http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15553544/how-does-israel-fill-up-their-sins

Audio Transcript

We have a big week ahead because today we launch week number five hundred on the podcast. That is incredible. That’s a lot of sustaining grace, and not possible without you. So thanks for your prayers, support, questions, and listens. We don’t take any of this for granted. Thanks for listening while you wait in airport terminals, ride in subways, do your daily mundane chores (dishes, laundry, walking the dog), drive to work, or shuffle your kids around town, or even listen through your iPhone speakers at the end of your day. However and whenever you listen, thank you for making this podcast a part of your busy life — now for five hundred weeks.

We begin week number five hundred with a question from a listener named Joe. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. What would you say is the difference between the kind of love that is produced in the Christian’s heart for others through the new birth (1 John 4:7; 1 Peter 1:22–23), compared to the charitable and often self-sacrificial love that we often see demonstrated in the world among non-Christians? How would you explain this difference?”

The difference between secular love and Christian love is that secular love is not rooted in the cross of God’s Son, and is not sustained and shaped by the power of God’s Spirit, and is not acted for the glory of God the Father. So the source of it is different, the sustaining power of it is different, and the goal of it is different. Let’s think about each of these one at a time and see if we can fill it out.

Rooted in the Cross

First, there’s a different source of these two loves. First John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” And how did he first love us? Well, John says in 1 John 3:16, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” So, Christian love is rooted in Christ’s sacrifice for me and for you.

By this our sins are forgiven. We’re justified, accepted, and loved by God. We have the hope that everything in life will work together for our good and bring us to everlasting joy, so that fear and greed, the great barriers to love, are taken away as we trust what God is for us in Christ. When Paul calls Christians to have compassion in Colossians 3:12, he prefaces that command with three identifiers of who we are. He says, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts.”

Now, this is the root of the source of compassion. God chose me. God consecrated me — made me holy, set me apart for himself. God loves me. And all of this is provided for us because of Christ’s death in our place. There is no other way. That death for us provided the hope from which love flows. Colossians 1:4 says, “We heard . . . of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.” That hope is purchased by Jesus on the cross.

Christ’s death also provided the joy from which love flows. Second Corinthians 8:2 says, “In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.” In other words, joy overflows in love. Christian love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others, and that joy is a blood-bought joy from the death of Jesus.

So, the first difference between secular love and Christian love is that our love is rooted in and is the overflow of the work of Christ and its effects in our lives.

Shaped by the Spirit

Second, Christian love is sustained and shaped by the work of God’s Spirit, where secular love isn’t. Paul calls it the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22. It is the Spirit that takes the death of Christ, causes it to be real for us, and gives us new hearts so that the death of Christ has a love-producing effect on us. First John 3:14 says, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.” Love in our lives is the evidence that the Spirit of God has brought us from death to life.

“Love in our lives is the evidence that the Spirit of God has brought us from death to life.”

The Spirit not only gives us life at the beginning of our Christian walk (in the new birth), but he sustains our faith and life as we go along, moment by moment depending on his power so that we can make the sacrifices necessary that love demands. It’s the Holy Spirit that sustains our faith so that we can continually lay hold of the promises of God for hope, for joy that frees us for love.

We could go on and on about how the Spirit forms and sustains our capacities to love by overcoming the great love killers of fear and greed and selfishness; by directing our hearts over and over again to the truth of God’s commands and promises, where we get the wisdom and boldness we need to love; and by humbling our pride so that we don’t need to be somebody, and instead, we can take thought for the interests of others and not just our own — and on and on. The work of the Spirit sustains and shapes Christian love, but not the love of the world.

Aimed at Glory

Third and finally, Christian love has a different goal — not an entirely different goal, but a radically different goal. It’s not entirely different from the unbeliever who loves. It’s not entirely different because secular love often aims at the physical and emotional and psychological and relational and economic well-being of other people. And Christians care about these things. There’s overlap. But when Christians ask, “What is good for people in all those areas — what’s really good?” the answer is always essentially different from the answer of secular people, because for Christians what’s good for human beings is always defined so as to include their relationship to God in Christ.

What is good for people is that they trust Christ, depend on his Spirit, walk in obedience, and live for the glory of God. Therefore, when Christians talk about seeking the physical good of a person, for example, we do so in the hope that they will experience this physical good as a gift of God and receive it in the name of Jesus and rely on the Holy Spirit to use it for his glory. If all those Godward dimensions are missing, our love is falling short of its goal, and we grieve.

“Christian love is keenly aware that life on earth is a vapor followed by an eternity.”

Christian love is keenly aware that life on earth is a vapor followed by an eternity either of exquisite happiness in the presence of God or eternal suffering cut off from his presence. And therefore, Christians care about all suffering, but especially eternal suffering. The Bible tells us to do everything to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), so we should love people for the glory of God.

Love That Enthralls

And when someone asks, “Is it truly love for a person if we are motivated by the hope that God will be glorified through our love for this person?” I know people ask that question. I’ve heard it recently. And the answer is yes, it is love — the greatest love.

The reason the answer is yes — it is love when you love someone in order that God would be glorified — goes like this: Love is doing whatever it takes to enthrall the beloved with the greatest and longest happiness, even if it costs you your life. And what will enthrall the beloved with the greatest and longest happiness is the glory of God — all that God is for them in Jesus. Therefore, love for people means doing all we can at whatever cost to ourselves — like Jesus did — to help people be enthralled with the glory of God now and forever.

When they are enthralled with all that God is for them in Jesus, then they are satisfied fully and forever, and God is glorified in their being satisfied in him. That’s what makes us tick at Desiring God — this glorious, profound biblical insight. Therefore, loving people and glorifying God are not alternatives. They’re not at odds. They are profoundly one thing.

So, in those three ways, Christian love is different from secular love. They have a different source (the death and resurrection of Christ), a different sustaining power (the work of the Holy Spirit), and a different goal (full and everlasting joy in God).

Many of the most common troubles in the Christian life come from relating to God as if he were like us — as if his kindness were as slight as our kindness, his forgiveness as reluctant as our forgiveness, his patience as fleeting as our patience. Under impressions such as these, we walk uneasily through the Christian life, insecurity rumbling like distant thunder.

John Owen (1616–1683) goes so far as to say,

Want of a due consideration of him with whom we have to do, measuring him by that line of our own imaginations, bringing him down unto our thoughts and our ways, is the cause of all our disquietments. (Works of John Owen, 6:500)

If we were God in heaven, we would have grown impatient with people like us long ago. Our anger rises quickly in the face of personal offense. Our frustration boils over. Our judgments readily fire. And apart from the daily renewal of our minds, we can easily measure God “by that line of our own imaginations,” as if his thoughts matched our thoughts, and his ways our ways.

Thank God, they do not. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). Our human nature has no ruler to measure God’s goodness; our natural imaginations cannot grasp his heights. His kindness is not like our kindness, his forgiveness not like our forgiveness — and his patience not like our patience.

