On Tuesday, February 7, Lebron Raymone James, Sr. broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career points record — 38,387 points — and became the NBA’s all-time scoring leader.

Perhaps the defining image of the night was captured by Andrew D. Bernstein. Look closely, and you’ll notice the photo has something in common with so many iconic images of the last decade: behind the indelible moment in focus, there’s a towering wall of raised arms holding small, metallic rectangles. Nearly everyone in the frame is reaching, straining to grab their own picture. Why would that be?

Surely all 18,997 in attendance that night knew that this moment would be thoroughly captured from every conceivable angle, by a small army of professional photographers, wielding the best equipment available. So why would thousands of amateur photographers, with less sophisticated cameras, at far worse angles, risk missing the moment for an inferior photo?

Because, deep down, this historic moment was not first and foremost about Lebron James, or the Los Angeles Lakers, or professional basketball, or even history — it was really about me. It was about the Instagram post and a couple dozen likes. Many are not even watching the play they paid hundreds to witness; they’re looking at their phones.

“Sin has always taught us to put ourselves at the center of everything — even the gospel.”

The smartphone, of course, did not invent this pervasiveness of self-centeredness. It’s only given our personal Babel-building newer tools (and fed it plenty of apps). Sin has always taught us to put ourselves at the center of everything — even the gospel.

Unless We Start with God

We can trace this innate self-centeredness back to the first sin. When Satan surveyed Adam and Eve’s vulnerabilities in the garden, notice what hedges he attacks: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Why are you content to live in his world? Reject him, and all this could be yours. It could all be about you. Satan tries the same play against Jesus in the wilderness (Luke 4:5–7).

Even after Jesus comes and dies for self-exalting, God-belittling sins like ours, we’re still tempted to listen to his gospel and hear a story centered on us. But the gospel from beginning to end — from the garden, through the fall, beneath the cross, outside the tomb, and into glory — is meant to lift our eyes away from self to God. As John Piper warns,

Unless we begin with God in this way, when the gospel comes to us, we will inevitably put ourselves at the center of it. We will feel that our value rather than God’s value is the driving force in the gospel. We will trace the gospel back to God’s need for us instead of tracing it back to the sovereign grace that rescues sinners who need God. (The Pleasures of God, 8)

I remember when this dichotomy first leveled me — and then lifted, thrilled, and strengthened me. Of course I could love a God who bent the universe because he loved me. But could I love a God who loved me because he loved his own glory? Could I love a God who chose to love me, not because I could ever deserve such love, but to display his perfect patience and unrivaled mercy?

Slowly, I came to see that God’s love for me — and he really does love me — was even bigger, stronger, and sweeter than I realized precisely because it wasn’t all about me. I learned to put the phone back in my pocket and focus instead on enjoying him — and nowhere more than in each chapter of his glorious, grace-filled gospel.

Creation: For God

When you were woven together in your mother’s womb — arms, legs, intellect, personality — you were made by God, in the image of God, so that others would see you and worship God. Listen to how God himself describes what he has made:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26–27)

In one sense, he made everything else — fish and birds and livestock and lady bugs — as one wild, enormous frame for the crown of creation, the ones that would be like him and make him visible, hearable, knowable in his world. That means we are not even the center of our own lives, much less the universe. We were made for God.

Fall: Against God

But we all rejected that God-centered purpose for our lives. We weren’t the images of his glory that we were meant to be. We sinned. As Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Before sin says something about us and our guilt, it says something slanderous about God. It throws shade over his value.

Almost everyone alive can acknowledge that they have done, said, or thought things they shouldn’t have. Almost everyone has experienced guilt, shame, and regret. That’s often why the gospel gets the hearing it does. Far fewer, however, know that all of that guilt, shame, and regret is rooted in how they’ve treated God. After committing adultery and conspiring to kill the woman’s husband, King David says to God, “Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4). In one sense, all of our sin (and any given sin) is first and foremost against God.

This is the only reasonable explanation for hell. Eternal conscious punishment wouldn’t be just for anything less than sin against the infinitely valuable, the infinitely merciful, the infinitely good God.

Redemption: To God

We were made for God, and each rebelled against God, deserving the wrath of God — but God.

You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. . . . But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:1–5)

Notice how little we contributed to our own resurrection. Yes, we were physically moving, breathing, talking, living before we found Christ, and yet we couldn’t offer God more than a dead man could. Spiritually, we were colorless, unmoving. But God — he stepped between the fallen image of God and the burning wrath of God and did what only God himself could do. He sent his Son to bleed and die in our place so that we might sit with him in his — “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6).

And nothing makes this grace sweeter and more glorious than that we get God. Jesus “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Forgiveness isn’t the final prize of this good news; neither is escape from hell. No, forgiveness means that souls made by God to know and enjoy God, who then rejected and insulted that God, still get to have God.

Commission: From God

When grace invades and brings life, one of the clearest evidences is that God has replaced self as the sun in the galaxy of our soul. Notice how we used to live before Christ: “He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:15). This verse describes who we were by default — and by recreation. We’re born living for me, making all our decisions, big or small, based ultimately on what will serve, satisfy, and advance self. But then we’re raised to live for him. We spend our time and money differently. Our neighbors and coworkers watch and wonder why we live like we do.

This is true no matter how and where God has gifted us. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4:10–11). Gifts (and lives) stewarded well, whatever they are, inspire others to give greater attention and devotion to God. If you dig deep enough into the happiest, most fruitful, most fulfilling lives, the driving engine and center of gravity will be the grace and glory of God.

Consummation: With God

The God-centeredness of heaven was my first discovery on the way to seeing the God-centeredness of everything else. The life-shattering quote came from (God is the Gospel)[https://www.amazon.com/God-Gospel-Meditations-Gods-Himself/dp/1433520494/]:

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. (47)

“The only heaven to come, the one Jesus bought with his blood, is one orbiting around God.”

It would be hard to overstate how much these lines shook my still young faith — in the very best ways. I imagine it was like Jesus upending the tables in the temple. It was forceful and merciful. You will not make this house of worship about you. And to me, two thousand years later, you won’t turn heaven into a flea market for your hobbies and cravings. The only heaven to come, the one Jesus bought with his blood, is one orbiting around God.

This is the paradise God has prepared for those who love him: “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” (Revelation 21:3). If you can imagine a world better than that one, if you think you would prefer an eternity built around you, you haven’t yet grasped what it would mean to live with this God.

Why haven’t you joined that church you love?

Maybe that question applies to you right now. It certainly applied to me at a particular season in my life. I had been going to the same church for more than a year. The preaching was faithful, and the people were warm and sincere. I had come to know several of the families and had even spent some time with the lead pastor. I wasn’t visiting other churches anymore. I had found my church, and yet membership never really crossed my mind (except maybe briefly when the church celebrated new members).

Why didn’t I join a church I loved? Well, in part because I was still in college and assumed membership was something I would consider after I was out of school and had landed a job somewhere. While we can talk about whether college students should join a church or not (generally speaking, I think they should), I’m not as concerned with that question. I’m more concerned with the mindset I see in my younger self — a mindset I believe is prevalent today: I’ll wait to join the church until I’ve figured out the rest of my life.

Looking back, I now realize just how little I knew about the necessity and joy of actually committing myself to a particular people in particular pews under a particular roof.

Surrendering Self-Sovereignty

Interestingly, we don’t often put off baptism in the same way (at least in my experience). People who come to saving faith in Jesus generally seem eager to say so in the water. My young children, for instance, already love baptism Sundays at our church and look forward to them. There’s a palpable sense of anticipation and celebration in the room. When someone comes up out of the water, the whole church spontaneously claps and cheers.

Does a similar sensation rise in us, though, when someone joins the church? Does it bring us to the edge of our seats?

It really should, shouldn’t it? Culturally speaking, church membership is an even more dramatic statement of our devotion to Christ than baptism. To be baptized today, at least in America, may be odd to our neighbors or coworkers, but it’s not all that shocking or inflammatory. To covenant ourselves to a particular local church, however, and freely submit our decisions, our time, our money, our relationships, our lives to its members and leaders — to give them the authority to excommunicate us if necessary — now that’s controversial. That will raise some eyebrows. Membership says, “What I’ve found in Jesus is worth more than all the freedom, independence, and self-sovereignty I surrender — and far more.”

In an age that suspects and even despises authority, church membership is a loud, arresting statement of our devotion to Christ. It’s John 13:35 in real life with real promises: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Isolated from Commitment

So what keeps us from joining a church? On the surface, some of us put off membership because it feels more like a formality than a necessity. I’m consistently here and even helping out, so why do I need to be a “member”?

Below the surface, though, our reasons may grow heavier and more sensitive. First, we might fear that the church we’re currently attending might not be the best church for us. What if a better church comes along? What if I find a church with better preaching, or better music, or better small groups, or better kids programs? I don’t have to rehearse our generation’s tendency — whether it’s a job, or a potential spouse, or even Friday-night plans — to push every decision to the last minute for fear of something better coming along. We’ve been trained to despise commitment of almost every kind because it inevitably limits our options.

“Committing to a church means committing to sacrifice, to show up, to confess, to confront, to forgive.”

Beyond our wandering eye on Sunday mornings, we might also fear the costs of major commitment. Meaningful membership in the church is undeniably costly. As in a marriage, we don’t know what the next months and years of church life will bring — for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. We can’t now anticipate how conflict will upset and perhaps even divide the body. We can be sure, in any church, that we will sin and be sinned against. Committing to a church means committing to sacrifice, to show up, to confess, to confront, to forgive.

Whatever’s keeping you from committing to that church, I want to help you over the hurdles of your fears by reminding you of who you are without a church committed to you.

1. You are a toe without a body.

First, without committing to a church, you’re an amputated arm. You’re a member of the body — an eye, a kidney, an elbow — but without an actual body. And eyes and elbows don’t survive apart from the body. “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). This isn’t optional to Christianity; this is Christianity.

To believe in Jesus means being united with his global body, and being united with his global body means belonging to an actual local body, a church. Biblically speaking, trying to follow Jesus without meaningfully committing to a church would look a lot like a toe flopping around on the sidewalk. You’re not helping anyone walk, and no one’s helping you see and taste and smell. The apostle Paul goes on:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” . . . But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Corinthians 12:21, 24–26)

“You weren’t meant to suffer alone, or rejoice alone, or make decisions alone.”

You weren’t meant to suffer alone, or rejoice alone, or make decisions alone. Membership stitches your toe to rest of the body — to all you need to follow Christ. It joins you to a group of people who are now committed, before God, to your spiritual and eternal good.

2. You are prey without protection.

Second, without committing to a church, you’re a sheep without the up-close direction, provision, and protection of a shepherd. Whether you feel this way or not, your soul is on the outskirts of the flock, in danger of starving or being eaten. Christ has called and given undershepherds to watch over you (1 Peter 5:2), but you’ve chosen to take your chances among the wolves rather than committing to a flock.

