Over 38 years of pastoral ministry at New Park Street Chapel (later to become The Metropolitan Tabernacle), Charles Spurgeon and the church added nearly 14,000 people into membership. Of that number, how many would you guess were brought into the church through baptism — as new souls won to the Savior?

I would have guessed up to 3,500. Most, I would have reasoned, transferred from other churches to hear the generation’s greatest preacher. Further, 3,500 people baptized — on average 92 a year, nearly 2 per week for 38 years — seems like a downpour of blessing compared to the trickle of conversions I am accustomed to.

In his wonderful book Spurgeon the Pastor, Geoffrey Chang gives us the answer. “Spurgeon took in 13,797 people into membership. Of that number 10,063 (73%) were taken into membership through baptism,” the rest through transfer (20%) and by profession (7%) (110). Meaning, “most of the membership of the Tabernacle was made up of those who were converted through the ministry of the church” (112).

In one generation, over 10,000 brought into one local church through baptism. Can you imagine?

‘Burning Disgrace’

The astonishment deepens when Chang documents how Spurgeon detested lax standards of baptism and membership. Meaning, the church did not baptize on a whim. Those ten thousand did not raise a hand in one moment of passion and wade into the pool a few minutes later. Spurgeon refused to boast of “unhatched chickens” (112). Rather, the church remained serious about regenerate membership, with a process on the front end that towers over many churches today.

Above all, Chang writes of Spurgeon, “he wanted to see people brought into the church from the world” (111). His hunger to see God save souls was contagious. He could not conceive of the church of Jesus Christ not winning her Master’s spoils.

I should reckon it to be a burning disgrace if it could be said, “The large church under that man’s pastoral care is composed of members whom he has stolen away from other Christian churches.” No, but I value beyond all price the godless, the careless, who are brought out from the world into communion with Christ. (111)

“Spurgeon could not conceive of the church of Jesus Christ not winning her Master’s spoils.”

How many pastors and churches today think this way? Or, most convicting to me, how many believe this way? How many really believe God can build our churches primarily through baptism? I struggle to. How many really believe we can see a revival of a neighborhood, town, city, or nation with that old rugged gospel? I struggle to. How many really plead for God to move mightily among us as of old? I struggle to.

Great Awakenings

Stories like these stir a restlessness in me.

I read of God’s work in other lands and times, and wonder at such little resemblance to my own experience. They lived in an epic, it seems. I turn the pages of Scripture to read of my forebears “who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” (Hebrews 11:33–35). What would they read flipping through the pages of my life?

Continuing on, I read of a mighty gospel “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). In special epochs — distant epochs — I read of major cities casting their idols into the fire (Acts 19:18–19), and of conviction for sin shattering hearts by the hundreds and thousands (Acts 2:37–41). I read of Great Awakenings on our own shores, as many looked up from their snake-bitten condition to Christ and were healed. Homes and streets were filled with heavenly conversation, they say. Multitudes lived with sobriety over sin and a fear of the wrath to come. Hearts seemed fuller, worship more robust, and the next life with Christ the grand desire.

Different times, I sigh. Then seemed to have something happening, something inbreaking, something at stake. Before them waters parted and revivals fell and mountains moved into the heart of the sea. Life was less certain, perhaps (I did not cite the next verses in Hebrews 11, detailing torture, flogging, and sawing in two), but as the fingers of time pressed firmly upon the neck, immortal beings felt their fleeting pulse and lived nearer, at least as I imagine, to the world to come.

Same Yesterday and Today

But on most days, that world and those times feel behind us. We live now — in a world of smartphones, freeways, and antibiotics. Modern man is too scientific, too enlightened — my unbelief contributes — to be won as less sophisticated generations were.

Today, more and more simply dismiss claims of religion, the Bible, and even objective truth. Today, the throb for that inarticulate something is often dulled by the endless buffet of amusements. Today, the breach between this world and the next is wider. The graveyard lies farther away. Loved ones are pulled through the door less unexpectedly; and when they are, we soothe ourselves with good vibes and vague hopes. Death’s noose is loosened just enough that few consider their end.

I am tempted to believe that the God of today is less immense, less relevant, and generally more nonintrusive than in former years. Like a president who has served his terms, he retired to his heavenly estate to enjoy the quiet life. We preach of God, but how often do we meet him? We teach classes on the Great Commission, but how often do we baptize? But what makes my soul bleed is this: How often have I even noticed the scarcity — or cared? Look up from your screens and worldly interests, Jesus says: “I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35).

Spurgeon, seeking to rouse the church (and his own soul), likened many Christians to the disciples falling asleep in Gethsemane:

Christ is up yonder interceding, and we are down here sleeping, the most of us. Christ is up there showing his wounds, and pleading before the Father’s throne that he would visit the sons of men, and give him to see of the travail of his soul, and here are we, not watching against his enemies, nor helping him by our prayers; but are busy here and there wasting precious time, while immortal souls are being lost. We are sleeping like men in the midst of harvest when the grain is waiting for the sickle. (“The Church Aroused”)

His sermon text: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14 KJV).

Ye of Little Faith

Perhaps this is all an errant assessment — romanticizing the past and overlooking present triumphs. God has certainly not retired. Does a single hour pass without heaven rejoicing over the repentance of a sinner?

But from my view, in my own limited experience and spheres, something feels lacking. Perhaps you feel it too. Less soldierly, more civilian. Less awake, more drowsy. Less expectant, more complacent.

Risk great things for Christ? Stop scrolling and watching and coasting, and live in this greatest of all stories? Leave the Shire for adventure? No, I too often think with Bilbo, “Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them!” (The Hobbit, 6).

“The gospel that sent a thunderclap through the world is the same we tell forth now.”

The difference is not with the times as much as it is with me. The God of yesterday — the God of Moses and David and Paul and Luther and Whitefield and Spurgeon — is the God of today. The gospel that sent a thunderclap through the world is the same we tell forth now. The Spirit, the mission, the urgency, the enemies have not changed. His promise to be with us now and unto the end of the age has not undergone amendment (Matthew 28:20). My faith and wakefulness and prayer and questing (or lack thereof) better explain castles untaken, souls unwon. Sentinels sleep upon the watchtower.

