Audio Transcript

Are motorcycles for fools? That’s today’s question. And we’re speaking of recreational motorcycles here, of course — their primary function in the States. And it’s really a question about providence more than anything else. Here’s the email: “Hello, Pastor John. My name is Ian, and I live in the beautiful city of San Diego. My girlfriend and I got into a discussion recently about riding motorcycles for fun. I stated that if we got married, I wouldn’t ride motorcycles because to me it feels unwise to put myself in a greater risk of dying and thus leaving her alone, or if we had kids, leaving them without their father and leaving their mother to support all of them, because riding for us is just recreational. She believes that if I died riding, it was God’s will for me to die anyways, and taking precautions, like not riding, is to live in fear, while for me it feels like a wise decision to not take that unnecessary risk when others’ livelihoods are at stake.

“I’m having trouble reconciling the sovereignty of God in our lives, but also making wise decisions. It’s true that God oversees every event that happens in our lives, regardless of our precautions, but in my mind I feel like decisions that we make will also impact our future. But aren’t crashes and misfortune in the hand of God, too, making precautions like these worthless? Am I living in fear? Or am I being prudent and wise in not wanting to ride motorcycles? Thank you, Pastor John!”

There are two sentences in Ian’s question that I think need some correction. And in the process, perhaps I can clarify a way of thinking about God’s sovereignty and our risks and our fear that will shape the way he and his girlfriend and all of us make our decisions. One of those sentences expresses Ian’s opinion, and the other one expresses his girlfriend’s opinion (at least the way he articulates it).

All-Governing Sovereignty

Let’s take Ian’s sentence first. He says, “But aren’t motorcycle crashes and misfortune in the hand of God, making precautions like these worthless?” Now, I’m not sure Ian really believes that — that God’s sovereignty over motorcycle crashes makes precautions like not riding a motorcycle worthless — because he had just said in the previous sentence, “It’s true that God oversees every event that happens in our lives regardless of our precautions. But in my mind, I feel like decisions that we make also impact our future.” So, it sounds to me like, Ian, you’re waffling. Precautions make a difference in our future, and precautions seem worthless in making a difference in view of the sovereignty of God.

So, we need to think for a minute. We need to ponder what’s going on here in that ambiguity and what is the truth here. And I think we can settle quickly that, according to the Bible, God governs the smallest details of nature and human activity — including motorcycle riding, including all accidents and non-accidents — as well as the greatest events in government and history and the universe, the solar system, the galaxies.

Jesus said, “Not one bird will fall from the sky apart from your Father’s will” (see Matthew 10:29). That’s tiny, micro providence. Proverbs 16:33: “The lot [dice] is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Isaiah 40:26 says not one of the stars is out of place because of God’s power. Ephesians 1:11: “[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” James 4:15: “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” So, the sovereignty of God over all things is not at issue.

“The sovereignty of God over human events does not make human choices about those events worthless.”

I think Ian agrees with that given what he says. But he does not seem to be as sure that taking precautions makes any difference in the outcome of our lives if God is sovereign over everything. That’s where he seems to be waffling. He says, “But aren’t motorcycle crashes in the hand of God, making precautions worthless?” Now, the answer to that question is a clear and emphatic no; they’re not worthless. They are not. The sovereignty of God over human events does not make human choices about those events worthless.

Over Ends and Means

The reason is very simple. God not only predestined the events that he wills to come to pass, but he also predestines the means by which those events come to pass.

If God predestines that there be a building, he also predestines that there be builders who build it. If God predestines that a person not starve to death, then he also predestines that they have food and that they eat it. If God predestines that you do not fly off a mountain cliff on your motorcycle, he also predestines that you not enter the curve doing 80 miles an hour. If God predestines that a nail be driven through a two-by-four, he also predestines that someone hit it with a hammer. If God predestines that someone be saved, he also predestines that someone bring that person the gospel.

It doesn’t make any sense to speak of God’s all-governing sovereignty as if it only designed the ends and not the means to those ends. It wouldn’t be all-governing if that were the case. Why would we think that? If he governs all things, he governs all secondary causes, all means to ends.

For the loss of a nail, the shoe was lost. For the loss of the shoe, the horse was lost. For the loss of a horse, the battle was lost. For the loss of the battle, the war was lost. For the loss of the war, the nation and the kingdom was lost. Every one of those causes, secondary causes — going all the way back to the nail that fell out of the horseshoe — is in the hand of the Lord just as much as the final outcome of a nation that falls. He sets up nations, he takes down nations, and he governs the billions of causes that develop over decades to bring a nation up or take a nation down. Any one of those causes may alter the outcome of our lives, depending on whether God wills it to be so.

So, it’s just wrong to say that because God governs final outcomes, our efforts to promote or hinder those outcomes are worthless. That’s just wrong. That would be a great, unbiblical mistake. God ordains means as well as ends, and our action is part of those means. So, not riding a motorcycle is a very good way not to be killed on a motorcycle. There is a real, causal connection between not riding motorcycles and not being killed on motorcycles.

Fearless Precautions

Now, the other sentence in that question is not Ian’s statement, but the one he says his girlfriend spoke. He says, “She believes that if I died riding a motorcycle, it was God’s will for me to die anyway and taking precautions like not riding is to live in fear.” Now, there’s more than one problem with that sentence, but we’re just going to take one — namely, the one about fear. She says, “To take precautions is to live in fear.” I doubt she really said that. I think he’s reporting it not quite exactly right.

I don’t think she really believes that, because that is certainly not necessarily true. And if she’s thought about it for five seconds, she’d know it’s not necessarily true that to take precautions is to live in fear. I take precautions by locking my doors every night. I take precautions by putting the car in the garage. I take precautions by backing up my hard drive on my computer. I take precautions by wearing a seatbelt. I take precautions by praying for protection before I go to bed at night. I take precautions by having health insurance. And on and on and on.

“God ordains means as well as ends, and our action is part of those means.”

The actual experience of fear in my life is almost totally absent. I don’t even think about it. It does not dominate my life. I hardly even give a thought to those things. Fear is rarely a conscious experience in my life. So, taking precautions doesn’t have to mean that you are living under the domination of fear. I have no intention of owning a motorcycle or going skydiving, for example. I don’t give them a thought. They don’t affect my fear level at all one way or the other.

What Risks Are Right?

So, the question that Ian and his girlfriend face regarding the motorcycle is this: What risks in life are wise and loving? So, instead of answering that question, which I don’t have time to do now, I’m going to send you to APJ 1446, where I do answer that question. I spent a whole session on it. The title of that episode is “How Do I Take Risks Without Being Unwise?” And I give six criteria there for answering that question — how to be wise, how to be loving and yet take appropriate risk. Because we all do every day. Life is a risk, right? You cannot not risk.

But the two main points here are (1) the sovereignty of God does not make precautions worthless, and (2) taking precautions need not imply that we are living in the grip of fear.

Few things in my fifty years of ministry have been more gratifying than to see the purposeful, all-wise, absolute sovereignty of God, which we call “providence,” move from being a stumbling block to faith to being a faith-sustaining, sanity-preserving rock of refuge for ordinary Christians passing through hellish circumstances.