“Obey your leaders and submit to them,” Hebrews 13:17 says. This might scare some away from membership. The verse goes on, however, “. . . for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” These men are charged by God to feed, guide, and protect you — to pursue the spiritual best for you — and they will have to give an account for the work they’ve done. They’ll stand before God to explain how they pastored you.

Maybe most important of all, when someone falls into unrepentant sin — and you could fall into unrepentant sin (1 Corinthians 10:12) — Jesus puts the responsibility for that sinner on the gathered church.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. (Matthew 18:15–17)

Tell it to what church? To the church he belongs to, the church that knows him and has the authority to put him out of the church, for the sake of his soul, if he refuses to repent (1 Corinthians 5:13). Perhaps the greatest reason to actually join a church, then, is to know that at least one group of faithful brothers and sisters has promised to come after us if we wander from the Lord.

3. You are a stranger without a family.

One of the enduring lessons of the last couple of years is that we were made, in the deepest parts of us, to belong. John Piper says, “The more disconnected we are from a local church, the more confused we will be about who we are and who God made us to be. We find our true individual selves in relationship to others” (“Should I Commit to One Church?”).

Social distancing wasn’t just uncomfortable or inconvenient; it was offensive to our nature. We felt this viscerally, didn’t we, after many of us had been lulled into forgetting, lulled into thinking that community was a nice but optional feature of the good life. No, we desperately and constantly need one another — and not just through texts, calls, and livestreams, but face to face (2 John 12). We’ve relearned the vital beauty of what we heard all along:

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24–25)

From birth, you were meant to belong — to know and be known, to stir and be stirred, to encourage and be encouraged. That kind of love happens through commitment — not through a group of regular attenders, but through a devoted family.

So, if you’re a toe without legs and arms and a head, if you’re a lost sheep with bad eyesight and a loud stomach, if you’re a brother or sister without a father, a mother, or siblings, join that church and experience what it really means to be home.

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

After a lifetime of Easters, it can be hard to put ourselves in the stunned and miserable sandals of those who actually watched him die. Sure, he had told them what would happen (in unnerving detail, Mark 8:31–32), but it all was still so unthinkable. This was the Christ, and the Christ could do literally anything but die. And yet there he hung, and then here he laid — his lungs emptied, his eyes vacant, his heart unbeating, like stone. Were we fools to leave all we were, all we had, all we knew to follow him?

The pale, unstirring body they now saw preached weakness, not strength; defeat, not victory; dishonor, not glory; despair, not hope. Why did we think he would be different?

All these years later, we’re so used to Sunday, we can hardly imagine the haunting hours before, when for three days, all their hopes lay dead in the tomb. But fools they were not. The body they buried, they would soon learn, was a seed that was about to sprout and bloom.

Just Another Sunday?

What you believe happened early that morning will decide what you believe about everything else.

“What you believe happened early that morning will decide what you believe about everything else.”

Either Easter Sunday is the hinge of all history, its answer key and center of gravity, the inbreaking of a whole new universe — or it was just another Sunday. Either the once-dead son of some obscure town walked out of his own grave — or thieves conspired to break in and steal his body. Either Christianity explains every longing and question of the human heart, or we are some of the most pitiful people who have ever been pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19). Either Jesus stayed dead that day, or he’s still alive right now.

Easter is as good a day as any to remember where we’d be if Easter did not happen — if it were only a beautiful, inspiring fairytale, only a heart-warming hope to hold onto. “If Christ has not been raised,” the apostle Paul tell us, “your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). And so, two verses later, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” How pitiful, then, would your life seem if you were wrong about Jesus?

Your Life Without Easter

If Christ did not rise, you are still in your sins. The forgiveness you thought you had found is just a fantasy. All the guilt and shame you had left beside the cross has really been hunting you all these years, and will soon find you. The sins you thought were canceled are again your debt to pay. Every evil you’ve said or thought or done — placed back on your shoulders. You have offended the one who can throw both body and soul into hell, and you have no advocate, no great high priest, no Lamb. The safety of the alter has become the horror of the gallows.

And if Christ did not rise, your faith is futile. All the hope and effort and sacrifice you’ve made to follow Jesus have been a devastating waste. If he did not rise, he can’t do anything for your sins; he can’t do anything for your heartache; he can’t do anything for your weakness, your confusion, your sickness and pain. Your anchor’s been cut loose, your sail shredded, your lifeboat sunk. If the cross was the end, Christianity wouldn’t be worth a minute more of thought, much less faith.

Can you imagine just how awful your life would be if, in the end, Easter proved to be little more than bright colors and plastic eggs?

Where Is Your Victory?

Our lives would be tragedies if Jesus were still dead, but he’s more alive than ever. You could dig up every continent on earth, and you won’t find his bones, because they’re sitting on the throne of heaven. He appeared in flesh and blood and glorified scars to hundreds, and then ascended before the eyes of his disciples. And as bleak as our sin-cursed lives would be if he never rose, our futures are that much brighter because he did.

If you have hoped in Christ and he did rise, then you are not in your sins. How can this grow old? You were born into sin and raged, each in your own ways, against the God who made you. You were destined for a fate far worse than death — for eternal, conscious torment. And then you weren’t anymore. God himself stepped between you and his wrath. Now, in Christ, you’re destined for eternal, conscious, ever-increasing joy.

And if Christ rose from the dead, your faith is not futile. No, your faith has overcome the world (1 John 5:4). Through faith, “all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:21–23). If Jesus rose, even death belongs to you and someday will kneel to serve you. The empty tomb unveils our inheritance and seals it for us. Jesus has already sung the chorus he’ll one day lead for us:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”“O death, where is your victory?O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54–55)

Our Easter Sunday to Come

The apostle knew just how much hung on that unassuming cave outside of Jerusalem. And he knew how hard it would be to believe what happened there. And he knew it would be even harder to believe that the same might happen to us. That’s why 1 Corinthians 15 is in the Bible, to rehearse the unavoidable, galaxy-shaking reality of Christ’s resurrection for us — and to prepare us for our own.

“We will not only see the man who conquered death; we will be the ones who conquered death.”

Most people in the world, billions and billions of people, believe he died like any other man. We too believe he died, but unlike billions, we believe he then lived to tell of it. He traveled through the blood, the torment, the humiliation, the grave, and then paved a blazing path through for all who believe he lives. In this way, that first Easter gives way to a second Easter, when all who have laid down their lives with his will be raised to live where he lives.

What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. . . . Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:42–49)

On that Easter Sunday to come, when graves all over the world are opened and emptied, we will not only see the man who conquered death; we will be the ones who conquered death. The bodies that will be laid in our graves will breathe and walk again. We’ll not only be with the man of heaven, we’ll be like him — pure, strong, immortal, glorious.

God planted the first vineyard, and God engineered the first grape. He knew precisely what would happen when that little unassuming ball was harvested, crushed, fermented, stirred, and pressed. He knew how it would make man feel — glad (Psalm 104:14–15). He knew he would serve it — not water, not milk, not just juice — in the church’s most important meals together (Matthew 26:27).

Before sounding the warnings, it’s good to remember that God loves good wine and still pours it for his children to enjoy, but his love is not young and naïve. His prophet warns, “Wine is a traitor” — notice, not excessive wine, but wine, the everyday alcohol of the day — “Wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol; like death he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples” (Habakkuk 2:5). As arrogant and ruthless as Hitler and as greedy as death, have we reckoned with the tyrant many of us thoughtlessly sip between bites?

Who Suffers Without Cause?

While it’s harder than we might expect to find encouragement toward alcohol in Scripture, it’s not at all hard to find warnings about its abuses.

Moses once describes it as “the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps” (Deuteronomy 32:33). In Psalm 75, it’s a picture of God’s wrath (Psalm 75:8). Those who bow to their next drink will never see the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Galatians 5:21). And if anyone claims to be a brother while abusing alcohol without repentance, he’s to be cut off from the church — for the sake of his soul. “I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is [a] drunkard . . . not even to eat with such a one” (1 Corinthians 5:11). The warnings are as serious as they are numerous.

One passage in particular, Proverbs 23:29–35, not only warns about the judgment that will fall on drunkenness, but about the spiritual dangers of this kind of drinking.

Who has woe? Who has sorrow?     Who has strife? Who has complaining?Who has wounds without cause?     Who has redness of eyes?Those who tarry long over wine;     those who go to try mixed wine. (Proverbs 23:29–30)

The wise man goes on to explain his woes and sorrows, his wounds and miseries. A healthy, godly use of alcohol remains vigilant against at least these five great dangers of alcohol (all results of excessive drinking): confusion, perversion, instability, paralysis, and futility.

Confusion

Your eyes will see strange things. . . . (Proverbs 23:33)

The first hazard of drunkenness is confusion. Abusing alcohol will make you see strange things, robbing you of the ability to perceive reality. You will see things that are not there, or you’ll see things that are there but not as they are. Like the man on the side of the road, you won’t be able to walk straight, much less in a manner worthy of God (Colossians 1:10).

“Drunkenness blurs life-and-death distinctions and muddies the precious promises and commands of God.”

We see this danger when God says to Aaron and the priests, “Drink no wine or strong drink, you or your sons with you, when you go into the tent of meeting, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations” (Leviticus 10:8–9). Why would God forbid the priests from drinking alcohol? Because they, more than anyone else, needed to see reality clearly enough to guard the people against danger, especially spiritual danger, and lead them to what’s true, beautiful, and holy. “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses” (Leviticus 10:10–11).

Drunkenness, then and now, blurs life-and-death distinctions and muddies the precious promises and commands of God.

Perversion

Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things. (Proverbs 23:33)

Scripture repeatedly ties drunkenness to immorality, especially sexual immorality (see Hosea 4:10–11; Joel 3:2–3). In the verses immediately before ours, the wise father says,

My son, give me your heart,     and let your eyes observe my ways.For a prostitute is a deep pit;     an adulteress is a narrow well.She lies in wait like a robber     and increases the traitors among mankind.Who has woe? Who has sorrow? . . . (Proverbs 23:26–29)

Why move so quickly, and without any transition, from prostitutes to wine glasses? Because the latter so often leads to the former. Excessive alcohol exaggerates the pleasures of sin and obscures its costs and consequences. Drunkenness makes a deadly pit look like a well, a bloodthirsty thief like a trustworthy friend, a forbidden woman like a secret stream of delight.

So what’s the warning? Alcohol draws perversity out of a man. He says things he never would have said sober. He does things he never would have done otherwise. Drunkenness undid righteous Noah after God delivered him through the flood: “He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent” (Genesis 9:21). Alcohol fooled Lot into incest (Genesis 19:32). When Nabal rejected David and left his men hungry, what fueled his foolishness? “Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk” (1 Samuel 25:36). Alcohol does not spark perversion where it is not (Matthew 15:11), but it can stoke secret sin into a raging, devastating flame.