‘Slow to Anger’

The God we meet in Scripture is a relentlessly patient God. He usually accomplishes his plans along the winding path. He fulfills his promises without haste. He compares his kingdom to a mustard seed.

The greatest displays of God’s patience, however, appear in response to our sin. “God is patient” means not mainly that God waits a long time, but that God shows longsuffering kindness to sinners (Romans 2:4). As God declares to Moses on Mount Sinai, he is not just “slow,” but “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6).

Consider the context of that famous declaration. Israel has just left slavery, redeemed by God’s mighty hand. They have watched the Red Sea swallow Egypt’s army. They have stood before a mountain wrapped in smoke and lightning, the entourage of the Almighty. They have been covered by the blood of the covenant. And then, in some of their first moments of freedom, they exchange the glory of the living God for a cow (Exodus 32:1–6).

Judgment follows (Exodus 32:25–29, 35) — striking yet restrained, tempered by a mysterious mercy. God does not destroy them; he does not forsake them. Instead, he reveals his glorious, incomparable name, like an unexpected dawn in an all-black sky:

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Exodus 34:6)

Why does full judgment tarry and mercy beckon? Because, unlike us, God is “slow to anger.” His wrath visits the unrepentant (Exodus 34:7), but only after taking the slow path. Meanwhile, his mercy stands ready to run.

Here on the slopes of Mount Sinai began a song that would be sung by Israel’s prophets and psalmists, sages and kings, even under the nation’s darkest nights (Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 86:15; Joel 2:13). The living God is a patient God. And in the shadow of his patience we find hope.

Patience Toward His Enemies

God’s patience, like his love, has special significance for his chosen people — the slow-to-anger God of Exodus 34:6 is none other than “the Lord,” Yahweh, the God Israel knows by covenant (Exodus 3:13–15). And yet, amazingly, the record of God’s dealings in Scripture reveals a marked slowness to anger not only toward his covenant people, but toward those who hate and oppose him.

The most forceful examples of God’s wrath, for instance, begin as examples of his patience. The flood waters swallowed the earth only after “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared” (1 Peter 3:20). God lingered for four generations before cleansing Canaan of its idolatry, for, he told Abraham, “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). And nine warning plagues fell on Egypt before the devastating blow to the firstborn (Exodus 11:4–8).

God’s wrath may be “quickly kindled” when the time for judgment comes (Psalm 2:12), but until then, he warns and invites (Psalm 2:10–11). God’s patience toward his enemies extends so far, Owen observes, that his people sometimes cry out, perplexed, “How long before you will judge?” (Revelation 6:10; Psalm 94:3). And still he patiently waits.

God, the patient potter, bears with the rebellious clay of his creation. He endures vessels of wrath with “much patience” (Romans 9:22), Paul tells us. How much more, then, does he deal patiently with vessels of mercy?

Patience Toward His People

When Paul rehearsed his testimony to Timothy, he framed it as a story of God’s patience:

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15–16)

God saved this “blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” (1 Timothy 1:13) so that no humble, broken sinner would think he’s out-sinned the patience of God. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus is patient toward his people — perfectly patient. As patient as the prodigal’s father, waiting on the porch (Luke 15:20).

Nor does his patience end when former rebels like us heed his summons and become his sons. As Israel’s faithful celebrated again and again, God not only “was” slow to anger; he “is” slow to anger (Psalm 103:8). His patience, like his love, endures forever (Psalm 136). To what else can we ascribe his ongoing kindness, his every-morning mercies, his present help, and his ready forgiveness, through all the fluctuations of our souls? Today and every day, “He does not deal with us according to our sins” (Psalm 103:10), but according to his great patience.

“In Christ, your life tells a story of divine patience.”

In Christ, your life, like Paul’s, tells a story of divine patience. God was patient with you as you wandered from him — scorning his Son, treasuring sin, scarcely giving him or his gospel a thought. He is patient with you now, as you daily find need for forgiveness. And he will be patient with you tomorrow, and the next day, and until the day of Jesus Christ, when he finally finishes the good work he’s begun (Philippians 1:6).

And why? Because, some several centuries after Moses, God once again revealed his slow-to-anger name. This time in flesh and blood.

Patience Supreme

In Jesus, the God-man, the song of God’s slowness to anger swells to its crescendo.

Jesus’s ministry was one of patience, for to be with us was to bear with us (Luke 9:41). He lived here as light among darkness, sinlessness among sin, the straight among the crooked — as the unrivaled prince of patience. We occasionally see the pain of his patience, as when he says, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” (Matthew 17:17). But he mostly kept the cost hidden, pouring out his soul to his Father (Luke 5:16), and receiving from his Father the patience needed as his enemies slandered him, his neighbors rejected him, his disciples misunderstood him, and the crowds tried to use him.

And thus he also died. Though twelve legions of angels stood ready for his summons (Matthew 26:53), he never called. Instead, Patience incarnate took the lashes, the thorns, the nails, allowing his creatures to mock him with the breath he gave, all while pleading for their forgiveness (Luke 23:34).

In the cross of Jesus, we see not only that God is patient, but how God can be so patient. How could he, “in his divine forbearance,” pass over former sins (Romans 3:25) — and how can he, in his divine forbearance, continue to show us mercy? Because the patience of God, in the person of Christ, purchased our forgiveness (Romans 3:23–24). God’s patience rests on the passion of his Son. And therefore, his patience will last as long as our resurrected Christ pleads the merits of his blood (Hebrews 7:25) — which is to say, forever.

Let Us Return

English pastor Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) once prayed, “Teach me . . . to read my duty in the lines of your mercy.” And what duty do we read in the lines of God’s merciful patience? In the words of Isaiah, “Return to the Lord” (Isaiah 55:7).

“Whoever and wherever we are, God’s patience invites our repentance.”

The patience of God is a beckoning hand, an open door, a pathway home. It comes to us as Jesus came to Matthew at the tax booth: not to condemn us, and not to comfort us in our sins either, but rather to turn us again to “seek the Lord while he may be found” (Isaiah 55:6), whether after a miserable lapse or simply a regrettable moment. Whoever and wherever we are, God’s patience invites our repentance.

And what do we find when we return to him, confessing and forsaking our sins? We find a Father running to meet us (Luke 15:20). We find a Savior who has already been knocking (Revelation 3:20). We find a God who abundantly pardons and plentifully redeems (Isaiah 55:7; Psalm 130:7). We find a Lord whose patience is perfect (1 Timothy 1:16).

One day, we will stumble and sin no more; the good work begun at our conversion finally will be complete (Philippians 1:6). But until then, the patience of God is not bound to the measure of our weak imaginations. It is not the pinched, passing, shallow patience we so commonly find among men, and within ourselves. His patience, like his peace, surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7). Return to him, then, now and forever, and in returning find rest.

The people of Israel had been enslaved for hundreds of years in Egypt. The time for their deliverance had come, and God sent Moses to lead the people out of Egypt after ten devastating plagues and by a mighty defeat of Pharaoh at the crossing of the Red Sea. They camped first at Marah. From Marah they moved to Elim. From Elim to Dophkah. From Dophkah to Alush. And from Alush to Rephidim (Numbers 33:8–15), where we meet them in this text.

