry but the pulsing thrills of the extraordinary, the delight of the unexpected, the felt-sense of supernatural power. Clearly their ministry had been fruitful. The 72 were not mistaken in what they observed and reported. Jesus affirms it, and their joy: “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). “Yes,” Jesus says, in effect. “These are real joys and good ones. It is right to rejoice at seeing God’s kingdom advance and oppressed souls set free.”

Then comes the twist.

Ten Thousand Times Better

Jesus stuns the delighted ministers by transposing their song into a different register. He honors ministry joys, and does so by taking them up into heaven, making the moment electric by drawing attention to what is even more important:

Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:20)

Surprising as it may be, spirits subject to you is really a small thing in Jesus’s way of reckoning. Even greater than what God does through his ministers, even over supernatural powers, is what he does for them. Far surpassing a ministry name below is the etching of their names above. With the declaration “your names are written in heaven,” Jesus puts ministry joys in their place — for the 72 and for us — not by talking them down, but by talking up something even better.

How much better? As good and right as it can be to rejoice in ministry fruit, here Jesus would have us feel the force of the contrast. He says, “Rejoice not in this . . .” Jesus does not oppose ministry joys, or charge us, universally, to never rejoice in them. Rather, Luke 10:20 is an acutely comparative statement, cast in these simple, stark terms to emphasize how much greater our rejoicing can be, should be, will be, in what God does for us than in what he chooses to do through us.

Which is why “names written in heaven” matters so much.

Where We Enjoy God Himself

“Names written in heaven” is so significant because God himself, in Christ, is the sovereign Joy, the Joy of all joys, and heaven is where he is. “Names written in heaven” is the surpassingly superior joy not because heaven gives us all that our hearts want apart from God, but because there, in the immediate presence of God, we get proximity to him, closeness to him, unhindered enjoyment of him.

“The heart of Christian ministry is the person and work of Christ, not the person and work of the minister.”

In heaven we get God himself. Heaven is where, finally, the many barriers and distractions and veils of earth are removed, that we, without further obstruction and distortion, might more fully know and enjoy the one we were made to know and enjoy.

Which brings us back to the dangers that accompany ministry joys, as good and important as they are.

Made for More Than Ministry

When working for Christ takes the place of Christ himself as the chief enjoyment in the soul, the shift is both subtle and significant. The incremental incursions can be so small as to be hardly recognizable at first, but if the pattern persists, the long arc will be utterly devastating — to the minister himself and to his people. Paul thought it perilous enough to issue repeated warnings to ministers to pay careful attention not only to the flock and to their teaching but to themselves. “Pay careful attention to yourselves” (Acts 20:28). “Keep a close watch on yourself” (1 Timothy 4:16).

Christian ministry is undermined, and soon utterly corrupted and ruined, when the ministry itself becomes first and foremost in the soul. The nature of Christian ministry is such that it cannot long operate, and will not in the end prove fruitful (no matter how successful it seems in the moment), if it turns in on itself as the sovereign joy. The very nature of Christian ministry is that the person and work of Christ himself is the origin and essence, not the person and work of the minister for him. The minister’s work is important, but as a second principle; Christ’s work, and Christ himself, is vital as the first and final principle.

Ministry for the King can be treasonous if it becomes a replacement of the King himself. And the peril is in how subtle and common a shift it is, even for the healthiest of Christian workers. Yet we have this hope: how readily the hearts of healthy ministers fly back to their first love when awakened to marks of the subtle shift.

Practically, the return can happen each new morning, with our nose in the humbling word and prayer. It comes through knowing our sin and being honest about our ongoing failures, weaknesses, and needs for change. It comes, then, through never letting the world-changing weight and wonder of Matthew 9:2 become old hat: “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” And apart from our initiative, it comes through God’s special brew of providence in our lives, his particular humbling moments, seasons, and conditions for each of us. He has his ways. For some, it’s marriage or parenting. For others, it’s finances. For others still, disease, disability, chronic pain, the devastating setback.

Ministry Isn’t Everything

Ray Sr.’s final words to “Bud” were perceptive. And much like Jesus’s own to the 72. And every pastor and minister and missionary — all those in full-time ministry vocations and beyond, in all posts of formal and informal labor — will do well to heed them from Ray Sr., as Bud did, and all the more from Jesus.

Jesus is the Joy of all our joys. Apart from him as central and supreme, ministry joys soon hollow and spoil. Yet, with the King of kings himself on the throne of our soul, the ministry joys of sharing him with others are real and substantial, and continually lead us back to him.

In the time it takes to read the Bible cover to cover, you could read the Westminster Confession almost seventy times.

Just think of it. Westminster, seventy times through. Almost four centuries ago, 120 of the best English-speaking pastors and theologians in the world labored for three years to hammer out the key theological and ethical teachings of Scripture. What good might it do you for a lifetime if you worked diligently through those learned 12,000 words some five or six dozen times?

Cast in such terms, normal Bible reading can begin to seem inefficient. Might your time be better spent in seventy readings of Westminster than one long journey through the whole terrain of Scripture with its genealogies, cultic regulations, esoteric aphorisms, and minor prophets?

Hopefully, you would answer “no,” but in responding to a question put that way, you might intuit both the profit and peril of our creeds and confessions.

Wonder and Danger of Creeds

The usefulness of such creeds is bound up with their brevity — whether it’s the longer 12,000 words of Westminster or the tight 200 of Nicea. What wonderful, helpful, instructive summaries faithful creeds and confessions can be! The full text of Westminster can be read, at a reasonable pace, in about an hour. It’s just a little more than 1% of the Bible’s length, and it is, by and large, a very good synthesis of Scripture’s teaching.

It is remarkable to rehearse the enduring Reformed formulations that emerged in that ninety-year period, beginning a generation after the Reformation (from the 1560s to 1640s):

1561: Belgic Confession1563: Heidelberg Catechism1619: Canons of Dort1648: Westminster Standards

Some adherents to Westminster today will tell you that the task of reformation was great but finite — and by 1648 it was essentially done. With the advent of Westminster, they say, the church’s doctrine, worship, and government were, at last, reformed. The project was complete; the last four centuries have brought plenty risk of erosion but no real exercises in improvement.