Instability

You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast. (Proverbs 23:34)

The image here comes close to the confusion of verse 33, but carries a unique warning. If the former was the inability to discern holy from unholy, real from unreal, this picture emphasizes incapacitation. Alcohol leaves a man asleep while he lies in grave peril, in situations where his alertness really matters. He even falls asleep in the crow’s nest, where the winds and waves would be felt most. He’s utterly, dreadfully unaware of danger.

In this way, alcohol is not only a danger to a man, but to everyone who depends on him. While he sleeps in the storms at sea, he imperils everyone else in the boat — and he leaves anything he might have done to someone else. When he’s needed most, he’s unavailable. Bottle after bottle, he makes himself a burden to those for whom he’s called to protect and provide.

Worse than that, alcohol often makes a man a terror to those he loves. Another proverb says, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1). This is the very antithesis of Jesus, who calmed the seas for those he loved. When the storm comes, this man creates even more chaos. He creates storms where there was none. Instead of a stable refuge, he becomes volatile, unpredictable.

Paralysis

“They struck me,” you will say, “but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it.” (Proverbs 23:35)

Of the five, this may be the most frightening. Drunkenness numbs a man to reality, and specifically to all that threatens him. His senses have been so dulled that he cannot even feel when someone beats him. He’s hurt but cannot feel hurt, which means he cannot detect danger anymore.

That’s what pain does — it alerts us to some threat and calls us to act. If we’re drunk, we sleep through the alarm. “Watch yourselves,” Jesus warns, “lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap” (Luke 21:34). He teaches the lesson with far more horrifying pictures. He says that when the wicked servant drinks with drunkards,

the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:50–51)

The horror is in how quickly they’ll fall from the comforts of drunkenness into the agony of judgment. If proverbs will not sober them, the weeping will.

Futility

“When shall I awake? I must have another drink.” (Proverbs 23:35)

Does any single picture better portray the futility and insanity of drunkenness? The drunk person looks for satisfaction in his glass, but searches and searches and never finds the bottom. No matter how much he drinks, his thirst is never quenched. Consumption consumes him.

“The drunk person looks for satisfaction in his glass, but searches and searches and never finds the bottom.”

The Preacher of Ecclesiastes was well-acquainted with strong drink. “I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine. . . . Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:3–11). No amount of alcohol could quench the craving inside of him. And yet millions keep pouring, keep binging, keep striving after wind.

The prophet Isaiah had seen alcohol ruin souls. He says of Israel’s leaders, “They are shepherds who have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each to his own gain, one and all. ‘Come,’ they say, ‘let me get wine; let us fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow will be like this day, great beyond measure’” (Isaiah 56:11–12). They ask life of wine because they’re fools, because they stubbornly drink at dry wells. And they’re parched souls burned any who followed them. Drunkenness is a well without water, a marathon without a finish line, a curse that will not lift.

Drinking on Empty

None of this, of course, negates the profound and spiritual goodness of wine. Again, the Lord’s Supper teaches us that this is not a drink for the shadows, but for the rooftops. Like so many of the best gifts of God, though, wine is all the more dangerous for having been infused with so much potential for good.

And, as is also true about the best gifts, wisdom over the glass will mean more than heeding warnings. It will mean being so satisfied at another, deeper well that we can enjoy wine without becoming its slaves. “Do not get drunk with wine,” the apostle Paul warns, “for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). In other words, if you do decide to drink, don’t drink on an empty soul. The best way to guard against the serious dangers of alcohol is to fill ourselves with God — to drink daily and deeply from his words, to entrust him with our fears and burdens through prayer, to thank him for the new and unique expressions of his kindness, to bury our lives and gifts and joys among his people, to sing together of our love for him. In hearts like these, drunkenness can’t get in the front door, much less find a seat at the bar.

Ironically, people who live like this, whose lives are gladly and regularly soaked in God, not only avoid the awful and destructive curses of drunkenness, but they also might get to actually and more fully enjoy some good wine.

Several months ago, the main drainage line from our house backed up — an unpleasant experience for any homeowner. One of the worst, really. The root of our unpleasant problem was, it turns out, a root — a tree root (likely many of them). So, we called someone with extensive experience with such unpleasantries: Larry.

Larry is everything you might expect from a man who’s spent thirty-plus years dealing with homeowners’ nightmares. He clears drains with an extraordinarily heavy machine that he built himself using spare parts. It looked like something out of a Ghostbusters movie and weighed about as much as our Honda Odyssey. As I helped him carry the minivan down our front stairs, he told me about his farm outside of town. He was especially excited about the poultry barn. “Oh, you have chickens?” I asked. “No, pheasants. I raise pheasants.” Every year, he went on to explain, Larry buys three hundred pheasant eggs and incubates them until they hatch. Once the birds hatch, he cares for the birds for six to eight weeks (with as much watermelon as he can afford). “Oh they love watermelon. That’s a special treat on Sundays. . . . They go crazy for watermelon.”

Larry goes on to tell me that on average half — half — of the three hundred pheasants die by the end of eight weeks. “So, what do you do with the rest? Do you sell them?” “No, no, I let them go in the wild.” “Oh, so do you hunt?” “No, no, I don’t hunt ’em.” “So why do you do it?” [Long pause. . . . He looks like he’s never had to answer that question before, like he’d never really had to have a good reason to incubate hundreds of pheasant eggs each year.] Unsure, he finally mumbled, “I guess it’s just my way of giving back . . .” Then he smiled, “Man, you should see ’em fight over that watermelon.”

As I helped Larry load his machine back into his truck and watched him drive off down our street, I was left with something of a haunting question: Does anything God has made make me feel like he feels about those birds?

Of all the people in the world, lovers of God ought to be the most captivated by what he’s made — shouldn’t we? And yet, too often, simple guys like Larry see and feel far more than we do (more than I do, anyway). And his fresh watermelon and warm smile are just a faint whisper of how God feels about pheasants. The real question before us this morning is, Does anything God has made make us feel like God feels about it all? That’s where I want to go and what I want to try to awaken in our time together in Psalm 104.

Do You Still Marvel?

Do your prayers ever sound like the 35 verses of Psalm 104? I don’t mean the length, or the poetry, or even the mountains, the streams, and the rock badgers, but do you ever stop, slow down, and marvel at something God has made and bless him for it? Does creation still arrest your attention and lead you to worship?

I say still because I have three kids under seven, and you don’t have to convince people under seven to marvel at what God’s made. Every rock is a precious rock, a rock worth keeping, protecting, and displaying. Every animal — bunnies, deer, racoons, turtles — may as well be a unicorn. Every bug is an all-hands-on-deck crisis. Children’s eyes are smaller than our eyes, but almost always wider too. They see things we’ve forgotten how to see.

Well, I want to see more of what they see, more of what God sees, and for that, I think Psalm 104 is a great park to walk through. As we do, I want to stop briefly at four great views along the way: First, God creates. Second, God delights. Third, we delight. And finally, we create. God creates. God delights. We delight. And we create.

God Creates

So, first, God creates. It’s interesting to compare Psalm 104 with the psalms that come immediately before it and after it. All three psalms set out to do essentially the same thing: awaken Godward awe and joy and worship.

Bless the Lord, O my soul. (Psalm 103:1)

Bless the Lord, O my soul. (Psalm 104:1)

Oh give thanks to the Lord. (Psalm 105:1)

We see the same goal in all three, but they pursue that awe and joy and worship in three noticeably different ways. Psalm 103 focuses on the glories of salvation: He forgives your iniquity. He heals your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit. Forget not all his benefits.

He does not deal with us according to our sins,     nor repay us according to our iniquities.For as high as the heavens are above the earth,     so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;as far as the east is from the west,     so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:10–12)

Psalm 103 revels in the rescue, in the pardon, in the “the steadfast love of the Lord . . . from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 103:17).

Psalm 105 pursues that same soul-awakening awe and joy and worship from a different angle. Again, same goal: “Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice!” (Psalm 105:3). But where’s the focus this time? “Remember the wondrous works that he has done. his miracles, and the judgments he uttered” (Psalm 105:5). The choosing of Abraham. The land he gave to Jacob. The freeing of Joseph from prison. The sending of Moses. The humbling of Egypt. The psalmist wants our hearts to seek and rejoice in God, and so he does a history lesson; he relives moments when God’s hand broke in to save and prosper his people. He traces God’s providence.

Psalm 104 pursues the same awe and joy and worship — “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” — but it sits beside yet another window (of the three, maybe a more neglected window in our circles). When the psalmist sees the disconnect between what he believes about God and how he feels about God, when he wants to stir the coals of his love for God into flame, he doesn’t rehearse God’s mercy and forgiveness again, and he doesn’t run back to all the many times God had rescued them. No, this time he lets his mind wander over hills and through valleys. He climbs mountains and wades into oceans. Creation was his chosen weapon against temptation. Creation was his rallying point back to reality.

Nature or Creation?

I say creation with deep conviction and purpose, because it is, all of it everywhere, conceived and performed by a real, divine imagination. As T.M. Moore writes in Consider the Lilies,

One of the central teachings of Scripture is that the natural world is not at all natural. It is the creation of a supernatural God. What we routinely call “nature” is in fact “creation.” (100)

Nothing we encounter is purposeless, or gloryless, or truly “natural.” We may notice the purpose and glory more in the grander aspects of creation, like oceans, lions, or mountains, but as Scripture teaches, even birds and lilies are saying something profound about God. Psalm 104 wants us to see and feel this throughout:

He stretched out the heavens.
He stacked the mountains and carved out the valleys.
He drew the shores of the oceans.
He taught the moon where to stand in spring and winter.
He cooks for the birds, badgers, goats, and lions.

The psalmist is pointing in every direction, highlighting as much as he can bring to mind — “Look at that! Look at that! And that and that and that!” — but really he’s saying again and again, “Look at him.” He did that. He did that. Oh and he did that too. Isn’t he stunning? Isn’t he terrifying? Isn’t he lovely? “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24).

This God-centeredness, the glory of this Creator, crescendos in verses 27–29:

These all look to you,     to give them their food in due season.When you give it to them, they gather it up;     when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.When you hide your face, they are dismayed;     when you take away their breath, they die     and return to their dust.

When you. . . . When you. . . . When you. . . . And never otherwise. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. They all, great and small, land and sea, sit and wait for him. They exist when and how and where he chooses. No creature is below him; no detail escapes him.
Every mouth bows before his cosmic farmers market.

Your Corners of Creation

All things are truly from him, through him, and for him (Romans 11:36). Creation is preaching the meticulous attention, power, creativity, and generosity of God. So do we hear it anymore? Do we regularly stop and look long enough to listen — or are we slumped in the back rows, barely paying attention, slowly nodding off?