According to Exodus 16:1, they entered this region only six weeks after their deliverance. It is as though everyone in this room had seen God divide the Red Sea with your own eyes on May 1, 2022. This generation of Israel in just the last months had seen some of the greatest miracles in the history of the world.

There are four scenes in Exodus 17:1–7. Every one of them is brimming with implications for your life. As we read the text, I’ll pause after each scene to see if we can summarize its main point.

Scene 1: A Waterless Camp

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin [pronounced “seen,” a transliteration of the Hebrew proper name Siyn, with no reference to what we mean by “sin”] by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. (Exodus 17:1)

Main point: God led his people to a campsite with no water.

This was his plan. He led them there. You can see this in middle of verse 1: they moved “by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim” (Exodus 17:1). “By stages” means that there were two other stages between the wilderness of Sin and Rephidim (Dophkah and Alush). Moses makes no mention of them here because he has one point to make: God is commanding the movements of Israel (pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night, Nehemiah 9:19), and his command brings them to Rephidim, which has significance for one reason in this story: there is no water to drink.

If you are a Christian, this is your life. God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3). Hundreds of you came to this conference encamped at Rephidim — where there is no water. As far you can see it’s wilderness in every direction and, from a merely human standpoint, your circumstances are going to end badly. There is no human way out. And this text says: You are not there by accident. Your ways are ordered by the Lord (Proverbs 20:24). And one of the purposes of these seven verses, and this sermon, is to help you see and feel why that is good news.

So, the main point of Scene 1 is: God has led his people to a campsite with no water.

Scene 2: An Angry Protest

Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” (Exodus 17:2–3)

Main point: God’s people did not trust that God’s providence is good, but accused Moses and God of harmful purposes.

In verse 2, the people take issue with Moses. Whatever is happening here — whatever it is — is not happening fast enough, and so they demand water. “Give us water to drink!” In essence Moses responds, “Your quarrel is out of place. It’s not a quarrel with me. When you quarrel with me you are trying God’s patience.” “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” (Exodus 17:2).

“Story after story after story in the Bible, including this one, is God’s roar from heaven: ‘Trust me.’”

Then in verse 3, we hear the heart of the indictment. They don’t ask, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt?” They ask, “Why did you bring us out to kill us and our children?” They aren’t questioning God’s timing. They are questioning his goodness. They aren’t saying that God is incompetent to give them water. They’re saying he doesn’t intend to. His purposes aren’t saving. They are murderous.

When Moses says, in verse 2, “Why do you test the Lord?” there’s a warning in those words. Don’t try God’s patience. It runs out for people who don’t trust him, who despise his ways. We know how the story of this generation ends.

None of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test [tried my patience] these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. (Numbers 14:22–23)

We may not understand all the reasons why God chooses a waterless encampment for us. But story after story after story in the Bible, including this one, is God’s roar from heaven: “Trust me. Trust me.” They didn’t. That’s Scene 2.

Scene 3: A Life-Giving Presence

So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. (Exodus 17:4–6)

Main point: God’s life-giving presence toward absolutely undeserving people goes on. His patience has not run out. Not yet.

What is God’s answer to Moses’s question in verse 4, “What shall I do with this people they are almost ready to stone me”? His answer is, “I’m going to give them water to drink.” But to make it as amazing as possible, he describes four ways that this miracle of life-giving grace comes about.

First, the miracle will be public. “Pass on before the people” (Exodus 17:5). They indicted us in public. We will be vindicated in public, “before the people.”

Second, it will be well attested by the elders. “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel” (Exodus 17:5). This will become part of what they know and teach and how they judge the people.

Third, this miracle will be seen as a continuation of the miracles of the ten plagues in Egypt. “. . . and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go” (Exodus 17:5). Moses only struck the Nile once with his staff. “In the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile, and all the water in the Nile turned into blood” (Exodus 7:20). In other words, “With this staff I turned water into blood. Today I will turn a rock into water.” Same staff. Same power. Same God. Same grace. True then. True today in your waterless wilderness.

Lastly, this miracle of life-giving grace will come about by the Lord’s presence. This is best of all. This is most wonderful. “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink” (Exodus 17:6). “I will stand before you on the rock.”

“God says ‘My presence is your life. I brought you out of Egypt to myself. You think you need water? You need me.’”

He might have said, “I’m done with this rebellious people” and withdrawn his presence. But he didn’t. And he might have said, “I will not defile my presence with this sinful people anymore. I will go to the top of mount Horeb and unleash my lightning bolt, and strike this rock and bring water from the depths of the earth.” But he didn’t do that either. He said, “When you strike the rock, I will be standing on the rock.”

Why would he do that? Because what the people need more than water is the presence of God. The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3). What, after all, has been the point of God choosing the people of Israel, making a covenant with her, leading her down to Egypt, bringing her out by a mighty hand, and taking her out into the wilderness? Here’s the way God says it in Exodus 19:4–5:

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. (Exodus 19:4–5)

He is saying, “I am taking my stand on the rock that will give you life, because my presence is your life. I brought you out of Egypt to myself. You think you need water? You need me.”

So the main point of Scene 3 is: God’s life-giving presence toward undeserving people goes on. His patience has not run out.

Scene 4: A Memorial of Failure

And he [Moses] called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7)

Main point: Moses memorializes their failure to believe in God’s saving presence.

The story does not have a happy ending. There is no repentance. There is no awakened faith. There’s not even any water, just a promise of water. “The people will drink” (Exodus 17:6). No doubt the water came. God keeps his word. But Moses means for the story to end on a note of failure: Israel’s failure, not God’s.

Moses doesn’t name the place “Grace abounding,” or “Water from the Rock,” or “God is faithful.” He names it Massah and Meribah. Massah means “testing.” Meribah means “quarreling.” Then he makes the meaning explicit: “. . . because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord” (Exodus 17:7).

Scene 4 harks back to Scene 2 where Moses said, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” (Exodus 17:2) And that’s where the story ends — memorializing Israel’s quarreling and testing — almost. Moses has one final indictment at the end of verse 7. He means for us to see the greatest failure in the light of the greatest gift. So verse 7 ends, “They tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not” (Exodus 17:7). God had said, “I will stand before you on the rock” (Exodus 17:6). The people said, “We don’t even know if he’s here or if he intends to kill us.”

Don’t Harden Your Heart

So, we step back now and ask, “What is Moses’s aim — God’s aim — in telling us this story?” The way Moses tells the story, failure is foregrounded. The story begins and ends with Israel quarreling with Moses and testing God. It begins and ends with unbelief. They don’t trust God. They harden their hearts against him. “God brought us into this waterless encampment and he doesn’t intend to be here for us.” And the trumpet blast of this text, echoing throughout the Bible and today, is: Don’t be like that.

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work” (Psalm 95:7–9).

“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years’” (Hebrews 3:7–9).