Others in the Reformed camp think differently — and these varying instincts have often clashed over what might be the most controversial of Reformed theology’s handful of Latin maxims: semper reformanda, “always reforming.”

Origin and Context

The oldest record of something like the phrase is in a 1674 devotional book by Dutch Reformed pastor Jodocus van Lodenstein (1620–1677). He juxtaposed “Reformed” and “reforming” not to plead for formal doctrinal improvements but for the reforming of the human hearts of professedly Reformed readers. His concerns were pietistic and devotional, and as Robert Godfrey writes, these “concerns were very similar to those of the English Puritans.”

Kevin DeYoung emphasizes the need to consider the context: “It is important to see the entirety of van Lodenstein’s phrase: ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbi Dei (‘the church is Reformed and always [in need of] being reformed according to the Word of God’).” Observe here the twin assertions — the church is both (1) “Reformed” as well as (2) “being reformed” — with two passive verbs, ending with the standard of that action: the word of God. As DeYoung, Godfrey, and others rightly stress, it’s not that the church is “being reformed” by the winds of the times but “according to Scripture,” by the ancient rule of God’s written word.

Semper reformanda, then, as a corollary of sola Scriptura, is not a call to revise for the sake of revising, or to assimilate with contemporary patterns of unbelief. Rather, it’s a reminder of our personal and ecclesial entropy, our gradual decline into the disorder of sin, our tendency to wander from Scripture’s doctrines and ethics. Without fresh effort and energies, and drinking ourselves from the headwaters of Scripture, the church’s life and doctrine will soon decline and erode.

Yet even in context, and with such disclaimers, the maxim unnerves some Reformed bents and inclinations.

What We Don’t Reform

Here on Reformation Day, as we remember the impulse of “always being reformed,” we clarify anew what we do not seek to reform: the substance of true doctrine.

For two millennia, Christ’s final word that is Scripture has been complete, objective, and fixed. The external word of the Scriptures has not changed or been added to since Patmos. For sure, not only individuals, but Christian communities, and the church at large, have grown and made improvements in these many centuries in understanding and articulating and applying God’s word. With the written word complete, the Holy Spirit has not been inactive, distant, or ineffective in working in his people to better know and appropriate the ancient word. But Scripture itself, what it teaches, and thus the substance of true doctrine has not changed and is in no need of reform or update.

To be clear, semper reformanda is not a blank check to rethink our doctrine from scratch in this generation.

What We Keep Reforming

What, then, do we seek to reform in an ongoing manner? Or, in what ways are we the church “always being reformed”?

In sum, we seek to reform any large or small ways in which we have received, expressed, or applied the substance wrong. Our assumption should not be that our own tradition, however generally faithful, contains no errors or imbalances. Rather, the question is whether we might, in time, truly identify them and improve upon them.

In his memorable essay called “In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism,” Reformed theologian John Frame quotes his own professor of theology, the great John Murray, to this effect (emphasis added):

However epochal have been the advances made at certain periods and however great the contributions of particular men we may not suppose that theological construction ever reaches definitive finality. There is the danger of a stagnant traditionalism and we must be alert to this danger, on the one hand, and to that of discarding our historical moorings, on the other.

Murray issues this warning to Reformed types — like himself and Frame and me — who admire and cherish our theological tradition:

When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation.

This taps on a long-standing fault line in the Reformed tradition. Some, like Murray, thrill to explore for themselves the riches of divine revelation; to others, this thought is more unsettling. Deep down, might they rather read Westminster seventy times than Scripture once? A right conception of semper reformanda presses on the tension.

In the essay, Frame provides various insights into how a true view of sola Scriptura (and with it, semper reformanda) will not only draw us “to explore [for ourselves] the riches of divine revelation” but lead, in time, to a kind of “creativity motivated by Scripture itself” — that is, not to “a stagnant traditionalism, but to a flourishing of original and impressive theological thought.” Now the stricter sect really begins to sweat.

Scripture, taken in practice as the final word (that both Scripture itself and our confessions claim it to be), “provides us with a powerful tool for the critical analysis of culture,” Frame continues, both our own and those of the past, and “guards us against both secularism and traditionalism.” That is, we will be shielded from making new mistakes as the society around us shifts, and we will see afresh what outright errors and lesser forms of expression we might improve upon with the ongoing work of “being reformed.”

We Reform Us

While our “always being reformed” will not include the substance of true doctrine, it may involve how we teach and express the doctrines in our generation. And putting in the energy to say the timeless substance in fresh contemporary ways will both deepen our own understanding (and our hearers) as well as open up our doctrine to some hearers who found the old articulations obscure or inaccessible. The times, into which we speak timeless truths, do change, and so, if we are faithful, our own preferred expressions and formulations will iterate over time. Even then, we observe a kind of conservatizing force in doctrinal formulation. For one, change risks new error. So, we do not recklessly reach for “fresh” language, or do so before it is time.

In the end, the heart of what we keep reforming centers on ourselves — and in particular, as was van Lodenstein’s original concern, our own hearts. “The part of religion that always needs reforming,” says Godfrey, “is the human heart.” We seek to search and address our own personal and communal and generational sins and shortcomings. We reform us, according to God’s word. At the heart of “always reforming” is “we,” “us,” and “ourselves.” And especially our hearts.

The question semper reformanda presses home today, as it did 350 years ago, is this: How is your heart? Are you content with formal religion, with historically accurate doctrines and external observance? Have you made peace with the appearance of godliness while denying its power in the inner man (2 Timothy 3:5)? Is your Christianity a religion of the heart? Have you been born again, or just baptized? Do you love and delight in Jesus and all God reveals himself to be for us in him?

Search the Scriptures

You will search in vain for a magic date, or magic year, when the Reformation was completed. The work continues, and most of all in us. Might we, then, just as well claim “no creed but the Bible”?

If “no creed” means subscribing to some other “Creed” as our final say, our last authority, our norming norm, some other human document over Scripture, then yes, no Creed, in that way. We have no final say but Scripture alone.