For example, a quote from one of our missionaries, who at that time was in China:

In December 1987, my father died unexpectedly at age 63. . . . I was plunged into a journey of several months, struggling to understand what had happened. I was at Bethlehem, but new to the teaching, and apparently missing many of the distinctives. . . .

Fast forward to 1992. We had been in China for a year and returned home to have our first child. As you remember, she lived one day and died in our arms. It was then [that the teaching of God’s providence] came home to roost. God had not turned us loose to some natural events, but in his divine mercy had seen fit to give us a child, and through the process of taking her from us, work in us a honing and sanctifying unlike anything we had ever known. . . .

Thanks to the foundation . . . laid in my life through our years at Bethlehem, I was now able to embrace, and understand, such verses as “The Lord [gives], and the Lord [takes] away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

There was another missionary couple who went out from us to the Middle East. Not long after, they traveled to Turkey to have their first child. He too died. They came home, and their first Sunday back was the Sunday that we sang Matt Redman’s song “Blessed Be Your Name” for the first time. I was in the front row, as usual, and they were off to my right, so I could see them.

Blessed be your nameOn the road marked with suffering.Though there’s pain in the offeringBlessed be your name.

You give and take away.You give and take away.My heart will choose to say,Lord, blessed be your name.

Their empty hands were open in front of them. And I thought, “This is worth living for.”

Here’s another letter from a young woman who tells me of her uterine cancer:

I came to Bethlehem ten years ago. I had been a believer for only a few years. Within a few weeks of attending, I begin to hear you’re teaching on God’s sovereignty in salvation, and it was the weirdest thing I had ever heard. It sounded archaic and un-American, and later I realized it truly was archaic and un-American, but genuinely biblical. Eventually, by the awesome weight of Scriptural evidence, I was compelled to adopt the Reformed perspective on God’s sovereignty.

Little did I know that the hunger to understand God’s nature and his ways over the last ten years was graciously given to fortify me for this year’s surprise cancer diagnosis. Of course, the news that I had a life-threatening illness, and the realization that I would not be able to have children, was horribly painful, but the powerful assistance that comes from the truth amazed me. Theology can be so practical. It does wonders for anxiety and self-pity and despair.

I’m so glad God ordained my conversion to Reformed theology prior to ordaining my cancer. I know he is immeasurably strong and thoroughly in charge and one hundred percent on my side, even when he sends painful circumstances. Was it Spurgeon that said, “I will kiss the waves that dash me upon the Rock of Ages”?

The reason for lingering over these several testimonies, brothers, is to communicate a certain tone in which I want you to hear what I say. The reality of God’s all-governing, all-pervasive, purposeful sovereignty (providence) is controversial. From now until the day you see Jesus, there will be people who turn red in the face and speak angry words against you if you give the slightest hint that you believe it was God who took their child or their spouse. From now until the end of history, there will be scholars and pundits who write articles and essays and books describing the God of Jonathan Edwards as a moral monster.

Your job, when those things happen to you in your ministry, is not to return evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but to absorb the slander and the abuse, hand it over to God, and patiently minister to those in need.

I bear witness, brothers, some of those adversaries will do a complete one-eighty and love you someday. Don’t go online with guns blazing. This is not the kind of doctrine that should be handled that way. It is the great design of Providence to be the ballast in your peoples’ boats that keep them from capsizing in the waves of suffering. That’s the spirit in which I want you to hear this message, and that’s the spirit I think you should have when you speak of God’s absolute, purposeful sovereignty — of God’s providence.

So, let’s approach providence this way:

First, let’s say just a few more words about the meaning of “providence.”
Second, since the focus of this conference is on truth, and this is a message on “the triumph of truth through providence,” let’s identify some of the glorious promises of God, whose truth will not triumph without the providence of God.
Third, let’s look at some of the realities that threaten to defeat those promises, and how providence overcomes those threats and guarantees the triumph of those promises.

So: (1) clarify the definition, (2) identify some of God’s promises about our glorious future, and (3) show how providence secures those promises.

1. Providence’s Definition

What is God’s providence? The word providence doesn’t occur in the Bible, so if we are going to use it, we need to forge a definition from realities in the Bible, not from the use of the word itself. The short definition that I use is “God’s purposeful sovereignty.” Sovereignty and providence aren’t identical. “Sovereignty” means that God can do, and does do, whatever he pleases. “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3). That’s sovereignty.

But the word sovereignty does not carry in itself any idea of design or purpose, just power and authority. “Providence” implies purposefulness. Buried in the etymology of the word providence is the word provide, which is formed from two Latin words: pro and videre — “to see toward,” or the unusual English idiom “to see to.”

As in: God saw to it that there would be a ram in the thicket to take Isaac’s place. He saw to it that Joseph would be sold into slavery. He saw to it that his Son would be killed. This way of talking implies purposefulness. He doesn’t act only in sovereign power. He acts according to plan, to wisdom — he acts in purposeful sovereignty. That is what I mean by “providence.” God sees to everything purposefully.

One more clarification on the meaning of providence, namely, on its extent. I use the terms all-governing and all-pervasive to describe the extent. We will see this from the Bible as we go forward, but what I mean is that this purposeful sovereignty governs everything in the universe, from the most insignificant bird-fall (Matthew 10:29), to the movement of stars (Isaiah 40:26), to the murder of his Son (Acts 4:27–28). It includes the moral and immoral acts of every soul. Neither Satan at his hellish worst, nor human beings at their redeemed best, ever act in a way contrary to God’s ultimate, all-embracing, all-wise plan — his providence.

2. Providence’s Role in God’s Promises

What are some of the promises of God that capture this ultimate purpose, whose truth would not triumph without the providence of God? I’ll mention three.

The Promise of Gospel Reach

First, the promise that the gospel of Jesus Christ will successfully penetrate all the peoples of the world, gathering into Christ all of God’s ransomed elect: “This gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). It is promised. It is going to happen. The gospel will reach all the peoples of the world. World missions cannot be stopped.

And as it reaches all the peoples of the world, the gospel will succeed in gathering all the ransomed into Christ. Revelation 5:9–10: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

The risen, sovereign Christ promises to gather his flock. John 10:16: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” “I must . . . I will . . . I will.” That’s the promise. It cannot fail.

The Promise of Glorification

A second promise: All of these ransomed elect, the bride of Christ, will be sanctified, glorified, and made perfectly beautiful for the eternal enjoyment of her divine Husband. Romans 8:30: “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” The promise of the glorification of God’s predestined, called, justified people is as good as done. They will be glorified, that is, made splendid and beautiful for Christ.

Ephesians 5:25–27: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her . . . so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” Christ did not die to set in motion a failed marriage. She will be blameless and beautiful.

“The promise of the glorification of God’s predestined, called, justified people is as good as done.”

First Thessalonians 5:23–24: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” Or Philippians 1:6: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” It is promised. It will happen. She will be beautiful, perfectly beautiful, for the mutual enjoyment of bride and Bridegroom.

