Audio Transcript

How do we overcome half-hearted spiritual laziness? That’s the question today and Thursday. And speaking of zeal for God, I should first mention again that this October we’re celebrating the Reformation — Martin Luther’s great stand against the pope and against Rome’s spiritual abuses and theological errors. But Luther didn’t stand alone. Other men stood for this same cause, before and after him — people like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, and John Calvin. And many other lesser-known names paid the ultimate price in the Reformation — men and women, even teenagers, who stood against Rome, and who bled and were burned and drowned for it.

These stories of sacrifice are our focus in the month ahead, in a 31-day tour you can complete in just 5–7 minutes each day. It’s called Here We Stand. You can subscribe to the email journey today by going to desiringGod.org/stand. Or just go to desiringGod.org and click on the link on the top of the website. I hope you’ll join us in remembering the price paid for the spiritual blessings and religious liberties we enjoy today.

Speaking of church history, this Saturday marks Jonathan Edwards’s birthday — his 321st, to be exact. Not a monumental year, but certainly a monumental man in your life and theology, Pastor John. Edwards was a pastor and theologian in New England during the First Great Awakening. His God-entranced theology and preaching became a powerful influence in your life over fifty years ago. And evidently that is still the case because just this last spring you delivered a commencement address at Bethlehem College and Seminary and again quoted Edwards as a key example of what you were trying to get across to those students in a message all about zeal. Revisit that message for us, and tell us what Edwards teaches us about overcoming spiritual laziness.

J.I. Packer wrote a blurb in 1986 for the cover of the first edition of the book Desiring God, and it said this: “Jonathan Edwards, whose ghost walks through most of Piper’s pages, would be delighted with his disciple.” Well, I really liked that endorsement very much — but it’s an open question to me whether Jonathan Edwards would be delighted with me as his disciple. But what’s not an open question is that he walks like a ghost through all my pages. That’s true, and in fact, the origin of that message that I gave at Bethlehem College and Seminary was not first from Edwards.

When You Really Want to Obey

I’ll get to Edwards in just a minute, but here’s where it came from. That message on zeal came from some morning meditation — maybe fifteen minutes of meditation — on Romans 12:6–8, where Paul says, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them,” and then you list gifts, and the last three go like this: “the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”

“Seek to magnify the worth and the greatness and the beauty of the Lord in all that you do.”

I read that and I turned to my wife, who was sitting with me in the living room there, and I said, “Noël, what’s the common denominator between contributing generously, leading zealously, and showing mercy cheerfully? What’s the basic point in saying, ‘Do what you do generously, do what you do zealously, and do what you do cheerfully’?” She said, “Well, you really want to do it. You’re not being forced. You’re not half-hearted. You’re all in.” I thought, “Yeah, that’s it. That’s it.”

The transformed mind from Romans 12:2 not only discerns “what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” — it really wants to do the will of God. It’s all in, 100 percent, with the will of God. It’s not a half-hearted doing of the will of God. If God’s will for you is to contribute, do it generously. If God’s will for you is to lead, lead zealously. If God’s will for you is to do mercy, show mercy, do it cheerfully, not begrudgingly.

So, what Paul is getting at is that the renewed mind, the mind of Christ in Christians, this transformed mind is not only able to recognize what is the will of God but also is inclined how to do it — how to go about the will of God. God’s will is not simply that we do the right thing but that we do it with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might. That’s the point of those verses. That’s what got me thinking about zeal.

It’s not surprising, then, that the very next verse, Romans 12:9, says, “Let [your] love be genuine. Abhor what is evil.” In other words, really love and really hate. Don’t let your love be half-hearted and unreal, and don’t let your recognition of evil simply be a mild disapproval. Abhorrent — it’s a very strong word. This is the only place it’s used in the New Testament. It’s the way zeal responds to evil — abhorrence. Then to make it crystal clear what he’s so concerned about, one verse later, in Romans 12:11, he says, “Do not be slothful in zeal” — same word as in Romans 12:8 — “be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” So, the great object of the lives of believers is the Lord: “serve the Lord.” Seek to magnify the worth and the greatness and the beauty of the Lord in all that you do.

But what burns in Paul’s heart, as far as I can see, is that we serve the Lord in a certain way — namely, that we not be lethargic or slothful or lazy or half-hearted or sluggish or lukewarm in the way we serve the Lord, or the way we do everything, for that matter. So, that phrase “be fervent in spirit” literally means “boil” — “boil in the spirit.” In fact, the word “fervent” is the Latin word for “boil,” and Paul is saying, “You don’t get a pass if your personality is phlegmatic.” That’s an old word. If you were born passive, as a couch-potato-type person, you don’t get a pass. This is not a comment on your personality. This is a command for all Christians. Whatever your personality, make it work for you. When you know the will of God and you resolve to do it, which is what Christians do, be all in. Do it all the way. Do it with all your might and all your soul. Do it with zeal, ardor, fervency, eagerness. Pray that your spirit would boil with zeal for the will of God and the glory of God.

The Zeal of Jonathan Edwards

Now, here we come: Edwards. I was about fifteen minutes into my meditation on Romans 12, making notes in my little journal that I keep beside my chair, and I realized there was a ghost walking through my mind. He’s really there. Yes, it’s the apostle Paul. Yes, it’s the Holy Spirit. There’s another ghost, and his name is Jonathan Edwards — and he wrote seventy resolutions when he was nineteen. I read those resolutions decades ago, and only one of them could I quote verbatim to this day — only one, because it’s short, but it’s also very important.

Resolution #6: “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.” Let me say it again: “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.” Every time I read that sentence, my heart rises up with zeal and says, “Yes, yes. O God, don’t let me waste my life with lukewarm, half-hearted efforts to do anything.” “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with [all] your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). I think that resolution is just a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 9:10. Or Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work heartily” — from the soul — “as for the Lord and not for men.”

“God’s will is not simply that we do the right thing but that we do it with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might.”

Lest we think that this resolution to “live with all my might while I do live” was simply an overstated nineteen-year-old expression of youthful energy, seventeen years later, as a pastor in North Hampton, Edwards preached a sermon entitled “Zeal an Essential Virtue of a Christian.” I just reread it a few days ago just to stoke my engine on this. The text was Titus 2:14: “[Christ] gave himself for us . . . to purify for himself a people who are zealous for good works.” He didn’t die simply to make us able to do good works. He died to make us passionate about doing good works. That’s what it says: not half-hearted.

So, in conclusion, the booster rocket that sends zeal for good works — in fact, zeal for everything we do — into orbit, this booster rocket is: Christ died for this. He died for this. Christ gave himself on the cross to create a people with zeal — zeal for good works, zeal for the glory of the Lord. This is what pleases the Lord. He died for it. So, I pray that all of us will join Jonathan Edwards and say, “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.”

From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. . . . But I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty than I had then. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has very often appeared exceedingly bright and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God.

I wonder how many can sympathize with the first line of Jonathan Edwards’s confession because they have never tasted the sweetness of “the doctrine” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1:xii–xiii). How many protest against the idea of God’s absolute sovereignty because they’ve never seen its “exceedingly bright” beauty? How can the doctrine come down from the heavens and delight us here on earth?

In his essay “Myth Became Fact,” C.S. Lewis gives us his answer for how to better experience what doctrine can merely explain: stories (what he calls “myths”). “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction” (57).

If we want to experience the sweetness of God’s sovereignty that Edwards celebrates in the form of the story Lewis advocates, we can hardly do better than the creation account in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. What we too quickly set to cool into the tidy ingots of doctrine, Tolkien presents in the molten form of myth.

The Ainulindalë

For those who don’t know, The Silmarillion is Tolkien’s mythological history behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the roots of his tree of tales. He begins the story with the Ainulindalë, which serves as both a creation myth and a kind of musical theodicy, revealing how an all-good and all-powerful Creator can allow evil in his world.

Before unpacking Tolkien’s lovely portrait of providence in the Ainulindalë (which is just over three pages long in small font), let me offer two clarifications to help you make the most of reading it.

First, Tolkien states elsewhere the central theme of this mythology in no uncertain terms: “It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 260). God and his glory run like a subterranean river under Tolkien’s world. Every reader (or filmmaker) who fails to begin at that fountainhead will necessarily do violence to Tolkien’s vision.

Tolkien sounds this central note in the first sentence of his legendarium: “There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar” (The Silmarillion, 15). Although Tolkien invents his own name for the Creator, his first line echoes the start of the True Myth: “In the beginning, God.”

Second, Tolkien builds on a long tradition that views the celestial beings or angelic “sons of God” as participants in creation. God himself pulls back the primordial veil and gives us a hint of this when he asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4, 7). Tolkien names these angelic beings the Ainur.

With the major players — Ilúvatar (God) and the Ainur (gods) — in place, let’s consider the beauty of God’s sovereignty in Tolkien’s myth.

Adorning the Theme

Tolkien begins his story by fronting the mysterious harmony between Creator providence and creature agency. After Ilúvatar creates the Ainur, he reveals his sovereign plan to them as “a mighty theme” of music — the central melody line of history. This theme begins in glory and ends in splendor. Just like Yahweh, Ilúvatar is the Creator, King, and Coherence of his world, and the central theme of all is his glory (Romans 11:36).