But if “no creed” means taking up no careful, expressed summary of key Christian doctrines and beliefs, then no, that is naïve. We have and love and benefit greatly from faithful formulations. And, as the Desiring God affirmation confesses,

We do not claim infallibility for this affirmation and are open to refinement and correction from Scripture. Yet we do hold firmly to these truths as we see them and call on others to search the Scriptures to see if these things are so. As conversation and debate take place, it may be that we will learn from each other, and the boundaries will be adjusted, even possibly folding formerly disagreeing groups into closer fellowship. (15.4)

With love for our confessions, we gladly default to Scripture itself, citing its chapters and verses, and counting the tradition of noble Bereans to be that, in essence, of the Westminster divines: “they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

What better course might Reformation Day inspire than a lifetime of diligent studies in our confessions, all within the context of an eager daily exploration of Scripture?

We live in times of great cynicism about leaders. From politicians, to leaders in business and entertainment, to spiritual leaders — we find ourselves surrounded by stories of leadership failures.

Yet even in our growing suspicions, we cannot be done with the idea of leadership. It is both a practical necessity and a deep longing in the human heart. We were made for true leaders, and we ache for them, for good leaders who will bless and work for the good of their followers, rather than use them.

This angst about leaders in our times makes Psalm 72 an especially relevant word. And not just us as humans and those alive today, but also particularly at our church, as we’ll see.

Who Is This King?

Psalm 72 is a prayer for the ideal leader. It’s a 3,000-year-old prayer, cast in the terms of ancient Israel, and yet the vision is strikingly timeless, both in its ultimate fulfillment and in its personal application to all of us. We all are led, and most of us serve as leaders in some aspect of our lives, whether as father, mother, or older sibling, or perhaps at work, on a team, in the neighborhood, or for extended family.

Now, the question we might have on the face of Psalm 72 is, Who is this king, the one that the prayer was originally for? The superscript at the beginning says, “Of Solomon.” Does that mean Solomon wrote it for his son? But verse 20, at the end, says, “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” Does that imply this is David’s prayer for his “royal son,” Solomon?

I think that an aging David, praying for his son, may make the most sense in the full context. (Themes here belong to the same era as David’s final words in 2 Samuel 23 and Solomon’s prayer in his early reign in 1 Kings 3.)

But as I hope you expect by now, almost halfway through the book of Psalms, this psalm is going to end up being about Jesus. Sometimes it’s subtle enough that we deal with the psalm mainly as is, showing in the end how it points to Jesus. This one is not subtle.

Now, it’s not strictly messianic like Psalm 110. This really is a prayer for Solomon, and other royal sons in his line. Yet the vision is so expansive. Verses 5–7 pray for a king without end; verses 8–11, for a king without borders. The majesty of this king — for all time, over all places and nations — swells beyond what any Israelite king ever realized or even came close to.

So, as Christians, we know where this is going. David may have prayed this for his royal son, and Solomon for his. But only the one Messiah fulfills this vision — that is, only Jesus.

Four Aspects of the Ideal Leader

Still, Psalm 72 has relevance beyond Jesus, in real-life manifestations, in various imperfect measures, in those of us today who seek to walk as leaders in Christ’s steps and have his help. Every good and godly leader instantiates this vision in some real, though imperfect, ways.

So, as we look at Psalm 72, let’s highlight four aspects of this ideal leader, fulfilled perfectly and primarily in Jesus, but secondarily and imperfectly in Christian leaders of all kinds today.

1. His people flourish. (verses 15–17)

Verse 7 prays, “In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound.” Then verses 15–17 flesh out this flourishing:

Long may he live;     may gold of Sheba be given to him!May prayer be made for him continually,     and blessings invoked for him all the day!May there be abundance of grain in the land;     on the tops of the mountains may it wave;     may its fruit be like Lebanon;and may people blossom in the cities     like the grass of the field!May his name endure forever,     his fame continue as long as the sun!May people be blessed in him,     all nations call him blessed!

One aspect of this ideal leader is that his people flourish. How so?

For one, they have; they possess resources. They have abundance of grain and fruit (verse 16). And even “the tops of the mountains” — that is, “the most surprising of soils” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 257) — wave with abundance. Under this ideal leader, the people prosper. He leads them in such a way that they steward the land and work it and harvest its produce, rather than squandering it. But they not only have; they give. They have gold, says verse 15, from which they give tribute to their king.

Yet they are not only a material people, having and giving wealth, but also a spiritual people. They pray for their king, making “prayer . . . for him continually” and invoking God’s “blessings . . . for him all the day!” (verse 15). This is an essential mark of a flourishing people: they are spiritual. They acknowledge and reverence God, praying to him for their leaders and everything else.

And as they pray, and God answers, and their leaders prove mature and wise, the people flourish even more, and so they multiply. The end of verse 17 says, “May people be blessed in him, all nations call him blessed!” Verses 8–11 mention desert tribes, kings from faraway coastlands, and the very ends of the earth.

Blossom in the Cities?

Verse 16 includes something that may sound strange to us in 2023: “May people blossom in the cities like the grass of the field!” You might think, “In the cities, the places from which so many seem to move away? Maybe in the prairies! Maybe near the lakes, in the country, in the small towns, on the farm, but not in the cities, at least not the Twin Cities. Get me to the Dakotas and wide-open spaces. Isn’t that now the place to blossom and flourish?”

It might be, for a short time. Yet the prayer of verse 16 gives us a glimpse of how we might think Christianly about cities, specifically the Twin Cities in which we live.

Just this week, I was in Manhattan with my young family of six, including an 8-year-old and 6-year-old. From there we took the train and stayed in downtown Philadelphia. Then on our way home, we had a flight delayed, missed our connection in Detroit, and couldn’t find room for six on a flight back to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport until two days later. We spent two unplanned nights in Detroit, so we’ve been on quite the city tour in the last week. We have seen the best and worst of American cities, and none of it feels especially easy for young families.

Yet here in Psalm 72, in this prayer for the future, David envisions God’s people blossoming in the cities. That is, in the cities, with all the challenges of their densities and pressures and crowdedness, God’s people blossom as humans. We were made for cities, at least eventually. And cities themselves, in all their strengths and complexities and opportunities are the blossoming of human civilization and industriousness. Cities, not prairies, are our future, both in this age and forever.

Manhattan is not becoming more rural, but our world is slowly becoming more like Manhattan. The world is growing toward cities — and good cities are God’s world in bloom. As a church in the central metro, filled with people from all around the metro, urban and suburban, we can be encouraged by this vision and prayer. Blossoming in the cities can happen, even in this age. It’s possible. Pray for it. Endure in it. And one day, for sure, it will happen under the full and final reign of the ideal leader.