The Promise of God-Centered Pleasure

Third promise: This beauty of the bride will consist essentially in the sinless echo of Christ’s excellencies, his preciousness, reverberating back to him in the all-satisfying pleasures that his people find in him forever and ever. Isaiah 55:12–13:

You shall go out in joy     and be led forth in peace;the mountains and the hills before you     shall break forth into singing,     and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;     instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;and it shall make a name for the Lord,     an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

What shall make a name for the Lord? What is it in the new creation that will magnify the worth of the Lord forever? All creation, especially the bride, goes out in joy and breaks forth in singing. Isaiah 35:10: “The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

And what is the center and focus and source of that joy? Revelation 21:3–4:

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

God is their joy. The center, the focus, the source. Psalm 16:11: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” This is the end of the story. This is the ultimate purpose of God’s all-wise providence. “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6–7).

And how will the infinite worth and beauty and greatness and preciousness of God’s glory be on display in this new world? It will enter God’s people and awaken in them undreamed-of pleasures, which will echo back to him, and to all the universe, that God is an all-satisfying treasure. It’s a promise. That’s going to happen.

The nations will be reached, the elect will be gathered in, and they will be made beautiful for the enjoyment of Christ, as they echo back his excellencies in the everlasting pleasures that they find in him.

But none of that is going to happen without the omnipotent exercise of the providence of God. Why? Because there are massive threats or obstacles standing in the way of God’s ultimate purpose. We turn to our third main point.

3. Threats to God’s Promises — and How Truth Triumphs

Now we look at some of the realities that threaten to defeat those promises, and how God’s providence overcomes those threats and guarantees the triumph of truth. But let’s say it a little differently: the providence of God doesn’t just overcome the threats and obstacles to the triumph of God’s promises; it actually makes the threats and obstacles serve the triumph of those promises.

I take that to be the meaning of Romans 8:35–37: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered’—” There they are, the obstacles threatening to nullify the promises of God. To which the apostle Paul says, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” I take “more than conquerors” to mean that God doesn’t just prevent the threats from sabotaging his purposes; he does more, and makes them serve his purposes.

So, the banner flying over Joseph’s brothers’ sin of selling him into slavery flies over every sin and threat to God’s purposes. Genesis 50:20: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Not “used” it for good, but “meant” it — planned it, designed it — for the good of his people. So it is with every obstacle and every threat. So it is with every evil from the fall of Lucifer to the lake of fire.

Now, to name a few.

The Threat of God’s Wrath

The greatest obstacle standing in the way of the final, glorious purpose of a beautiful, happy bride of Christ in the presence of an all-holy God is the wrath of God because of our sin. Nothing compares to the horrible, blazing barrier of God’s wrath between us and our everlasting happiness in him.

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). This is why we pour out our lives in the course of world missions. The greatest obstacle to the everlasting happiness of every culture, every people group on the planet, is the wrath of God.

One thing can remove this obstacle: the love of God, propitiating the wrath of God through the death of the Son of God to vindicate the glory of God. Romans 3:25: “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood.” But right here, at the most important point in redemptive history, at the most horrible, sinful point in history, the providence of God is in total control, without which there would be no salvation. Acts 4:27–28:

Truly in this city [Jerusalem] there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Herod, Pilate, mobs, soldiers — you thought you were threatening and destroying the saving purposes of God. No. You were fulfilling them. In God’s providence you were doing whatever God’s hand and God’s plan had predestined to take place. “You meant it for evil. God meant it for good.”

The Threat of Satan and Sin

So now, the ransom for Christ’s bride is paid, the sins are covered, the condemnation is endured and past, the justice is satisfied, the impeding wrath is removed. But for the bride to enjoy all of this purchase, she must hear and believe (Romans 10:14–17). And Satan, in concert with human depravity, will do everything in their power (Satan and sin’s power) to keep that from happening.

Satan and sin conspire to turn kings and governors — the ones who make laws and break laws that hinder the spread of the gospel. “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you . . . and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake” (Luke 21:12). And what does that mean for the spread of the gospel? “The kings of the earth . . . and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed. . . . He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision” (Psalm 2:2–4).

Why? Because “the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will” (Daniel 4:32). “He removes kings and sets up kings” (Daniel 2:21). When they are in place, they act according to his plan: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).

Do you think, O king of Assyria, because you destroy my people, that you are not a hatchet in my hand?

Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it,     or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?As if a rod should wield him who lifts it,     or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood! (Isaiah 10:15)

No. When Satan and sin conspire to raise up kings and governors against the mission of God, they cannot succeed. They simply find themselves to be advancing his ultimate purpose. “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

The Threat of Disaster

But what about disease, like missionary kids in intensive care? What about freak accidents that take two missionaries from driving over a cliff, or a whole family of five wiped out on their way to the mission field? What about imprisonment and murder?

Disease? We have a sovereign Lord in heaven, to whom all authority is given. He rebuked fevers (Luke 4:39), cleansed lepers with a touch (Luke 5:13), opened the eyes of the blind (Matthew 9:29), made the deaf hear and the mute speak and the lame walk (Mark 7:34–35; Matthew 11:5). He raised the dead (Luke 7:14), and all the powers of hell obeyed him (Mark 1:27). And he “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

To be sure, Satan strikes with sickness (Luke 13:16). But he is on a leash. He cannot act contrary to God’s decisive plan. God can step in at any moment. And what he permits Satan to do, he wills to permit. He plans to permit. He doesn’t permit on the spur of the moment. He plans his permissions, and planned permission is providence. This is why Job 2:7 says, “Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores.”

But Job, three verses later, says, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” To which the inspired author comments, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:10). Indeed, the writer speaks his final word over the whole book in Job 42:11: “[Job’s family] showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.” And Paul called his painful thorn in the flesh “a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Corinthians 12:7). How it must gall Satan to be made the means of Christian holiness. “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

And yes, Satan throws into prison (Revelation 2:10). Satan kills Christians (Revelation 2:10). Satan orchestrates freak accidents (John 8:44; 12:31). But from God’s standpoint, there are no accidents — freak or otherwise.

James 4:15 tells us how to speak of random events: “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” If the Lord wills, we live. If the Lord wills, we die. We are immortal until our work is done. And while we live, James says, “this or that” will happen to us if God wills. From man’s viewpoint it can feel like “random this, random that.” But not with God. “If the Lord wills, this or that happens,” no matter how freakish it looks to us.

And if Satan and the enemies of God rub their hands together in triumph when a Christian witness languishes and dies, let them hear this word from Revelation 12:11: “They have conquered [the accuser, the serpent] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” The death of a Christian is not Satan’s victory. All of heaven knows it, and we need to teach our people to know it.

The Threat of Shipwreck

Glance briefly at one last threat to God’s plan. God’s ultimate purposes would fail if Satan’s blinding power over the depraved human heart were sovereign. If he could hold God’s elect in the blindness of spiritual death, or if he could deceive the Christian elect and cause them to turn away from the path of holiness and make shipwreck of their faith, God’s purposes would fail.

Neither Satan nor man is sovereign, either in the blindness of unbelievers or the fragile perseverance of Christian faith. God is. And over the new birth of every blood-bought sinner fly the words, “[God] made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:5). And over the miracle of every glory-seeing and glory-savoring Christian flies the banner, “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

At the end of every person’s life, for those who have persevered in faith, fought the good fight, finished the race, flies the banner, “Now to him who has kept me from stumbling and presented me blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (see Jude 24–25).

Providence Will Stand

I conclude that the truth of God, the promises of God, triumph.