When the Ainur hear the theme, awe seizes them, and they bow before their Creator in silence. But their amazement only increases with his next words:

Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song. (15)

The storyline is set in stone. It cannot be changed. Ilúvatar has declared it. And yet he invites his creatures to “achieve it” (20). For Tolkien, God is no machinist of automatons. He is a Creator of subcreators — a term that captures the mystery, dignity, and privilege of real creaturely agency. Though God is the Author, he intends his characters to “actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation” (Tolkien, On Fairy-stories, 79). The Master-Maker’s art flourishes in the hands of made-makers.

And what is the end of this cosmic polyphony? The pleasure of the Creator. He delights to see their work. The derivative beauty they awaken makes him “glad” because it mirrors his own original beauty.

Tolkien recounts the Ainur’s response to this commission:

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void. (15)

This music of the Ainur adorning Ilúvatar’s theme is the musical history of the world “foreshadowed and foresung” (20). Yet, as in our own world, the music does not remain harmonious for long.

Notes of Discord

Good, good, good, very good — then dissonance. The pattern of the garden is mirrored in Tolkien’s myth. The music begins flawless, but soon arises “the discord of Melkor.”

As the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself (16).

Melkor, a Satan-like character whom Tolkien calls “the Prime sub-creative Rebel,” tries to make his own music apart from God’s design (Letters, 191). There is no fear of God before his eyes, so he seeks to usurp heavenly hierarchy. He wants to wield the conductor’s wand. Yet he only manages to make discord — the inevitable result when creatures seek to jettison their creatureliness, when made things envy their Maker. Satan sought to ascend God’s throne; Adam tried to seize divinity; Melkor wanted his own theme. The notes may change, but the dissonance is the same. This rebel refrain echoes throughout our fallen world.

“God and his glory run like a subterranean river under Tolkien’s world.”

Melkor’s discord, like Satan’s and Adam’s (and ours), is contagious. As a result, many of the other Ainur attune their music to Melkor instead of staying in concert with Ilúvatar. A cacophony results, a sea of sound, a tempest of clashing tones.

But just here, Tolkien’s vision of sovereignty shines brightest. The rivalry of themes is a false one. Ultimately, there is only one theme — Ilúvatar’s. He makes new music through the chaos:

It seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern. (16–17)

Like a master conductor, Ilúvatar folds discord into his theme. Just when evil seems most triumphant — when the cross looms large and the grave yawns deep — it most serves the theme of glory. Tolkien, following both Augustine and Aquinas, holds that God permits evil in the world to serve his final purposes. The splendor of the happy ending “reflects a glory backwards” that reveals God’s good design from the start (On Fairy-stories, 76).

The Irresistible Melody

Shortly after Ilúvatar weaves the disharmony of Melkor into his grand theme, he stops the music and declares,

Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. (17)

Ilúvatar transposes the music of the Ainur into being. As if a book were brought to life, Ilúvatar makes the music into a world and does so for a specific purpose — to display his sovereign glory. Echoing Yahweh’s words to Pharaoh (Exodus 9:16), Ilúvatar declares,

Thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. (17)

What a potent taste of the doctrine! In the end, sovereignty and agency mingle in perfect harmony. Not only will evil bow to good (Proverbs 14:19), but ultimately, evil must serve good (Genesis 50:20). All the schemes of Melkor will prove “but a part of the whole and a tributary to its glory” (17). And lest we imagine Ilúvatar had only the gods in mind, he says of men, “These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work” (42). All the rebellion of gods and men, in the final reckoning, serves but to amplify and accentuate the symphony of glory. For Tolkien, good wins because God is sovereign.

Again and again, Tolkien shows that Providence can make beauty blossom out of evil and its bitter fruit. Tolkien calls this surprising transformation eucatastrophe. Austin Freeman explains, “The eucatastrophic subversion of evil into good is the essential way that God has designed Middle-earth to function” (Tolkien Dogmatics, 208). As the greed of Gollum ultimately ensures the destruction of the Ring, God makes all discord ultimately serve his ends.

No matter how dire the situation, no matter how bent the Dark Lord may be, no matter how far the filth of Mordor spreads — even if Saruman breaks all the bonds of friendship and scours the Shire, though, with the very fires of Mt. Doom heating his heart, Frodo claims the Ring as “mine,” and even Samwise the Brave surrenders his last hope — yet the sovereign song takes up all the dark and the dangerous, all the evil intents and bent imaginings, all sin and sorrow, and makes them adorn the theme of glory.

Celebrating Sovereignty

In the symphony of sovereignty, God’s perfect providence and man’s real agency form one wonderful melody. The two seemingly distinct strains of music dance together, Providence leading and guiding the steps while creatures move in time. Even man’s missteps and discordant notes, God flawlessly weaves into the fabric of the whole so that when the final ovation comes, the standing cosmos will forever sing, “From him and through him and to him are all things. Blessed, blessed, blessed be he!”

Tolkien helps us taste the sovereignty Edwards celebrates. He shows us that God’s sovereignty transcends mere fact. It fires the imagination. It is at once imperious and mellifluous — an insurmountable wall for would-be rebels and an unassailable fortress for the faithful. Indeed, by his pen, the doctrine appears exceedingly bright and sweet.

You bring some strange things to our ears.

Some in Athens said it to the apostle Paul. Some in America will say it to faithful preachers today. Of course, strange is a relative term. What’s familiar to some is foreign to others — whether in multicultural cities or, even now, in more rural and monolithic places because of the Internet.

More generally, human life in God’s wonderfully wide and detailed world presents us with the challenges of strangeness in the midst of our familiarities. But don’t we grow as various strangenesses become familiar? A strange food might become a new favorite, or a strange person, a new friend. Even as our circle of familiarity expands, maturity involves navigating an endless parade of strangenesses, both for ourselves and in others. So does growing as a Christian, and particularly as a preacher.

Stranger Things at Mars Hill

Paul encountered a matrix of strangenesses when he was brought to Athens in Acts 17. Having enjoyed a string of gospel successes, not without persecution, in the cities of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea, he arrived in Athens to wait for his coworkers. This waiting then led to one of his most memorable messages. Can we imagine the apostle waiting around anywhere, especially in a city like Athens, without finding a way to preach about Jesus?

Paul’s celebrated visit to Athens, and its infamous Mars Hill, turns on this concept of strangeness. Now, Paul at Mars Hill received all sorts of fresh attention twenty years ago in conversations about postmodernism and dialogues with the “emerging church.” Without rehearsing those, let’s look from a preacher’s perspective, as Paul navigates five flashpoints in the Athens account. Then we’ll gather up some lessons for preachers today.

1. His spirit is provoked locally.

Paul is supposed to be waiting. He might have buried his attention in some ancient equivalent of an electronic device. He might have sunk himself into reports from faraway parts of the empire. Surely after such challenges (and fruitfulness) in three other cities, he could have used some downtime. He could have laid low and waited in Athens without being emotionally present. Instead, Paul looks up and around. He embraces his setting, his specific locale, with its specific needs. He observes his surroundings and sees a city full of false gods. And it stirs him:

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. (Acts 17:16)

We too will do well to attend, like Paul, to the locale in which God has placed us, rather than losing ourselves in distant dramas or the daily pining for something new. Has it ever been easier to fill our limited consciousness with inactionable reports from far, far away, and be provoked by the remote, while ignoring our immediate surroundings?

2. He takes reasonable initiative.

Paul reasons, and does so day after day. He doesn’t react with an outburst, but being righteously provoked, he responds with the measured, mature initiative of daily reason, rather than volatility. He doesn’t pretend to lance it all at once in one diatribe, or force his passions into the wrong places, but he reasons in spaces that welcome a sober-minded approach:

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. (Acts 17:17)

Far too often, holy provocations devolve into unholy reactions. We do well to follow Paul, and seek holiness, Christlikeness, in both our spirits and in our next steps.

3. Misunderstanding leads to further opportunity.

In the marketplace, Paul converses with two major strands of unbelieving thought (non-Christian hedonists and stoics). Neither the progressives or the unbelieving conservatives had been prepared for Paul’s message. They both find it strange. Yet here in the public square, while some react obstinately, others show an openness to hear more. Surely, Paul does not mean to be simply strange or misunderstood, but when he is, not all is lost. One faithful step leads to another — they invite him to speak again:

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”— because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. (Acts 17:18–21)

Luke, who compiled the account, plainly is not impressed with this Athenian fixation on news. (Imagine if he saw us today!) He does not commend them for giving so much time and attention to the drivel of daily novelties. Rather, he sets their lust for the ephemeral in contrast with the strange, timeless glories they soon will hear from Paul. His message is indeed news, and yet utterly different than the trivialities and speculations they are accustomed to consuming. They are settling for news; Paul will offer the News.