Which relates to that little phrase in verse 17: “in him.” Zoom out, and you’ll see, “May people be blessed in him.” To understand the flourishing of the people, we need to know more about the leader himself.

2. His strengths serve his people’s good. (verses 1–4)

Look at the first four verses:

Give the king your justice, O God,     and your righteousness to the royal son!May he judge your people with righteousness,     and your poor with justice!Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people,     and the hills, in righteousness!May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,     give deliverance to the children of the needy,     and crush the oppressor!

There is a threefold vision here for the skills or abilities or competencies or strengths of this ideal king.

First is his ability to make the decisions that leadership requires, to make wise and skilled judgments. The king decides. Verse 1 is literally, “Give the king your judgments [plural], O God.” In other words, make him wise and discerning in the countless decisions it takes to lead well. Help him to know, in the ever-changing and ever-complex situations of life and leadership, how to navigate the moment not for his own private good but for the good of his people, to think for their good as a whole (which is often more costly to the leader). People who flourish are guided by leaders who are wise and judge justly.

Second, the king provides. We saw the mention of mountains in verse 16. So here, “mountains bear[ing] prosperity for the people” is a sign of abundance. And we can say this about the king’s leadership: he guides the people in such a way that they steward the land and reap its natural benefits in season. They at least conserve the land; they sow in the spring and gather at harvest. And so, through his able leadership, he provides for the people.

Then third, according to verse 4, he protects his people. Which has two parts: he defends the cause of the vulnerable, and he crushes the oppressors of the vulnerable. The two go together. Oppressors don’t just quietly go away when the king arrives to defend his people. Oppressors must be confronted and defeated. To protect his people, the king must crush his enemies.

Note how the ideal king not only exercises wisdom and provides for his people, but also protects them, particularly those who are truly weak and needy and poor, that is, those without the power to protect themselves. The leader leverages his strength to protect his people who are weak.

This is what Jesus does for us. Which is why Christians, from the very beginning, have been people with hearts to help the weak, the needy, the poor, the orphan, the widow, the unborn. This leads to a third aspect of this ideal leader.

3. His heart pities the needy. (verses 12–14)

There’s a flash of his heart in verse 6: “May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth!” This is very similar to how David talks in his last words, recorded in 2 Samuel 23:3–4:

When one rules justly over men,     ruling in the fear of God,he dawns on them like the morning light,     like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning,     like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.

This image of life-giving rain goes back to Moses in Deuteronomy 32:2, where he says,

May my teaching drop as the rain,     my speech distill as the dew,like gentle rain upon the tender grass,     and like showers upon the herb.

Gentle rain is an insightful picture of good leadership. Think about what rain can do for crops. A gentle rain gives life, but a driving, violent rain destroys. This is what gentleness in leadership is. It is not weakness. Rather, it is strength applied to life-giving rather than life-harming ends. Gentle leaders are not weak. Rather, they are strong, and they know how to exercise that strength so as to help their people, rather than hurt them. Which begins in the leader’s heart.

Worship Won by Mercy

Verses 12–14 expand on this prayer, and (this is very important) these verses give the reason why his dominion extends so far (verses 8–11), to include the ends of the earth and all kings and nations:

For he delivers the needy when he calls,     the poor and him who has no helper.He has pity on the weak and the needy,     and saves the lives of the needy.From oppression and violence he redeems their life,     and precious is their blood in his sight.

There is only one “for” or “because” in Psalm 72 — at the beginning of verse 12. It shows verses 12–14, humanly speaking, to be the reason why this king’s dominion stretches so far, and why so many bow the knee to him.

Verse 11: “May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him!”
Then verse 12: “For he delivers the needy.”

In other words, this ideal king wins the nations with his mercy. He may conquer hostile foes by force, but he does not win worshipers with the sword. He wins worship with his stunning mercy. He works for the joy of the needy, the weak, the poor, and in doing so, he reveals his warm heart of pity and compassion and wins others to bow the knee. As we sang this morning in the words of Isaac Watts, which were inspired by Psalm 72,

People and realms of every tonguedwell on his love with sweetest song.

This ideal king, in all this unequaled strength and wisdom and wealth, has pity on his weak people. He has compassion for the needy. He is sympathetic to the desperate, the humble, those who own their need of rescue. And this heart of mercy wins the nations.

Crush the Oppressor?

What about the tension between verses 4 and 14?

Verse 14 says he redeems them “from oppression and violence.”
Verse 4 says he “crush[es] the oppressor” of his people.

Now we’re not asking about his gentleness with his people, but his strength in protecting them. And when he does so, does he oppose violence or use it? “Crush the oppressor” is strong language. It sure sounds violent.

The answer is at least this: The way he opposes violence, of necessity, is by crushing the oppressors. Crushing a known oppressor is very different than oppressing with violence. Jesus is never the oppressor; he crushes the oppressors, and in a very unexpected way.

And that leads to a final aspect of this ideal leader.

4. His God gets glory. (verses 18–19)

It’s amazing that Psalm 72 ends the way it does. The glory of the king in verse 17 — his name, his fame — gives way to the glory of his God in verses 18–19:

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,     who alone does wondrous things.Blessed be his glorious name forever;     may the whole earth be filled with his glory!Amen and Amen!

As wondrous as this ideal leader is in his wise decisions and gracious provisions and strong protection of his people and stunning mercy, verse 18 says that “[God] alone does wondrous things.” In other words, the wondrous works of this good, godly leader are wondrous works of God.

Not only does the king’s name and fame endure forever, but also God’s “glorious name” (verse 19) will be praised forever, in the whole earth. Without end and without limit. No expiration and no borders.

Note that Psalm 72 doesn’t say that God gets the glory and not the king. Oh, the king gets glory, honor, and praise indeed: gifts of gold, cries of “Long live the king!” an enduring name, ongoing fame — yet all that in complement to, not competition with, the glory of his God. You might even hear Philippians 2:9–11:

God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Which leads to two particular words of hope for us as a church in this season.