The gospel of Jesus Christ will successfully penetrate all the peoples of the world, and will gather into Christ all of God’s ransomed elect.
All of these ransomed, the bride of Christ, will be sanctified, glorified, and made perfectly beautiful for the eternal enjoyment of her divine Husband.
This beauty of the bride will be the sinless echo of Christ’s excellencies, his preciousness, reverberating back in the all-satisfying pleasures that his people find in him forever and ever.

These truths, these realities, cannot fail, because God’s providence is his all-governing, all-pervasive, purposeful sovereignty, or, as he himself says, in Isaiah 46:10, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”

Audio Transcript

Should we ever speak directly to the devil? Some Christians do. Many don’t. Who is right? Here’s the question, from Frederic, a listener in Germany: “Pastor John, hello! An episode of APJ — APJ 1439 — really jumpstarted my prayer life. Thank you for it. As I felt really blessed, I was also concerned about something you did there. While you were pressing into reasons why the devil loves it when our prayer life is weak, you even addressed the devil directly, telling him to get out of the way. While I got the point, I was left concerned.

“Should we ever speak to or address the devil directly while praying to God? I know that it is a common practice in many churches to address the devil directly, to rebuke him, in corporate prayers for example. I consider these practices false as I don’t see any biblical reasons to do so. We even read in Jude: ‘But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you”’ (Jude 9). It seems like some people spend a lot of time speaking directly to the devil while praying to God. But should we?”

Well, may the Lord give us wisdom not to overemphasize the presence and danger of the devil and demons, and not to underemphasize the presence and the danger of devils and demons. That’s what I’m going to try to do — strike that balance in these few minutes that we have together. I want to get a biblical balance, and you can fall off the fence on both sides here.

Stay Grounded

Here are three preliminary, brief encouragements to set the stage.

First, the devil is not our main problem. Sin is our main problem; we are our main problem. And therefore, we should focus the lion’s share of our spiritual warfare not against Satan and not against other people but against sin in our own heart and life. If you succeed there, you defeat the devil, and you defeat your adversary. What God delights in is your holiness, and if you attain that by putting to death your own sin through the power of the Spirit, you triumph over Satan and over the world. Satan doesn’t care much about being seen. What he cares about is destroying people by trapping them and holding them in sin. So, sin is the main issue. That’s the first preliminary observation.

Second, never forget — preach it to yourself many, many times — that “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Christ, by his death and resurrection, dealt a decisive, defeating blow against Satan. He cannot destroy you except by tempting you to distrust Jesus and walk in sin. Believe in the triumph that you already have — the down payment by the Spirit in your life — and walk in this victory.

“The devil is not our main problem. Sin is our main problem; we are our main problem.”

Third, prioritize the method of demonic deliverance that Paul gives in 2 Timothy 2:24–26. He said to Timothy that he should “not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.” And then he adds, “God may” — so, as you do that, here’s what God’s going to do, perhaps — “perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” That’s the steady-state, normal way of defeating the power of the devil in the Christian ministry.

There is a kind of demonic possession that may call for a remarkable power encounter and real exorcism. I’ve been part of one of those in my life. But the ordinary way of deliverance is the way of teaching the truth that Satan cannot stand, and therefore he leaves because truth begins to take hold by God’s grace in people’s lives.

How Not to Speak to the Devil

Now, with those three encouragements in place, here’s what I’d say about speaking to the devil directly.

First, never negotiate with the devil. He is evil through and through. He is too subtle and deceptive, and he is expert in laying traps for people. Never bargain with the devil. Jesus refused to do it in the wilderness. We should refuse to do it everywhere.

Second, never speak to the devil approvingly. In John 8, Jesus said he’s a liar from the beginning, and behind that trickery is a murderous intent. Even when he speaks in half-truths, you would do well not to approve any half of it, because its intent is to trap and deceive.

Third, never speak a self-reliant or self-dependent rebuke to Satan. Now, mark those words: “self-reliant, self-dependent rebuke to Satan.” Any power that we have over Satan does not reside in us by nature. It is the power of Jesus Christ. We do not have authority in ourselves apart from him. We do not have wisdom in ourselves that is sufficient to oppose or figure out the schemes of the devil. It’s all of Christ.

In Whose Authority?

Now, this is where Jude 9 seems to be misunderstood — even by Frederic, who asked us this question, it seems. Frederic, in his question, seemed to use this text to say, “Not even the angel Michael spoke to the devil.” But in fact, the text says the opposite. “When the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’” He’s talking to the devil. The word you means he was speaking to the devil. But what he would not presume to do, and we should not presume to do, is speak to the devil in his own name or in his own authority. And so, he says, “The Lord rebuke you.”

We know that Jesus had authority over demons and that he spoke to them — like, “Be silent, and come out of him!” (Mark 1:25). And we know that he gave this authority to his disciples in Mark 6:7: “He . . . gave them authority over the unclean spirits.” And we know that when the 72 disciples returned, not just the twelve, to report about their ministry, they said, “Even the demons are subject to us in your name” (Luke 10:17). The words “in your name” mean that’s how they cast out the demons. Jesus cast them out in his own authority; the disciples cast them out in the name of Jesus. “Get out in the name of Jesus” is probably what they said.

So, when 1 Peter 5:9 and James 4:7 say that we should “resist the devil,” I think those commands in 1 Peter and James include those times when the demonic assault on you or your loved one is so plain and so blatant that you should say something like, “No, no, in the name of Jesus, leave me alone” or “Leave my child alone in the name of Jesus. Be gone, Satan — get out of this house.” Then we turn to Christ. Oh yes, we turn to Christ. This is the step that’s probably neglected. At that moment, we turn to Christ — we turn to the promises of Jesus:

“I’ll never leave you.”
“I’ll never forsake you.”
“I’ll always be with you.”
“I bought you; you’re mine.”
“No one can snatch you out of my hand.”
“I will help you.”
“I’ll be your shield.”
“Hold up the shield of faith. Believe in my promises. I’ll protect you. You will never be less than a super-conqueror as you trust in me.”

And then we rest. We rest in his sovereign care.

Fight Daily

So, my answer is yes, Christians may talk like that to the devil, but it will not be their normal, daily way of triumphing over his schemes. That’s the imbalance I’m trying to avoid. The hour-by-hour life of faith and holiness and love will be the normal way, and God will make us very useful in this world of defeating the schemes of the devil as we focus on his promises and defeat our own sins by his power.

When Jonathan Edwards was nineteen years old, he wrote a series of life resolutions. Decades ago, as a young man, I read them, and number six lodged itself in my mind and heart as something I very, very much wanted to make my own. And I have tried to.

Edwards wrote, “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.” My hope is that your years here at Bethlehem College and Seminary have kindled in you this fervent disposition of mind. While you live — all the way to the end — you live with all your might. All your life, with all your might. There’s a biblical name for that. It’s called zeal. And that’s what I want to talk about: your zeal, for the rest of your life.

God’s Will for God’s Will

I was sitting beside my wife while reading Romans 12 a few weeks ago, and I read these words in verses 6 and 8: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them . . . the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”

I turned to my wife and asked her, “What’s the common denominator between contributing generously and leading zealously and showing mercy cheerfully? What’s the basic point in saying, ‘Do what you do generously; do what you do zealously; do what you do cheerfully’?” And she said, “You really want to do it. You’re not being forced. You’re not half-hearted. You’re all in.”