4. He preaches the familiar and strange.

Would Paul pass up the chance to commend Jesus before a captive audience? Undeterred by being mocked and misunderstood before, he speaks again, and begins by commending his hearers and seeking common ground. He even appeals to their own poets (verse 28). He will not be needlessly strange. He does not delight in simply being provocative. Strange is not his goal. He aims to win them to the risen Christ, and he will leverage familiarity where he can. But as agile as he may be with this approach, he will not adjust the heart of his message — the resurrection of Jesus — even when that was the showstopper before. He may start with the familiar, and quote Greek poets, but he moves inescapably through what he knows they will hear as strange:

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. . . . The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:22, 30–31)

5. He knows when to stop.

When the strangeness of resurrection again brings chaos to Athens, Paul doesn’t power through stubbornly. He won’t pretend to do it all in one sermon. He trusts God to give him another day.

What is the response to the message at Mars Hill? Again, some fire insults, but others express intrigue, and soon join him and believe:

Some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” So Paul went out from their midst. But some men joined him and believed. (Acts 17:32–34)

Some Insult, Others Inquire

Brother pastors, observe that in and of itself, mocking is no clear reflection of the faithfulness or fruitfulness of preaching Christ. Wise preachers do not take mocking as an indicator of failure, nor as an indicator of success. Twice in Athens some mock Paul, which may seem like a failure compared to his homiletic triumphs elsewhere. However, others say, “We will hear you again.” And then, in the end: “some men joined him and believed.”

In Athens, the message of Jesus and his resurrection landed on the hearers, unavoidably, as strange. But then comes the great divide, both in the marketplace and again at Mars Hill: some insult, others inquire.

“Has it ever been easier to fill our limited consciousness with inactionable reports from far, far away?”

Any audience of sufficient size will have its insecure, closeminded types for whom the strange can only be threatening. Surely, some new message can’t be real and true if they, in their brilliance, are not yet aware of it! So, some write it off right away: “What does this babbler wish to say?” Attack the preacher, rather than face down his message.

But others, in the same audience, respond very differently. They may scratch their heads, and not yet understand, but they start asking genuine questions.

Marginalize Mockers

As Christian preachers, we accept the reality up front that proper strangeness in our message both provokes insults in some and intrigue in others. And a preacher like Paul doesn’t let the mockers distract him.

On the one hand, we are not surprised to be mocked. We suspect scoffers will come, and we’re ready to give them a deaf ear. Unbelieving hearers, dead in sin and devoid of the Spirit, do not submit to the gospel of Christ. Indeed, they cannot (Romans 8:7). Of course, our message lands on them as strange, if not appalling, and it remains strange, unless the Spirit opens their eyes. We think it not strange that some think it strange enough to mock.

On the other hand, how foolish it would be to distract ourselves with the mockers. Or to call special attention to the mocking as some great badge of our own faithfulness. Rather, we have the example of Paul at Mars Hill, who, so far as we can tell, wholly overlooks, with a holy disregard, these mockers and concerns himself instead with those asking honest questions.

This second group, these “others,” also initially found the message strange, but they found the strangeness intriguing: “you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean” (verse 20). The Spirit is at work. Paul hadn’t failed because Christ’s resurrection landed on them as strange, but now he had opportunity, at their invitation, to say what these things mean and press for saving faith.

Strange, Not Strange

For preachers, the reality about strangeness in our preaching is at least twofold. First, to preach the real Christ, and proclaim his resurrection, will mark us off as strangers and exiles in an unbelieving world. Hebrews 11:13 is not just about old-covenant, pre-Christian saints, but also faithful new-covenant believers: they “acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” We are strangers here, for now, and our message will be heard, unavoidably, by many, as strange.

Still, second, we also soon ask, Who’s really believing the stranger things? The time comes, with even the most secular of people, to ask, like Paul elsewhere, “Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?” (Acts 26:8).

As Christian preachers, we might ask ourselves, Do I avoid or minimize scriptural truths in the pulpit that land as strange on people today? Do I reckon head-scratching and unfamiliar questions to be a sign of failure in my preaching? Or, conversely, do I over-index on the strange, aiming inordinately to provoke, assuring myself that mocking and criticism are sure badges of my faithfulness, and all the while drawing attention to myself and my manliness, rather than to Christ?

Whether in Athens or America, we cannot be faithful without preaching some strange things. Yet these strangenesses — like the Trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection, the ascension — are often the most glorious realities of our message.

Let’s be faithful to our strange and wonderful Scriptures, work like Paul to be familiar where we can, and then gladly, and with great hope, bring some strange things to their ears.

“Something is stabbing me in the back!” I yelled at my husband. When he didn’t jump to his feet to dislodge the knife, or the needle, or whatever else had impaled my spine, I screamed to him again: “Help me! I’m being stabbed!”

Eyes wide, he turned to the nurses. What was wrong with me? Should he do something? Careful to avoid my line of sight, both women shook their heads. One leaned in, whispering, “She’s just in labor.”

No New Pain

No small amount of aches and pains accompany pregnancy, labor, and delivery. From the usual symptoms, like nausea and fatigue, to the more surprising ones (no expectant mother really expects to start having dental troubles), to the contractions that shock the bravest of husbands, childbearing confronts us with the reality of mankind’s rebellion and God’s just response.

We ask pregnant women, “How are you feeling?” from weeks one to forty and beyond because, Christian or not, everyone knows that having babies is hard. Even today, in the age of germ theory and prenatal care, medications, and C-sections, mother and child alike can still lose their lives in any trimester. Given the choice, I suspect many moms would opt for the ER over L&D. Pregnancy can be that terrifying, and labor and delivery that excruciating.

Christian moms know why: Genesis 3. Sin entered the world, and the word’s sinless Creator responded. To Eve he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (verse 16). When our first parents looked for life apart from God, the one to whom they owed life itself, he rightfully declared that bringing forth life would now be painful — and, in the end, futile (verse 19).

And though the curse’s effect on childbearing makes a debut in Genesis, the Bible abounds with allusions to its intensity. The apostle John describes the “sorrow” and “anguish” that a mother feels while giving birth (John 16:21), and Paul himself uses labor to convey his torment over the Galatians’ stunted spiritual growth (Galatians 4:19). As Micah 4:10 puts it, “Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in labor.”

Without an epidural (and sometimes even with an epidural), “writhe and groan” is right. Sin hurts, and an expectant mother duly cries out — indeed, all creation echoes her pain (Romans 8:22). Nurses say, “She’s just in labor,” because that’s how childbearing works in a fallen world.

Even so, we do well to remember that the curse isn’t the only thing coursing through pregnancy, labor, and delivery. If we look closely not only at Genesis 3 but also Genesis 2, we’ll see that mankind’s rebellion did not speak the loudest, most lasting word in the garden. Grace did.

Grace Begets Billions

Have you ever seen estimates of human history’s birth rates? Flash back to America’s founding in 1776, and you’d find 13 colonies and less than 3 million colonists to fill them. As of today, more than one hundred times that amount call the country home. Then step back and consider the entire planet. Before 1900, Earth contained less than 2 billion; today, over 8 billion people. In 2023 alone, 134 million babies let out their first cries in hospitals and houses around the world. In a word, since God breathed creation into existence, we can only begin to imagine the number of newborns who’ve taken a breath.

“Christ’s death makes new life worth conceiving, new life worth carrying, new life worth delivering.”

On the basis of Genesis 2, however, how many babies ought there to be? When God set Adam among Eden’s luxuriance, he invited him to eat of every tree but one. The day that tree should be tasted — that day, God warned, man would die (Genesis 2:17). Creation’s first people would be creation’s last people, and never would Adam and Eve enjoy the blessing of filling creation with more people. So, on the basis of Genesis 2 alone, how many babies ought there to be? Zero. Not one.

But because God’s person and plan — not our sin and rebellion — is the surest basis of creation’s story, an unimaginable number of babies have been born. The Bible has more than three chapters, the Earth more than two people, because the God who justly punishes is also the God who abundantly pardons (Exodus 34:6–7).

When Adam and Eve sinned, God did not smite them on the spot. Instead, he sought the place to which they’d fled, asked questions, and listened (Genesis 3:8–13). He would cast them from his presence, curse their labors, and declare that death awaited them (verses 17–19). But for now, that day could wait. Adam and Eve still had life to live and babies to make because the God of grace would still have sinners for himself.

Since then, a mind-numbing number of people have followed Adam and Eve — a number to which you may be contributing. But that number should do more than make our brains hurt. It ought to electrify our hearts with praise. Your pregnancy, with all its difficulties, exists because the God who fashioned everything, from the largest nebula to the lightest newborn, is not only powerful and just but also gracious.

Why Babies Are Worth Having

The fact that human life even exists (let alone inside our own bodies!) should astonish us. But is it enough to sustain expectant mothers? When our bodies feel crushed by the curse’s physical effects, when our minds remember that death calls for both us and our babies — what then?

Genesis comes to our aid once more. If at first chapters 2–3 depict God as death-denier, they likewise reveal him as death-destroyer. In the very moment that God cursed creation, he also promised a means for its restoration. From Adam and Eve’s offspring — the children that sin would have thwarted, the babies made possible only by grace — a Savior would come (Genesis 3:15).