“[They] all ate the same spiritual food [manna], and all drank the same spiritual drink. . . . Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. . . . We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did. . . . Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction. . . . Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:3–12).

In other words, this failure of Israel to trust God in the wilderness reverberates through the whole Bible. And the message is: “When God brings you into a waterless encampment, and you see wilderness stretching in every direction with no way out, don’t be like Israel! Trust him. Trust him. He brought you into the wilderness. He can bring you out. He led you to Rephidim where there is no water. There’s only a dry rock. And he will take his stand on the rock and be your life.”

Will he? Even in 2022?

Confidence for Waterless Campsites

For many of us, the great obstacle to joyful confidence in the waterless wilderness is not that God can’t save us, but the question, “Will he?” And the great obstacle to believing that he will is our sin. How can God be a just and holy God, and do what he did in Scene 3?

Surrounded by a thankless people who say that God brought them out of Egypt to kill them, God says, “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock . . . and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink” (Exodus 17:6). How can God be righteous and act as though the despising of his name had so little consequence? Our very hearts cry out, “I have scorned the name of the Lord, in all my doubting and all my unbelief and all my despairing in my wilderness. Will God not simply join me in the belittling of his name by sweeping my sins under the rug of the universe? How can I ever be saved — how could they ever be saved — by a righteous and holy God?”

In the mind of the apostle Paul, there was no greater problem facing humankind. How can God uphold the righteousness of his name while showing mercy to God-belittling, God-despising sinners? How is Scene 3 in this passage even conceivable? God offering himself as our life while surrounded by the outrage of people indicting him as evil?

Paul has an answer to this greatest of all moral problems. I’ll read it you from Romans 3:25:

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation (a satisfaction of God’s justice) 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.

Thunderclap of Justice and Mercy

When God passed over the sins of Scene 2 and Scene 4 and poured out mercy on sinners in Scene 3, was he unrighteous? Was he belittling his own name? Was he taking his holiness lightly? No. Because he knew what he would do in 1,400 years to vindicate his righteousness.

“The death of Jesus is a thunderclap of this truth: No sin is ever merely passed over! Ever.”

The death of Jesus is a thunderclap of this truth: No sin is ever merely passed over! Ever. It will be paid for in hell. Or it was paid for on the cross. No quarreling with God’s word, no testing of God’s patience, ever goes unpunished. Ever. God’s righteousness is absolute. And the unspeakable mercy of Scene 3 (Exodus 17:6) is owing directly to the blood of Jesus. “[The blood of the Son of God] was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Romans 3:25).

Every undeserved blessing shown to God’s elect in the Old Testament was bought by the blood of Jesus. When Paul made that strange statement in 1 Corinthians 10:4 about Israel in the wilderness, “They drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4), this is what I think he meant:

The undeserved blessing of water from the rock, the undeserved blessing of manna from heaven, the undeserved blessing of deliverance at the Red Sea, the undeserved blessing of guidance day and night in the wilderness are all owing to cross of Christ. How right it is, then, to say, the rock was Christ, the manna was Christ, the deliverance was Christ, the pillars of guidance were Christ, because God’s guilty people could enjoy none of that without the blood of Christ.

And so it is for you who are in Christ. You who despair of your sinful selves and know that God owes you nothing. So it is for you. Every undeserved blessing you will ever receive is owing to the death of 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?” (Romans 8:32). Not just he can give us all things, but he will. He will. He will give us everything we need to do his will, and glorify his name, and make it home.

When he leads you into the waterless encampment of Rephidim, and there is no human hope, trust him. “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?” (Romans 8:32). Everything you need has been purchased, above all, himself, for your enjoyment now and forever (1 Peter 3:18).

“Don’t go to bed angry.” How many times have you heard some version of this marital proverb? Many bright-eyed couples hear it in premarital counseling and happily nod along in agreement. Those who’ve been married for a while may chuckle at the naivete. We’ll see if they’re still smiling and nodding in a few months.

Once you’re married, the counsel quickly becomes more complicated, uncomfortable, and costly. Sometimes, dealing with anger before bedtime can feel like finishing the basement before bedtime. My wife and I know firsthand, having fought hard over seven years to subdue our anger before exhaustion subdues us. Achieving a cheap, superficial peace may be easy enough, but meaningful reconciliation typically takes meaningful time and energy and, well, work.

The counsel really is good counsel, though, because it’s God’s counsel: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). The command covers all relationships, but marriage may be the hardest place to apply it. For many of us, marriage carries the most potential to make us most angry (or at least angry most often).

Counsel for Couples Battling Anger

This heightened tendency toward anger isn’t a defect in marriage. It’s actually a consequence of what makes marriage beautiful. Marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for anger because marriage has a higher and more consistent capacity for intimacy. Sin hurts more when we’ve opened and entrusted all of ourselves to someone. The proximity and vulnerability can make even small sins feel like acts of war.

So how can couples fight to put their anger to bed? While many (rightly) turn to Ephesians 5 for a vision for marriage, the verses immediately before that chapter also hold valuable weapons in the fight to love each other well.

1. Anger is a good emotion that we often express sinfully.

Be angry. (Ephesians 4:26)

You won’t often hear those two words together in premarital counseling (or any counseling, for that matter). Before we try to put away our anger for the night, we need to remember that anger can be a healthy and godly response to evil.

“Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified.”

Many of us have developed a map of our emotional life in which anger is always out of bounds. We tend to assume that anger — especially any anger directed at us! — is unwarranted and wrong. This was my bent coming into marriage. God’s word to us, however, is not, “Never be angry,” but, “Be angry, and do not sin.” Has your marriage made room for some righteous anger over an offense? Does either of you ever say, “I was wrong. I sinned against you. And it’s right for you to be angry about that”?

Many marriages suffer because we assume that anger is always bad — or that our anger is always justified. Often, we assume the former when it comes to our spouse’s anger, and the latter when it comes to our own. The rest of chapter 4, however, puts checks on the anger that inevitably arises in marriage.

2. Strive to put away all anger.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. (Ephesians 4:31)

Wait, isn’t this a blatant contradiction? Didn’t Paul just say, “Be angry, and do not sin”? There is a tension here, but not a contradiction. Much of maturity and wisdom in marriage (and in the Christian life in general) is found in the ability to know when to apply seemingly opposite commands — when to correct offenses, and when to overlook them; when to speak, and when to stay silent; when to be angry over sin, and when to put away anger.

“Be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.”

The message should be clear: anger has a place in healthy hearts, but it’s a limited and temporary place. It’s right to feel angry over evil, but only within a life that’s actively, persistently laying anger aside — and not just most anger, but all anger (“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger . . . be put away from you”). God gives even our righteous anger an expiration date — and that expiration date is today.