Driest Pool

I’ve needed to repent before our Lord for my small estimations of the King’s power and his willingness to work powerfully today. Maybe you have reason to do the same. Through even this one example of Spurgeon’s ministry, I’ve become more restless not seeing people added to the church regularly:

More rainless than the desert sand,No place more parched in all the land,This drought — above all droughts — abysmal,The empty pool, the dry baptismal.

Satan laughs, accusing fraud:“Behold the shortened arm of God!Behold the fountain, now a tomb;Behold the barren, lifeless womb!”

Satan nor his works renounced,No triune loyalties pronounced.No signal of heaven’s addition,No evidence of Great Commission.

Spurgeon kept the baptismal pool filled — even when no baptisms were scheduled (81). His people would always have the mission set before them. May our pools be figuratively filled with importunate prayers, compassionate tears, and joyful proclamations of the excellencies of our glorious Christ. May we be fully awake, fully alive, sowing much. And let us look to the God of our ancestors to answer us from heaven.

The question sounds strange at first, but I’ve come to ask it of myself: Am I in danger of losing Christ in my Christianity?

Among those of us who truly know Jesus, love him, believe upon him for eternal life — have we lost our first love? Does the greater light now shine as the lesser in our hearts? Has he traveled unnoticed from his place as the great Object of our souls to an adjective modifying other pursuits? Books on Christian living sell today — books on Christ himself usually remain in stock.

Can we still say in truth, “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning” (Psalm 130:6)? Is the one thing we ask of our Lord to gaze upon his beauty and converse with him (Psalm 27:4)? If he returned today, would it feel like an interruption, or would he only interrupt us asking each other, “Have you seen him whom my soul loves” (Song 3:3)? Do we feel the pain of his absence? Do we miss him?

Of late, I have peered less over the walls of this world, waiting for his coming. Instead, I have busied myself with good and even godly pursuits — those that are from him, to him, and through him, but are not him. To my surprise, I realized I began to lose Christ, of all places, in my Christianity. And losing sight of him here seems subtler, easier.

I shall attempt to describe how we can lose sight of him in a few places most precious to us: the gospel, the Scriptures, the pursuit of holiness, and the church.

Have we lost him in the gospel?

I’ve misplaced Jesus in the gospel when the gospel becomes faceless, when it becomes part of an equation where gospel plus faith equals heaven. Michael Reeves gets at this when he writes that Charles Spurgeon

preferred to speak of preaching “Christ” than preaching “the gospel,” “the truth,” or anything else, because of how easily we reduce “the gospel” or “the truth” to an impersonal system. Christ himself is, in person, the way, the truth, and the life; the glory of God; the life and delight of the saints; the Bridegroom that the bride is invited to enjoy. (Spurgeon on the Christian Life, 71)

If I do not keep guard, the gospel and the truth can be reduced to a bloodless, pulseless science. Against this personless scheme, Paul describes God’s gospel as that

which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 1:1–4)

“If I do not keep guard, ‘the gospel’ and ‘the truth’ can reduce to a bloodless, pulseless science.”

Paul did not dedicate his life to a static formula, but God set him apart for the gospel, the gospel “concerning his Son.” This gospel, God’s power for salvation, is the good news of a person — Jesus Christ, the long-prophesied Son of David, crucified for sin, resurrected in power, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, soon to return.

Have we lost him in the Scriptures?

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life,” Jesus told the Pharisees, “and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). Have we learned bad habits of Bible reading that imitate these blind Pharisees?

Ask yourself, What have I seen in the Bible lately? You may answer that you’ve learned about contentment, how to suffer, or how to better love your wife. You may have explored the disciples’ boldness in the book of Acts or gleaned from the minister’s heart in the Pastoral Epistles. You may have bent low in humility while traveling through Philippians or been taught to pray in the Psalms or contemplated your assurance in 1 John. All good lessons.

Next, ask yourself, What have I seen of Christ lately? What about him has emblazoned your heart and satisfied your soul? Which of his words has captivated your attention? Which of his excellencies has harpooned your affections? What about his cross has humbled you, what of his resurrection has sustained you, what of his return fixes your eyes upon the skies, waiting?

I suspect with most of us, the first question will be much easier to answer than the second. We have thought about much — but how much about Christ himself? We speak much of faith — but how much about whom our faith is in? The Pharisees searched out many holy topics but missed seeing the Messiah right in front of them.

Have we lost him pursuing holiness?

When we lose sight of Jesus in our sanctification, Christlikeness comes to mean perfect virtue, and sin a nonpersonal infraction.

Instead of seeing our own love as imitating Christ’s love (John 15:12), we seek to possess a generic love to the full extent, a general patience overflowing, a basic joy and gentleness and self-control to the superlative. Holiness soon becomes ethical math, where we take a positive attribute and calculate how much more of it we need.

And when we think of sin, we come to mean merely breaking a soulless law. Sin happens when the sign said the speed limit was 70 miles per hour, and the speed camera clocked us going 80. We broke the law. The cold eye of justice catches us — a ticket is sent in the mail.

Instead, our holiness looks at Jesus, looks like Jesus. Beholding his glory, we are changed into the same image (2 Corinthians 3:18). The Father predestined us to be conformed to his Son’s likeness (Romans 8:29). We do not attain shining virtues for their own sake; we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14). And we obey not an abstract law, but his law: we bear one another’s burdens “and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Instead of confessing sin as those who broke the speed limit, we confess sin against our triune God.

Have we lost him in the church?

Our increasingly post-Christian society prefers the Golden Rule to the Golden Ruler. Humanitarianism pats the conscience on the back — love of neighbor remains, though many pretend God is dead.

Yet we can be guilty of a more holy version. We are to be known by our love for each other, it is true, but not merely by our love for each other. We cannot major on horizontal love for other Christians and forget vertical love for Christ, thus taking seriously the second great command to love one another as ourselves while ignoring the first to love God with everything.

The temptation is like the short-term-mission-trip temptation — dig the well; forget the living water. We can cook for the small group, lead the prayer meeting, visit the recluse members, set up the chairs for service, practice for worship, set up a meal train, send a card, attend the funeral — and lose focus on Jesus. Christian community, for it to remain such, must be community founded upon the work of Christ, full of the Spirit of Christ, and existing for the glory of Christ.