The Bible has more than three chapters, the Earth more than two people, not ultimately because God still wanted to create people. No, he wanted to save people. He had shown his glory as Creator, and he would show his glory as Redeemer, as Father. His Son would take on human flesh, trample Satan, sin, and death under his feet, and deliver God’s children back into his arms.

We are privileged women. Eve bore children with sights set on the One who was to come; we labor in full view of the blood-stained cross where he hung. His death makes new life worth conceiving, new life worth carrying, new life worth delivering. For any mother and any child who believe in him, though they die, yet shall they live (John 11:25). The curse may linger on, but it’s as good as crushed wherever Christ is concerned.

Shining, Expectant Stars

Expectant mothers, do we believe this? The more we do, the more we’ll be able to groan beneath the curse’s weight without grumbling about it. Our babies have a chance not only to live but to rise. And as we wrestle to bring them safely into this fallen world, God promises to use our pain to help see us home (Romans 8:28).

The sovereign God of the universe chose your symptoms and set your due date before Earth had seen a single sunrise, and he did so with your good in mind. One contraction at a time, he will see you “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). He will be glorified in you, and you will be happy in him. Your sufferings will help to make sure of it.

Which means: First-trimester fatigue, spine-stabbing labor, second-degree tears? Yawn, nap, cry, clench, grimace — but do it “all . . . without grumbling” (Philippians 2:14). Gratitude, not grumbling, befits Christian moms. All three trimesters of pregnancy, every hour of labor, each week after delivery — as full of fear, discomfort, or agony as they may be, if you are in Christ, grace runs through them.

Remember this, groan without grumbling, and then “shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15) — a world that knows having babies is hard but neglects to praise the God who makes babies possible and worth having.

If I were still an enemy of God, if I still dwelled in rebel camps outside his kingdom, if I still played the madman slinging stones at my Creator, this audible response to our amassed assault would empty my blood of courage. I would sooner hear the threats of the archangel, the blast of the trumpet, the opening of his gates, the rhythm of his war drums, the wheels of his chariots, than this. After our rage had been spent, our God presumed defeated, our terms of surrender sent, “He who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2:4).

What was true in David’s generation is true in every generation: the nations rage, the peoples plot in vain, the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his Anointed (Psalm 2:1–2). Mankind does not just walk a broad way; we march along it. We bring the battering ram to the door; our soldiers spend quivers shooting over walls. You and I were born in their ranks, children of wrath by nature (Ephesians 2:3).

And the nations do not just oppose God; they “rage” at him. Their lives spit upon the ground at the mention of his name. Their hearts speak sedition: “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3). And they gather, each man’s disgrace torching another’s — “the peoples plot in vain.” Heads of state sit stately, nodding their approval, strategizing — “the rulers take counsel together.” The body fevers mutiny. Samson’s foxes dart into the King’s fields with fire at their tails.

And after they unleash their hate and let slip the dogs of war, they thought the battle decided. They thought his strength broken, his cords snapped, the immortal dead. And then they hear it. Scorn and mirth that strip the forests bare and shake the earth to the foundations. His laughter, the noise to shatter the shield and stop the heart as the hunter realizes he is the hunted.

Sinister Soundtrack

Psalm 2:1–3 depicts how every age wars against God. Every generation of unbelief swarms and swaggers, taking counsel together to escape his rule. Fools pretend to deny him. Most pretend to ignore him. Nations defy his law. Our time flaunts its sexuality and kills its children. Every age seeks to break his reign, and every generation will hear his dreadful laughter.

But the specific fulfillment of this rising against God’s Anointed happened two thousand years ago. This was the D-Day of the world. The Master sent his own beloved Son to a people who had beaten his servants, as if saying, “they will respect my son” (Matthew 21:37). They did no such thing. They took him, cast him out of Jerusalem, and crucified him amid the garbage heap.

Consider the soundtrack of their unholy day, foretold in Psalm 22. Mankind scorns him; the people despise him (verse 6). All who see him mock him, hurl expletives at him, wag their heads at him (verse 7). They taunt, “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (verse 8). Bulls surround him (verse 12). Lions roar at him (verse 13). His dry tongue sticks to his jaws as dogs bark and growl, as they pierce his hands and feet (verses 15–16). They gloat over him as soldiers cast lots for his garments (verses 17–18). They snarled over their prey, the ageless war decided, so they thought. Until a curious key change occurs (verses 21–31).

His enemies, no doubt, thought themselves very manly, exulting over the anguish of the Master’s Son. With violence they cast his cords from them; with what disdain they threw his shackles back at him. They must have assumed themselves mighty indeed to have subdued this lion like a lamb. They had failed so many times to trap him. Where now his whip, his woes, his questioning whether we have read the Scriptures? Where now his rebukes, his blasphemies, his boastings about his Father and being the Man coming on the clouds. Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him; let him now extend his hand to us, and we shall kiss his ring!

What musical sounds in their minds. The victory, they thought, was final. They slew him, slowly, as one might roast the Passover lamb. Oh, how the mighty have fallen — or rather, how that serpent had finally been lifted up. He who stood and beckoned the thirsty to himself now cries, “I thirst.” Is this God’s Anointed King? Well then, we have lifted him to his throne — we, his royal footstools (Psalm 110:1). If you are the Son of David truly, shake off this unproven and wooden armor, come down at these taunts, and sling the stone at Israel’s enemy.

Hunters Hunted

How quickly did their revelries end. But two days they enjoyed cigars. The Lord’s silence was their favorite song. On the third day, though, laughter. Laughter that kills courage. Laughter that bursts champagne bottles. Laughter that replies, “Your havoc only wakes my slumbering wrath.” They cannot discern how death lies dead at his feet, how the sins of his people lie still, alone in the tomb. A voice speaks, through a smile, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6).

The war room is mic’d with a megaphone — omnipotence cares not who overhears. He speaks to someone, but to whom? The riddle does not remain unsolved.

The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;     today I have begotten you.Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,     and the ends of the earth your possession.You shall break them with a rod of iron     and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Psalm 2:7–9)

And when was his sonship publicly declared? We might think only of his baptism, but overhear Paul’s revelation:

What God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” (Acts 13:32–33)

But they killed him. Let him reintroduce himself: “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). The seed perished and was buried, corruptible, but raised incorruptible, indestructible. He lives. The one they fixed to the cross with iron nails has forged those nails into a rod of iron to dash the nations apart. All authority has been given to him. Who can stand in the day of his terror?

His empty tomb speaks a command to all, including kings and all in high places:

Serve the Lord with fear,     and rejoice with trembling.Kiss the Son,     lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,     for his wrath is quickly kindled.Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:11–12)

Checkmate

Publish it in Gath, tell it in Los Angeles, speak it forth in Minneapolis, alert the Supreme Court, hail it in China, chant it in Honduras, light beacons in Brazil, declare it in Denmark, announce it in Afghanistan and Argentina: Christ is King. All authority is his; he offers amnesty to the humble who repent, and he will judge the nations and dash the unrepentant with his scepter.

Write it upon the gates of Jerusalem; post it for all to see: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). The Son reigns. “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him . . .” (Hebrews 2:8–9). We see him by faith. We hear him in his word. We love him by his Spirit. And the time hastens for all to see him face to face — even those who will soon cry out to the rocks and mountains, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:16–17).

Yet today is the day of his kindness, the day he offers terms of shalom. Surrender to his Son who freely gave his life, bore his Father’s almighty wrath and your curse willingly, that by faith in his finished work on the cross you may enjoy his peace and glory and life with him and the Father, forever. He does not ask — he demands you come be forgiven, welcomed, loved.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30–31)

But this day of salvation is drawing late. John calls it “the last hour” (1 John 2:18). The time is arriving when he will say, “As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27).

Hail Him While You Can

O man, see the disaster of your rebellion. You have always been Satan’s pawn — “captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26) — and never close to checkmate. Come to your senses and escape his snare. Your plots and plans have served his courses. Overhear how the early church prays Psalm 2:

“Why did the Gentiles rage,     and the peoples plot in vain?The kings of the earth set themselves,     and the rulers were gathered together,     against the Lord and against his Anointed” —

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:25–28)

Sinner, he laughs at your rebellion, and it is a harrowing laugh. He holds the nations in derision. He has equipped his Son with a rod. You stand outflanked, surrounded, defenseless. Only one safe space exists — not in his mother Mary, not in morality, not in Muhammed, not in your own positive vibes or self-defined spirituality — only in the Son, Jesus Christ, so violently put to death to bring the guilty dead to life. “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” By faith, kiss this Son, lest he be angry with you, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Are you still raging? Your insurrection causes him no loss of sleep. Your revolt gives him no worry. The loss is yours alone. Know that it will soon be sung to God, in praise, concerning all such rebellion: “The nations raged, but your wrath came” (Revelation 11:18). Celebrate his grace in this day of salvation, receive his kindness while you can, lest you glorify his justice and power in hell. All uprising is futile; sinner, come to Jesus, kiss his ring, bow to his love, and live.