3. The 24-hour day is a mercy for marriages.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger. (Ephesians 4:26)

Have you ever wondered why God made each day 24 hours long? Surely there are hundreds of good reasons, but he himself tells us at least one of them here: because it checks our anger and keeps it from breaking into a quiet wildfire. In this way, the 24-hour day is a great mercy for marriages. As the sun crosses the sky each day and begins to bury itself on the horizon, it steadily carries us toward reconciliation. It draws a line in the sand that forces us to choose between submitting to God and seeking reconciliation or refusing his counsel and coddling our hurt.

Many marriages suffer because we let offenses harden into bitterness that slowly erodes trust and intimacy over days, or weeks, or even months. Trust is the currency of intimacy. Spouses can squander that trust in big, obvious ways that we could all name. Trust is also squandered in more subtle ways, though, and perhaps the most common way is by carrying and stoking offenses. The initial hurt or anger may have been completely warranted, but the warrant has long expired, and yet the bitterness quietly remains and wounds and separates. So God pushes the sun around the earth, each and every day, to give us a golden opportunity to put away all our anger.

Let me add one important qualification here: full reconciliation may be unrealistic some days. Releasing our anger does not mean all is well in the relationship. That’s why in our home we talk about pursuing meaningful reconciliation before bed. A little bit of time and sleep can actually be great allies in the process. Insisting on full reconciliation in a short time often will just prolong the pain and discord (again, I’ve learned this firsthand). That doesn’t mean, however, that we should allow ourselves to harbor anger or settle for less than real forgiveness and reconciliation. It just means we’ll have to be patient at times for the warmth and harmony to fully return. The important lesson here is that both spouses resolve to regularly, even daily, put away all anger.

4. Unresolved conflict opens a door for the devil.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)

Maybe we would be quicker to resolve conflict in our marriages if we could see what Satan can do with unresolved conflict. It’s not simply that he can poke and stir unresolved conflict and make it worse over time; it’s that unresolved conflict gives him access to every other area of our marriages. An open wound in one area eventually bleeds onto every other area. Sleeping together gets harder. Praying together gets harder. Parenting together gets harder. Scheduling together gets harder. Serving together gets harder. Just existing together gets harder.

Many marriages suffer because they ignore the spiritual war against marriage. “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood” — including the flesh and blood lying beside us in bed — “but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Every marital battle is first and foremost a spiritual battle, and we’ll inevitably lose that battle if we think we’re only fighting each other.

5. Treat your spouse’s sin as Christ has treated yours.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

How many marital crises and divorces might have been averted if these fifteen words had really taken hold?

Notice, Paul doesn’t merely say, “Be kind and forgive one another,” but “Forgive as God has forgiven you in Christ.” God didn’t just overlook our sin and begrudgingly move on; no, his Son bore our griefs, he carried our sorrows, he received our thorns, he was crushed for our iniquities, he was wounded to heal our wounds, he was cursed, all so that we might be forgiven. So forgive as you’ve been forgiven. Nothing you or I suffer in marriage will ask or demand more of us than what Christ bore for our sake on the cross.

Many couples who have practiced this verse have made a startling discovery: conflict is actually an unusual opportunity for intimacy. Why? Because when we treat each other’s sin as Christ has treated ours, we both get to see and experience more of him. For sure, we get to see and experience him on the days when we get along, but how much more present and real does he feel when we extend and receive meaningful forgiveness, when we receive harshness with kindness, when we stay and love when we could reasonably leave?

The moments in marriage that make us most angry can become the clearest pictures of Christ and his church. What else could make a husband so kind, even now? What else would compel a wife to forgive him — again? Where else would a love so selfless, so patient, so resilient even come from?

So, husband and wife, be angry over the sin in your marriage, and don’t go to bed angry.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15547071/god-hates-when-the-gospel-is-hindered

Wait a minute. That can’t be right, can it?

If you’ve taught the Bible a few times, you’ve had one of these moments. The construction of a biblical sentence just doesn’t look right. More often than not, you find that your concern was unwarranted or could be explained. But for me, one of these moments changed everything.

I had only been pastoring for about five years. We were preaching through the book of Colossians, and it was the second week in the series when I read this in my study:

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love of that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. (Colossians 1:3–5)

I thought to myself, “No, no, this translation must be off. Paul wouldn’t ground his thanks in the hope laid up for the church in heaven, would he? He must mean to say that he thanks God for their love for all the saints, and their hope in heaven, because of their faith in Christ Jesus.” Nope. Paul wrote it just as both he and the Spirit of God intended. It changed my life. Paul was grounding their love and his thanksgiving in the Colossian church’s hope in heaven. Heaven was (and is) that foundational. That important.

I met with a young college student later that afternoon and asked if he ever really hoped in heaven. Later, I asked some other guys I was discipling, and a couple days after, some pastors I was meeting. For the next four days, I asked more than twelve Christians if they hoped in heaven. One of them said that he did hope in heaven from time to time; the rest said they hardly ever thought about it. They immediately recognized the problem without me even bringing it to their attention.

I began to see the massive blind spot in my preaching, discipling, evangelizing, counseling, and praying. I’m still learning not to miss it.

Our Common Hope

Fast forward four years, when my church graciously gave me and my family a sabbatical. I took the two and a half months to study the hope of heaven. Not heaven itself, but the Bible’s use of the hope of heaven.

Monday to Friday, I would pray and study from about nine in the morning until noon. The most important work I did was to read a handful of chapters from the New Testament every day. I’d circle every verse where I saw the author counseling the hope of heaven. No conclusions were made; I’d just circle the verse, and at the end, handwrite that verse in a journal.

When I finished, I found an astonishing 387 verses that used the hope of heaven the same way Paul did in Colossians. Out of 7,957 verses in the New Testament, almost 5 percent counsel the hope of heaven. For perspective, there are some 150–160 verses on hell, and some 30–40 verses about marriage. So, even if I’m half right, the hope of heaven is far more common than we might have thought.

Heaven for All of Life

Think of the Beatitudes. Most of them motivate present behavior in view of some future reward. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).

Or think about Paul’s conclusion to the Corinthians. After all his teaching, exhorting, and correcting, he lands the plane on the final resurrection, and only then does he say, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). The future resurrection provided confidence for their work.

The models of faith in Hebrews 11 instruct us because they were “looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:26). Peter counsels suffering Christians that they could rejoice because God was guarding their inheritance in heaven (1 Peter 1:4–5). James commended patience without grumbling by reminding his readers that the coming of their Lord was at hand (James 5:7–9). Then we have Revelation, which ends the entire canon of Scripture with those beautifully haunting words: “‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).

Saved in this Hope

None of these examples struck me more than when I came to Romans 8. I was basking in the sun of Naples, Florida, in February. It was in the upper 70s, and I was going to the beach later that afternoon. Heaven already seemed to be breaking in when I read,

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. (Romans 8:22–24)

It was a similar moment to my time in Colossians 1. I circled the verses, but I couldn’t help lingering over the implications of those words. I had read that passage many times, but this was the first time I saw that the hope of our salvation looks not only back to the cross, but also forward to the day we will worship a resurrected Savior in resurrected bodies on a resurrected earth.

“The hope of our salvation looks not only back to the cross, but also forward.”