Our life in the body is life in his body. Jesus “is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent” (Colossians 1:18). We are not the best version of the world’s social clubs, the best humanistic society with sprinkled platitudes about Jesus. We remain his possession, his sheep, his bride. As the King leaves, so goes our lampstands.

Searching the Unsearchable

“The study of Jesus Christ is the most noble subject that ever a soul spent itself upon,” writes John Flavel. “Those that rack and torture their brains upon other studies like children, weary themselves at a low game; the eagle plays at the sun itself. The angels study this doctrine, and stoop down to look into this deep abyss.” The angels never tire from gazing upon the King in his beauty. Have we?

“The angels never tire from gazing upon the King in his beauty. Have we?”

Christian, “though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8–9). To know him is heaven on earth and the very heaven of heavens. The saints’ eternal happiness is to see God in the face of Christ and become like what we see. Heaven orbits him. Will we settle now for a Christianity malnourished of Christ?

Let’s spend our lives beholding his manifold glories. Let’s plunder the riches of Christ until we too verify that they are “unsearchable” (Ephesians 3:8). Let’s make his love — which surpasses knowledge — our all-engrossing subject. Let’s request of our ministers, as the Greeks did Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:21).

We all have more of him to see. Flavel again:

It is the studying of Christ, as in the planting of a new discovered country; at first men sit down by the seaside, upon the skirts and borders of the land; and there they dwell, but by degrees they search farther and farther into the heart of the country. Ah, the best of us are yet but upon the borders of this vast continent!

Travel onward, dear Christian, in the knowledge of him — do not settle for his ethic, his marriage counseling, his worldview without him. You will explore this vast continent for coming ages, for all eternity, and ever have more left to discover.

Can a man really be truly alive who has forgotten how to weep? Can a man of God, or a minister of Christ, truly claim to be fully awake without tears? These are questions, uncomfortable questions, I have been asking myself.

These considerations, dry as my eyes have been, do not originate with me. I consider them somewhat reluctantly. I had studied (and even memorized) the parting speech from Paul to the Ephesian elders before I beheld the apostle’s wet face.

Paul, anchored briefly on the seacoast of Miletus, sends a message forty miles south to Ephesus. He bids the elders come immediately. When they arrive, he tells them what breaks their hearts: “Now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again” (Acts 20:25, 37–38). Paul was resolved to board a ship sailing into dark providences. “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me” (Acts 20:22–23).

“Can a man really be truly alive who has forgotten how to weep?”

Three years he had spent with them in Ephesus, tending their souls “day and night.” This is their last meeting in this life. His words fell as bricks of gold. Of all the things to say and recall, to encourage and to warn, with so few characters left to compose his final message, are you surprised that Paul mentions twice, of all things, his tears?

Serve the Lord with Tears

He begins his final words to these dear friends,

You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews. (Acts 20:18–19)

Paul mentions his crying as a matter of fact — you yourselves know. The Ephesian elders remembered how the dew of his affections fell unashamedly. They saw him cry the “whole time” he lived among them. What an oft neglected picture of the mighty apostle.

If I could, I would try and paint it, entitled, “The Lord’s Lion, Crying.” It is good for me to see this. Paul, in his ministry, lost composure at times. At times — and it appears at many times — his passion for Christ and his pity for souls undid his seeming poise. “Do you remember my tears?” he asks these now elders of the church. Can you see those gracious rains watering my sermons, indeed, those sermon exclamation points from my soul to yours, servants of your eternal good and my gracious Lord?

The scene causes me to ask, Do I serve the Lord with such tears? Do I even want to? Do you?

Warnings Through the Blur

When Paul mentions his tears the second time, he says more. After telling the men to pay careful attention to themselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit made them overseers, he tells them that vicious wolves will attack from without, and false teachers will creep up from within (Acts 20:29–30) — stay alert, he pleads. But notice what accompanies his appeal:

Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. (Acts 20:31)

“Admonish” means to warn. For three years he did not stop warning them, or weeping for them. What a sight. What a perplexity. Ponder this weeping warrior with me.

This man of industry and blood-earnestness warns them of sin and judgment and the wrath to come — while he weeps warm tears over their souls. As a sentinel, he held up his hands and declared himself free of their blood. He tells them twice he did not shrink back in cowardice from telling them all of God’s truth. He said the hard and unpopular word; he warned and called sin what it is. People did not like what he said — in fact, they were trying to kill him.

Still this soldier wept while warning: Turn from your ruin, flee from the coming wrath, repent toward God and place all of your faith in Jesus Christ! Believe in the good news of the grace of God. Keep believing in the crucified — now risen and soon returning — Christ!

Power of Tearful Pleading

Imagine standing across from such a man.

Your fallen heart has often been on its guard against arguments and criticisms. Your armor is well-clad, and your sin is well-protected. Heartless disputes and playing with words is your sport. But who is this foe striking from horseback? What kind of warrior sheds tears for the man he wishes to conquer? Steel meeting cold steel — this is the battlefield’s familiar soundtrack. Grunts and yells and trumpet blasts you relish, but not these soft and unnerving cries from the enemy — tears for you. This is more than mere truth; it’s love.

You see his redness of eye. You hear the arresting stoppings and startings in his speech. Here is no enemy, no hired hand, no mere debater of this age. He is earnest, to be sure, but earnest for more than an argument. He’s earnest for souls — my soul. He may discard my opinions, yet he bears me upon his heart. He tells me hard things but seems to want good for me. Perhaps more than I want for myself.

Admonitions for Two Men

What a corrective to both tearless stridency and weepy willows today — to the ones like me who have taught on the lake of fire while seldom shedding a tear beside it, and to those crying who would never dare mention hell.

“What a nuisance warnings can become when given without this holy moisture. All lightening, no rain.”

What a nuisance warnings can become when given without this holy moisture. All lightening, no rain. Such repeated scolding gives off dry, hot air and leaves hearts cracked. Bellowings Paul knew too well, “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). In his now-wet eyes, the tearless can find hope that grace may not be done with us just yet.

But neither can we long tolerate the convictionless crier, whose tears have no deep well. Men ever on the verge of crying over trifles need reminding that they should quit themselves like men and be strong. Good tears serve a higher ambition. They serve the Lord Jesus. But above these rise the cries in Ephesus. How that weeping earnestness confounded sinners as Paul pled with the dead to turn and live. The Lord’s Lion — Crying, Warning, Pleading.