Our Church, Right Now

The first word concerns this perfect leader, the fulfillment of Psalm 72, Christ himself. He is reigning now. He died, he rose, he ascended, he took his seat at the Father’s right hand, he is alive, and we have him now.

The leader we long for, the leader this psalm prays for — we have him now. The great leader has come, and is on the throne, and has sent his Spirit. Even now, he has spoken and still speaks. He builds his church, he decides for us, he guides us, he leads us, and he will judge justly and right every wrong. As Christians, we have the leader our souls long for, though we can be so quick to forget it.

For our first five years as a church, we had no pastoral transitions. But in the last three years, we have had pastors move to Wisconsin, to Washington State, to Missouri, to Florida, to Idaho. That’s no condemnation. People move. They didn’t leave the faith; they only left the state. Undershepherds will come and go; Jesus will not. The undershepherds are not the chief Shepherd of the church. Jesus is, and he is the one true, perfect, immovable leader.

The second word of hope concerns your imperfect leaders who remain — and your own imperfections in your various callings of leadership. This is such good news: the chief Shepherd changes us as part of his rescue of the weak and needy. He brings this vision, this prayer of Psalm 72, to life in real measures in leaders today.

So pray for it, and expect it, in your pastors. And pray for it, and seek to be it, in your various callings of leadership. He changes people. No matter what they say, change is possible. Don’t give up on anyone, including yourself. And in your leadership disappointments — with yourself and with other leaders — look through and beyond to the true King.

In him, we remember that, and admit that, we are not the ideal leader, and we can repent like it. And in Jesus, we not only admit that we are not him, but we can even take joy in admitting it, because he’s the kind of king who has pity on those who know themselves weak and needy. He came to call sinners, not the righteous.

Whether father or mother, executive or manager, block leader or team captain, pastor or deacon, we can lay aside the pretense of perfection. We can own our neediness and weakness and failures, not to mope about them or wallow in them, but to know the strength and mercy of our King. He is good. He is generous. He is compassionate. He is wide-hearted. We come to his Table.

Receive Abundant Mercy

Along with blossoming in the cities, verse 16 mentions an abundance of grain and fruit — which is how we get bread and wine. Not only does the ideal leader, King Jesus, exercise wisdom and provide for and protect his people, but it is only possible through his self-giving at the cross.

He shed his own blood to show the preciousness of the life of his needy, weak people. His providing an abundance of grain and fruit, including the bread and cup of this Table, is not cheap, but costly, at the price of his own blood.

And in that very moment when he decisively crushed Satan, the oppressor of his people, he showed his people his mercy. The cross is the supreme manifestation of regal mercy. It is the place where the King triumphs, the ground of all kings and nations falling down before him. And his cross purchases not merely the pardon of his people but our blossoming — even in the Cities.

It was a long, shameful walk back to the hunting cabin.

For well over an hour, I had sat in the deer stand, happily reading and enjoying the quiet morning. Then I felt the loose bullets rattle in my pocket. I turned and looked. Oh no.

I had forgotten my rifle.

No choice now but to go back for it. The rest of the men in our extended family were tucked away in their own stands. They wouldn’t see me go back for my gun. But they would hear about it. Oh, would they. The cabin, teeming with our wives and children, would all too gladly report on my “hunt.” I could see pairs of eyes gawking through the window as I came up the dirt road. They gathered around and met me with barbs and laughter at the door.

Years later, I’m yet to live it down (and rightfully so). Now every fall we hear, “Remember the time Uncle David . . .”

Hunting Without a Rifle

I’m a terribly amateur hunter. I easily smile and chuckle about once forgetting my rifle. For me, the real joy in that quiet deer stand is unhurried Bible meditation and prayer. Getting the big buck is a distant second.

As a pastor, however, it would be a serious shame if I took the stand without my weapon. That is, if I entered the pulpit without the sword — without the staff, the wand, the scalpel for the most exacting of operations, the singular instrument of our holy calling. Without the Book, a Christian preacher is unequipped and incompetent. He is left, tragically, to preach his own ideas, his own preferences, his own lifehacks, his own self. When the act does not begin, persist, and conclude with faithfully delivering the message of another, it is, in reality, pretend preaching, not the real thing.

But with the Book in hand, with the Scriptures, with the word of truth about Christ and his work — and with the one weapon well-worn and cherished, internalized and rightly handled — the mere man, finite and fallen, is God’s man for the preaching moment. This blade, well-known and well-handled, can take the head off an evil giant, and perform the most delicate of surgeries on saints. With it, take to the pulpit with a holy and humble confidence. Without it, take a long walk back to the cabin.

Put the Word to Work

As the apostle Paul ascends the mountain to that great “preach the word” peak in 2 Timothy 4:2, he charges his protégé and dear friend to use Scripture to fulfill his calling.

Use Scripture — that might sound strange. But this is not the use of exploitation or abuse. Rather, this is the use of attention, reverence, and trust. Take it up. Put it to work. God gave us his Book not to file it away on the shelf, but to use it. Read it, explain it, preach it. Repeat. And don’t dare pretend to preach without it.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable . . .

Scripture is profitable, beneficial, useful (to greatly understate it!) in the pastoral calling. With Scripture in hand, and in his mouth, the preacher is competent, capable, proficient for the various aspects of his calling — “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). But without it, he is incompetent, incapable, inept — no matter how elegant he sounds or what a “good communicator” he is.

How, then, might preachers today, both current practitioners and those who aspire, answer this timeless call to use the Book?

1. Handle It Privately

First, we hold it, touch it, taste it for ourselves, in private — and ideally for some years before regularly taking it into a pulpit. And then, once preaching, we continue to handle it privately in all the times and seasons we endure as pastors, and as Christians.

We learn to use Scripture to help others by using it to feed and restore our own souls morning by morning. First, we learn — over time, not overnight — how to handle Scripture for ourselves, leaning on God’s Spirit. He may be pleased to give early flashes of insight and sovereign protection from error, but he doesn’t make preachers without putting them to work and conditioning them for the long haul. The arc of good preaching is years in the making, beginning with understanding and applying God’s word rightly in our own minds and hearts and lives. The competent pastoral use of the word emerges not mainly from study sessions prior to public messages but from long-standing patterns of being conformed to God’s word in secret.