According to these verses, we evangelize by pointing people’s gaze to the restoration of all things as well to the cross. Yet few of us regularly preach, sing, pray, or evangelize about heaven.

Losing the North Star

Randy Alcorn, in his book Heaven, documents that John Calvin, Reinhold Niebuhr, William Shedd, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Louis Berkhof said little about heaven even in some of their most monumental theological writings (8).

Alcorn shares a quote from A.J. Conyers that I’ve never gotten over:

Even to one without religious commitment and theological convictions, it should be an unsettling thought that this world is attempting to chart its way through some of the most perilous waters in history, having now decided to ignore what was for nearly two millennia its fixed point of reference — its North Star. The certainty of judgement [and] the longing for heaven. (9)

Lord, have mercy. If you are still in doubt, go and ask your fellow church members how much the hope of heaven informs their daily lives as Christians.

Matthew Westerholm studied the difference between songs used in American churches from 2000–2015 and those used from 1737–1960. His conclusion? “Among many similarities, one difference was striking: the topic of heaven, which once was frequently and richly sung about, has now all but disappeared.”

“We’ve been working so hard to make this world home, just as it is. But we are sojourners.”

Something so central to the New Testament’s counsel and the renewed imagination lives faintly in the consciences of many Christians. Perhaps this might explain why so many are so anxious: we’ve placed in the periphery something meant to be central. We’ve been working so hard to make this world home, just as it is. But we are sojourners. This isn’t home — at least not as it is right now. Not yet.

We’ll Be Home Soon

As we wait for our true home, beloved, call to mind the great treasure of heaven. Jesus says that the pure in heart shall see God (Matthew 5:8). We are told by John that “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2) — not as he was but as he is. It will be the same Jesus that suffered and bled, but we will see him in the effulgence of his infinite glory.

Gone will be the veil that led him to hunger, thirst, suffer, and moan, while rejected by men. Present will be the Jesus who, through those sufferings, has triumphed and taken on a new body dripping with kingly power, beauty, and love. This is the Jesus awaiting us in the splendor of his kingdom. This is the Jesus to whom we say with all the saints of old, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:21). His presence will be our home — heaven on earth.

Brothers and sisters, regularly draw your attention to this heaven. Pray heaven. Preach heaven. Sing heaven. Counsel heaven. Make heaven so much a part of your local church’s culture that on the brightest day or the darkest night you can say together with confidence, “Jesus is coming, and he will make this right. Once and for all.” Drink it in: He’s coming, as sure as that sky that you look upon now. And when he comes, justice and everlasting joy will come with him.

Join me in prayerfully redirecting our lives and ministries to that great North Star. We’ll be home soon enough. Oh, the joy.

If you were to ask me what I take to be among Scripture’s most comforting passages, my answer may surprise you: Psalm 90 and Ecclesiastes.

Psalm 90 is Israel’s poignant lament that, even though they are God’s chosen people, they are also Adam’s children, subject as he was to God’s righteous anger at their sin. Moses’s poetry in Psalm 90 leads us, step by step, deep into the cellar of their life’s brevity, pain, and toil. The third verse begins that descent by echoing God’s words to Adam in Genesis 3:19:

You return man to dust     and say, “Return, O children of Adam!” . . .You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,     like grass that is renewed in the morning:in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;     in the evening it fades and withers.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. (Psalm 90:3, 5–9)

We aren’t exactly sure of the details — perhaps, as Allen Ross argues, Moses penned this psalm at the end of Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness (A Commentary on the Psalms, 3:26–27). Whatever the specific backdrop, the Israelites had gone through a period of intense suffering and had thus learned the hard way that God’s anger against their sin meant that, even if they lived unusually long lives, their best years would be but toil and trouble that would soon be gone, and then they would fly away (verse 10).

Good But Unfathomable Providence

Ecclesiastes is best understood “as an arresting but thoroughly orthodox exposition of Genesis 1–3,” as David Clemens observes. In particular, it makes “the painful consequences of the fall . . . central,” clarifying how disconcerting life after the fall can be. The Preacher knows that God generally administers his providence through the world’s regular causal processes (Ecclesiastes 1:4–7, 9). Fools and sluggards generally get what they deserve because they refuse to conform to creation’s ordered patterns (Ecclesiastes 4:5; see also Proverbs 6:6–11; 20:4; 24:30–34). Wisdom is better than folly because the wise understand and honor those patterns and thus can see where they are going, while fools stumble around in the dark (Ecclesiastes 2:13–14).

But still, “time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). In other words, what God, in the course of his ordinary providence, ordains creation’s structures and processes to bring us, is not only outside our control but also beyond our finding out. Yet nothing can be added to what God does, nor anything taken away from it. “God has done it, so that people fear before him” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).

A healthy, holy fear of God’s providence thus keeps us humble and dependent as we acknowledge that he has so ordered life “under the sun” that, however hard we may strive to understand what was or is or will be, we won’t fathom much. “No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it” (Ecclesiastes 8:17 NIV).

More specifically, we can’t tell from what is happening whom God truly loves, since the same events happen to good and bad alike. In this fallen world, righteousness is not always rewarded, and wickedness doesn’t always receive the punishment it deserves: “There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous” (Ecclesiastes 8:14; 7:15). How God will apportion good and bad, joy and sorrow, ease and difficulty to each of us in our earthly lives exceeds our grasp (Job 9:1–12; Luke 13:1–5).

God Has Not Abandoned Us

The stark realism of Psalm 90 and Ecclesiastes may seem disheartening. Yet, the apostle Paul tells us that “everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (Romans 15:4 NIV). So how do these passages encourage us and give us hope?

They remind us that, since the fall, suffering is an ordinary part of human life under sin’s regime. God’s judgments in Genesis 3:16–19 anticipate some of the sorts of suffering that are now endemic to human life. Genesis 4 then drives home just how excruciating human life can be: Adam and Eve’s first son, Cain, murders their second son, Abel, and then is condemned to be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.

“Since the fall, suffering is an ordinary part of human life under sin’s regime.”

Yet we must not conclude that our lives will be nothing but unrelieved suffering. In addressing the pagan polytheists in Lystra, Paul reminds them that God had not left himself without a witness, “for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). Eve’s daughters will suffer physically and emotionally as they marry and have families (Genesis 3:16), but they may experience great joy in their marriages and families as well. Adam’s sons will always have to scratch out a living (Genesis 3:17–19), but the end of long days may still be satisfying if we have labored as we should.

Psalm 90 and Ecclesiastes caution us against expecting settled happiness now. Since the fall, even creation itself groans because of its subjection to the futility of sin (Romans 8:18–21). And so, if life gets bad for us, it isn’t a sign that Christianity is untrue or that God has abandoned us. In fact, when we have faced significant suffering and survived it, we often experience the opposite: we find we can rejoice in our suffering, knowing that it teaches us endurance, and that endurance makes us stronger and deeper in ways that prompt us to hope for our final and complete salvation as we sense God’s love for us through the presence of his Holy Spirit (Romans 5:3–5; James 1:2–3; 1 Peter 1:3–9).