Such a one — I am only left to imagine — was hard to argue with for long, and even harder to forget. When is the last time, dear Christian reader, you warned a faithless brother, an apostate mother, a lustful son, a deceived friend through blurred vision?

Should not the truly living, in such a world as this, find times to weep? Do not many live despising mercy and rejecting Christ? Are not souls lost to that eternal place of gnashing and weeping every hour — our friends, classmates, and neighbors — many not knowing a Christian who shed a single tear over their souls? We come with glad tidings; we need not always cry. But is our danger too much tearful pleas for souls?

Weep into Their Souls

A final word, then, for fellow pastor-elders, men like those Paul spoke to that day. Do you have a tear to shed for the lost sinner and threatened saint? Do you serve your Lord with tears? I do not pretend to instruct you in these matters. These are but my sermon notes as I overhear the weeping lion.

Charles Spurgeon said it was a blessed thing for a minister to “weep his way into men’s souls,” a quality he had admired in George Whitefield.

Hear how Whitefield preached, and never dare to be lethargic again. [Cornelius] Winter says of him that “sometimes he exceedingly wept, and was frequently so overcome, that for a few seconds you would suspect he never would recover; and when he did, nature required some little time to compose herself. I hardly ever knew him go through a sermon without weeping more or less. His voice was often interrupted by his affections; and I have heard him say in the pulpit, ‘You blame me for weeping; but how can I help it, when you will not weep for yourselves, although your own immortal souls are on the verge of destruction, and, for aught I know, you are, hearing your last sermon, and may never more have an opportunity to have Christ, offered to you?’” (Lectures to My Students, 307)

Let us all pray for holy tears. Not for their own sake, not to make a vain show that draws attention to ourselves, or tries to manipulate. But let us seek life, full life, abundant life in Christ — a life fully alive, fully awake, fully compassionate within a cursed world of evil times and immortal souls. Lord, raise a generation of lionhearted men and women for Christ who serve you with all their hearts and minds and souls and strength — and tears.

The memories, on most days, seem better left forgotten. Never has remembering sweet Bible studies tasted so bitter. Flashbacks of late-night conversations and time spent in prayer press inconsiderately upon the wound. In that large group, I can still hear his profession of faith echo. I thought I heard angels sing at his surrender. So long we had prayed for his salvation. Now, he no longer walks with Jesus.

The grief of false conversions.

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19). They. We knew them by another name: friend, spouse, mother, son. Each sang with us in church, confessed to be the Savior’s, renounced the world and Satan at baptism — but only for a time.

Our prayers, we thought, were finally answered. Their souls, we thought, were finally saved. Our joy, we thought, was finally complete. The prodigal son returned home — and left again. The difference between a comedy and a tragedy, some say, is where you place the period. Their faith, at best, led only to a semicolon; what a horrible independent clause came next: “They went out from us.”

How the Gospel Dies in a Soul

Jesus tells the tragedies of our daughters, our best friends, our parents, in his parable of the sower.

The parable is familiar. The sower scatters seed on four soils. Some falls on the path — where the hateful bird, Satan, steals it before it can be understood. Such are those who dismiss the gospel as foolishness and never pretend to believe. The fourth soil is the good soil, the true soil, the one who receives the Christ by faith and holds to him, the genuine Christian. But the second and third soils receive the seed, it germinates, and life sprouts from dead earth. Hallelujah! Professions are made; baptismal waters stir; they break bread with us. Our prayers, we believe, have been answered. But the gospel seed, over time, dies. Their faith returns to the dirt before our eyes.

Jesus depicts two ways the gospel dies in the soul.

Scorched by Trials

The first false soil is rocky.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. (Matthew 13:5–6)

The most confusing part about this soil is how wonderful the beginning seems. Upon hearing the gospel word, they do not argue with it or poke at it. Rather, these receive it “with joy” (Matthew 13:20). They smile at the news of Jesus, shed tears that he would die in their place. They raise their hands and sing of eternal life with what Jesus tells us is real joy.

But the plant shoots up quickly because the soil beneath is thin. Inhospitable rock prevents the roots from growing deep. When the sun eventually rises, tribulation or persecution beat down upon them on account of their new faith in Christ (verse 21). Through much of church history (and still in many places today), this entailed lives threatened, property plundered, friends arrested. In the modern Western context, girlfriends threaten to break up with them. They lose their job. They become the ridicule of family and friends.

A time of testing arrives, and they fall away. They received the word with joy, but when the weather changed, they headed back home, as did Bunyan’s Pliable. Happily, Pliable walked from the City of Destruction as Christian assured him of all the glories that awaited them at the Celestial City. But they soon fell into the Slough of Despond.

At that Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, “Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey’s end?”

He struggled out of the pit and returned home.

So with some loved ones. They explode like a firework only to fizzle in the night sky. Their initial joy, though real, proved shallow. The gospel gripped passing emotions but did not reach the heart. Their god was worth serving, but only in fair weather. Their faith was worth confessing, but only while it cost them little. Their Shepherd was good to follow, but only when he led to green pastures. The sun rises and scorches the gospel word buried in the shallows of their soul.

Choked by Pleasures

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. (Matthew 13:7)

Here, we find that more than just the gospel grew in the heart. Alongside faith grew rival loves — thorns.

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. (Matthew 13:22)

They grew too busy. They began a new relationship. They found a way to make some extra money. Jesus and his service could wait a little longer after all. The love of this world and its shiny things, its comforts, its urgent business became preferred to the unseen world. These sharp loves wrapped themselves around the word of the cross, of forgiveness of sins, and of eternal life with God, and squeezed. Maybe we saw them put up some fight as faith lost its breath, but busyness, this career, that boyfriend proved too gripping.

We see these thorns grow even in the hearts of those who seemed most dedicated to Christ and his work in this world. Such was the tragedy of Demas. Paul writes to the Colossian church, “Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas” (Colossians 4:14). Paul calls him his “fellow worker” in his letter to Philemon (verse 24). Yet thorny soil he proved to be in the end. “For Demas,” Paul writes to Timothy at the end of his life, “in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Timothy 4:10).

In love with this present world, they desert us, desert Christ — thorny soil.