And remember, the psalmist didn’t have Netflix or National Geographic. He didn’t have Google or YouTube. He couldn’t plan a trip to the Pacific Ocean or the Rocky Mountains or even the local zoo. No, he could see as far as he could walk (and then only through the stories of others). He had to make the most of whatever was outside his front door. So don’t hear “creation” and first think of some grand adventure somewhere far away or through a screen; think of whatever’s growing in your front yard (the things you want to grow and the things you don’t). Don’t first think of rare and exotic animals; think of the moles or squirrels that are ruining whatever you want to grow in your front yard. Yes, he mentions lions and Leviathan, but he also mentions birds and grass and night skies. By all means, take advantage of all of the ways we can see more today, but don’t miss the ordinary, breathtaking glimpses in your own little corners of creation.

The God we worship is a creative and creating God. We’re literally surrounded with the work of his hands. Nothing anywhere is untouched by his wisdom and creativity, by his brush. Because he wants us to see and savor him, he not only speaks; he also creates — and he speaks through his creating. So, first, God creates. The second stop, now, is God delights.

God Delights

As we keep walking through the park of Psalm 104, we see the hand of God again and again — building, intervening, producing, feeding, sustaining — creating. Everything there is, everything we see, everything we know, our God has made. Bless the Lord, O my soul.

This isn’t a conference, however, about the power and creativity and wisdom of God. We want to know what makes the happy God happy. And in Psalm 104, we not only see the strong hands of God; we also get a glimpse of his smile.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works. (Psalm 104:31)

Not, “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may we rejoice in his works.” No, “May he rejoice in his works.” He’s not just putting on a show that a few nature-loving people might enjoy. No, he loves high mountains and winding valleys; he loves full moons and brilliant sunsets; he loves badgers, storks, and wild donkeys. The God of the universe genuinely enjoys the universe he’s made — the one we get to live in every day.

This shouldn’t surprise us. It should be a familiar melody from the very first chapter in the Bible. Genesis 1:3–4: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was . . . good.” We’re so used to hearing that word, we might pass right over it. Right there, though, in the very first verses of the Bible is the first hint — no, the loud, repeated chorus (“good . . . good . . . good . . . good”) — that this world was not made to be a functional place to live and raise a family. No, God meant for the place he made to be beautiful, awe-inspiring, worshipful — in a word, good.

“God made a world that even God could admire.”

Night and day were not just needed, but good. Mountains and oceans were not just enormous, but good. The bushes, flowers, and trees were not just fertile and productive, but good. The birds and fish and beasts of the field were all intentional, unique, and captivating in their own ways. They were good. In other words, God made a world that even God could admire. How strange and tragic, then, that our eyes so often grow dim with it all.

God’s Pleasure in God

God not only makes; he delights in what he makes. He admires his creation. He steps off the stage, as it were, to take in and savor what he’s done — the stories he’s conceived, the lighting he’s staged, the flooring he’s laid, the scenery he’s built, the characters he’s developed, the colors and textures he’s woven together, the melodies he’s written under it all. And why is it all so good in his eyes? Because everywhere he looks, he sees something of himself, his glory. The pleasure of God in creation is the pleasure of God in God.

Derek Kidner sees this in the first verses of the psalm — “covering himself with light, stretching out the heavens, laying his chambers on the waters, making the clouds his chariot.” Kidner writes,

The metaphor of his taking up its parts and powers as his robe, tent, palace, and chariot invites us to see the world as something he delights in, which is charged with his energy and alive with his presence. (Psalms 73–150, 402)

He delights in what he’s made because it’s charged with his energy and alive with his presence. He is creation’s splendor and majesty.

Good and Very Good

And in the midst of everything good — the light was good, the land was good, the lions were good, the honey was really good — in the midst of everything else, God outdid himself. He made creatures in his own image — man and woman, you and me. And only then did he say, “very good.” You can almost taste his pleasure in the words. “Very good.”

Why very good? Why especially delightful? We don’t have time here to explore all the goodness of the image of God in mankind, but one vital difference between humanity and everything else he had made is that, of all the wonders he had conceived and created, only this creature could share in his pleasure over what he made. Only the man and woman had the capacity to experience fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. Only to them could he one day say, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). And only this creature, among all the creatures on earth, would be a creating creature, taking what he had made and making something new. And those are our next two stops in the park: We delight, and we create.

We Delight

At our third stop, we finally arrive where the psalm begins. Verse 1: “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great!” Notice, the first words of the psalm are not cast into the heavens, but directed inward, at the heart. Bless the Lord, O my soul! Wake up! Stop nodding off before the splendor and majesty all around you.

I mentioned earlier that, in our circles, we do Psalm 103 reflection pretty well (rehearsing the glories of redemption) and Psalm 105 pretty well (recounting the stories of what God has done in Scripture and history). How often, though, when our hearts grow cool or dull or distracted, do we think to immerse ourselves not in more books, but in trees and fields and birds and streams — in fall leaves and maybe even in some snow? How often have you thought of the outdoors as a means of grace?

Prescription for an Anxious Age

As I watch, over and over again in Scripture, how creation deepens faith, and quiets fears, and instills confidence, and inspires courage, and awakens joy, I can’t help but wonder if creation isn’t one of the great prescriptions we’re missing in our modern and anxious age. So much of our technological lives today carry the illusion of control — deciding what we eat, where we eat, when we eat; deciding what we watch, where we watch, when we watch. Our phones tell us we’re in control. Our cars tell us we’re in control. Our heating and air-conditioning tell us we’re in control. Creation disagrees. Creation dispels the mirage of my sovereignty. Creation shouts, “You’re not in control! And this world isn’t about you.”

That’s a sermon we need to hear and rehear and rehear, especially today. You can’t decide the weather. You can’t grow grass in that corner of the yard. You can’t control the squirrels or moles. You can’t tame a thunderstorm. You can’t survive the bitter cold. You can’t outlive an oak tree. But God can, and does, and will.

In the introduction to Pleasures of God, Pastor John says,

Unless we begin with God in this way, when the gospel comes to us, we will inevitably put ourselves at the center of it. We will feel that our value rather than God’s value is the driving force in the gospel. We will trace the gospel back to God’s need for us instead of tracing it back to the sovereign grace that rescues sinners who need God. (22)

Souls centered on self are homes built on sand. If we subtly believe that we’re in control, that our value is driving history, that God really needs us, it’s no wonder we’re so anxious. Watch where our wild safari ends. Verse 34: “May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice” — not in mountains or moons or donkeys, no: “for I rejoice in the Lord.” Those who see the most in creation are never left with just creation; no, they’re drawn into a higher, more intense love — a higher, more intense good: God himself.

Wild Glimpses of God

Everything God has made is preaching, with loudspeakers cranked high and embedded everywhere we turn — and yet we often have our heads down, scrolling on our phones. So put the phone down for a moment (turn it off if you have to) and lift up your eyes.

When the sun rises each morning, God means for that flaming ball of ferocity, a star the size of a hundred earths and heated to ten thousand degrees, to remind us that he is strong, massive, reliable, and radiating with joy. Psalm 19:4–5: “He has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.”

When we see the stars scattered in a clear night sky, an estimated one hundred billion in our galaxy alone, God wants us to see how detailed and personal he is. “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names” (Psalm 147:4). Why would he name stars? Not for their sake (they’re stars!), but for ours — so that we would know that he knows and cares for each and every one of us.

When clouds crawl across the sky and over our heads, they are not meant to be massive, miraculous afterthoughts (or depressing inconveniences, for that matter). No, they should draw our attention into heaven and stretch our imaginations, far beyond them, into the faithfulness of God. “Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds” (Psalm 36:5).

When we make out a mountain in the distance (or drive through them as my family did on vacation earlier this year), we’re meant to see enormous shadows of the majesty of God. “Glorious are you,” we sing, “more majestic than the mountains full of prey” (Psalm 76:4).

When we hear the rush of a river or stream, it can inspire us to drink more deeply from all that God is for us in Christ, the well who quenches every thirst forever. “They feast on the abundance of your house,” David writes, “and you give them drink from the river of your delights” (Psalm 36:8).

And that’s to say nothing of all we see and experience of God in the boom of thunder (Psalm 29:3), the ruthlessness of lions (Psalm 7:2), the fragility of sheep (Psalm 78:52), the sweetness of honey (Psalm 19:10), the strength of horses (Psalm 20:7), even the defenselessness of snails (Psalm 58:8). The heavens, the earth, and the seas (and all that fills them) are declaring the glory of God to us. How much richer, sweeter, and more tangible might our theology be if we were willing to stop and look and delight more than we do?

What About Sin?

Before we move away from stop three — our delight in who God is and what he’s made — the psalm ends in a strange but fitting place:

May my meditation be pleasing to him,     for I rejoice in the Lord.

We delight. Next verse:

Let sinners be consumed from the earth,     and let the wicked be no more! (Psalm 104:34–35)

When I first read that, I thought, Now that’s a strange way to respond to all he’s seen. “Look at the heavens! Look at the mountains! Look at the lions! Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more.” Seems strange, right? It’s not how many of us would think to pray after seeing so much of God in what he’s made.

It’s not strange. The psalmist lets his mind wander over wonder after wonder until his heart is set on fire again for God, and then he opens his eyes, and he realizes just how broken this world is, how far it’s strayed from its Creator. He feels, again, that the wondrous creation is enslaved to futility, in bondage to corruption. It’s magnificent as it is, but it’s nowhere near what it could be. Nowhere near what it once was. Because of sin, we live in the ruins of paradise. And the awful, tragic disparity between what was and what is exposes the seriousness of sin — the seriousness of my sin.

Sin vandalized the satisfying glory of God in creation. Sin introduced disease and hostility and death. Enjoying what remains of the beauty of creation should make us hate sin all the more, especially our own sin. And it should make us long for God to make it all new again. Verse 29 again: “When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust” — sin did that. Next verse: “When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.”

Death doesn’t get the last word here. The light will invade the darkness. God will make all these things, including us, new. All who oppose him will be consumed. The wicked will be evicted. We’re destined to live on a real earth like ours, with real bodies like ours, surrounded by wonders and blessings and experiences like ours, but without the weakness, mortality, and sin that plague all we know and enjoy now. That world will be like ours, but glorious. We will be ourselves, but glorious. The psalmist knows how this will all end, and so he ends not with despair, but hope: “Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 104:35).

God creates. God delights. We delight. And now, finally, we create.

We Create

The pleasure of God in creation and human culture: that was my assignment. When I say culture, I mean all the good that humans do and make. I’m thinking of the cultural mandate in Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” We won’t get to spend nearly as much time here, but we don’t have to travel far in our park to see what we need to see.