And I thought, “That’s it.” When, six verses earlier, Romans 12:2 said, “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that [you can prove] what is the will of God,” the point was not only that God wills for us to do certain things, but that we do them in a certain way.

Once you have found God’s will for what to do, now the question becomes, What is God’s will for how to do God’s will? And one answer is this: with all your might, while you live. That is, with zeal. All in. Nothing half-hearted. Therefore:

If God’s will is for you to contribute, you do it generously. You divert all the tributaries of grace and goodness and kindness in your heart into that one river, and you give generously. Not begrudgingly.

If God’s will is for you to lead, you lead zealously. You corral all your energies and all your skills and all your creativity and all your desires, and you harness those horses to the wagon of your leadership, and you lead with zeal. Not sluggishly or carelessly.

And if God’s will is for you to show mercy, you do it cheerfully. You gather all the kindling of God’s promises, and you throw it on the fire of your joy, and you give cheerfully. Not reluctantly or under compulsion.

God’s will is not simply that we do the right thing. His will is that we do the right thing in the right way — that we do it with zeal.

Then, as if to confirm that we are on the right track, the very next verse says, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil” (Romans 12:9). In other words, it’s not enough to love. We need to love in a certain way: genuinely, deeply, really, zealously. It’s not enough to hate evil. We need to hate evil in a certain way: with abhorrence. Be all in with your love for people. Be all in with your hatred of evil. Nothing phony. Nothing half-hearted. Nothing ho-hum about love or hate. Love people zealously. Hate evil zealously.

Intensified, Clarified, Focused

To make crystal clear what Paul is so concerned about here, one verse later (in Romans 12:11), he says, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” So, he intensifies the zeal of zeal. He defines the meaning of zeal. And he focuses on the goal of zeal.

First, he intensifies the zeal of zeal. He says, “Do not be slothful in zeal.” In other words, be zealous about being zealous. Don’t be lackadaisical about not being lackadaisical. Don’t be half-hearted in your repudiation of half-heartedness. He intensifies the zeal of zeal.

Then he defines zeal. He says, “Be fervent in spirit.” The Greek verb literally means “boil.” “Boil in spirit.” In fact, the Latin word fervens, from which we get the word fervent, means “boil.” Christian zeal is a flame ignited by God’s Spirit in our spirit to live with all our might while we do live.

This is not a personality trait. It is a spiritual duty. Your personalities are all over the map: some are high-strung, and some are phlegmatic and passive. Nobody gets a pass on zeal. It is not a personality trait. It’s a spiritual response to the King of kings. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).

“What is God’s will for how to do God’s will? One answer is this: with all your might.”

And third, he focuses our zeal on the ultimate goal of zeal. He says, “Serve the Lord.” Here’s the entire verse again: “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” Zeal for the sake of zeal is atheism — energetic atheism. Paul is not aiming at zeal for the sake of zeal. He’s aiming at zeal for the glory of the Lord Jesus: “Serve the Lord” — the Lord! Let your unflagging zeal serve the Lord. Let your boiling spirit serve the Lord.

In other words, gather all the streams of your heart, and harness all the horses of your creative energies, and pile on all the kindling of God’s promises, and live with all your might to make Jesus look great.

All Your Might for All Your Life

From those biblical reflections, I draw out this doctrine:

It is the will of God that the graduates of Bethlehem College and Seminary do the will of God with zeal.

Or:

That you live with all your might while you do live — for the glory of Jesus Christ.

To clarify and support this doctrine, consider these realities.

1. Consider the example of zeal in the Lord Jesus.

His passion for the purity of his Father’s house moved him to drive out the money-changers and say, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” And “his disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’” (John 2:16–17).

2. Consider the reward of zeal in heaven.

Colossians 3:23–24: “Whatever you do, work heartily [zealously!], as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.”

3. Consider the camaraderie of zeal.

Hebrews 10:24–25: “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together.” The word for “stirring up” is paroxysmon, from which we get paroxysm. It means “arousing a person to activity” — provoking, awakening, kindling, bringing alive. This is what Christian friends are for. This is what the church is for. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Your zeal has stirred up most of them” (2 Corinthians 9:2). Zeal is contagious. This is what we do for each other — the camaraderie of zeal.

4. Consider the loneliness of zeal.

Jesus warned in Matthew 24:12, “Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” You may have to stand alone (or with the few), surrounded by lukewarm, indifferent people. God will help you.

5. Consider the danger of zeal.

Paul never ceased to think of himself as the chief of sinners largely because, before he was a Christian, his zeal was so great and so evil. Philippians 3:5–6: “as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.” And he called all of it “refuse,” garbage (verse 8). So, he warned the churches: there is a zeal that is not according to knowledge (Romans 10:2). Measure your zeal by biblical knowledge and biblical love.

6. Consider the price Christ paid for your zeal.

Titus 2:14: “[He] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Christ died to make you zealous for good works. Christ gave his life so that you would not just do the will of God, but that you would do it in a certain way — with zeal.

Therefore, graduates of Bethlehem College and Seminary, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” Say from your heart over the rest of your lives, “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.”

Audio Transcript

Today we read Luke 15:11–32 together in our Bible reading, the parable of the prodigal son, or the parable of the prodigal sons (plural). It’s a famous story about a father — a blameless father — and his two sons, who are anything but blameless, each of them entrapped by his own sin in very different ways. For parents of prodigal sons and daughters, the story resonates deeply in offering hope, like it does for Heather, a mom in Birmingham, Alabama.

“Pastor John, hello. I am the mother of a prodigal son in his early twenties. I read Luke 15 over and over. I have studied it a hundred times. I was wondering, if you were to talk to the parent of a prodigal son or daughter, how would you give hope to them from this text? I want my life to reflect the life of the father in this story as I wait on the porch.”

It really is an amazingly encouraging parable for parents of prodigals. It has so many layers of encouragement in it. I don’t think we or anybody has ever gotten to the bottom of it and its amazing portrait of the gracious heart of God. We could talk for hours about the implications of this parable, but we don’t have hours. So, let me perhaps mention seven encouragements from this parable.

1. God pursues sinners.

First, this is one of the three parables in Luke 15, which are told by Jesus in response to being criticized in verses 1–2 because of eating with tax collectors and sinners. When the Pharisees and scribes grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2), Jesus responds by telling the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost son (or sons — we’ll see).

So, all three parables are meant to illustrate the fact that when Jesus is eating with sinners, this is what God is doing. He’s embodying the pursuit of God that’s described in the parables as he pursues the lost. That’s what’s happening when Jesus comes into the world and eats with sinners. God is not in any way compromising with sin. Christ is not becoming a sinner by eating. He’s doing John 3:17: God sent his Son into the world not “to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” And so, the father in the parable of the prodigal son is a picture of God acting in Christ to save prodigals. That’s just the basic picture that we should be encouraged by. We need to see God that way. Think of him that way. He’s pursuing sinners.