Heart of the Matter

The soils represent different types of hearts. In some rocky hearts, the gospel seed dies due to a shallowness of reception. In thorny hearts, it dies in the grip of love for this world and its concerns. Yet read the description of the good soil in Luke’s account:

As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience. (Luke 8:15)

“Good soil fends off encroaching loves for a pure and beautiful devotion to Jesus.”

Good soil holds fast the gospel seed, refusing to relinquish it when persecution comes. Good soil fends off encroaching loves for a pure and beautiful devotion to Jesus. Good soil bears fruit with patience. Good soil is analogous to a good and beautiful heart, a heart promised long ago:

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)

The new-covenant heart, one removed of its stone and cleansed of its competing loves — this heart endures trials and tribulation, and resists temptation and the world’s best, aided and empowered by God’s own indwelling Spirit. Good soil bears good fruit, yielding thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold (Matthew 13:23).

A Prayer

Father, tears well in our eyes as we consider those whose desertion our hearts cannot bear. What hope is left?

For some, you alone know it is too late to restore them to repentance. For them it is impossible to be restored, for they have been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, shared in the Holy Spirit, and tasted the goodness of your word (Hebrews 6:4–6). We love your Son, and would not have him “crucified again” or held up for contempt. And yet, you can permit restoration (Hebrews 6:3). Let us be hopeful of better things — namely, that you are not done with our loved ones just yet.

“Let us be hopeful of better things — namely, that you are not done with our loved ones just yet.”

Let us see those who have wandered from the truth be brought back. Use us to return them from their wandering. Use us to save their souls from death and cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19–20). Teach our lips the promise, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7). Your grace is unlike our grace. You offer abundant pardon still, and in that, we hope.

And grant us each to keep eyes and prayers on one another, lest we too fall. Let us take heed, lest there be in any of us an evil, unbelieving heart, leading us to fall away from the living God. May we be diligent to exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of us may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:12–13). Keep us in your love. Be pleased to place the period — over them and us — after the words, “Enter into the joy of your Master.”

What happens every Sunday when the church gathers? We meet with God. Do such words still hold weight for you?

Some of us arrive late and sneak in the back. During songs we don’t prefer, we wonder what’s for lunch. If tears fill our eyes, they stream from yawns between choruses. We finally get to sit down so we can listen to sneezy Bill try to survive another congregational prayer. As the preacher mounts the pulpit, we “hear from Almighty God” and doodle in the margins of the bulletin. We sing a few more times, perhaps receive communion, and then wrestle our kids out of the door to get them fed and down for naps.

My contention (and sad experience) is that the drama of meeting with God every week can be so hijacked by carelessness, worldliness, and unbelief. Too often we saunter into church drowsily and distractedly and leave as we came. We are too often Elisha’s servant. When he woke up and saw Syrian chariots surrounding the city, he cried, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” “Do not be afraid,” came the reply, “for those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 Kings 6:16). The man of God prays for him, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see” (2 Kings 6:17). God answered, and he sees the hillside anew: “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17).

Until then, the servant could not see the spiritual realm. Too often on Sunday mornings, neither can we. We look around the congregation and see nothing upon the hills. O Lord, please open our eyes.

Upon Eagle’s Wings

We all might learn something from watching Israel draw near to God for the first time.

From the burning bush, God promised Moses, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain” (Exodus 3:12). Through mighty plagues, a splitting sea, several battles, and a few tests, they had finally arrived at that mountain to worship.

The meeting with their Great Redeemer was set. Three days and God would meet with them at Horeb. In the meantime, they needed to prepare. “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day” (Exodus 19:10–11). In the meantime, God sent his people a message dipped in myrrh:

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:3–6)

As a mighty eagle, their God reminds them how he swooped down into the land of Egypt and lifted them from their groveling life of slavery. His actions and message drip with good intentions. He saved them to bring them to himself, to make them his special kingdom. He rescued them to bless them, bore them up on eagle’s wings, and treasured them above all others.

Draw Near the Mountain

Finally, the third day arrived. With garments washed and boundaries around the mountain strictly observed, the people arrive consecrated and ready to meet their unseen God.

None, however, could truly prepare to meet this God. “On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled” (Exodus 19:16). Their Lord descended in flaming fire. “The whole mountain trembled greatly” (Exodus 19:18). Triviality and levity shattered in the quake. As the trumpet blast grew louder and louder, “Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder” (Exodus 19:19).

God then booms his Ten Commandments. He spoke from the blaze, erupting from the darkness of the mountain. The people could not endure the sound,

Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” (Exodus 20:18–19)

The sight of their gracious God would kill them; his unmediated voice would break them. “Do not fear,” Moses consoles them, “for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin” (Exodus 20:20).

Where Has Wonder Gone?

How different is this experience of drawing near to God from our normal experience of worship on Sunday morning? Important discontinuities exist, yet the questions remain: Is there any evidence of us drawing near to anything like this living God? Does our pulse ever quicken? Has he changed his complexion so drastically by sending his Son? Are wonder, reverence, awe, thoughtfulness, carefulness, and seriousness no longer befitting his worship?

“Is there any evidence of us drawing near to anything like this living God on Sundays?”

If you’re like me, you too seldom consider the grand things we profess to be doing. How do we then worship God in holy reverence? How do we see the God who Is, rather than the god of our comfort and carelessness?

Practical considerations can be drawn from this first meeting. Like Israel, we can dedicate time to prepare to meet with God. “Let them be ready” should be our command as well. Study the sermon text beforehand. Pray until your heart is tenderized to meet with God and his people. Repent of any known sin. Abstain from heart-numbing activities leading up to Sunday, and by all means, don’t cut your sleep short to indulge them. Dress in a respectable manner. If possible, arrive early and unhurried. Meditate beforehand on God’s great redemption in Christ — our only means to meet with God and live.

But alongside these, I wish to consult your holy imagination, as the author of Hebrews does when he reads this scene in the Old Testament.

Tale of Two Mountains

The author of Hebrews brings the new-covenant people back to Horeb in order to teach them about drawing near to God. Unlike Israel, he tells us,

You have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. . . . Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” (Hebrews 12:18–19)

Rather, in Christ’s new covenant,

You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22–24)

“Our worship ought to be heavy with thanksgiving and happiness, with holy fear and wonder.”