So, first, long before preaching, we quietly learn to handle God’s word for ourselves. We meditate on it and enjoy it — and enjoy God in it. We steep our souls in Scripture for years. We seek to know God’s word, as much as we can, inside and out, and have it take root, and bear fruit, in us.

2. Handle It Publicly

We then turn and make God’s word explicit in public teaching. In our sermons, we show God’s word to be our authority and driving inspiration — not our own ideas and opinions and observations and cleverness. We get our key insights from lingering in Scripture, and then we work to show our hearers where we got them. We don’t assume they will see it without our help, so we labor to make them see it for themselves.

Saturating a pulpit ministry in Scripture happens both directly and indirectly. Directly: by drawing attention to particular words and phrases, and quoting chapter and verse. Indirectly: by preparing and preaching from the kind of soul that is constantly shaped by Scripture over time, to think and feel in God’s cast of mind, rather than the world’s and our own.

3. Handle It Rightly

Now, when any modern man, in this age of the triumphant self, embraces the personal preciousness of God’s word and resolves to preach that Book, not his own thoughts and self, he has crossed the first critical hurdle. He becomes indelibly persuaded to handle the word, to use it at the heart of his preaching, and he does. This is a glorious start. The miracle has begun. Yet to fully instantiate the apostle’s vision in his final epistle, a second critical hurdle comes: rightly handling the word.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

That is, with a studied, steady hand, guide the word along a straight path. No distortive twists, no gratuitous incisions, no clever detours, no sleight of hand. With the skill of holy familiarity, take the blade from its scabbard, and wield it with precision, care, and self-control.

Handling Scripture rightly — that is, using it, without abusing it — can happen in countless ways, but here consider just two challenges among them.

Understand Truly

One, rightly handling means not cutting corners in the work of understanding what this text means (and does not mean). Study your passage for yourself long before you’re up against the deadline, and long before you check commentaries and other’s insights. Make time to steep in and ponder the text well before preaching it. And as you move from broad study to the narrow outline and presentation for this message, build your sermon on what you have seen for yourself, or can genuinely own as yours if another voice said it first.

Apply Duly

Two, rightly handling entails not cutting corners in the work of appropriate application, which can be the more challenging labor for many of us. We will not be content to have the message remain distant, and not bridge the gulf from the biblical to the present world.

This too will require planning ahead, giving ourselves space, and having the patience to discover what this particular text really means for our church (and not). We will not content ourselves with preaching right ethics from the wrong texts. We will yearn to do justice to the particular passage in front of us. We won’t make a habit of or excuses for forcing square Scriptures into round pegs of application. If the desired application is not there, we’ll find a faithful way to address it, and apply the text and/or another text that genuinely addresses the felt need of the congregation. We seek to work with the grain of God’s Spirit, not against him.

Whom Does the Sermon Exalt?

We could consider other misuses. A preacher might use Scripture, but too sparingly, garnishing his own ideas with verses out of context. He may abuse Scripture when the moral burden of his sermon originates elsewhere, with Bible texts then artificially pressed into a subordinate role, to show God on the side of whatever cause. Scripture also may be in use technically and yet without fitting priority and centrality. Opportunities for error are endless.

Good and faithful preaching is not only science but art. It’s a lifetime skill learned over years and decades, not weeks and months. Make a list of all the possible requirements in Christian preaching (including appropriate focus and sufficient brevity), and no single sermon will check all the boxes. In the complexities of the art, and the diversities of biblical texts, and vast variations of congregations around the world and throughout history, producing one single litmus test for preaching is likely impossible. But perhaps one check would come close: Whom does the sermon exalt?

We might ask, in the end, does the preacher himself look best? Do the hearers feel themselves raised up above all? Or is Jesus supremely exalted? Preachers, young and old, who aspire to use Scripture rightly, in their devotions and in their pulpits, can scarcely ask themselves enough, Who is supreme in this sermon?

Mention something “majestic” in nature, and many of us would think of mountains.

We might call to mind some great range of mountains, or a towering waterfall, or an expansive body of water with no end in sight. Majestic features are both imposing and attractive, both impressive and beautiful, both intimidating and inviting. They have a strange pull on the human soul, drawing on us to draw near, but with reverence and care.

In our language, as in biblical terms, the word majesty captures not only bigness but also beauty, awesome power combined with pleasant admiration, both great height or size and yet potential safety. Majesty brings together both greatness and goodness, both strength and splendor (Psalm 96:6). It’s not only a fitting descriptor for mountain majesties but also for God, who is, above all, “the Majestic One” (Isaiah 10:34). Psalm 76:4 declares in praise to him, “Glorious are you,” and then adds, “more majestic than the mountains.”

How Majestic His Name

Such divine majesty pulses with an expansive, evangelistic force. God is not only majestic in fact but also in renown. His greatness, his power, his glory are not to be hidden and kept secret, but to spread through sight and word far and wide, attaching his name to such greatness and glory. His majesty is to be known, and he to be known, by name.

In a song of high praise, Psalm 148 bids both kings and commoners, young men and maidens, old and young alike to praise God’s exalted name as an extension of his majesty:

Let them praise the name of the Lord,for his name alone is exalted;his majesty is above earth and heaven. (Psalm 148:13)

“Divine majesty pulses with an expansive, evangelistic force.”

So also Micah’s famous Bethlehem prophecy speaks of a great ruler arising, from the little town, who “shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth” (Micah 5:4).

Of course, nowhere is God’s majesty accented as memorably as in the first line of Psalm 8 and its refrain in the last. This is Scripture’s signature celebration of divine majesty. Yet here, God’s majesty is not like the renown of mere human splendor, whether of ancient Egypt or Babylon or Rome, or like the renown of a Washington or Napoleon, a Lincoln or Churchill. This psalm, perhaps surprisingly, largely assumes God’s natural majesty (as we might call it), equally visible to unbelieving eyes, while accenting his peculiar majesty — the summit of his beauty requiring a miracle of his grace to see and enjoy.

Two Modes of Majesty

Psalm 8 manifestly sings of glory — God’s glory, set above the heavens (verse 1), and man’s glory, appointed by God, as one he has “crowned . . . with glory and honor” (verse 5). And so, that memorable opening line, reprised as the final note, hails the majesty of God’s name:

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Here, under the banner of God’s majesty and excellence as his glory, we find two levels, or modes. First is what we might call a natural mode: the heavens (verses 1 and 3), the moon and the stars (verse 3), and we might presume the quintessential natural majesties like mountains and waterfalls and oceans, vast physical expanses that remind us of our smallness and the awe-inspiring bigness and authority and power of the one who made such majesties.