2. God is glad to have prodigals home.

Second, in all three parables, there’s this jubilant celebration over a single sinner who repents. “I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). And in the parable of the prodigal son, the father says, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him. . . . Let us eat and celebrate (Luke 15:22–23). So, God’s heart in this parable, in all three parables, is glad to have prodigals come home. He’s not begrudging; he’s glad.

3. God, not guilt, is in view.

Third, in all three of these parables, there’s no focus on the guilt of the woman who lost the coin, or the shepherd who lost the sheep, or the father who lost a son. Now, I’m not saying that to make any comment about the quality of my or your parenting, which all of us know could have been better on every count. People sometimes ask me, “What would you do differently?” And I say, “Everything. I’d try to do everything better.”

“When Jesus eats with sinners, he embodies the Father who pursues the lost.”

I’m simply saying, when I observe this, that that’s not the issue here. Jesus is simply not calling any attention to that, which is crystal clear in the parable of the prodigal son, because the father is a picture of God, who is the absolutely perfect Father, and yet he’s got this lost son. I mean, go figure — how can you be a perfect father and have a lost son? We are encouraged to fix our gaze in these parables not on ourselves, not on our shortcomings, but on the kind of God we are dealing with in these parables.

4. God can bring sanity through misery.

Fourth, the prodigal son experiences a change of heart at the lowest point of his miserable life. He’s ready to share food with the pigs. At the boy’s lowest point, he came to himself (Luke 15:17). And the encouraging thing is that just when it looked absolutely hopeless — How could you return from something so low? — he experienced his awakening.

5. God’s heart runs toward his children.

Fifth, perhaps the most tender and beautiful and powerful moment in the parable, which Jesus surely intended for this effect because he told the parable this way, is the moment when the father sees the boy a long way off and runs to greet him — not walks; he runs to greet him. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). So, he saw, he felt, he ran, he embraced, he kissed. So, oh, let us — I want to say it to myself — let us keep that picture in our minds, not only as a picture of God’s heart, but to make our own hearts tender that way and eager that way.

6. God can raise the dead.

Sixth, the father describes the change in the boy’s life as a change from death to life. “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:24). This is encouraging because the father did not minimize the dreadfulness of the boy’s condition. The boy was dead. From a merely human standpoint, he was hopeless. So, don’t ever look upon the hardness, the indifference, even the bitterness or the cynicism of a prodigal and think, “That can’t change. This is never going to change.” Don’t think that way. It can. He was dead and he lives.

7. God invites both sons home.

And then, finally, seventh: Remember that this father in the parable of the prodigal son had two prodigals, not just one. When Jesus was eating with the tax collectors and sinners, there were two groups of lost people he had to deal with. One was the tax collectors and sinners, and the other was the scribes and Pharisees.

The tax collectors and sinners are represented in the parable by the prodigal son, and the scribes and Pharisees are represented by the older son who was angry. He was angry that the father was celebrating the return of the younger son. Life — he was angry at new life. This older brother, like the Pharisees, saw his relationship with the father in terms of earning privileges rather than enjoying a relationship. So, how would the father respond to this kind of wayward son, the second prodigal son? How would he respond?

Sometimes people say — and I heard this when I was in Germany, writing a dissertation on loving your enemies — “There’s no way that Jesus ever tried to woo the Pharisees. He only had negative things to say about the Pharisees. He never invited them to believe.” And I pointed out in my dissertation that that’s what’s going on here. Look at verse 28. The older son was angry, and he refused to go in and be a part of the celebration of life and salvation. And his father, just like with the younger son, came out and entreated — not commanded, not was angry — he entreated him. He had come out to meet the dissolute younger son. He came out and wooed and pleaded with the legalistic older son.

So, here’s my conclusion, for myself, for all of us: Let’s take heart for at least these seven reasons, and remember Jesus’s encouragement in chapter 18, just a few chapters later, that we should “always . . . pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).

Suppose I wrote you a letter, about five pages long, in which I explain in some detail a controversial behavior of mine a week ago that people have been misinterpreting. And suppose that in the letter, I describe the behavior in a paragraph, and I give the background for it, and I explain my motivations, and I tell you about the outcome and where it all led, and I explain how it relates to my faith in Jesus and how his death and resurrection give me hope.

And suppose you read the letter, and then you take the paragraph from the letter, the one that simply described the controversial behavior, and you lifted it out of the letter, and you ignored everything I said about the background and my motivation, and everything I said about the outcome of the behavior, and everything I said about how it relates to my faith and the death of Jesus, and you simply spread all over social media that “John Piper has this behavior” — with none of the context that I provided.

What would you be doing?

Love’s Surest Measurement

One answer to that question is that you would be disobeying this text. When the lawyer says at the end of Luke 10:27 that you should not only love God, but also love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus approved of that answer. Verse 28: “You have answered correctly.” So, one of the teachings of this text is that we should love our neighbor as we love ourselves — which is about as radical a thing as you can say.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is not about self-esteem. It’s about the fact that every one of us does what we think will make us happy. We don’t walk in front of trucks. We don’t drink poison. We don’t jump off buildings. We put a roof over our head when it’s raining. We wear warm clothes in the winter in Minnesota. We try to get enough sleep and exercise to function. We want good grades for ourselves in school. We want a job that will put bread on our table. And we want to be treated fairly. We want people to read our letters fairly.

So, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is to keep them from walking out in front of trucks, or drinking poison, or jumping off buildings. To help them have a roof over their heads. To help them have clothes in winter and sleep and exercise and good grades and jobs and be treated fairly. Because all of that we want for ourselves, which is what it means to love ourselves.

The apostle Paul applied this command to marriage in Ephesians 5:28–29, saying, “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies [as they love themselves]. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.” That’s what “self-love” means. And of itself, it’s not wrong. To love your neighbor as you love yourself is to make your own self-care the measure of your care for others. It’s very radical. Crazy radical. It’s absolutely life-revolutionizing. Churches full of people like this, scattered throughout the cities, would be gloriously strange.

Will You Love Luke?

To read my letter in a way that you would never want your letter to be read is to disobey this text. Why in the world am I pointing that out? Because that’s the way millions of people read the Gospel of Luke, especially when it comes to this parable — the parable of the good Samaritan. Millions of unbelievers love this parable and ignore what Luke teaches. And I’m saying that when you read the Gospel of Luke that way, you are disobeying the Gospel of Luke. You’re disobeying Jesus and not loving Luke.

It is disobedient to Jesus and unloving to Luke to take this parable, lift it out of its Gospel-setting, and use it to build your own wrath-omitting, repentance-omitting, faith-omitting, blood-omitting, justification-omitting ethic of good deeds. That is the playbook of theological liberalism, which rejects the authority of the Bible but keeps the Bible, picking and choosing the parts it likes, and treating the rest as legend or mythology.

And I’m saying that is disobedient to Jesus and unloving to Luke. When you treat a biblical author that way, you are breaking the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. In this case, to love Luke as you love yourself. If you love Luke, if you treat him the way you want to be treated — if you read him the way you want to be read — you will keep in mind the other crucial things that he says when you read this parable.

For example, John the Baptist warns about the wrath of God that is coming (3:7). Jesus warns that unless we repent, we will all likewise perish (13:3). Jesus said not to fear those who simply kill the body, but to fear him who, after he has killed, can cast into hell (12:5). So, one burning question not only for the lawyer, the priest, and the Levite in this text, but also for the Good Samaritan is this: Will they escape the wrath of God?