We now draw near to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, where countless angels and the redeemed saints gather with merry reverence — and to Jesus, the great mediator of the covenant, whose blood secures our place with him in heaven. Through him, we glimpse the countless chariots on the hillside celebrating the accomplishment of Christ’s atonement.

Will You Refuse or Revere?

How do we draw near to God in worship this Sunday? What is it like to again come, on earth, with God’s people to the heavenly Zion?

The author of Hebrews concludes his tale of two mountains this way:

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. (Hebrews 12:25)

Notice, the stakes rise in the new covenant, not fall. The refusal becomes more severe, not less. Worship is not more laxed or frivolous or casual or light.

He lands,

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28–29)

We, like Israel, draw near to a consuming fire — one whose flame devours all froth and presumption. He is good, not safe. Like Israel, we draw near to a great God solely on his terms and within his boundaries — by his Spirit, in his truth, covered in Jesus’s atoning blood. Our worship, then, will be heavy with thanksgiving and happiness, with holy fear and wonder. For this Sunday, we gather joyfully and fearfully together to worship before the Fire who is our God, and we meet him — really — and do so with reverence and awe.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . (Matthew 6:9)

How many lips have formed these words since the Lord Jesus first taught them? How many languages have uttered them? How many different people, in how many different circumstances, have bowed their heads and hearts to pray as Jesus famously instructs?

The dying have prayed it. The uneducated have prayed it. The unbelieving and villainous have even prayed it. Children have prayed it. The great and wise have found room for it. Every continent on earth has heard it whispered. Tribes in remote villages and kings in tall palaces have bowed and repeated after the Jewish prophet from Nazareth. Has there been a prayer more prayed; have there been words more often spoken?

“For some of our wandering prayer lives, the best thing for us to learn is how not to pray.”

And yet, for as many as have repeated our Master’s teaching on how to pray, how many can repeat what words come directly before them — namely, the ones teaching us how not to pray? How many realize that our Lord’s instruction on prayer is both positive and negative — that it doesn’t simply stand alone but is given in contrast? For some of our wandering prayer lives, the best thing for us to learn is how not to pray like a Pharisee or a pagan.

Prayers of Pharisees

Do you love to be noticed and admired by others when you pray?

Jesus’s first how-not-to aims at the hypocrite, embodied in the Pharisee. When the Pharisee prayed, he wanted not so much to pray as to be seen praying. As a bird in mating season, he sang forth loud, preening look-at-me prayers.

“And when you pray,” Jesus begins, “you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5).

Such a man pours his best zeal and focus and interest into public prayers. He positions himself on street corners or within small groups. What may seem stirring and deeply spiritual to many does not impress the one above who knows their anxious thoughts: Are others looking? Are they impressed?

Jesus shows us an example of such a look-at-me pray-er, who cannot help exalting himself even without an audience.

Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” (Luke 18:10–12)

In other words, “God, thank you that when you look at me — and when I look at me — we both behold such a pleasing sight! Unlike this man, loathsome to both Gentile and Jew alike, you have made me quite the spectacle. Twice per week my belly aches from fasting. My spice racks withhold not your due!” “Be merciful to me a sinner” lives miles from his mind in the distant town called Justified.

Do you pray to impress others? To build up a spiritual résumé? How is your life of secret prayer? Do you ever stand so tall or shine with such saintly luster as when you know others are watching? You must not be like them, Jesus teaches, for “they have received their reward.” Instead, “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:5–6).

Prayers of Pagans

Have you come to the end of your prayers and realized you can’t remember anything you just prayed? You spoke Christian-speak — observed the phrases of prayer, drew near to God with your mouth, and honored him with your lips while your heart was far from him. Prayer on autopilot.

“And when you pray,” Jesus teaches next, “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).

The pagans prayed empty mantras, stale platitudes, barren banalities. Prayer for pagans often proved little more than a formula — say these words so many times, and the gods will hear and reply. Just babble invocations in order to awaken your deity from his slumber, and he will eventually bless you. The priests of Baal modeled this in their showdown with Elijah, praying, “O Baal, answer us!” from morning until noon (1 Kings 18:26).

So too with us.

Although we do not pray to stones or wood or the sun, Jesus does not want his disciples praying true words to the true God falsely. Emptily. I don’t know about you, but mealtime prayers can be the first ones vampired of their lifeblood (what does it even mean to “bless this food to our bodies”?). Too many times, my mouth has moved, prayers were spoken — but not really from me. A pious ventriloquism.

Our Lord exposes a hidden insecurity underneath empty-phrased pagan prayers: “They think that they will be heard for their many words.” The pagans are uncertain about the divine heart toward them — so they appease or impress or update the unknowing and unconcerned gods. They try to get their attention, throwing dust at the heavens, desperately wishing for someone to answer.

Such an insecurity resonates with my say-more prayers. Am I really being heard? Prayer can seem less reliable than, say, a text message, which tells me it was delivered. Not so with prayer. I feel as though I pray carrier pigeons — as each flaps away, I hope some will arrive at the destination.

Praying empty phrases with many words, then, can turn into a probability proposition. The more pigeons, the greater the odds God receives the message. Third-times-a-charm mentality. But Jesus allays our rambling fears: “Do not be like them,” he instructs, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). Before you approach your Father’s throne, he knows. He knows your needs — his eye has not turned from you. The pagans pray to the unknown god. We pray to a Father.

Prayer for Christians

Jesus introduces “Our Father who art in heaven” with “Pray then like this” (Matthew 6:9). Then connects the instruction on how not to pray with the how-to Lord’s Prayer.

I believe Jesus gives us this prayer, in part, to contrast with the how-not-to errors of the hypocrites and pagans. In his short prayer, Jesus gives us an alternative to the look-at-me prayer of the Pharisee and the say-more prayer of the pagan.

Against hypocrite prayers, he teaches us to pray,

Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name.Your kingdom come,your will be done,     on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9–10)

Jesus teaches his disciples to pray that God in all his glory be seen, not us. Instead of our names being hallowed, our kingdoms coming, our righteousness being seen and praised and admired — or the various ways we ask for these — we want God’s to be imposed and cherished. This prayer, spoken from the heart and not just the mouth, transforms hypocrites to worshipers, deorbiting the heart from revolving around self to God. And when God’s fame is truly our heart’s desire, we will come to love secret prayer.