But then, second, is what we might call a special mode of his majesty, which is the particular emphasis of Psalm 8: verse 2 mentions the mouths of babies and infants (that is, the weak) testifying to his strength in the face of foes and the enemy and avenger. Then, at the heart of the psalm, verses 3–8 marvel at his grace toward mankind. In view of such natural majesties as the heavens (“your heavens”!) and moon and stars, and mountains, “What is man that you are mindful of him?”

“Yet,” says verse 5 — this is the “yet” of grace — God has made man “a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor.” In such a majestic creation, God has made man, with humanity’s smallness and limitations, in the divine image, and given him “dominion over the works of [God’s] hands.” The beasts of the field and birds of the heavens and fish of the sea are to be subject to man, thanks to God.

So, we find here both a natural majesty and special majesty. And Psalm 8, while acknowledging the obvious majesty of God in the bigness and beauty of creation, emphasizes “the unexpectedness of God’s ways” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 66) which further demonstrates his majesty — indeed is his majesty in full flower.

God reveals his greatness and power and glory not only through his heavens and moon and stars and mountains but also by confounding his foes with the praises of the weak. God shows himself majestic through the heavens and surpassingly so through humans — and in particular the ones we’re prone to least expect: the humble, the lowly, those who naturally seem least majestic.

Great God, Graced Man

The point of Psalm 8, then, is this: God’s grace toward man redounds to the glory of divine majesty, to the fame of God’s name, to the extension of his renown through his world. The sum of the psalm is not how great is man, but how graced is man — and how great is our God. And for the faithful, he is our God: “O Lord, our Lord.” He is majestic in his greatness, power, and glory — and exceedingly majestic in grace toward his people, so much so that he is our Lord.

Psalm 8 includes this striking dignifying of humanity, yet without leaving any doubt as to where the accent falls, thanks to the refrain. The first word, and the last word, lest we forget, is how majestic is God’s name. The primary emphasis, driven home in verse 9, is “God and his grace” (Kidner, 68).

High and Exalted, Exalting the Lowly

Behind Psalm 8, the second “song of majesty” is Psalm 145, where we also find “two modes” of divine majesty. The fourth stanza praises God’s regal highness in the more typical terms: glory and power, mighty deeds, situated in “his kingdom,” under his kingly dominion. This is the stuff of natural majesty. Then the fifth stanza unfolds this peculiar majesty for the enlightened eyes of his covenant people — the people to which God, amazingly, is kind, or literally loyal (verses 13b and 17) by his gracious covenant.

Psalm 138 also contains a parallel, at least in showing the surprising majesty of God, and the global advance of his renown, his name:

All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O Lord,for they have heard the words of your mouth,and they shall sing of the ways of the Lord,for great is the glory of the Lord.For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly,but the haughty he knows from afar. (Psalm 138:4–6)

“We thrill at God’s mercy for the lowly, and marvel at his justice for the wicked.”

Mark his royal highness. His greatness shines out all the more in how far he bends down to help the lowly. His majesty is on display not just in his capacity to resist and decimate strong foes, but in his merciful, gentle stooping to rescue his weak people. His majesty is unsurpassed both in its highness (above the highest heavens) and in its regard for the lowly, how far he can bend, and will bend, to rescue the needy, comfort the afflicted, provide for the poor, and exalt the humbled.

His majesty is unrivaled. His greatness, his power, his glory are unmatched. And yet, to this incomparable natural majesty he adds the very summit of his greatness: his peculiar majesty that stoops to show mercy, raise up the lowly, and rescue the humbled. He is surpassingly majestic in his person and capacities, and then, even more, in his grace and mercy. His people delight in his gentleness toward them, and in his fierceness with their foes. We thrill at his mercy for the lowly, and marvel at his justice for the wicked.

And now we know, as the psalmists could only anticipate, the personal manifestation of this surpassing and peculiar majesty. Which brings us to Isaiah’s enigmatic suffering servant.

No Majesty, Now Majestic

The great prophet foresaw one who would have “no form or majesty that we should look at him” (Isaiah 53:2). From beginning to end, the earthly life of Jesus magnified the majesty of his Father. Jesus so spoke, and so acted, that as Luke 9:43 reports, “all were astonished at the majesty of God.”

Yet, even then, in the earthly ministry of Christ, a greater and more stunning majesty remained. Luke continues, “But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men’” (Luke 9:43–44). That is, he would accent the display of this emerging majesty with an unexpected and special majesty.

To natural eyes, Jesus had no form or majesty that we should look at him. Now he became to the eyes of faith the supremely majestic one. After the resurrection, eyes now fully opened to grace, Peter testifies of being an eyewitness to his majesty (2 Peter 1:16–17). Now the one without natural majesty, who humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, has been super-exalted and seated at the right hand of Majesty.

Which might remind us of what Hebrews 2:8 comments about man in Psalm 8: “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” But then he adds in verse 9, “But we see him,” that is, the God-man.

We see Jesus, who — by virtue of his becoming man, suffering, dying for us, rising in triumph, and ascending to sit at the right hand of Majesty — has become the first to fulfill the vision of Psalm 8, with all things under his feet. Not only is divine majesty on display through this man, but he is divine Majesty himself, shining in the peculiar glory that outstrips and surpasses our best notions of natural glory.

When we turn to the highest majesty that can be conceived, we look and listen to Jesus.

Every morning summons us to a feast. With each new day, the inviting voice of Isaiah 55 beckons, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. . . . Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food” (Isaiah 55:1–2).

So, with the Book in hand, we turn Godward with the parched and famished soul of Psalm 63, acknowledging our need and anticipating his banquet: “My soul thirsts for you. . . . My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food” (Psalm 63:1, 5). In Christ, we come to God, through his word, as those who thirst come to water, to receive wine and milk without cost (Isaiah 55:1), as those who hunger to be satisfied with true bread.

Each new morning dawns with divine mercies to quench our thirst and satiate our souls.