Audio Transcript

Today we talk about some of the deadliest errors of present-day Roman Catholicism. And over the next month, we look at Rome historically. This October, we’re celebrating the Reformation — Martin Luther’s great stand against the pope and against Rome’s spiritual abuses and theological errors. But Luther didn’t stand alone. Other men stood for this same cause, before and after him — people like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, and John Calvin. And many other lesser-known names paid the ultimate price in the Reformation — men and women, even teenagers, who stood against Rome, and who bled and were burned and drowned for it.

These stories of sacrifice are our focus in the month ahead, in a 31-day tour you can complete in just 5–7 minutes each day. It’s called Here We Stand. You can subscribe to the email journey today by going to desiringGod.org/stand. Or just go to desiringGod.org and click on the link at the top of the website. I hope you’ll join us in remembering the price paid for the spiritual blessings and religious liberties we enjoy today.

The core beliefs enshrined by the pope and in the practices of Rome that deeply concerned the Reformers five hundred years ago are some of the very same concerns for us Protestants today — leading to this question about whether someone in a Roman Catholic church could be genuinely saved. The question comes from a listener named Jimmy who writes, “Hello, Pastor John. A close friend of mine passed away recently. He was a great man, a good friend, a mentor to many young men like myself. And he was a devout Roman Catholic. My questions for you are these: Will I see my friend in heaven? Or do his theological views make this impossible? Can I rightfully experience Paul’s ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing’ mantra, or was my friend merely a devoted husband, a wonderful friend, and a good man? In other words, do you believe devout Roman Catholics can be genuine Christians?”

Before I answer that specific question, let me lay out again the reasons we should be seriously concerned with Roman Catholic teaching — and that, at numerous levels, its contradictory stance toward Scripture produces, I think, a kind of religion that I fear has led many people astray, even into destruction. And I do not mean that Roman Catholicism has a corner on that kind of misleading teaching. There are lots of brands of so-called “Christian” tradition that have damaged people by the errors that they represent.

Seven Deadly Errors

So, let me give you seven examples of what concerns me about Roman Catholic teaching and that I think we should be very concerned about and steer clear of.

1. We should be concerned that the Roman Catholic Church elevates the authority of the pope and the church councils — when speaking in their official capacity as teachers of the church — to the same level as Holy Scripture. This has led many Roman Catholics away from a personal engagement with the Scriptures into a reliance on the church — even though the church is fallible — when they ought to be relying on the Scriptures, the very word of God, inspired and written.

“I think there are genuine Christians who are devout and inconsistent Roman Catholics.”

2. We should be concerned that the blessed Virgin Mary — and I have no problem calling her that — is elevated to a position, in practice, where she mediates between the people of God and the Son of God in a way that undermines the direct priestly ministry of Christ between his people and God. This elevation of Mary — beyond anything in the Scriptures, based solely on church tradition — distances the people of God from the enjoyment of personal fellowship with Jesus and the kind of relationship and assurance they might otherwise enjoy with him.

3. We should be concerned about the teaching of baptismal regeneration — the idea that an appropriate putting of water on the baby’s head, by the very work of the water (ex opere operato, by the very operating of the thing itself, by the very work of the water in the priestly act), causes a change in the nature of the baby from lost in original sin to saved through regeneration. This notion has produced, I would say, untold ill-founded confidence in the people of God who have little or no personal faith or relationship with Christ or love to Jesus, and yet, because of their baptism, believe they are heaven bound.

4. We should be concerned about the offering of so-called indulgences, which the very Pope Francis himself offered — not in some distant sixteenth-century past. It involves certain kinds of pilgrimages or special buildings or special payments that one can perform or attend so that an indulgence is granted by the pope that provides forgiveness of sins. This is an appalling detraction from the absolute uniqueness of the death of Christ as the provision for sins, and personal faith as the means by which that provision becomes ours.

5. We should be concerned about the confusion over the doctrine of justification by grace alone on the basis of Christ alone through faith alone to the glory of God alone. The Roman Catholic insistence that justification consists in the infusion of righteousness, which (as our own virtue) qualifies us to be accepted by God, is not the same as the biblical doctrine of God becoming 100 percent for us in the moment when by faith we are united with Christ so that his blood and righteousness alone become the ground of that acceptance.

6. We should be concerned about the centrality of the Mass in the Roman Catholic practice, in which the bread and wine are actually transubstantiated. They become the physical body and physical blood of Jesus so that the Lord’s Supper takes on a power of salvation by the entering of the blood and the body of Jesus into us, which it never was intended to have in the Bible. It misleads millions of what’s happening there.

7. Finally, we should be concerned about the doctrine of purgatory, in which a person after death may be given another chance of bearing some punishment so that finally he can make his way to heaven after doing appropriate penance there. The Bible holds out no such hope for those who die in unbelief. It is not found in the Scriptures.

Can Catholics Be Saved?

Now, having waved a flag of concern for those seven matters of Catholic belief, my answer to the question nevertheless is yes. I think there are genuine Christians who are devout and inconsistent Roman Catholics — “devout” in the sense that they are earnest and serious, sincere, and “inconsistent” in the sense that their true heart embrace of Jesus is better than their mental ideas or doctrines.

If a person has a genuine encounter with the living Christ and recognizes the depth of human sinfulness and the hopelessness that we are in without grace and without Christ, and sees in Jesus the substitute that God provided to bear our punishment and provide all we need for acceptance with God, and that person throws himself on the mercy of Christ, despairing of all self-reliance, and cherishes Christ as his supreme treasure and hope for eternal life, that person will be saved — even if many doctrinal ideas are confused or erroneous. In other words, it is possible for a person’s heart and his essential grasp of Christ to be far better than the structures of his doctrinal framework, and we may all be very, very thankful for this.

Who won the game last night? When do they play next? You open your computer to check the scores, and along the way, the ads are inescapable. You couldn’t avoid them if you tried. Sports betting has arrived in full force.

The advertisers are not wasting their money either. In February 2024, an estimated 68 million Americans were expected to wager over 23 billion dollars on the Super Bowl. This comes as no surprise since just under 120 billion dollars was bet on sports in 2023. That’s $360 per person in the United States. Sports betting has most likely arrived in your church, and it might have even set up shop in your own home. If it hasn’t yet, the bookies are certainly knocking on the door.

Sports betting has infiltrated the sporting ecosystem. How should Christians respond?

Stewardship Problem

Some respond by suggesting that gambling in any form — including sports betting — is reckless and fails to contribute anything meaningful to the real world. The money wagered also belongs ultimately to our God, so failure to manage it well amounts to embezzlement against him. Additionally, he gives each of us one life to live, and better investments abound for the money and the time used to engage with sports betting.

Sports betting has also become something of a Trojan horse for more nefarious forms of gambling as well as gambling addiction. Sports betting functions as a door into the wide hall of Internet gambling — particularly for young people who ordinarily would not set foot into a casino. Gambling companies, driven by their bottom line, see a return on investment of 500 percent when they convert a sports better into a casino gambler.

We shouldn’t be surprised that the desire for thrill and gain can escalate occasional game-specific sports betting into 24-hour-a-day forms of online gambling. After all, Paul warns Timothy, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:9–10).

‘Responsible’ Sports Betting?

The stewardship argument certainly carries weight, and sober-minded Christians should have a category for the slippery slope, especially in activities so closely related to greed.

But more and more, a common rationalization has come to the forefront: What about “responsible” sports betting? Sports betting is now legal in many places, so the social stigma has lessened. Do we not spend money on other hobbies and activities? So what could be wrong with betting on a limited budget, especially while remaining focused on enjoying the sports experience with friends? Is there no room for carefully enhancing and intensifying the sports-watching experience?

Beyond the stewardship problem and the risk of gambling addiction, however, several other aspects of sports betting point to a serious, sobering reality: Sports betting wagers more than just our resources. Due to how it shapes our view of risk, how it corrupts the nature of sports, and how it fails to love our neighbor, sports betting is unwise and even sinful.

1. Sports betting distorts our view of risk.

Sports betting distorts our view of risk and dulls our capacity for true and lasting joy. While betting companies pitch sports betting as a risk to enhance enjoyment, the practice ultimately encourages risk for immediate financial reward.

“Sports betting fails to love anyone but self — and it even fails at that.”

The book of Proverbs warns against betting slogans like, “The more you play, the more you’ll earn.” Proverbs 13:11 counsels, “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little makes it grow.” Or consider Proverbs 28:20: “A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.” Sports betting conditions our hearts to love risk for the sake of immediate financial gain, and chasing such wealth leads to destruction.

We should not conclude, however, that we should never take risks. The farmer who “observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap,” declares the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 11:4. Rather than seeing dismal prospects and refusing to take God-honoring, entrepreneurial risk, the Preacher calls for humility and faithful labor before the “God who makes everything” (Ecclesiastes 11:5–6).

Two factors distinguish the faithful entrepreneur from the sports bettor. First, whereas the sports bettor aims to gather quick wealth, the faithful entrepreneur aims to create wealth. Christian business seeks to love neighbor by providing a good or service at a fair price. Sports betting fails to love anyone but self — and it even fails at that.

Second, the faithful entrepreneur embraces risk but also seeks to mitigate risk in the areas he can control. By doing so, he embraces risk with wisdom and faith, whereas sports betting increases risks for the sake of higher payouts. In other words, sports betting teaches us to embrace risk in the wrong ways.