The young lions roar for their prey,     seeking their food from God.When the sun rises, they steal away     and lie down in their dens.Man goes out to his work     and to his labor until the evening. (Psalm 104:21–23)

Man goes out to his work, and works a full day. It feels a little anticlimactic, right? The trees climb into the heavens, the mountains shake with wildlife, the lions roar their hunger for all to hear, the moon ushers in fall and winter and spring, the sun chooses when the sky goes from blue to red to purple to dark — and Larry heads over to Pike Lake Drive to clear another drain (or whatever ordinary work God has given you to do).

“The ordinary work of man is one of the manifold works of God.”

“Man goes out to his work and to his labor until the evening.” Now listen to this in the very next verse: “O Lord, how manifold are your works!” — trees and mountains and lions and the work that man can do. “In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24). The ordinary work of man is one of the manifold works of God. No other creature can do what you do. What you can do in eight or ten or twelve hours with your mind and hands and gifts says as much or more about God as a sunset or a canyon or a thunderstorm.

Only God could conceive of a creature capable of doing the work you do. Every working human you meet (white collar or blue collar; paid or unpaid; student, employee, manager, or stay-at-home mother) is a living canvas covered in the creativity of God — whether they believe in him or not, whether they see the glory in their work or not. That they can do what they do, whatever they do and however well they do it, reminds us of just how much more God can do.

Human Hands at the Table

We get one more small glimpse in Psalm 104 into the pleasure of God in human culture, in verses 14–15:

You cause the grass to grow for the livestock     and plants for man to cultivate,that he may bring forth food from the earth     and wine to gladden the heart of man,oil to make his face shine     and bread to strengthen man’s heart.

Wine to gladden the heart of man. Bread to strengthen man’s heart. Grapes transformed through crushing and waiting. Wheat transformed by mixing and baking. Wine and bread. I wanted to end here because tomorrow (or in the next couple of weeks) we’ll each gather in our churches and we’ll hold and enjoy bread and wine together, the Lord’s Supper. This isn’t the point of verses 14 and 15; bread and wine were ordinary fare for Israel in those days. But they’re not ordinary fare any longer, not on the other side of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

Is there a more subtle and yet stunning marriage of God’s pleasure in creation and culture than in the feast we eat over and over to remember all he is for us in Jesus? I want this to be a tangible, holdable, edible reminder for you of what we’ve seen here. Jesus chose to serve bread, not wheat. And he chose to serve wine, not water. Both are products of human creativity and effort — of culture. Both quietly dignify all that mankind can do and make.

And then, through Psalm 104, we taste even more meaning in the wine. Bread strengthens man’s heart. Wine gladdens the hearts of men. Peter Leithart writes,

Jesus did not give his disciples grapes, but the blood of the grape, which is the creation transformed by human creativity and labor. Like bread, wine assumes a degree of technological sophistication, as well as a measure of social and political formation. Wine, however, is a drink of celebration and not mere nutrition. If Jesus had wanted to depict man’s relation to creation and to God in purely utilitarian terms, bread and water would have sufficed. This Bridegroom, however, changes water to wine, and in doing so, clarifies man’s purpose in the world. (Blessed Are the Hungry, 169)

And what’s that purpose? In both work and rest, to enjoy what God has made and done. Ultimately, to enjoy God himself. “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4). Cup after cup, the wine reminds us that the Lord’s Supper is not a eulogy, but a toast. It plays an old, beloved chorus: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

The Beauty in Every Beauty

We don’t, however, need the bread and wine in Psalm 104 to get to the carpenter from Nazareth. We’d be just fine with birds and grass and badgers. Hebrews 1:1–2:

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

And then, quoting Psalm 104 of all places, he writes, “Of the angels God says, ‘He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.’ But of the Son he says, . . .

You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,     and the heavens are the work of your hands;they will perish, but you remain;     they will all wear out like a garment,like a robe you will roll them up,     like a garment they will be changed.But you are the same,     and your years will have no end.” (Hebrews 1:7–12)

“When the Father looks out over the goodness of creation, at the center of it all, he sees his Son.”

When the Father looks out over the goodness of creation, at the center of it all, he sees his Son. And he loves what he sees. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). Steve Dewitt writes, “Until we see the beauty of Christ, we will never see the true beauty in anything else” (Eyes Wide Open, 116). That means if we really want to hear what God is saying in the blues of bluebirds and waddle of penguins, in the raging of rivers and stillness of lakes, in the opening of lilies and landslides along cliffs, we first and forever fix our eyes on Jesus. All the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, are about him (Luke 24:27). And all of creation is preaching in that same series.

Who’s the star of the Psalm 104 galaxy — sun and moon, birds and lions, oceans and forests? The one who became flesh and dwelt and worked among us. “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2) — and yet he’s the beauty in every beauty, the paradise hiding in our fallen world, the Creator born in the likeness of the creature, the sun dawning on the darkness around us, the crucified, risen, reigning — creating and sustaining — Jesus. And so whenever we enjoy and use creation rightly, it will surely lead us to him.

If I could go back and make myself read one article when I was 17, 18, or even 21, I think it might be this one. I would want to try to expand and reframe my naive ideas about dating, romance, and marriage. I would want to lay out a map for making wiser, more loving decisions about relationships. That’s how I think about this article: as a three-dimensional map for dating well.

But why would I choose this article for myself at that age? Well, for at least two big reasons. First, because nothing in my life and faith has been more confusing and spiritually hazardous than my pursuit of marriage was. My teenage years were a long string of relationships that were too serious for our age, went on too long, and therefore often ended badly and painfully. I hope that’s not your experience, but it was mine. And I’d love to save even of a few of you from the stupidity and heartache that plagued me (or lead those like me out of it).

The second reason is that I’ve been married for seven years, and I see it all — dating, romance, marriage — so much differently now. Eight years ago, I knew marriage a little like my 6-year-old knows Narnia. I knew a lot about marriage — from the Bible, from other books, from watching couples in my life — and I was enchanted by the idea of marriage. But I hadn’t stepped through the wardrobe yet. I hadn’t experienced the real thing. And the real thing is wilder, richer, and deeper than I imagined. If we could taste what covenant love is really like before we started dating, I believe we’d make far better decisions about when we date, whom we date, how we date, and when we marry.

I can’t give you that experience, but maybe something I say from the other side can help you see more than you have so far. If you desire to marry one day, I want you to experience the fullness of what God wants for and in a marriage. And to get there, we need wisdom from God. So consider this my letter from the forests of Narnia.

Dimensions of Healthy Clarity

As I look back on what I would have done differently in my journey to marriage, one of the main lessons I wish I had learned sooner would be to pursue clarity and postpone intimacy.

Now, I could say a lot more on the second half of that lesson (“postpone intimacy”) — and I have elsewhere — but here I want to press on the first half. What does it mean to pursue clarity in dating — and particularly as a Christian? What would clarity feel like if we found it? How do you know he (or she) is the one to marry? To answer those questions, I want to give you something of a three-dimensional map.

Most people today, even Christians, pursue clarity about dating by following their feelings. How do I feel about this person? Am I ready for this relationship to move forward? Do I want to marry this person? Those are good questions to ask. They’re just not the only questions. Wise people don’t dismiss their feelings, but they don’t wholly trust them either. They know we need more than feelings to make wise decisions and choices, and all the more so in dating relationships. They know there are at least two other dimensions to a healthy sense of clarity (think height, width, and depth): first, confirmation from our community. And then, often overlooked or at least taken for granted, the opportunity to actually pursue or marry a particular person. So we have three dimensions of healthy Christian clarity: desire, community, and opportunity.

Height: Clarity of Desire

First, consider clarity of desire. It’s good to want to be married. In fact, according to Scripture, the very desire itself is wisdom:

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22).
“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Proverbs 31:10).

It’s good to look for a worthy spouse, and even better to find one. It’s good to want to be married. That doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of bad ways to pursue marriage (there are), or that the desire for marriage can’t be distorted and imbalanced (it can be). But God made most of us to want marriage.

Now, you don’t need to want marriage to follow Jesus. Some of the happiest, most godly people in the church never marry. The apostle Paul, for one, celebrated the goodness of lifelong singleness (1 Corinthians 7:7–8). But if you do want to be married, that desire isn’t something to hide or be ashamed of. God loves our longing to be married — to promise ourselves to one man or woman, to become one flesh, to bear and raise children if he wills.

Beyond that, we could say a lot about desire and feelings and attraction, but at its simplest, biblically speaking, we’re mainly looking for someone we can marry. We’re looking for someone with whom we can enjoy and live for Christ. Paul says to the widows in the church (and to all believers by extension), “You are free to be married to whom you wish, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). Marriage, for Christians, is never simply about sex, or companionship, or children, or life efficiencies. We want to marry in the Lord.

We want to take in God’s word together, pray together, go to church together, serve together. We want our marriages to consistently and beautifully tell people what Jesus has done for us. We want our marriages to make us more like Christ, slowly but surely changing us into someone new, someone holy. That means that when we look for someone we can marry, we’re not looking first for something physical or financial or convenient or fun (though we will weigh some of these factors). We’re looking for God in one another and in our future together.

So, the first dimension of clarity is our own desire. Do I want to date or marry this person? And if so, am I convinced that my desire pleases God — that he wants a relationship like this for me? If we’re unsure what God might think about that, he often reveals his will in the other two dimensions of clarity.

The second dimension of clarity we need in dating comes through community. Of the three, this is my greatest burden for young believers today.

Dating often isolates us from other Christians in our lives. The closer we get to a boyfriend or girlfriend, the more removed we can get from other important relationships. Satan loves this, and encourages it at every turn. To resist him, we need to fight the impulse to date off in a corner by ourselves, and instead draw our dating relationships into those other important relationships.

Again, Proverbs is filled with wisdom along these lines:

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14).
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice” (Proverbs 12:15).
“Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment” (Proverbs 18:1).

In other words, Lean hard on those who know you best, love you most, and are willing to tell you when you’re wrong. Through personal experience and counseling others, I have found that to be a golden rule in Christian dating, the rule that most often makes the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships.

“Lean hard on those who know you best, love you most, and are willing to tell you when you’re wrong.”

Only people who love Christ more than they love you will have the courage to lovingly tell you that you’re wrong in dating — wrong about a person, wrong about timing, wrong about whatever. Only they’ll be willing to say something hard, even when you’re so happily infatuated. Most peers will float along with you because they’re excited for you, but you’ll need a lot more than their excitement — you’ll have plenty of that yourself. You’ll need truth, and wisdom, and correction, and perspective. Lean hard on the people who know you best, love you most, and will tell you when you’re wrong.

Consider, then, three kinds of people who could be this kind of community for you in your pursuit of marriage (I’d even go as far as to say should be this kind of community for you). Which counselors would it be wise to involve in a meaningful way?