Against pagan prayers, Jesus adds,

Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our debts,     as we also have forgiven our debtors.And lead us not into temptation,     but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:11–13)

“When God’s fame is truly our heart’s desire, we will come to love secret prayer.”

Instead of waking a snoring deity, anxious to appease the god we do not truly know, we pray to a heavenly Father. And therefore, instead of seeking to impress or play probability games with the divine ear, we can pray simple, childlike, and even concise prayers to our Father (this prayer totals 57 words in Greek, 38 in Luke’s account), knowing that we have his ear through Jesus Christ. We ask him for the needs we already know he knows about. He is a Father, bidding his sons and daughters come close to tell him all the requests of their hearts.

One of the best ways to pray is to know how not to pray. Instead of praying self-exalting prayers that cry, Look at me! we pray in secret, and we pray for God’s glory to be loved and admired. Instead of praying empty-talk, babbling, insecure prayers, we pray about daily bread and forgiveness, knowing that he knows our needs and has forgiven us in Christ before we ask him.

At first, it seems a little thing,A want unmet, a prayer unwinged.Voiceless, it interrogates the King,When sounded, Lucifer sings.

Grumbling.

If you do not stand at the gate armed with sword and spear, if you keep down the drawbridge and fail to post men on the watchtower, gurgles and grunts will occupy your heart. Self-love and unbelief have a fruitful marriage, multiplying little moans and murmurs as rabbits in the forest or as crabgrass in the front lawn.

What is in a grumble? The sound, unheard in heaven, is the heart shaking its head, rolling its eyes, cursing under its breath. It is the seemingly harmless exhale of several respectable sins — ingratitude, thanklessness, discontent. It’s a controlled rage, an itchy contempt, the muffled echo of Satan’s dismay. A broken tune. It can be voiced in a sigh or strangle a praise. It is the cough of a sick heart.

We overhear these pitiful pleas all over the New Testament. The volume turns up with the crowds and soon-to-be apostate disciples of John 6, and in episodes with the envious scribes and Pharisees. Yet New Testament authors often bend the ear backward to hear the mumblings of an ancient people. None better expose the horror of this muffled mutiny than ancient Israel.

The apostle Paul writes,

We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. (1 Corinthians 10:9–11)

God’s Spirit records Israel’s history in the wilderness to teach us about this too-easily-committed and too-easily-overlooked sin of grumbling.

Lessons from the Mumblers

If we had to venture a guess as to who the first grumblers mentioned in Scripture would be, could any man or angel have suspected it to be God’s own people, and that right after their wondrous redemption from Egypt?

Ten plagues have fallen on Pharoah’s defiance. His army and chariots now lie at the bottom of the sea, a calm settles upon the water’s surface — Israel is free. Uproar sounds in the heavens, and praise to God extends to earth. Music sheets are passed around beside the Red Sea, they begin,

I will sing to [Yahweh] for he has triumphed gloriously;     the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. (Exodus 15:1)

Who could have guessed that these same tongues would rot into a chorus of murmurs by the end of the same chapter? Satan’s song intrudes. Lucifer’s lyrics, once sung, get stuck in their heads. Trial after trial — needing water, then food, then water again — leads to more and more muttering. Consider, then, just a few lessons from the all too familiar sounds of Exodus 15–16.

1. God deprives us to see what’s inside us.

God led Israel around the Philistines, in front of the Red Sea to bait Pharoah, and through the Red Sea, and now to the wilderness of Shur. Millions marched waterless. One day turned to two turned to three. Finally, in the distance, water. They bend down to drink — yuck. Dying of thirst, they spit out the sour beverage. They named the place “Marah,” meaning bitterness (Exodus 15:22–23). We finally find water and it is undrinkable? Is this where trusting the Lord gets you? For the first time in the Hebrew Bible we read, “And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’” (Exodus 15:24).

“When you find yourself kneeling by the bitter waters of God’s providence, what does God hear from you?”

And then, as he did with the water, so God did with their stomachs: “he tested them” (verse 25). He “let them hunger” and led the people to depend upon him that whole forty years to see what was in their hearts (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). And he found Marah in his people — out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth sighs. When you find yourself kneeling by the bitter waters of God’s providence, what does God hear from you? Cries to your heavenly Father for help and mercy, or grunts against an unreliable god?

2. Grumbling complains against God.

Grumbling would weaponize our circumstances against God if we let it. Yet, it doesn’t always feel like that, does it? I am complaining because my darling child pooped through her diaper, or because I’m late for work and now stuck in traffic — not because I dislike God. Hear Moses’s analysis of Israel’s grumbling,

“At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him — what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.” (Exodus 16:6–8)

Moses speaks in capital letters: The arrows of your complaints fly at the Lord. So it is with us. He hears our creaturely objections, as protests against his throne, even when we do not lift our eyes to meet his. What is a boss or infertility or ruined plans or cancer that we gripe at them? God rules all with infinite wisdom and care. Against him, him only have we grumbled, and done what is evil in his sight.

3. Grumbling is severely short-sighted.

Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water. (Exodus 15:27)

The springless wilderness of Shur often leads to the plentiful land of Elim. Even in Shur, God responded graciously to his people’s huffing and puffing, turning the bitter water sweet. But before the relief arrived and the parched throats tasted sweet drink, how many kept trusting him?

This point climaxes at the arrival to Elim — and cuts me to the heart. How many times have I finally arrived at the place of twelve springs and lush palm trees — the place God was leading the whole time — with sharp regrets about my distrust? He blessed me, but despite me. I pouted the whole way.

“To my shame — and to the glory of his patience — our God is more gracious than we are grumbling.”

To my shame — and to the glory of his patience — our God is more gracious than we are grumbling. But this should make us hate the murmurs more. Our protests and complaints cannot see past our own noses. Often just around the corner is the respite of some smiling providence. Our God leads us out of Egypt to hold a feast to him in the wilderness (Exodus 5:1). Blessed is he who did not curse God under his breath in the meantime.

4. A grumbling heart distorts reality.

Would that we had died by the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. (Exodus 16:3)

The muttering heart thinks the worst of God and the best of its former suffering. God would be their provider and their healer (Exodus 15:26). Yet, meat pots and a full-service bakery in Egypt sprout in the malcontent’s mind. They would rather have died under the Lord’s plagues in Egypt than suffer want in this wandering wilderness. A month ago, they praised God for sinking his enemies under the sea like a stone; now they wished to be that stone.