Additionally, Christians take gospel risks for the sake of eternal joy. Jesus calls upon us to give up our life in order to gain it (Luke 9:24). Paul calls death in Christ gain for the one dying (Philippians 1:21). Acts 15:26 describes Paul and Barnabas as “men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Whereas sports betting conditions people to take risks for immediate hits of dopamine or rapid financial reward, Christians take risks with Christ and immortal souls in mind. So, we should avoid participating in activities that train us to think of risk deficiently.

2. Sports betting corrupts sport.

Not only does sports betting distort our view of risk, but it also corrupts God’s holy purposes for sport. The same God who created the sea monster to play in the depths of the ocean (Psalm 104:26) created humans to enjoy the world he has given to us (Ecclesiastes 3:12–13). Holy play today, as a momentary rest from the burdens of daily life, helps us look forward with hope to the new creation awaiting us tomorrow.

Though not utilitarian in essence, sports can also benefit humanity. In particular, competition can cultivate self-control and skill — though we should be wary of the envy that lurks at the door (Ecclesiastes 4:4). At its best, sports can bring out the best in competitors.

Sports betting, however, corrupts both imaginative play and athletic competition. By reducing the game to wins and losses — or worse, point spreads or in-game betting — the result of the game supersedes the game itself. Certainly, the bettor has more on the line related to the outcome, but he can no longer enjoy the game for the simple beauty of the play or the nuances of the competition.

Not only this, but more and more players in professional sports have been swept up by the sports-gambling flood. Fans of these sports have reason to be concerned when players have been found to bet on their own sports, bet on their own team, and bet on their own personal performance — sometimes even betting that they will not perform well and then checking out of the game with an “injury.”

Sports betting corrupts the nature of sports and the purpose of sports, and it also incentivizes players to participate in the corruption, making it unwise for Christians to participate in such a broken and detrimental system.

3. Sports betting lacks love for neighbor.

Let’s say you do very well in sports betting. You are one of the few who outsmart the system and make a decent amount of money doing so. The question then becomes “Who loses?” In reality, sports betting is not a zero-sum game; it is a negative-sum game. The house, by definition, must win. To do so, sportsbooks subtly stack the odds so that if bettors wager an even amount of money on both teams, the sportsbook will still make money.

Scripture establishes the command to “love your neighbor as yourself,” which Jesus affirms as one of the two — along with love for God — upon which all the Law and the Prophets depend (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:37–40). Paul calls upon Christians in Philippians 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

The bookies cannot lose money. Therefore, in order for you to win, your neighbor must lose. And as you take your neighbor’s money — possibly contributing to a destructive gambling addiction — you make a profit for the predatory sportsbook as well. Sports betting lacks love for neighbor.

This lack of love requires repentance, even if done unintentionally or ignorantly (Numbers 15:27–31).

Guard Your Heart

Proverbs issues a warning to all who would walk the path of wisdom:

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. . . . Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or the left; turn your foot away from evil. (Proverbs 4:23)

Sports betting calls us down a crooked path, one that will reshape our hearts away from life. It promises pleasures, but they are, at best, fleeting and fraught with unholy risk. That path swerves from the deep and enduring joys that come by following God’s designs in God’s ways.

So, yes, sports betting has arrived in full force. And how should we respond? It may feel like we cannot avoid sports betting — or at least the ads. But because sports betting distorts our view of risk, corrupts sports, and lacks love for neighbor, participating is unwise and even sinful. Do not risk your heart, and your neighbor, for quick financial gain.

My view of preaching is that the preacher’s job is to receive from God a word through Scripture, hold it up before God’s people, point them to it, and say, “Look!” He then opens it with connections to Scripture and life, and exults over it in such a way that, by God’s grace, the hearers will be drawn into the enjoyment of it and obedience to it, so that the infinite greatness and beauty and worth of Christ might be manifest in our lives. If a preacher is not exulting over the realities revealed in his text, he’s not preaching.

Therefore, preaching is a happy business. Because even if the text is a hard word that devastates the hearers (and my text is not a hard word), the preacher connects the hard word with the gracious word and the hopeful word, and he catches them as they fall. So, in the end, all preaching is a happy business. Sometimes it’s a toe-tapping happy business, and sometimes it’s a tearful happy business. We preach good news. We preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Whether hard or comfortable, we herald good news, and we do it by exulting over the goodness of the good news. If there is no expository exultation, there is no preaching.

All of that is in part to say thank you. I owe you a debt of thanks for giving me the privilege of exulting over this word with you. Most of the pleasure of expository exultation is owing to the greatness of the good news. But some of it is owing to the sweetness of the fellowship. There is joy in the exultation. There is more joy in the shared exultation. And my experience has been that to preach among the people of Sovereign Grace provides an unusually sweet fellowship of exultation. So, thank you, Bob, and all of you for inviting me.

My happy assigned theme is “Union with Christ and the Promises of God,” and my text is 2 Corinthians 1:20, which says, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.”

There you have all three pieces of my theme: “all the promises of God,” “in him” (union with Christ), and both are connected with “Yes.” In Christ, all the promises of God are affirmed, not denied. It’s yes, not no. In Christ, all the promises of God are secured, guaranteed. For all of you who are in Christ, every promise of God will come true. That’s our text. And it is, as you can see, spectacular.

Travel Plans and the Promises of God

Before we dig in, there is one noncentral observation from the context that I don’t want you to miss because it is so pastorally significant. Paul explains his situation starting in 2 Corinthians 1:15. He says, “I wanted to come to you first,” meaning travel over from Ephesus to Corinth across the Aegean Sea, “so that you might have a second experience of grace,” meaning the grace of a second visit when he comes back from Macedonia, where he intends to go after he visits them. He explains now in 2 Corinthians 1:16, “I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia [probably Philippi or Thessalonica], and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea.”

Now, that did not happen. He explains why in 2 Corinthians 1:23: “It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.” But Paul’s adversaries at Corinth, probably the “false apostles” that he refers to in 2 Corinthians 11:13, who were challenging his authority, were all over this. And they were accusing him of vacillating. They were saying, “He’s fickle. He’s unreliable. He’s a hypocrite. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He says one thing and does another thing. He says he’s planning to come — he’s not planning to come. He says yes, but underneath it’s a no. And this is the one you want to follow as an apostle?”

Paul responds to this criticism in 2 Corinthians 1:17–18:

Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No.

In other words, “I am not a hypocrite. I mean what I say. I don’t tamper with the truth like that.” Now, here is the amazing thing. Up through 2 Corinthians 1:18, Paul is dealing with an ordinary kind of situation. He told them his travel plans. A new situation arose, and it caused a change. People who don’t like him are making it into a failure of integrity, and Paul is responding to this kind of criticism. That’s just an everyday situation that we all deal with from time to time.

But then in 2 Corinthians 1:19–20, Paul attaches that ordinary situation to a cluster of the most profound theological realities. Here’s what he says:

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.

Now, if I did that in my pastoral ministry, here’s what would happen. Someone would say, “Good grief, Piper. Lighten up. We’re talking about travel plans and a few cranks in the church, and there you go talking about the Son of God, all the promises of God, union with Christ, and the glory of God. My goodness. This is overkill.” Now, my pastoral counsel is that you patiently ignore these people and graciously proceed to root your ministry, your travel plans, and all the ordinary things of life in the most glorious realities in the universe. There aren’t too many people in the world who live this way and think this way.

That’s the one observation I wanted you to see from the context. Be known in your church as the person who is so God-besotted, so Bible-saturated, so Spirit-filled that people expect you to connect ordinary life to glorious realities — to God, Christ, cross, Spirit, promises, and glory.

Images of an Inexhaustible Union

Now let’s go to 2 Corinthians 1:20. It says, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” What does “in him” mean? The way I would say it is this. Beneath all our biblical efforts to conceptualize or picture what this attachment to Jesus is like, there is a reality, a union, that is unfathomable and inexpressible, which we will never exhaust with words or doctrines, but which the Bible gives expression to in many ways. That means there’s always more underneath, but the revelations, the pictures, and the conceptions that the Bible does give of this reality are indispensable and glorious.

For example, consider just briefly five such ways of expressing this inexhaustible union.

1. Called into Fellowship

First, 1 Corinthians 1:9 says, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The point where the union happens is the effectual call of God. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified” (Romans 8:30). There is a sovereign call that is predestined and effective in bringing into being a new reality. We call it new birth. We call it new creation. It’s the creation of spiritual life where there was deadness, spiritual sight where there was blindness, and faith where there was rebellion. All of it happens because simultaneously there comes into being a union with Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 1:9, the call of God is described as a call into the koinōnian (“fellowship”) of his Son. It’s coming into participation in the Son, a sharing of life in the Son, a oneness with the Son.

2. Union of Life

Second, that union is called a union of life. Colossians 3:4 says, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” The union is such that Christ is my life. In Galatians 2:20, Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The uniting is so profound that there is a kind of “no longer I, but Christ.” Yet the verse goes on to say, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The “I” that is Christ is the “I” who trusts Christ. That’s our conscious experience of the subconscious, unfathomable “not I, but Christ.” So, this is a union of life. He is my life in this union.