Church Family

First, avoid leaving your church family behind. We don’t usually think of our church family as part of our pursuit of marriage (maybe we even cringe at the idea), but as uncomfortable or inconvenient as it may sound, God gives the primary and final responsibility of our accountability to the local church (Matthew 18:15–20; Hebrews 13:17).

God means for the church to be the rough tread on the edge of the highway, making sure we stay awake and alert while driving in life, including in dating. If we don’t build our church families into our routines and our relationships, we’re likely to ride right off into a spiritual or relational ditch. The church, however, can surround a couple with structure, direction, and safety.

Now, this doesn’t mean you need to stand up during the announcements and give the whole church an update on your relationship or print a weekly update in the bulletin. But lean on fellow Christians, and especially some who are older and more mature than you. Let a few people you wouldn’t hang out with on the weekends into your thinking and decision-making in dating. Be accountable to a local church: plug in, get to know and be known by others, seek out people different from you, and draw them into what you’re thinking, wanting, and experiencing in dating. Don’t leave the church behind.

Mom and Dad

Second, lean into the love that made and raised you. “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12). It’s so simple, and yet it can often be challenging, and all the more so in dating. In our day, it’s increasingly unexpected to involve your parents at all. It seems old-fashioned and unnecessary. Parents are typically a formality once we’ve already made our own decisions — unless, of course, we want to listen to God and pursue marriage more wisely. Wisdom says, “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old. . . . Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice” (Proverbs 23:22, 25).

Maybe we don’t see eye to eye with our parents. Maybe our parents aren’t even believers. Maybe our parents are divorced and disagree with each other about what we should do. Maybe one or both aren’t even interested in being involved in our relationship. We can’t force our parents to care or cooperate, but we can honor them, and we can think of creative ways to encourage them to be involved and to solicit their input and advice along the way. Our parents may be flat-out wrong, but most parents don’t intentionally want to harm us or keep us from being happy. They have known and loved us longer than anyone else, and genuinely want what they think is best for us.

What if we loved our parents more intentionally and more joyfully when we disagreed with them? What would that say — to them, to our significant other, to the rest of our friends and family — about our faith in Jesus? Lean into the love that made and raised you.

Real Friends

The next line of defense in dating will be the friends who know us best — and who love us and Jesus enough to hold us accountable. We don’t just need friends. Everybody has friends. We need real friends — friends who know us well, who are regularly and actively involved in our relationship, and who love us enough to ask hard questions or tell us when we’re wrong.

Even after God rescues us from our sin, pulls us out of the pit, and puts his Spirit inside of us, we still battle remaining sin, and we’re outmatched on our own. We need friends in the fight to help us see where we’re wrong or weak. Don’t wait for a friend to come ask you how things are going. Seek those few friends out, and share openly with them. You might ask each other questions like these:

What do the two of you talk about? What’s a typical conversation like?
How far have you gone physically, where will you draw the line, and in what situations do you experience the most temptation?
What are you learning about him (or her)? Are you moving toward or away from clarity about marriage?
How has your relationship affected your spiritual health, including prayer life, Bible reading, involvement in the local church, and ministry to others?

Does anyone ask you questions like these? Who are the friends who will go there with you? If you don’t have them, do you know anyone who could potentially become that kind of friend? Do you know anyone who might need you to be that friend for them? If you want to date well, do what it takes to have some real friends.

Depth: Clarity of Opportunity

We have the clarity of desire, the clarity of community, and now, finally, the clarity of opportunity. Our hearts and our community are not enough to give us the clarity we need. Our hearts will speak (through our desires), our friends will speak (through good community), and then God will speak (through opportunity). Really, God speaks in all three ways, but sometimes he speaks clearest in this last way. In other words, he speaks through his providence. The relationship works out, or it doesn’t. Circumstances line up, or they don’t. Feelings and timelines match up, or they don’t.

“If God withholds something good from us, it’s not because he wants to harm us. Ever.”

Sometimes, God gives the clarity we need in dating simply by doing something outside of our control. You might fall in love with someone, and your friends and family may think it’s a great idea, and marriage still may not happen. Maybe she doesn’t reciprocate; she prefers just being friends. Maybe he ends up dating and marrying someone else. Maybe she moves away for school or work, and the distance proves too far. God makes his will clear by clarifying our own desires, but he makes his will clear in other ways too.

Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap” — or the text, or the call, or the bouquet of flowers — “but its every decision is from the Lord.” Does that sound cruel? Why would God give us a good desire for something (or for someone), and then not give it to us? One of the most important lessons to learn about following Jesus is that there are a thousand good answers to that question.

If God withholds something good from us, it’s not because he wants to harm us. Ever. “We know,” Paul says, “that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11). No, God withholds good from his people when it’s not yet good enough — when he wants and has planned something better for us. So don’t assume that a good desire confirmed by good friends is good for you. Assume God knows what’s truly good for you.

As you pray and pursue marriage, trust God, in his all-knowing and unfailing love for you, to make his will for you clear in all three ways — desire, community, and opportunity.

September 10, 2021, was a day a father won’t forget. It wasn’t the day our eldest learned to walk. It wasn’t his first day of school (that actually came a few days later). It wasn’t the day he learned to ride a bike (“Dad, let go! Let go! I can do it!”). No, Friday, September 10, 2021, was the first time my son saw death.

And not just any death. This was “Grama Sally,” my wife’s grandmother. During trips to Los Angeles, our son had met Grama Sally, hugged her, talked with her, took pictures with her. He knew her. And yet there she was, lying strangely still — too still to be asleep — in a large, beautiful, wooden box, surrounded by flowers, pictures, and lots of tears. I remember his eyes — tiny vats swirling with confusion, curiosity, and fear. Looking around, he knew he should be sad, but he also didn’t understand enough to know why, which made the whole scene more unsettling. Whether you’re a father or a five-year-old, nothing can fully prepare you for moments like these.

I could write a dozen articles about that day, but for now, isn’t it interesting that my son could live five whole years and not be confronted with death?

Veiling Mortality

I started noticing how strangely absent death seems from everyday life when Ray Ortlund quoted a line about the Victorian era (roughly 1820 to 1914), when people talked more freely about death, but almost never about sex. And now, the opposite is true. The line sent me searching for days when death was a more visible member of society.

Grief in American society today is relatively discrete. We talk about “respecting the family’s privacy.” When someone dies, a group of loved ones put on some nicer clothes, attend a brief viewing, then a short service, and finally a burial, often with a reception afterward. All of this might take place in only half a day.

In the 1800s in Britain, however, people grieved very differently — and far more publicly. Widows, in particular, often wore elaborate gowns long after the funeral (sometimes for a year or even two). An entire fashion industry rose around death. This meant that, on any given day, it wasn’t strange to see someone grieving for all to see. Five-year-olds couldn’t avoid the dark clouds walking in and out of crowds. Their kindergartners were forced to ask questions our kids rarely think to ask.

Given how little time and attention (and fabric) we now give to death, should it surprise us that it blindsides us like it does? As a society tries to suppress and hide the reality of death, it inevitably becomes less prepared for it. I, for one, want to be ready when it comes for me — and it will come for me, and you, and everyone you know, unless Jesus returns first. As I help raise three young lives, one of my great burdens is to prepare them to die well.

Could Death Be Better?

When my own death draws near, I want to face it like the apostle Paul. I want to be as prepared for death as he was, so that I can live as fully as he did before he died. We could go to several passages, but Philippians 1 holds up the grave as boldly and beautifully as any other.

As he writes, he sits in a Roman prison, with no assurances that he’ll ever sit anywhere else again. His friends were afraid. After many scares before, this really could be it. “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). While others would have been consumed by worry, regretting all that would be lost and left undone, Paul embraced the prospect of the end, even a seemingly premature end.

A few verses later, he expresses confidence that God will deliver him from prison (verse 25), but that confidence doesn’t come from his circumstances. Everything he could see issued a different forecast. He knew he might die. And that haunting thought did not disturb him.

To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)

When you read him, death doesn’t seem like death at all. Hope has somehow drained death of its shadows, of its bleakness. For Paul, death is like the demonized man in Mark 5, who broke through chains, cut himself ruthlessly, and cursed the sky for years — until he met Jesus. Then, people found him “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15). Christ does that to death for all who live in him.

When he surveys what life and death offer him, Paul doesn’t merely tolerate and receive the latter; he prefers it. “Gain.” “Better.” “Reward.” He doesn’t despise his life in Christ on earth — “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me” (verse 22). But he knew enough to gladly trade all he had now for what comes next.

Better Life by Far

Paul, like the rest of humanity, was born enslaved to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:15). Consciously or unconsciously, we grow up and live under the oppressive, terrifying reality that we will die. And that fear makes people do all manner of sinful and irrational things. Paul wasn’t immune to the dread that terrorizes millions. So what changed his perspective on death? What lens could he possibly put over the grave to see gain?

“Death is only better than life if death means getting closer to Jesus.”

He tells us just two verses later: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23). Death is only better than life if death means living closer to Jesus. And it does for those, like Paul, who trust and follow him. As we step through the grave, “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). And he will be so stunning, so arresting, so satisfying, that seeing him will change us. “What we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Death will introduce us to a glory that will not only sweep us off our feet, but swallow and transform us.

One day, I’ll wake up in a better-by-far world, surrounded by better-by-far sights and tastes and opportunities, and I’ll experience it all as a better-by-far me. A better world, because Christ’s reign will be seen and felt in every inch and breath. Better adventures, because we’ll eat and work and travel and laugh and swim and reign with the one who made it all. A better me, because I will have never been more like him. That’s how death loses its sting. That’s how the prospect of losing all can grow to feel like gain.

Living to Die

This perspective doesn’t merely prepare us to die well, though. It also prepares us to live well until we die. And ironically, while dying well will mean living more fully than ever, living well will mean repeatedly dying to ourselves. Paul can say, “I die every day!” (1 Corinthians 15:31). What does he mean?

He tells us in Philippians 1. “If I am to live in the flesh,” verse 22, “that means fruitful labor for me.” And what would that fruitful labor be?

I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. (Philippians 1:25–26)

“While dying well will mean living more fully than ever, living well will mean repeatedly dying to self.”

Because he was prepared to die, Paul was freed to live, not for himself, but for others’ joy in God. In other words, he was freed to spend his life preparing people to die well, giving them reason after reason to live for Christ and long for heaven. He spent the little time he had on earth (even in prison!) looking for creative and costly ways to win and mature souls for the next world. He knew that dying well on his last day meant dying well every day.

And so if we want to live and die well, we die, as long as we have breath, so that others might finally and fully live in Christ.

The danger of drifting, spiritual or otherwise, is in just how subtle and comfortable drifting can feel. Often we don’t even notice it’s happening at all.