Joy with the Morning

To be a Christian means to believe in our Lord’s bodily resurrection (Romans 10:9), and to believe in his resurrection entails believing in our own resurrections (1 Corinthians 15). Our hope for the ultimate redemption of our bodies is, as Paul puts it, the hope in which we were saved (Romans 8:24).

This hope, Paul tells us, keeps us from losing heart, for while “our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). No matter what is happening to us, we can recognize that it will ultimately count as little more than a “light momentary affliction” that is “preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 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” (2 Corinthians 4:17–18; Romans 8:18).

“Our suffering can and should prompt us to look up and long for what God has prepared for us.”

Our suffering, in other words, can and should prompt us to look up and long for what God has prepared for us. And what is that? It is a life of no more sorrow, no more tears, when sin and death will be no more (Revelation 21:4). It is the life of complete joy in communion with God that our Lord has prepared for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4).

Psalm 90 and Ecclesiastes encourage me to look only to God and not to anything or anyone in this world for every good thing (Psalm 90:13–17). They also assure me that, for those of us who have become his children through faith in his Son’s work, God’s anger against our sin will last for only a moment, while his favor toward us will last forever. While our weeping may last through the night, unending joy will come to us in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

Audio Transcript

Why does the Bible tell us not to be overly righteous? That is today’s question. It’s a sharp one from a perplexed Bible reader and pastor named Aaron. “Hello, Pastor John! Can you explain two texts to me? The first is this: ‘Be not overly righteous,’ which we read in Ecclesiastes 7:16. And square that with Peter’s lofty command: ‘As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy”’ (1 Peter 1:15–16). What would it mean to be ‘overly righteous’? Is the ESV translation accurate here? Here’s a little background story: I was laughing at a crude joke. I caught myself, and I turned and said to my Christian friend that I felt guilty for laughing at it. He said to me, ‘Well, doesn’t the Bible say not to be overly righteous? I think a little guilty laughing is fine.’ He was right about the text. But this statement didn’t sit well with me. How do these two texts hold together in your own mind, Pastor John?”

I’m glad it didn’t sit well with him. It doesn’t sit well with me either. My first thought when I heard this question was, “I should not try to answer this question, because I’m not sure what Ecclesiastes 7:15–18 means.” I remember over the years returning to these puzzling verses several times and coming away each time, after all my efforts to read the commentaries and do the work in Hebrew, saying, “Well, maybe I’ve got it, but frankly, I’m still not sure.” So, my second thought was, “Well, at least I should admit that publicly.” And I should make the difficult effort, I think, because there are a lot of verses in Ecclesiastes that I’m not sure about. The whole book is a little bit of a puzzle to me. But I think, in all fairness, I should give it a try so that we all have at least one plausible interpretation, even if we may not be sure it’s the only right one.

So here is Ecclesiastes 7:15–18:

In my vain life, I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.

Slightly Unrighteous?

Now, without any context and without any sense of what this author says elsewhere about righteousness and wickedness, I suppose you could say that these verses mean, “Well, be a little bit unrighteous: tell a few dirty jokes; laugh a little bit at the sinfulness that you see on the screen; be a little bit wicked; be a little bit unwise.” I suppose you could say, “Well, it’s what they say, and it must mean that.”

But that would fly right in the face not only of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, who told us that our righteousness better exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees or we’re not going to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20), and “be holy because your Father in heaven is holy” (see 1 Peter 1:16–17); it also flies in the face of what the writer of Ecclesiastes himself says, because he ends his book like this: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). And he adds this: “For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). In other words, he does not encourage just a little bit of disobedience — maybe just one or two commandments, or just a little white lie. That’s not what he says. In fact, he says every deed will be brought into judgment; every secret thing will be found out.

These are not the words of a man who thinks it is prudent to lighten up on our vigilance over the fullness of our obedience to God. The entire Bible, plus the context of Ecclesiastes itself, warns us not to think he is teaching us to be a little bit wicked, a little bit unrighteous, a little bit unwise. So we stand back and we say, “Well, what on earth does it mean, then?” Ecclesiastes 7:16 says, “Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?”

Righteousness of the Pharisees

Now, what if I paraphrased it like this? “Do not be greatly righteous, and do not be righteous with the aim of great righteousness, and do not become bloated with wisdom.” What would you hear in that paraphrase? Well, what you can hear in that paraphrase is my sense that what he’s getting at here is not a warning against true righteousness, or not a warning against avoiding wickedness, true wickedness, but a warning against a kind of righteousness that is excessive or great in the sense of being fastidious or lopsided or showy.

And as soon as I say that, I can’t help but hear in my own words the words of Jesus — and maybe that’s why I’m thinking it up, because those words are tucked away at the back of my mind — regarding the kind of distorted righteousness (perhaps he would say excessive righteousness), of the scribes and the Pharisees.

For example, Matthew 23:23–24:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

“We should not become so preoccupied with the minor aspects of righteousness that we neglect the major aspects.”

It’s not a stretch, is it, to call this over-much righteousness or excessive righteousness in an ironic way — righteousness that is super-vigilant over tithing every spice in the spice drawer, but neglectful of justice and mercy and faithfulness.

We all get this. We use language this way. Jesus could have easily said, with Ecclesiastes, “Be not overly righteous.” That is, don’t make yourself too wise because there is a kind of fastidious, lopsided, showy righteousness and wisdom that God abominates. So I don’t think the point of Ecclesiastes is that we should be a little bit unrighteous or a little bit unwise, but rather that we should not become so preoccupied with the minor aspects of righteousness that we neglect the major aspects, nor should we become so caught up in clever casuistry to justify our blind spots, like the Pharisees who had all kinds of ways worked out to do the kind of little bit of unrighteousness that they wanted to do.

And then in verse 17, to parallel verse 16, Ecclesiastes says, “Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?” I can’t help but think that he provided this audacious parallel to being overly righteous in order to draw out how wrong it would be to interpret the previous verse any other way than ironic. It’s just over the top, I think, to suggest he would be saying something like, “Just be a full, solid, wicked person — not excessive, just full, solid, normal wicked. Just be that.” It’s crazy. I mean, you cannot believe that this writer is saying that. I think he expects us to say, “Don’t you see this as irony in the way I’m saying this?”

Don’t Be a Fool

So instead, I think he’s saying something like, “Look, if you get the idea that the pendulum should swing from over-much righteousness to over-much wickedness, don’t even begin to think that you can lengthen your life by being a standout villain, a villain who isn’t just your average run-of-the-mill villain. Don’t even begin to think that I’m suggesting that you should be an over-much wicked person. It won’t work. You can’t save your life by being that way.”

“Let the things that are clear in Scripture control your thinking rather than the things that are unclear.”