3. Members of His Body

Third, there is the picture of each Christian being one with Christ as members of his one body. First Corinthians 12:12–13 says,

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. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Christ is not head of the body here. He is the body. And the body is one — and every Christian an appendage. The hand is in the body, and the body is Christ. The foot is in the body, and the body is Christ. “The body is one.” So, it is a union of members in a body, who is Christ.

4. Members of His Family

Fourth, in adoption and new birth, God brings us into a family union where we are fellow heirs and have a single spiritual DNA. Romans 8:16–17 says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” The family union is such that we are coheirs with the Son of God.

Peter explains in 1 Peter 1:23, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed [DNA] but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” Paul concurs with his reference in Galatians 4:29 to those who are “born according to the Spirit.” The Spirit becomes the DNA that makes us not only legally part of the family by adoption, but also, by some unfathomable supernatural genetics, we are one with Christ by the new birth, with the same spiritual DNA as the Son of God. So, this is a union of family identity.

5. Counted Righteous

Fifth, I’ll mention one more picture of this inexhaustible union — namely, the judicial experience of union with Christ. The union becomes our righteousness. Philippians 3:8–9: “that I may . . . be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” In union with Christ, a righteousness not our own is ours.

In summary, being in Christ means we are called into his fellowship. In that fellowship, Christ is our life. We are one with him as members of his body and one with him as members of his family. And in him we are counted righteous with his righteousness. All of this results in 2 Corinthians 1:20: all the promises of God are yes for us in Christ. In his fellowship, in his life, in his body, in his family, in his righteousness, everything he has and ever will have is ours.

Every Promise Secured in Christ

“All the promises” means every good that God can conceive of is ours in Christ. First Corinthians 3:21–23 says, “So let no one boast in men. For 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.” That’s the same as saying, “All the promises are Yes in him.” Romans 8:32 ties all the promises to Christ’s death as the way he secured them for all who are in Christ: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” “Graciously give us all things” is the same as saying, “All the promises are Yes in him.”

No good thing does he withhold from those who are in Christ (Psalm 84:11).
He will put his Spirit within you and cause you to walk in his statutes in Christ (Ezekiel 36:27).
Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life in Christ (Psalm 23:6).
Everything will work together for your good in Christ (Romans 8:28).
He will never leave you nor forsake you in Christ (Hebrews 13:5).
He will strengthen you, he will help you, and he will uphold you with his righteous right hand in Christ (Isaiah 41:10).
He will finish the work he began in you in Christ (Philippians 1:6).
No one will be able to snatch you out of his hand in Christ (John 10:27–29).
He will raise you from the dead in Christ (Revelation 2:10).
He will make known to you the path of life so that you find your way to God, in whose presence is fullness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures forever in Christ (Psalm 16:11).

Why did Paul declare such a lavish truth in 2 Corinthians 1:20? Because he was fighting for his apostolic life and their faith, joy, and love, which he would defend through his own faith, joy, love. His defense began in 2 Corinthians 1:18. Paul is saying, “It’s this faithfulness of God, this guarantee of the Holy Spirit, this union with Christ, and this fulfillment of all the promises that enables me to keep on rejoicing through affliction so that the overflow of my joy will be your joy. That’s how I love you. That’s how I pour out my life for you. I don’t manipulate, I don’t deceive, I don’t exploit you. I love you.”

Paul is not just defending himself; he is inviting the Corinthians, and us, into this life in the promises of God — sustaining joy in affliction, overflowing in love for others. He says, “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No” (2 Corinthians 1:18). My life is built on the faithfulness of God to all his promises. He continues his defense in 2 Corinthians 1:22: “[He] put his seal on us and [gave] us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” He is saying, “My life is built on God’s Holy Spirit seal that his promises stand.” Therefore, 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him.”

Joy in Affliction, Overflowing in Love

Let’s turn to see how Paul in the rest of this letter moves toward joy in affliction — sustained by promises, overflowing in love. He sounds the note immediately in 2 Corinthians 1:4 that this is where he’s going: “[God] comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” This is comfort in affliction — joy in affliction — for the sake of love.

Then there is this amazing statement in 2 Corinthians 7:4: “I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.” Lest we pass by the word affliction too lightly, listen to his list of afflictions in 2 Corinthians 11:

Labors . . . imprisonments . . . countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (2 Corinthians 11:23–27)

Now, here are his words again from 2 Corinthians 7:4: “I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”

He says it again in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10. The Lord refused to take away his thorn in the flesh.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Gladness in calamities? Here it is again in 2 Corinthians 12:15: “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less?” This is gladness in affliction, overflowing with love.

“In union with Christ, a righteousness not our own is ours.”

Here is one more text on this point. Second Corinthians 13:9 says, “We are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.” It’s gladness in weakness, overflowing in love. How in the world did Paul maintain such a life of suffering with joy for decades? The answer is this: “All the promises of God are Yes in Christ.” Here’s the way he expressed it in 2 Corinthians 4:16–18. How does he not lose heart?

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison [that is a promise that is Yes in Christ Jesus], as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

By faith, he looks to the unseen and banks his life on the promise that all the afflictions happening in this world are not meaningless but are preparing for him an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. By this, he not only survives but rejoices in all his affliction. Second Corinthians 7:4: “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”

Our Glad Amen

With one more clear, indisputable demonstration, he shows that this promise-sustained joy is the source of love. In 2 Corinthians 8:1–2, he describes how the Macedonians became a model of generosity for the Corinthians. Paul was collecting money for the poor in Jerusalem. Here’s what happened in Macedonia. In 2 Corinthians 8:8 he calls it “love.” This is one of the most amazing texts in the Bible on the spring and power of love:

We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. (2 Corinthians 8:1–2)

Where did this wealth of generosity (this love) come from? He says it is the overflow of their abundance of joy. And what kind of joy was this? What were they so glad about? It wasn’t the absence of affliction. It wasn’t the absence of poverty. Contextually, one answer is left from 2 Corinthians 8:1 — “the grace of God.” Paul says, “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia” (2 Corinthians 8:1). This is the grace that says to sinners, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the promises of God are yes for you in Christ Jesus.” They believed, and despite affliction and poverty, their joy was so abundant that it overflowed in love to the poor whom they didn’t even know.

In the second half of 2 Corinthians 1:20, Paul brings it all to a climax with these words: “That is why [namely, because all the promises of God are Yes in Christ] it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” Amen is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew expression for yes. Amen! Truly! Surely! Yes!

So, what is Paul saying? He is saying, “The response of my life (2 Corinthians 1:20) will not be a grumbling No to God’s promises. My life will not be a self-pitying, reclusive No to God’s promises. My life will not be a loveless No to God’s promises. My life, in all its afflictions, will be a radiant Yes to the promises of God. When God says Yes to me with all his promises, my response is Yes to him. I say, ‘Amen! Yes, they are true. Yes, they are enough. Yes, I am content. Yes, I am glad to spend and be spent for your souls.’”

And from such a life — promise-sustained, overflowing in joy, poured out in love — Paul says God gets great glory (2 Corinthians 1:20).

I just attended my fortieth high school reunion. It feels a bit surreal to write that. Forty years have passed already? It’s another reminder of my recent reflections: our lives are very brief, briefer than we’d like to think.

I remember graduation day like it was yesterday: all of us a mere seventeen or eighteen years old, and most of us feeling a flush of euphoria as we stood together for a moment at that milestone, on the very brink of adulthood, full of hopes and dreams.

Now most of us are older than our parents were when we graduated high school — in fact, a significant number of us are grandparents — which made our reunion somewhat bizarre to experience. Photos of us from our high school years played on the monitors in the venue as we reconnected with old friends and acquaintances, all of us now with thinning, graying hair and our bodies showing the tolls that gravity, solar radiation, and changing metabolisms have taken as we’re rapidly approaching our culture’s retirement age.

But those aren’t the only tolls we’ve paid. We’ve also experienced, in different ways and to differing extents, the universal reality that Moses spoke of when he wrote,

The years of our life are seventy,     or even by reason of strength eighty;yet their span is but toil and trouble. (Psalm 90:10)

We’ve discovered that life not only passes faster than we expected; it’s also harder than we expected.

“Life not only passes faster than we expected; it’s also harder than we expected.”

I know this all sounds a bit depressing. But our hope has to be real hope if it’s going to sustain us through real life, not the illusory hope of the mirage-like dreams my classmates and I likely had when we graduated. Real hope is only realized when we come to terms with the dismaying reality we all face in this age. Truly facing it is what forges in us “a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12), the kind of heart that Psalm 90 teaches how to cultivate.

Why We Are Dismayed

It’s actually heartening that Moses, one of the godliest people to walk the earth, one who grounded his hope in God and his promises, was dismayed by his experience and observation of life — just like we often are. But in this psalm, he doesn’t take a shortcut to hope. His real hope is grounded in the reality of the human condition. Which is why we first hear him lament the end we all face: death.