I grew up outside Cincinnati, Ohio, a far drive from any ocean. I can’t even remember a lake near our house. The largest body of water might have been the man-made pond next to the local golf course. So when I finally met the ocean, I would never forget it. I had never seen anything so large and alive and frightening — and yet my little brother and I could splash and wrestle in its wake.

I distinctly remember, on one of those early beach days, mustering up the courage to swim out a little farther, and then a little farther, floating over wave after wave, learning how they obediently march in rows and yet dance in their own way. And then, as happens to so many first-timers, I realized (with great fear) just how far I was from safety. Suddenly the waves were coming higher and faster, pulling me farther than I wanted to go. My feet searched frantically for the bottom. My arms and legs suddenly felt like logs, like they were somehow taking on water. I looked and looked along the beach, but couldn’t see my brother, my dad, my mom, anyone. Another wave crashed over my head.

In a panic, I swam frantically, and soon found my feet back on land, but I had learned just how easy and dangerous it is to drift away from shore. How much more dangerous, then, to drift away from Jesus — to realize, after weeks or months or years, that the waves of life have carried us farther away than we ever expected.

Focus or Drift

One mark of Christian maturity is learning that none of us passively drifts toward Christ, not even after we’ve followed him for years or even decades. The currents of the still-sinful soul, weathered by constant waves of temptation, still pull us out to sea. We can’t sluggishly float in place. We’re either swimming toward God or drifting somewhere else.

“None of us passively drifts toward Christ, not even after we’ve followed him for years or even decades.”

The writer of Hebrews had felt the undertow of sin battling our love for Jesus. After lifting up the supremacy of the Son in creation, in redemption, in authority, in glory, he writes, “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1). In other words, if we take our eyes off of this Christ, we’ll soon find ourselves further from him. In the life of faith, we either focus or drift.

For his immediate hearers, the tide threatened to pull them back into the Christ-less rituals of old-covenant Israel. Jewish persecution made following Jesus painful and costly, leaving some in prison (Hebrews 13:3). Many considered retreating from Christ to being mistreated with him. Our souls may drift along similar lines. We might drift because people we love hate the God we love, making belittling comments about our convictions or distancing themselves from us because of them. Or we might drift in other, very different directions.

We might drift after unrepentant sin, allowing some lust or bitterness or craving or envy to take hold and slowly drag our souls from safety. We might, like Demas, drift away into worldliness, slowly allowing our affections and imaginations to be absorbed with some distraction — deadlines and promotions, headline news, sports triumphs or losses, shopping trends and deals, social media controversies. We might even drift away because of a fixation on friends or family. Each of these loved ones is a gift of God meant to lead us to God, and yet how often do they instead become gods?

We might drift any number of ways to any number of places. The warning is that if we’re not currently swimming closer to Jesus, we cannot stay where we are. Paddling in place is not an option. And the tide will choose where we go — if we let it. The human soul is designed to wax or wane, to drive or drift. So do you know, in the moments of greater preoccupation and weaker resolve, where your soul tends to drift?

Greater Than Angels

Whatever ways our souls tend to drift, how do we counter the pull? By paying all the more attention to what we’ve heard about Jesus. The claim of the first chapter of Hebrews, that he’s greater than angels, may fall strangely flat on modern ears (like mine). We’re not awestruck by angels anymore. And so the argument’s largely lost on us — not at all because it’s a weak argument, but because we have weaker eyes, because we’ve grown ignorant to reality. Angels haven’t changed; we have.

We yawn when we should marvel (and often marvel when we should yawn). We scroll by when we should fall on our faces. We treat angels like puppies or kittens — adorable, desirable, cuddly, surely not wonderful and terrifying. That’s not how first-century Jews would have imagined angels. They might not have been comfortable printing them on children’s clothing.

If we could see angels, we would shudder and hide our faces. And Jesus, Hebrews tells us, is more frightening than a hurricane, more spectacular than a towering pillar of fire, more glorious even than the angels of heaven.

Because of Who He Is

Wholly apart from our tendency to drift, Jesus really is worthy of our whole attention. He really is endlessly fascinating. When my family visited Yellowstone, we came across two grizzly bears playfully wrestling in a field. We were far enough away to be completely safe, but close enough to see it all. I can still picture those enormous, furry brawlers running and tackling and rolling. No one had to convince us to pay attention or keep watching. Someone could have easily made off with our car, which we had left running.

“If we could catch a glimpse of who Jesus really is, we wouldn’t struggle to focus on him.”

Similarly, if we could catch a glimpse of who Jesus really is, we wouldn’t struggle to focus on him. In fact, we’d probably have a hard time noticing all the things that capture and consume so much of our attention now. When we read our Bibles and feel little, it’s like we’re scanning the field but can’t see the bears. Or we can, but they’re too far away and fuzzy. When we stop reading our Bibles, we’ve stopped even looking in the fields. We’re driving right by while we stream some series on our phones.

Hebrews 1 is a trailer to the glory we’re missing when our eyes drift away from the field. The boy born in Bethlehem is the heir of all things — in part because he made all things (Hebrews 1:2). This Jesus is the beauty of the universe — “the radiance of the glory of God” — and he upholds that universe with his all-powerful breath (Hebrews 1:3). And though he is the pure, spotless image of God, he stepped between the wrath of God and the enemies of God, to make his enemies his brothers. After dying on the cross, he proved even death was under his feet, rising from the grave and then ascending in even greater glory than he came.

And if you could see him as he now is, even mouth-stopping, sword-wielding armies of angels would grow dull by comparison. He’s always worthy of more attention, and he rewards whatever focus we give him.

Because of Who You Are

We pay exceedingly close attention to Jesus because he’s worthy of such attention, and because we know how easily we drift away from him. “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” We keep our eyes fixed on him because of who he is, and because of who we are — tempted, distracted, sometimes wandering.

Staying close to Jesus means steadily moving toward Jesus. Scripture’s language of “walking by faith” is a great encouragement here. There are times to run (or swim) hard, but most of the Christian life will be walking with Jesus against the drift, like the disciples who walked with Jesus during his ministry. In an age of driving, riding, flying, and hurrying, many of us have lost the art of walking. Resisting the tide often means just taking the next few steps — reading the next chapter, praying the next prayer, preparing for the next Sunday gathering. As we do, we’ll find, on some days and in some seasons, that the waves actually turn to serve us, to lift us higher and farther in the right direction. With the Spirit’s help, like surfers, we can actually tame and enjoy the currents we once feared.

As we fight the drift within us, we don’t have to try to finish our race today. We just need to go as far as we can in these few hours with our eyes on Jesus.

When suffering comes, we often stop and ask God to give us what we need to suffer well. Sometimes, the suffering itself unexpectedly becomes his answer to that prayer.

One experience of suffering — with the presence and help of God — can prepare us for some future experience of suffering. Scripture actually goes even further and says that when we receive and experience suffering in a certain way, we can actually begin to rejoice in our suffering. I haven’t suffered as much as many have, but I’ve suffered enough to want to know how that happens, how we can rejoice even while still in the midst of our sufferings. What miraculous filter could I put on my hardest days to make me respond like that? How could joy possibly take root and bloom in the dark and dry ground of suffering?

One of the clearest texts along these lines is Romans 5:3–4. If you’ve heard these words over and over before (like some of us have), read them again, but slow down enough to hear just how startling they are.

We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. (Romans 5:3–4)

Who in your life talks about suffering like that? We don’t merely receive and tolerate suffering when it comes; we rejoice in it. Our hope doesn’t merely survive suffering; suffering strangely makes our hope stronger. Suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope. Has your experience of heartache and loss felt like that?

Before Suffering Comes

Now, suffering in itself does not produce hope from scratch. Suffering will not create hope where there is none. But it can serve to strengthen and refine an already living hope. No matter what we suffer and for however long we suffer, no one suffers well without a real and abiding hope in God. Look at the verses immediately before:

We have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. . . . (Romans 5:2–3)

“No one suffers well without a real and abiding hope in God.”

Before suffering can strengthen our hope, we first need to put our deepest, strongest hope in God. Those who can rejoice in the hope-building experience of suffering can only do so because they have some hope to build upon. They already rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

That means the first step to suffering well is to die to all our confidence in self and learn to rely instead on God. If suffering turns you inward (as it tends to do), you’re likely to fall into downward spirals of despair, like so many do. If, however, suffering lifts your eyes to someone above and beyond this pain or problem, then it can become a staircase into greater courage and joy. The staircase may be arduous and harrowing, but it can carry you onto firmer ground and into fairer fields — if you are not own your hope in suffering. Suffering will not stoop to serve you if you will not bend your knee before God.

Suffering Produces Endurance

We all can see how hope might help someone embrace and endure suffering, but the apostle Paul doesn’t settle for mere survival. He demands that suffering strengthen hope and serve joy. So how does that happen? First, by showing us how much God can do when we come to the end of what we can do.

Part of the suffering of suffering is the creeping suspicion that we won’t make it, that this will cost us more than we have to give, that tomorrow will be the last straw. If you’ve felt like that, Paul knows what you feel: “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8). That doesn’t sound like hope rising. That doesn’t sound like rejoicing. How could God rewrite a death sentence and make it give life? Next line: “But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).

We find hope at, and beyond, the end of ourselves — at the end of all we can do and say and feel — if we find God there. Suffering produces hope because it shows us, like nothing else can, that we can handle more than we think — with God. In other words, suffering produces endurance. As we lean on God, he strengthens us with all power, “according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11).

Endurance Proves Character

Second, suffering strengthens hope by revealing and refining who we really are. We may not like what suffering reveals, but it unveils us. We thought we were patient, until the car died for the third time this year. We thought we were kind and gentle, until our child pitched another fit at bedtime. We thought our faith was firm and unshakeable, until our spouse got sick, and then more sick, and then more sick. Suffering shakes our souls, bringing sin to the surface, revealing the worst in us.

And, if God has begun his work in us, suffering also reveals and nurtures the God-wrought best in us. The apostle Peter describes the beauty and worth of this painful process:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6–7)

The miracle of Spirit-filled patience shines brightest in moments that test patience. The miracle of kindness sparkles most where we expect to find irritation and rudeness. The miracle of love looks most miraculous when we have every painful reason to focus on self. Comfortable circumstances may draw a veil over these miracles, but suffering draws light to them, exposing the hidden work of God within us.

In other words, endurance produces proven character. Our patient perseverance through suffering, with joy, says we are real — that we are not the sin-enslaved soul we once were, but a new creation by God, one he promises to complete (Philippians 1:6).

Character Produces Hope

If we could see that we’re real in Christ, how would that make us feel about our future? If we’re real — if the King of heaven lives in us, and intercedes for us, and promises to come back for us — then our future is overwhelmingly bright and secure no matter how unbearable our present may feel for now. In other words, character produces hope.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2–4)

“Through suffering, we see that we are someone we could never have been without grace.”