And if we say to Luke or to each other, “There’s no wrath in this story,” wouldn’t Luke say, “Do I have to put everything in every paragraph? Isn’t it enough that I tell you about these things all over my Gospel? Is it too much to ask that you would keep them in mind as you read? And, oh — this is a story about inheriting eternal life [verse 25].”

Another example is the forgiveness of sins. Jesus says in Luke 5:24 that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And in Luke 7:47 he says, “He who is forgiven little, loves little,” implying that genuine love for others is going to flow from a sense of having been forgiven by God.

Luke’s List Goes On

Or then there’s justification. In Luke 18:11–14 Jesus says there was a boastful man who went up to the temple, and there was a broken man who went up to the temple. The broken man said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” To which Jesus responded, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.” That has something to do with eternal life.

And then there’s inner transformation. In Luke 6:43–44 Jesus says, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit.” And later he says, “Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within” (11:40–41). Outward good deeds without inward change is Pharisaism. So, what is the lesson of the Samaritan’s good deeds?

Or what about faith in Jesus, allegiance to Jesus? In Luke 12:8–9 Jesus says, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” Will the Good Samaritan be acknowledged before God?

Or what about that other time a man came to Jesus in Luke 18:22 and, like this lawyer, asked how to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, after all the man’s law-keeping, this: “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Bottom line: “Follow me. Confess me. Without me, no eternal life.” Does it matter if the Good Samaritan follows Jesus?

Or most important, what about the blood of Jesus shed for the forgiveness of sin? Jesus says in Luke 22:20, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And the new covenant is this: “You believe in me; I forgive your sins.” As Luke 24:47 says, “Repentance for the forgiveness of sins [will] be proclaimed in his name to all nations.”

“Jesus changed the question from ‘What kind of person is my neighbor?’ to ‘What kind of person am I?’”

So, when we come to read the parable of the good Samaritan, we should love Luke the way we love ourselves. We should read him the way we would want to be read. As I was preparing for this message, I heard Luke, so to speak, say to me, “Pastor John, as you talk about this parable, please remind people of what I said about wrath and repentance and justification and the blood of Jesus and forgiveness of sins and faith in Jesus.” Yes, Luke, I will.

With that great vision of reality, let’s watch this story unfold.

Law-Keeping Isn’t the Path

In verse 25, an expert in the Mosaic law, called a “lawyer,” puts Jesus to the test by asking, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” You don’t want to approach Jesus like that — putting him to the test. If you ask Jesus a question, it better be because you want to know, not because you want to trip him up. If you come to Jesus like the lawyer, he will trap you in your own words. We’re going to watch it happen.

In verse 26 he turns the test around and says, in effect, “You’re the expert in the law — you tell me.” The lawyer answers, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (verse 27). To which Jesus responds in verse 28, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

Now, there are two ways you can understand Jesus’s approval of the lawyer’s answer. Jesus may be saying, “That’s right, Mr. Lawyer, if you choose the path of law-keeping as a means of getting right with God and a means of earning your way into eternal life, then following these two commandments is the way to go about it. Love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself. And you must do it perfectly if you’re going to show that you deserve to be in the presence of the perfectly holy God by law-keeping.”

If that’s the way you understand it, then Jesus would be showing the lawyer that he’ll never be able to do that, and that he should look away from law-keeping to the work of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, and salvation by grace, not works. That would be a theologically, orthodox, and biblically faithful way of understanding Jesus’s approval of the lawyer’s answer.

Love Is on the Path

But there’s another way to understand this text, which I’m inclined to think is closer to the mind of Christ. Namely, Jesus agrees that loving God and loving your neighbor is the path that leads to the inheritance of eternal life — the only path that leads to that inheritance. It is the path that you are on right now, if you are a Christian — if you are saved by grace through faith.

Luke wants us to know, in the context of his whole Gospel, that Jesus died for our sins, and that we are justified, and that our sins are forgiven by faith, not by works of the law, and that we receive the Holy Spirit and are changed from the inside by turning to Jesus and renouncing law-keeping as a way of earning eternal life. But rejecting law-keeping as a way of earning eternal life does not mean rejecting love — for God and neighbor — as the path that leads to eternal life. And the only path.

The apostle Paul said to the Christian church at Corinth, “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” (1 Corinthians 16:22). No love for God, no eternal life. That’s true for Christians. And earlier in the same book he said, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). No love for people, no eternal life.

Why? This is not about earning life. The apostle John puts it like this: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. . . . Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 3:14; 4:8). Loving God and loving neighbor is necessary to inherit eternal life not because it is a work of merit to earn life, but because it is a fruit of the Spirit that proves life is present.

So, in this parable, we are going to be shown the path of love that leads to eternal life. We can walk this path by faith, trusting the blood-bought promises of Jesus, or we can miss the path and join the lawyer in his desire to justify himself. Self-justification is the opposite of faith and the opposite of love.

A (Shocking) Story for an Answer

Verse 29: “But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” In other words, “Which groups of people don’t I have to love?” Jesus likes questions — but not that kind. Questions that are designed to escape the sacrificial path of love, Jesus won’t answer. So, instead of answering, he tells a story. And at the end of the story, he’s going to turn the lawyer’s question upside down — and look us right in the eye. Verses 30–35:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho [a drop of about 3,500 feet in 17 miles], and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii [two days wages, maybe $400] and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.”

There are at least three shocking things here.

First, it is shocking that the people who pass by on the other side, leaving the man half dead to die, are the ones who serve most closely to the holy place of God: the priest, who serves in the temple, and the Levite, who assists priests. I thought maybe Jesus would make one of the bad guys a lawyer. That would work, wouldn’t it? But it seems that the point is this: getting religiously “close” to the most sacred acts, events, and places does not necessarily make you a loving person. This is very sobering to those of us who spend most of our lives with God’s sacred book and God’s sacred church. Very sobering.

Second, it is shocking that the hero of the story is a Samaritan. John 4:9 says that “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Luke 9:53 says that the Samaritans wouldn’t receive Jesus and his apostles because they were going up to Jerusalem. The Samaritans are Jewish half-breeds who intermarried with the pagan people of the land and set up their own temple. They are outcasts and unclean.

And the shocking thing is not that a Samaritan cared for a Jew (the half-dead man is never called a Jew), but that a Samaritan surpassed a priest in becoming the kind of person Jesus came into the world to create. The message is clear: this Christ does not limit his transforming work to one ethnicity.

Third, it is shocking how over-the-top lavish the Samaritan’s care is for a total stranger. Bound his wounds. Poured oil and wine. Let him ride the Samaritan’s animal. Took care of him at an inn. Gave him $400 for his needs. Promised to return and pay more. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your [lavish] good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

“Christ died to create a people who are so secure, and so content in Christ, that we move toward need, not comfort.”

What’s the difference between the religious leaders and the Samaritan? The one difference that Jesus points out is that the Samaritan felt compassion. Verse 33: “A Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had [felt] compassion.” Compassion is a feeling, not an act. But oh, how it overflowed in lavish acts — gifts of time and money and risk. But the root was compassion. And compassion rooted in love for God requires a new heart.