Ideally, this is the main feel of morning meditation in God’s word: feeding, eating, drinking, being satisfied. Not the feel of battle and combat, but of feasting. But mark this: as sinners, in a cursed world, with a real enemy — to keep feeding, we also must fight.

Ordinary devotions are nothing less than war.

Devil Rise Early

“Did God actually say . . . ?”

From that very first temptation, the enemy has set his sights on the words of God. If we’ve already heard them, he’ll question them. But even better, he knows, would be to keep us from hearing God in the first place.

The devil and his team know how powerful are the words of God, and how vital they are for our life and health. They know the devastating power of ordinary Bible intake. They know the power of fire to warm coals, and the power of God’s word to feed saving faith and keep believing hearts soft. They know, and tremble at, the explosive, world-altering force of faithful Christians sitting down morning by morning — without fireworks or theatrics or applause — to the quiet glory of ordinary devotions.

So, the devils will do whatever they can to disrupt the morning feast. They launch their campaign under the cloak of darkness, and attack at dawn. But we are not left to be outwitted by their schemes, ignorant of satanic designs (2 Corinthians 2:11). The devil may prowl like a roaring lion, seeking to devour (1 Peter 5:8). Yet with sober-mindedness and watchfulness, we can observe, and reinforce, his likely points of attack.

Three Assaults on Bible Intake

Consider, then, how our enemy often leverages the patterns of our world, with the sins and weaknesses of our own flesh, to plot against the ordinary, quiet, unhurried, early-morning feeding of our souls in the word of God.

1. Keep Them Up Late

The campaign begins the night before, at dusk: keep them up too late. It could be a sleepless child. It could be some tangible, late-breaking need, requiring an act of love. It could be analog human conversation or a late-night event. All the old stuff. But these days, machines are now doing a good bit of the work. Our many screens — from big ones on the walls to the little ones in our pockets — are very efficient at burning the midnight oil.

The spiritual war for ordinary devotions begins long before the sun comes up. The sober-minded and watchful observe it, and act with wisdom — ready to sacrifice the good of sleep in the call of Christian love, and eager not to squander God’s gift for the follies of late-night bingeing and scrolling. One bad habit can knock other good ones out of sync. The enemy would have us be blinded to the cascading effects of empty late nights.

2. Distract Them

If we do retire at an actual human hour, not all is lost for the enemy: distract them in the morning. Which can be quick work.

In one sense, it’s always been easy. Even in the mid-seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) lamented our universal proneness to distraction: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” We don’t need endless news and the Internet to sidetrack our attention — yet now we have them and, oh, how susceptible we can be. The smartphone, its notifications, and infinite scrolls are particularly ensnaring.

3. Make Them Rush

A third enemy scheme is hurry. The devil would have the motor of our souls run at the same RPMs first thing in the morning as it does the rest of the day. He would have us move at the world’s pace, rather than the Word’s. He would even happily have us try to do too much in morning devotions, so that we do it all too quickly.

As columnist Thomas Friedman has written, we find ourselves living in an “age of accelerations.” Our world pressures us and conditions us to adopt its pace, and we are prone to internalize its speed as our own — and bring the rat race with us when we come to God’s word.

But the morning feast of Bible meditation is not fast food, and not to be treated as such.

Three Attacks on Temptation

How, then, might we combat the devil’s schemes? It’s one thing to anticipate how the demons will attack; it’s another to act on that knowledge. What will you do to thwart the evil forces set against daily Bible reading and meditation?

1. Handle Screens with Care

Among other practical strategies, we might learn to handle our screens with special care. Think how much less prone to morning distraction you might be if you kept the phone silenced, upside down, and further away than arm’s length. Or even better, in another room.

For our souls to start the day feasting on God, we need not only to make time, and be realistic about what we have, but also to guard it by getting to bed, getting up, and avoiding morning diversions. Both the night before and morning of, screens and their content, with their glittering pixels, are great distractors of souls.

For many of us in modern life, we can hardly avoid them. We work at them and use them for our jobs. We spend a shocking amount of our days and weeks on them, much of it for good. But exercising particular caution with our screens after dark, and before meeting with God in his word, is becoming the greater part of modern Christian wisdom.

You might also consider going old school with a paper Bible. Those do not ring, vibrate, or notify. And paper actually helps a reader slow down and experience “the precious milliseconds of deep reading processes.”

2. Gather a Day’s Portion

A glorious simplicity accompanies “ordinary devotions,” the kind that feed and sustain souls for a lifetime. Admirable as it may be to try to read this book and that commentary, and study these topics, and memorize those verses, and even pray long lists — and all that in addition to reading and meditating on God’s word — trying to do too much in the morning will undermine the rest and feast of being in God’s presence and enjoying him, and his Son, through his word.

One way to put it: seek simply to gather a day’s portion each morning. Like God’s people, collecting manna each day in the wilderness, aim to feed your heart’s hunger and quench your soul’s thirst for just that day. No need to catch up from yesterday’s missed readings, or try to get ahead to store up for tomorrow or next week. God will take care of tomorrow. Rather, come to eat and drink and be satisfied today. In other words, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t try to do too much, but cultivate a faithful realism for the long haul.

3. Chew Your Food Slowly

Finally, save your hustle for the rest of the day. Slow down, if you’re still able. It may take some time to learn how. Seek to chew your food slowly and enjoy it. Such savoring in the moment also helps us to carry it with us into the ups and downs, and pressures and accelerations, of the day.

The biblical image of meditation dovetails with the feasting pictures of Isaiah 55 and Psalm 63. Hebrew meditation is like an animal chewing the cud. I’m no farmer, but the few cows I’ve observed doing this did not seem to be in any sort of hurry. If you’re going to be like a cow, be it first thing in the morning as you chew slowly, unhurriedly, even leisurely, on the words of God in Scripture.

Ancient books in general, and the Bible in particular, were not meant to be read with speed, like we today have been conditioned to read (that is, skim). Learn a whole new gear for Bible reading. Read slowly, and reread. Seek to enjoy God and his world and his glory and his Son. Don’t swallow too quickly and move on, but chew slowly and savor his grace.

War is not the main mindset for early mornings. Come to God’s word to feast and be satisfied. But know this is nothing less than battle. Consider the devil’s common schemes, and fight to guard the feast.