Suffering demands endurance, allowing us to see what God can do when we come to the end of ourselves. Enduring hardship with God reveals what’s happening inside of us, as he conforms us degree by degree to the glory of his Son. As that happens, we get to see glimpses of the wonder of who we are in Christ. Through suffering, then, we see that we are someone we could never have been without grace.

Bigger Than Relief

So, instead of praying that God might preserve our hope through suffering, we might begin praying that God would build our hope through suffering — that this season of darkness actually might leave us nearer to and more confident in him. Instead of merely praying that God would heal us and restore us to where we were, we can pray that he would use suffering to grow us and lead us forward to where he wants us to be.

I’ve learned more about suffering well from Vaneetha Risner than from anyone else on earth. She’s suffered in more ways than most — diagnosed with post-polio (a painful and debilitating condition), lost an infant son because of a doctor’s mistake, and then in the midst of the hurricane of her pain and loss, was abandoned by her husband. And yet by God’s grace, she’s suffered more joyfully than most. When you meet her, you cannot explain her — but for God.

She says this about the transforming power of her trials:

I cried out asking God to help me to trust him, to reconnect, and to find hope in what seemed like impenetrable darkness. I needed peace and I couldn’t find it anywhere besides Christ. It was then that my faith radically changed. I found an inexplicable peace and hope that I had not experienced before — my easy trouble-free life had not yielded anything but an enjoyment of the present. But suffering was producing something unshakeable. Suffering is a catalyst that forces us to move in one direction or another. No one comes through suffering unchanged. (“Suffering Will Always Change You”)

Suffering will change us. The question is whether it will change us for the better, driving us nearer to Jesus and making us more like him. By all means, when suffering comes, pray that God would give what you need to receive it, to survive it, to endure it. But don’t stop there. Ask him to do what he has done again and again for Vaneetha. Ask him to make suffering a servant of your peace and hope and joy in him.

“I haven’t met anyone in a while, and I haven’t been on a date in a couple of years. I’ve thought about trying a dating site — what do you think?”

Having ministered among college and post-college men and women for more than a decade, I’ve heard some version of this question again and again. Each time, it’s clearer to me that Christians today are increasingly dating in a different world from the one I did (and I’ve been married only since 2015). Many experts have already observed the obvious: dating (like so much of life) is changing rapidly because technology is regularly revolutionizing everyday life. And dating websites aren’t the only flashpoint.

“A guy from church started texting me. What should I do?”
“She hasn’t texted me back in a week. What does that mean?”
“He liked a couple of my old posts on Instagram. Does that mean he’s interested?”
“She started following me yesterday. Should I ask her out?”
“She still uses Facebook. Should I be worried?”
“My friend found someone on an app. Should I try that?”

You’ve likely heard other questions (or asked them yourself). If you had to ask all the questions in one, you might ask, Does technology help or hurt Christian dating?

Blessings of Technology

As we ask about the potential benefits and dangers of technology in dating, I need to say up front that technology was a massive blessing in my wife’s and my story. We met at a wedding and dated long-distance for two whole years. Some 95 percent or more of our interactions before our wedding were made possible by technology. Our honeymoon was the longest stretch we’d ever spent in the same city.

Three days after we met in Los Angeles, I flew 1,911 miles away to Minneapolis. Why didn’t the relationship end right there? Because she had acquiesced and given me a special nine-digit code (a much longer story), which I could then type into a small plastic box and immediately hear her voice anytime anywhere, even from faraway snow-covered hills. Fifty years ago, every phone was attached to a wall. One hundred fifty years ago, you couldn’t make a phone call. And that’s to say nothing of the opportunities of social media and instant messaging (or cars and planes, for that matter!). Imagine dating in a world where you could talk only face to face with people nearby or else write long letters (which might take weeks or months to be delivered).

Were it not for planes, phones, and Wi-Fi, my wife and I probably wouldn’t be married. And with technology, long-distance dating wasn’t only possible, but came with its own advantages and benefits. So I thank God for technology, and specifically for how technology can serve dating and marriage.

Hurdles of Technology

Now, someone might read about our story and conclude technology is all blessing and no curse when it comes to dating. The reality, however, is that the blessings (which are real) come with equally real dangers and consequences — and all the more so in the pursuit of marriage.

“We were made to know and be known in real time and shared space.”

While technology makes many aspects of relationships easier (or even possible!), it can make other aspects more challenging. Probably the highest hurdle of technology is achieving and maintaining meaningful levels of relationship. We were made to know and be known in real time and shared space, to experience the kind of love and joy that’s possible only through physical presence (2 John 12; Romans 1:11–12). Technology can effectively (and even beautifully) complement that kind of togetherness, but it can’t replace it. We’re learning this again and again and again (for evidence, revisit the heartaches and challenges of the last three years).

For sure, technology allows us to have and keep many more relationships (or, in this case, allows us to “meet” many more men or women whom we might date), but technology struggles to create meaningful relationships where there wasn’t one already. Even how we talk about technology confirms its less-than-ideal role in our relationships: “I’ve tried everything else and come up empty, so I’m thinking about trying a website.” Technology connects more dots over larger distances, but the dots are unavoidably fuzzier (no matter how high-definition our cameras become). We simply can’t get to know people virtually the way we can in person (I mean, we call them virtual interactions). I would argue, then, that technology is weakest in what dating relationships need most: clarity and depth.

People pursuing marriage want to get to know each other well enough to decide whether to make an exclusive, lifelong, for-better-or-worse vow. So how well is technology helping us make that decision? Well, it depends on how we use it.

Two Kinds of Technology

I recently stumbled onto a new way to see both the benefits and the hurdles of technology in the pursuit of marriage. In his book The Life We’re Looking For, Andy Crouch helpfully differentiates between two kinds of technology: devices and instruments.

Devices, he says, are kinds of technology that discourage human effort and eventually replace human labor altogether (the furnace, the phonograph, the Roomba). Instruments, on the other hand, encourage and extend human effort and ingenuity (the bicycle, the piano, the telescope). Here’s how Crouch describes instruments:

There is a kind of technology that is easily distinguished from magic — a kind that involves us more and more deeply as persons rather than diminishing and sidelining us. This kind of technology elevates and dignifies human work, rather than reducing human beings to drones that do only the work the robots have not yet automated. It does not give us effortless power but instead gives us room to exert ourselves in deeper and more rewarding ways. (134)

As he goes on to observe (and this is where the distinction becomes hyper-relevant for dating), our phones can be devices or instruments, depending on how we use them. “With the right software it can become the ultimate instrument for any number of exercises of personal heart, soul, mind, and strength. Or, of course, it can serve as the ultimate device” (146). Our phones can encourage and extend our effort and ingenuity, or they can discourage and replace them. And perhaps never more so than in how we woo and date one another.

Two Kinds of Men

One question we could ask about technology and dating, then, would be, Is the way we’re using technology — phone calls, text messaging, social media, dating websites and apps — encouraging and extending the right kind of effort? Or is it rewarding (or at least compensating for) laziness? And while this question can go both directions, I have men particularly in mind, because I believe God wants men to bear a greater responsibility for leadership and initiative in marriage, beginning with dating. In the hands of the right kind of men, technology can strengthen and multiply blessings in a relationship. In the wrong hands, however, it can become a relational curse.

So when does technology help in Christian dating? When it helps us (again, men in particular) rise to meet the demands of love, rather than helping us avoid them. Technology helps when it draws the right kind of risk-taking initiative out of a man. And it helps when it serves what happens when we’re face to face (like we’re meant to be in relationships). Technology hurts when it replaces initiative and displaces presence.

The kind of man who uses technology well in dating wears the selflessness of Philippians 2:3–4, even when he’s online: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” He wears the intentionality of 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” He wears the humility of 1 Peter 5:5: “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.” Above all, he puts on love (Colossians 3:14), even when shielded by a keyboard.

Dating Devices or Instruments?

Let’s try to apply these principles to some real technology today. For single women, how do the men pursuing you use their phones?

Take social media, for example. Do they use social media to flirt and signal interest in order to avoid the possibility of rejection (device)? Or are their interactions with you marked by honest and intentional initiative (instrument)? Is their general presence online the typical exhibition of impulsiveness, laziness, and self-gratification (what social media companies prey on)? Or is it refreshingly selfless, considerate, self-controlled, and valuable to others (instrument)? I’m not encouraging you to over-analyze every post or like, but on the whole, what patterns do you see?

Or what about dating apps or websites? Do their profiles exaggerate their better qualities and hide their weaknesses (device)? Or are their profiles refreshingly honest, modest, and Godward (instrument)? When they call, are most of your conversations meaningful and beneficial (instrument)? Or are they shallow, meandering, and self-indulgent (device)? Are their texts consistently thoughtful and caring (instrument) — or listless and cavalier (device)? Do they text in ways they wouldn’t speak to you face to face (device)?

We could ask dozens of more questions. In short, are phones drawing the right kind of effort and intentionality out of the men interested in you? Men, you can ask some of the same questions of women you’re interested in, but over time men will inevitably (and rightly) set the tone in relationships. Technology can help relationships, and technology can hurt them. Unfortunately, many naively assume the former, while living the latter.

What Do You Want from Dating?

Another good way to assess technology’s role in your dating might be to ask, What do you really want from dating? For what it’s worth, this question is a good one for how we use technology in every area of life. Far too often we assume technology is helping us achieve what’s important to us. Often technology promises to help us, and convinces us it’s helping, but only ends up distracting and undermining us.

“Technology can facilitate clarity or impede it; it can accelerate clarity or slow it.”

When it comes to dating, then, what do you want to accomplish? Have you even thought of dating in those terms? As I’ve said elsewhere, the great prize in marriage is Christ-centered intimacy; the great prize in dating is Christ-centered clarity. Technology can be a wonderful vehicle to that kind of clarity (I know, because airplanes and phones helped bring my wife and me together). Technology can also be an obscurer, hiding concerns and dangers we would easily spot face to face. Technology can facilitate clarity or impede it; it can accelerate clarity or slow it. So, are the ways you use technology in dating helping you see each other more clearly? Over time, are your calls and texts and posts and video chats helping you each decide whether you want to marry?

If you want the short-lived, adrenaline-filled pleasure of thin, low-commitment romance, technology has very effectively reproduced those relationships by the millions. Billion-dollar companies are wholly devoted to this kind of “love.” You’re just a few quick swipes from your next fling. If, however, you’re looking for a deeper, safer, more durable, more satisfying, more Christ-exalting love — for the kind of holy intimacy and security only a covenant in Christ can provide — if you want to live out the mystery of the gospel in a lifelong union (Ephesians 5:32), if you want to see and enjoy more of God in the harrowing and thrilling trenches of marriage, then technology may still help you, but only when it complements and encourages what can happen face to face.