How Compassion Moves

The story ends in verses 36–37 with Jesus turning the lawyer’s original question upside down. The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor? Which group don’t I have to love?” Jesus says,

“Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor [became a neighbor] to the man who fell among the robbers?” [The lawyer] said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Jesus changed the question from What kind of person is my neighbor? to What kind of person am I? He changed the question from What status of people are worthy of my love? to How can I become the kind of person whose compassion disregards status?

How can I become the kind of person who, instead of moving to the other side of the road (or the other side of town), moves toward need and sacrifice and risk? For decades at Bethlehem one of our standing mottos for the neighborhoods and for the nations was this: “Christians move toward need, not comfort.”

And hundreds have found, as Jesus says, that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). More blessed to move toward need than comfort. The risk of crossing the road, or the ocean, is worth it.

As we move to the Table, remember this: among the many things in Luke’s Gospel in which this parable is embedded, is this great word of Jesus: “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Christ died to create a people who are so secure, and so content in Christ, that we move toward need, not comfort.

Audio Transcript

Can we pray that God would teach someone a lesson? Can we pray for God to disrupt and make their life hard, all to get their attention? It’s an interesting question from Tiffany today.

“Pastor John, hello and thank you for the podcast. I know the Bible says to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I want to pray for God to change their heart and ways. But sometimes I want to pray that they are affected by their actions so they will wake up and change their ways. For example, at my job there is rampant negligence that has been brought to my boss’s attention multiple times. This negligence could seriously harm or kill someone. My boss doesn’t like the confrontation and doesn’t address the issue.

“Is it wrong to want them to be shaken up by some event to change their ways, or is praying that someone gets taught a lesson the same as saying, ‘I told you so’? Or is all of this unchristian to begin with? Psalm 73 comes to my mind and seems to check this kind of thinking. Immediate justice isn’t something that often happens, and we shouldn’t necessarily look for it to happen before Christ returns. But what do you think? Can we pray for someone to be taught a lesson?”

I start with the conviction from Jesus in Luke 6:28 that Christians are to “bless those who curse you [and] pray for those who abuse you.” So, I think it is right that we should seek the good of our enemies when we pray, especially the ultimate good: their salvation. So, if we pray that they be taught a lesson, we would be praying that the lesson would bless them, save them. That’s the principle. That’s the basic thing I would say. If you’re going to do it, do it savingly. It’s not an “I told you so” — it’s not a “Gotcha!” — but rather, “I want your ultimate blessing.” That’s what I’m seeking in my prayer.

But let me back up and put this question in a particular framework of what the Bible teaches about prayer. It was really helpful for me to think about this. Maybe it’ll be helpful for others. This question really is part of a larger question of how detailed our prayers should be when it comes to pleading with God to accomplish something in a particular way. In other words, if we have an ultimate outcome in mind that we want God to bring about, like saving a particular lost person, how detailed should we get in praying for God to do it in certain ways? Or to say it another way, how many secondary causes of a desired effect should we ask for?

Praying for Causes

Let me illustrate with a couple of pictures. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he began with the most general, all-inclusive prayer — namely, “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). So, this is a prayer that God would see to it that his name is honored, reverenced, treasured, glorified. “Do it Lord; cause that to happen.” And at that point in the prayer, he could have just stopped, right? He could have just stopped. “That covers everything, folks. If everything happens to the hallowing of my name, the glorifying of my name, the treasuring of my name, it’s over. That’s the end of the universe. That’s the point of everything.” He could have just stopped right there. The hallowing and the glorifying of God’s name is the ultimate goal of all things.

But he didn’t stop there. He tells us to pray some specifics underneath the hallowing of his name — namely, “Your kingdom come” and “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). So here are two specific secondary causes to the ultimate purpose of the hallowing of God’s name — that he would reign in people’s lives and over the earth, and that those lives would be obedient to his revealed will. And that would result in the hallowing of his name, the glorifying and honoring of his name.

“We may pray for others to be taught a lesson for their good, but we should be careful not to presume to be God.”

Then Paul gets even more specific in Romans 10:1, and he shows that we don’t merely just pray for the hallowing of his name or his reign in people’s lives or the doing of his will. We also pray that people be saved, be redeemed, be rescued from their sin. “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). So now we have several secondary causes prayed for: that God would reign in people’s lives, that they might be saved, that they might do his will on earth, that the hallowing of his name, the glorifying of his name, would come to pass.

But Paul and the Psalms take us into more specifics, more secondary causes. They pray — for example, in Ephesians 1:18 and Psalm 119:18 — that God would open people’s eyes to see wonderful things in the Bible. So, the New Testament saints did not just pray for people to be saved, but also prayed for what needed to be done for people to be saved — they have got to have their eyes open so that they can see the glories of Christ.

But Paul gets even more granular in his prayers and asks in 2 Thessalonians 3:1 that the word of God would run and be glorified. In other words, he’s not content to pray that people’s eyes would be opened, but that the word of God would in fact be effective in opening their eyes. So, he’s moving back down the causal chain here and asking God to act in producing certain secondary causes that bring about the ultimate thing he’s concerned about.

And Jesus takes this even a level below that in the causes that bring about such things. He says in Matthew 9:38, “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Now, these are the people who speak the word of the Lord, which will open people’s eyes, which will lead them to salvation, which will lead them to obedience, which will lead them to the hallowing of God’s name.

‘Teach Them a Lesson’?

So, you can see where this is going. I’m pointing out that the Bible does not simply teach us to pray for the ultimate end of things — like the glorifying of God’s name — and then stop. It teaches us to pray for layers of causes that the Bible itself reveals do in fact lead to the glorifying of God’s name. Which means that the question I’m being asked is, in effect, Is it biblical to pray that one of those causes, leading to the ultimate effect, would be, “Lord, teach this person a lesson in order to bring them to repentance and faith and obedience and the glorifying of your name”? Is that biblically warranted?

For example, say a person is making a practice of cheating on his income taxes, and he’s just not telling the whole truth to the IRS, and he won’t pay any attention to your rebukes. “You’ve seen it; you understand it; you’re telling me that’s not wrong. A Christian doesn’t act that way. It’s deceptive. Change your behavior.” And he doesn’t do it. He won’t repent. Should we not only pray that he come to repentance and leave the method by which he’s sinning, but should we pray that something happen to him in order to wake him up from his sinful way?

My answer is this: We may pray for particular ways for him to be taught a lesson for his good, but we should be humble and careful not to presume to be God and to know more than we do. The reason I say this is first because of Psalm 83:16. Here’s what it says — this is a prayer now — “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.” So, the psalmist doesn’t just pray that they would seek God’s face, but that they would be shamed for what they’re doing, and that that shame would bring them to seek God’s face. So, that’s a biblical example of praying that somebody be taught a lesson.

So, the basic answer is yes. But the reason I say we should be humble and careful not to presume to be God is that we don’t know what the best way is for God to bring a person to his senses and save him. We don’t know. We can guess. We can look at the Bible for pointers. But we’re not God. We should be careful not to tell God how he should do what’s best to do. If there are biblical pointers, then we can follow those pointers in praying for secondary causes, but I would not make a practice of going beyond Scripture and prescribing to God how he should accomplish his biblically revealed purposes.