And then at the end of that clause, he simply says, “Don’t be a fool.” And the reason that stands out is because he does not say, “Don’t be an over-much fool,” or “Don’t be an excessive fool.” He said that about righteousness; he said that about wickedness. He doesn’t say it about being a fool. And I think it’s his way of saying, “Hey, do you get what I’ve been saying? Only a fool would miss what I’m saying by thinking I’m commending a little bit of unrighteousness, a little bit of wickedness.”

But just a couple of cautions here at the end about difficult passages of Scripture (because this is one). First, let the things that are clear in Scripture control your thinking rather than the things that are unclear. You have a lifetime to get more clarity on the hard passages, but obedience is called for this afternoon — today. And the second thing I would say is to beware of those people that our friend referred to: beware of people who latch onto unclear texts to justify worldly behavior. This is not the evidence of biblical wisdom or biblical righteousness.

One of the most frustrating parts of my life is that I’m not as passionate about God as I should be. I imagine many Christians feel similarly. There are some, however, for whom this feeling goes deep and lasts long.

Some of us may find ourselves in the midst of a long stretch of feeling fairly indifferent about the things of God. We know that Bible reading, prayer, church involvement, missions, evangelism, and many other means of grace should capture our hearts, but we just can’t seem to get excited about them. We are spiritually apathetic. And while we may be aware of our apathy, we often find ourselves feeling helpless to pull ourselves out of it. It’s one thing to diagnose a disease, but quite another to heal it.

“Zeal — the antithesis of apathy — can be cultivated.”

Scripture is clear that we have a role to play in overcoming apathy. For example, Paul exhorts, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Romans 12:11). The assumption here is that zeal — the antithesis of apathy — can be cultivated. So, how do we find healing from crippling indifference?

Three Questions for the Apathetic

The path to healing begins with coming to grips with the causes of our indifference. While there may be many causes (and many permutations of causes), I want to pose three questions that may help diagnose the possible issues underlying our apathy.

1. Am I living in unconfessed sin?

One possible cause of spiritual indifference is the choice to walk in sinful obedience to God in some area of life. If we are unremorseful or unrepentant about our sin, we likely will find ourselves feeling cold, distant, and disinterested. Our experience of apathy, then, may be God allowing our fellowship with him to cool in order to snap us out of our sinful stupor and draw us to him in repentance. David writes,

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away     through my groaning all day long.For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;     my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer (Psalm 32:3–4)

David interprets the emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion he feels as the result of his silence regarding his sin. In a similar way, the source of our listlessness may not be as mysterious as we might think. Those who are cold to God are allowed by him to grow still colder.

“If we sow to satisfy our sinful desires, we should not be surprised to find ourselves feeling distant from God.”

Paul echoes this scriptural connection between sin and deadness when he cautions, “God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:7–8). If we sow to satisfy our sinful desires, we should not be surprised to find ourselves feeling distant from God and less enthusiastic about what matters to him. This is not to say that sin is always or even often punished with apathy. Yet we do well to remain open to the possibility that willful and unconfessed sin may be blunting our passion.

2. Have I neglected God’s means of grace?

I fear that sometimes we make spiritual growth overly complicated. It seems we are regularly trying to find the secret key that unlocks closeness to God and power in our spiritual lives. Yet in our search for that key, we often neglect the basics. What are the basics? Here’s one: “Read your Bible, pray every day, and you will grow, grow, grow.” In other words, hear God’s promises and commands, and then respond to him — this will make you more like him. Dallas Willard is correct when he writes,

We can become like Christ by doing one thing — by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself. If we have faith in Christ, we must believe that he knew how to live. We can, through faith and grace, become like Christ by practicing the types of activities he engaged in, by arranging our whole lives around the activities he himself practiced in order to remain constantly at home in the fellowship of his Father. (The Spirit of the Disciplines, ix)

What did Jesus do? He prayed, studied and meditated on God’s word, and regularly served others (among other activities). Those are the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life. They are some of God’s means of showering his life-transforming grace on us. If we neglect these, is it any wonder we are growing dull to God? Remember, it is those who meditate on God’s word day and night — that is, those who make this a disciplined practice — that are like vibrant trees planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:2–3). The less time we spend with a beloved friend, the less likely we are to have him on our minds and in our hearts.

3. What fills my mind daily?

If God is not filling our thoughts and occupying our attention daily, then what is? The reality is that we are always being formed. We are being shaped by everything that holds our gaze, whether we realize it or not. The problem for us is that we are regularly beckoned to fix our eyes on objects that really don’t matter much. We are in a culture where the peripheral and irrelevant are presented as meaningful and worthy of our attention. This is a problem for those wanting to maintain spiritual zeal.

In the foreword to his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, cultural critic Neil Postman contrasts the dystopian visions of George Orwell (1984) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) — and through them paints an insightful picture of the dangers we face today.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. (xix)

Our world is Orwellian and Huxleyan, but Huxley’s concern is relevant here. We have become a trivial culture and, unfortunately, triviality numbs us to the meaningful. In a world where everything is seemingly significant, what are we really supposed to care about?

Paul exhorts the Colossians, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2). In doing so, he calls them to continually carry with them the distinction between the trivial and the meaningful, and to set their minds on the latter. The problem with making everything important is that everything might become equally important. It becomes increasingly difficult to feel the grandeur of something that really is a big deal. As Postman writes, “The public has . . . been amused into indifference” (110–11). At a time when everything is posted, liked, commented on, and retweeted, we are slowly being conditioned to treat worthy things unworthily or, worse, to stop caring about anything. Does this describe you?

Again, I could have highlighted other factors that contribute to apathy (like fatigue, grief, doubt, and more), but I’ve highlighted these three, as they are among the most common in my experience. It may also be the case that apathy is a mere symptom of a greater issue. Even still, view these questions as a launching point for further reflection.

Overcoming Apathy

As I said earlier, we do have a role to play. What is it? How can we “lift our drooping hands” (Hebrews 12:14) and take steps to overcome indifference?

If the issue is unconfessed sin, own the sin before your Lord and before someone else. Confess. Repent. Receive God’s forgiveness for you in Christ (1 John 1:9).

If the issue is a lack of spiritual disciplines, start small, but start somewhere. If Bible reading has become stale, shift gears and try listening to an audio version. If prayers have become repetitive or you don’t know what to say, pray the Psalms or grab a hymnbook and pray those songs as if they are your own heart’s desire. Shake things up. But start somewhere, anywhere. These are just small ways to fight the good fight of the faith (1 Timothy 6:12).

If the issue is filling your mind with too much triviality, consider fasting from Twitter, other social-media platforms, or even your phone (for a short season). Seek to cultivate a sense of meaning by only reading long-form material — that is, edited articles or books that require you to slow down, reflect, and respond thoughtfully. We are in a crisis of meaninglessness, and we exacerbate it by being less reflective and more reactive. Give yourself the time and space to be “renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23).

As with most parts of the Christian life, the solutions may be straightforward but not easy. This is especially the case for the apathetic, for whom motivation is the main issue. So, it’s worth repeating: start small, and then pray that God will enable you to take more steps forward and sustain you in continuing those steps. He is at work in you to will and to act for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).