When the way seems meandering and lost, when resources dry up, when circumstances seem too cruel to have a purpose, God is for his people, teaching us precious truths.

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:3)

God’s great Israel, Jesus Christ, learned this lesson in his forty days in the wilderness, and he quotes it at the devil when tempted (Matthew 4:4). These seasons can teach us also to walk by faith, to nourish our souls with his word, to venture all upon his promises. And these lessons, should we learn them, become the defining moments of our lives and our proudest memories in heaven.

Satisfied and Shining

At first, it seems a little thing,A knee now bent, thanks to bring.When in need, it trusts a worthy King,When sounded, heaven rings.

Prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

This is the Christian’s lot — not just starving grumbles alone, but feeding worship. God has delivered us through a greater exodus and manifested a higher love in his Son: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We are a people who now address one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs “with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).

How startling then, for angels to hear us begin our day with songs to Jesus, only to end that same morning with snorts of irritation and resentment. Paul gives a glorious battle cry against it. Directly after the momentous charge to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:13), listen to the first thing Paul would have us work out in the next verse.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life. . . . (Philippians 2:14–16)

Paul describes the luminary life of trusting saints; a life that shines in a dark and thankless world (Romans 1:21). Blamelessness, innocence, proving ourselves to be children of God — all by a supernatural life of worship instead of bleating.

Don’t you want to live that brightly to the glory of Christ, holding fast to his word, journeying toward the greater Elim just around the bend?

Globdrop,

I nearly forgot to respond to a slender detail you so quickly skipped past: “They are considering having children.” Are they now? Have you nothing more to say? No course of action to take? Do your eyes fail to see the Enemy’s movements in the dark?

Have you never considered what a disadvantage we demons endure to remain at a fixed multitude? Should our pits and shadows become spawns of reproduction, would this war have not long since been won? Would not our hoards stand without number, offspring more numerous than the stars, swarming as the locusts in Egypt? The Enemy saw well the threat. We would require that every demon spawn an army of himself; imagine our sheer density. But such powers the Enemy gifts to his little cottontails. A gift you must discourage at every turn.

You do not tempt, may I remind you, in that tiresome age that prized its children. Who saw their little vermin as “blessings from the Lord,” the solidifiers of a legacy, whose very existence signaled the exercising of dominion — a word you must keep from view. That Hebrew people troubled us to no end with their mocking genealogies, insisting that “children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Arrows in the hand of a warrior they were to that people. Sharp to the patience of every demon made to watch them hatch and grow.

No, no, no, you tempt in an age with a different regard for their brood. Offspring remain forever second-best. What a delicious contempt exists in the word optional. Offspring are extracurricular — a mere lifestyle choice. Some have dogs, travel the world, or might throw themselves into collecting stamps; still others might, after giving up on better things, settle down and have children.

Incarceration and Interruption

This idea must hold utmost command of the male and female mind: children, at best, remain a backup plan. Tempt each according to their sex.

For the female, this shouldn’t be difficult. Our Gender Studies Department has done wonders exposing the truth of motherhood to this generation. A crib signals the female’s confinement; a swollen belly her inequality. How prejudiced of the Enemy, if you ask us, to create the female with the ability — nay, the imposed duty — to house the species in her body (with all the resulting wear and tear). What (ask her constantly) of her career? Her dreams? Her body? Her misfortune to have sex with greater consequences (stress that last word)?

For the male, we must stoke the idea that children distract from his life’s purpose, his attaining transcendence — instead of providing a means to it. Dominion, again, must be absent from his mind. Instead, remind him that children bother his career and limit his labor. As he builds to make a name for himself, do not let him imagine legacy through lineage. Make his first name more precious to him than his last.

Most men — and we even begin to make progress within the Enemy’s ranks — have a beautiful shortsightedness that would have shocked their forefathers. They prefer investing in themselves for themselves. A race of Hezekiahs, who don’t care much what happens to their offspring unborn, as long as it will be well with them.

Make sure to cast the spell. When they think of the little brats, let them see sleepless nights, the death of dreams, the sacrifice, the giving up of oneself — why bother? Why not buy a pet — man’s best, and much less demanding, friend? Entice them along these lines. Keep them thinking about themselves — not the extension of themselves. Go forth and . . . follow your own life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Discarded Image

Nephew, what do you see when you look at the yapping, flopping, drooling little creatures? If you see only food, you do not see as you ought. We hate their children, because we hate the Enemy himself and his image. Especially when that crude first birth gives way to a second. That sight of the Enemy in them grates our spirit. We would claw at his face, tear out his beard, mar him “beyond human semblance” all over again, if possible. But as it stands, he thinks to irritate us with little hims, running about in their poopy, needy course — potentially and horrifically to join his ranks and attain a much more accurate depiction.

These burping, crawling icons swarm our spirits, gnaw our patience, incite not just our appetite but our disgust. We hate their offspring (and them) with a complete hatred. Oh, that we could witness little ones drowning in the Nile again, or hear their pitiful yelps rise from Bethlehem. Of course, I downplay current successes; I do not mean to belittle our devilry — handing them the doctor’s forceps and judicial precedent. You cannot fault me for being, well, greedy.

Barren Household

All in all, Globdrop, sterilize him through his thoughts.

Show him and his wife the inconvenience of the leavened womb, how “the clump of cells” inside her threatens to clog careers and shave finances and constrict the home into a jail cell. Let them hear the midnight screams, the coming chaos — feel the cold death of lives formerly lived to themselves.

Cover the Enemy’s command to go forth and multiply; dull the unseemly spectacle of generating little souls; silence the little giggles, the pattering footsteps, the full-grown harvest. Cover his ears from that word dominion, and hers from glory. Snap their arrows. Break dreams of spawning little soldiers for the Enemy. Picture the disposable “it” as an interruption of better things; the double lines on the test signal downfall.

My mouth waters at scenes of my patients, now old and gray, who — neither through infertility nor miscarriage — sit diverting themselves in an empty house. They busily refused to have children, never knew birth pains for physical or spiritual sons and daughters, and now fill out crossword puzzles or scroll mindlessly through screens, bereft of memories and family photos. The best way to uproot a generational tree, nephew, is to prevent its planting.

Your begetting uncle,

Grimgod