Dismayed by the Dread of Death

Moses cuts right to the chase when he says,

You return man to dust     and say, “Return, O children of man!” (Psalm 90:3)

We all dread death. We dread it for myriad reasons, but underneath all others is a primal root reason: death is God’s judgment on sinful humanity, and we intuitively know God’s judgment is dreadful. When Moses prays, “You return man to dust,” we can see he’s in touch with reality because he’s quoting God’s words back to him:

You [shall] return to the ground,     for out of it you were taken;for you are dust,     and to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:19)

Perhaps you and I will be among those alive when Jesus returns, and we will experience our mortal bodies being “swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). I imagine every saint since Jesus’s resurrection has hoped and prayed for that experience. But there is wisdom to be gained from pondering the significant likelihood that someday soon — bewilderingly soon — God will say to us, “Return, O child of man.”

Dismayed by God’s Anger

Then Moses delves into the core of our dread of the judgment of death:

For we are brought to an end by your anger;     by your wrath we are dismayed.You have set our iniquities before you,     our secret sins in the light of your presence.For all our days pass away under your wrath;     we bring our years to an end like a sigh.The years of our life are seventy,     or even by reason of strength eighty;yet their span is but toil and trouble;     they are soon gone, and we fly away.Who considers the power of your anger,     and your wrath according to the fear of you? (Psalm 90:7–11)

For those of us living on this side of Jesus’s substitutionary work on the cross, these words can sound confusing and disturbing. Didn’t Jesus pay it all for us? And if so, in what way are we still under God’s wrath? Here is where we, as believers, find the ground for real hope.

Hope in Our Dismay

Moses’s description of our dismay over our toil and trouble reminds us of the mysterious experience of living in the already–not yet kingdom of God. For when Jesus died, he did pay the full price for the sins of all saints past, present, and future.

God put forward [Jesus] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins [of former saints]. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:25–26)

Jesus’s death “delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10), so that when we “appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10) we will not stand condemned (Romans 8:1). Rather, we receive “the free gift [of] eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

But in this age, until Jesus returns, we still endure the wretched experience of living in a body where sin dwells in our members (Romans 7:23–25). We still suffer the toil and trouble of living in a world subjected to futility, along with the groaning that comes with it (Romans 8:20). And we still suffer the dreadful experience of the death of our bodies. In other words, we still experience the same kind of dismaying sorrows Moses lamented.

“Life not only passes faster than we expected; it’s also harder than we expected.”

But for those who have ears to hear, there is gospel in this profoundly sober part of Moses’s prayer. When he prays, “Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?” (Psalm 90:11), the answer is that the believing saint does. For those who trust in Jesus, our fallen bodies, our toil and trouble, and our approaching death cause us to consider the reality of God’s judgment and see that they all point to the gospel hope — the same hope Moses had, even if he saw it only in copies and shadows (Hebrews 8:5).

For believing saints, these sorrows cause us to lay up our treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:20), to fight our remaining sin with all our might (Romans 6:12), to sojourn as “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13), to share with others the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15), and to ultimately view death, however we may dread experiencing it, as gain (Philippians 1:21).

Teach Us to Number Our Days

On that happy June evening in 1984 when my classmates and I celebrated our high school graduation, not only did we not comprehend how fast our lives would pass; we didn’t comprehend how difficult our lives would be. We know much better now.

But that doesn’t mean we all have cultivated a heart of wisdom. Not all my classmates have a hope grounded in the sobering explanation of why our days are so brief and so full of trouble. Not all have considered the power of God’s anger and his wrath according to the fear of him. O God, have mercy! Open their eyes that they may consider these things and be delivered from the wrath to come!

But for those of us who have put our hope in God, it is good for our souls to continue to consider these things seriously — even, with Moses, to the point of lament. Because feeling the weight of our fleeting days and troubled lives can teach us to number our days and so teach our hearts wisdom. It also can teach us to feel more fully the joy that is set before us (Hebrews 12:2) and to be filled “with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit [we] may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13).

Imagine a sin so terrible the stars shake in horror. Imagine a transgression that appalls the planets. Imagine evil that astonishes the angels, shocks the sun, and makes the moon shudder. What could be so bad that the Judge of all the earth calls the cosmos into the courtroom to testify against it?

Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:12–13)

God names two great evils: first, not drinking from the fountain of living water and, second, trying to drink from broken tanks that cannot hold water. According to God, evil — that appalls angels and shocks the heavens — is refusing to be satisfied in God and seeking to be satisfied anywhere else. Where we seek to be satisfied is a matter that concerns the highest heavens.

Parched Hearts

Jesus exposes the same arid evil in his gracious pursuit of a Samaritan woman. He has set his sovereign sights on making her a worshiper of the Father. He offers her living water, but she is wary (John 4:10, 13–14). Uninterested, incredulous, imperceptive, and, yes, a touch sarcastic, this woman will not surrender easily.

He identifies her broken cistern: “Go, call your husband, and come here” (verse 16). After she denies having a husband, Jesus replies, “You are right . . . you have had five husbands [literally, you have had five men], and the one you now have is not your husband” (verses 17–18). The love of our Lord here is surgical, exposing this woman’s parade of sexual encounters and her parched soul.

Like every other person, like God’s people in Jeremiah 2, this woman has an ocean-sized thirst, a pining deep as the soul, a yearning yawning wide as the human heart. And she has been trying to fill that abyss with men. She moves from man to man, cistern to cistern, trying to sate a longing only God can satisfy.

That is like trying to fill an ocean with a thimble. You might as well attempt to top off the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon. Don’t we all know the futility of this attempt? If you are an unbeliever, you live in this parched place. If you are a believer, oh, how tragically often we stray here.

“Our thirsty hearts are so prone to wander from the fount of every blessing.”

We each have our thimbles and our teaspoons. If honest, don’t you know what it’s like to scurry from mudhole to mudhole, thinking the next dirty mouthful will satisfy? The next drink, the next meal, the next partner, the next child, the next date, the next dollar, the next show, the next scroll, the next click — on and on. No stability of desire. Endlessly digging cisterns that can hold no water. Friend, these thimbles can never fill an ocean.

But Jesus offers us something to satisfy our soul-thirst.

His Ocean

Jesus uses three images to capture what he offers this woman and anyone else who will come:

If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. . . . The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:10, 13–14)

The gift of God, eternal life, and living water — three images help us imagine what Jesus offers us — namely, enjoying the Father through the Son by the Spirit. In the immediate context, we know that God’s gift is the gift that is God, the Father’s gift of the Son. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). Elsewhere in the New Testament, the gift of God most often refers to the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; 8:20; 10:45; 11:17; Hebrews 6:4; Ephesians 4:7).

Jesus later defines eternal life as knowing the Father and the Son (John 17:3), and from the rest of John, we learn that this knowledge comes by the witness of the Spirit (14:26; 15:26).

When we look at the image of living water, we find the same reality. A few chapters later, in John 7:37–38, Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Immediately, John comments that the living water here is the Spirit (7:39). And to come to the Son is to come to the Father (John 1:18; 14:7–9). They are inseparable (1:1; 10:30; 17:11). By inviting us to come, Jesus beckons us to swim in the ocean of Trinitarian fullness (15:11; 17:26)!

He means to satisfy her soul — and ours — by giving her God. He invites us into the infinite life and joy of the Trinity. But he does not merely beckon us to come to the fountain. No, he puts the fountain within us. We never need to run to empty cisterns again. By giving us his Spirit, Jesus gives us an internal waterfall of leaping life. He increasingly turns our desert heart into Eden with a spring that will never go dry.

Come, Come, Come

Why, then, do we still feel thirsty? How often — with dry tongues — do we echo the cry of the poets, “My soul thirsts for God!” (Psalm 42:1–2; 63:1)? Our joy is not always full. The garden sometimes wilts. We still say with this woman, “Give me this water.”

To answer, we must circle back to Jesus’s surprising words: “Go, call your husband” (John 4:16). Remember, to woo her to his well, Jesus shows her cisterns cracked and empty. By exposing her ocean-sized thirst, Jesus leaves her only two paths to take: return to the dry places or “come to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1). He leaves no other route open. She cannot continue to wallow in the mud and plunge into the ocean at the same time.

And neither can we. Our thirsty hearts are so prone to wander from the fount of every blessing. We often stray back to the mudholes Christ freed us from. Even after we believe, the drinking is not automatic. We must continually abandon waterless sins and come back to the fountain.

After all, Jesus does not eliminate our thirst. When he says, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:14), he means, “You will need never go to another fountain. No more empty cisterns. You have unlimited, eternal access to the ocean.” After first tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, no one says, “That was enough for me. I’ve had my fill. Farewell, thirst.” God abhors that kind of stagnant religion. No, the desire of the saints is increased. But we must constantly bring that thirst back to the only one who can satisfy it.

We — like the Samaritan woman — have uninterrupted admission to the ocean. But we still must come. Living water is an already–not yet reality. We already have access to the fountain, but we have not yet drunk nearly enough. So come. Come each Sunday to savor the heady brew of Christian communion. Come each morning to drink down God’s word and make your soul happy in him. Come each minute in prayer “that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). Come, come, come, and keep coming!

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Revelation 22:17)