Audio Transcript

Why does God hide himself from believers? It’s a question we have touched on, on the podcast, but we need to address it head-on. We do so today through a question sent to us from James, a listener in Toledo, Ohio.

“Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast. Way back in APJ 338, you said God sometimes chooses to withdraw from us his ‘manifest, experienced, known, tasted’ sweetness of his presence. But you also said that God never leaves or forsakes his people either. So God never forsakes his people, but he sometimes withdraws from them the sweetness of communion with him. He hides his face, as the psalmist says in about a dozen places.

“In that episode, you demonstrated conclusively why this dynamic is equally at work in the old covenant and new covenant. At the end of it, you said God has ‘his reasons for doing this,’ but that ‘maybe there would be another time for us to talk about that.’ That was eight years ago. I don’t know that you have addressed it since. Can you explain some reasons why God would intentionally hide his face from us?”

So important. Let me repeat the very, very crucial central statement that he made. He said this: “So God never forsakes his people, but he sometimes withdraws from them the sweetness of communion with him. He hides his face, as the psalmist says in about a dozen places.” His question is, Why would God do that to his own children?

God Hides His Face

First, let me make the case that he already accepts. He doesn’t need me to make the case. But my guess is some of our listeners are saying, “Really?” There is evidence in our very songs that we sing these days that there’s disagreement about this. For example, Edward Mote wrote this great hymn, which most of us would recognize, 150 years ago:

My hope is built on nothing lessThan Jesus Christ, my righteousness;I dare not trust the sweetest frame,But wholly lean on Jesus’s name.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;All other ground is sinking sand,All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils his lovely face,I rest on his unchanging grace;In every high and stormy gale,My anchor holds within the veil.

That’s what he wrote: “When darkness veils his lovely face.” Then about a decade ago, a group (I won’t name them) adapted this hymn, and we sing it now, I think, under the title “Cornerstone.” And it goes like this:

My hope is built on nothing lessThan Jesus’s blood and righteousness.I dare not trust the sweetest frame,But wholly trust in Jesus’s name.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,All other ground is sinking sand;All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness seems to hide his face,I rest on his unchanging grace.In every high and stormy gale,My anchor holds within the veil.

So Edward Mote, who wrote the hymn, wrote, “When darkness veils his lovely face.” And the group thought they could improve on that and do better, and they say, “No, actually we are going to sing, ‘When darkness seems to hide his face,’” as if it doesn’t really happen. Well, there’s disagreement. That’s the least you can say: there’s disagreement about that.

Why would that be? My guess is that those who think darkness really doesn’t hide his face but only seems to hide his face would probably also reject William Cowper’s verse in his great hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” — one of my favorite hymns. Here’s what he wrote:

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,But trust him for his grace;Behind a frowning providenceHe hides a smiling face.

Now, Cowper not only says that darkness hides God’s face, but that God hides God’s face. Behind a frowning providence, he — God — hides a smiling face, which is what the question is: Why would God do that?

He Disciplines the One He Loves

I think Cowper’s understanding is right in the way God relates to his people. God is never wrathful toward his forgiven, justified, redeemed, loved, secure children. Christ has absorbed all of God’s wrath, and we have passed out of death into life. We have moved beyond judgment because the death of Christ is our condemnation. We don’t bear it anymore. We have been transferred into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Therefore, God delights in us as his justified, forgiven children. But that delight does not exclude disapproval of behaviors and attitudes that don’t reflect the glory of the Father in his children, and it doesn’t exclude discipline of his children.

So Proverbs 3:12 says, “The Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” That’s amazing! We reprove the very son in whom we delight. In the New Testament, the book of Hebrews quotes that very proverb in reference to the suffering of Christians and says,

Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,     nor be weary when reproved by him.For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,     and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Hebrews 12:5–6)

“God delights in us as his justified, forgiven children. But that delight doesn’t exclude discipline.”

And that discipline sometimes includes seasons of spiritual darkness when God turns his face away — for example, when he turns his face away from answering our prayer, as in James 4:3: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

In other words, “I’m looking away from that prayer. Your attitude and your motives are so corrupt that I’m looking away from that sinful request.” That may feel like darkness. That may feel like a season of darkness, because it is — when his face turns away, there’s a cloud.

Why He Turns Away

So let me give three reasons why God may turn his face away from time to time and give us over to seasons of perplexity, confusion, and darkness.

1. To teach us the value of his presence.

He does it to teach us the value of his precious presence by withdrawing it for a season. In Ephesians 1:18, Paul prays for the Ephesians that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened to know God. He’s praying for Christians. He’s praying for Christians because the brightness and the light of God’s preciousness is not always as clear as it should be or as we want it to be.

So he asks that we would know God as we ought to know God — know the sight of his face as we ought to know the sight, with the eyes of the heart. He asks that fresh glimpses of the worth and beauty and greatness of God would be given to us and that we would cherish him more because of having lost sight for a season.

2. To show us our own weakness.

He does it to teach us our own weakness in holding fast to Christ and keeping a clear view of his face — our weakness to keep a clear view of his face — so that we are humbled and made to realize how utterly dependent we are on God to keep his face before our heart’s eyes. That’s why Paul’s praying. It’s God doing.

“God allows us to taste that former darkness so that we will come trembling back to the word, and prayer, and the cross.”

At the end of the book of Jude, Jude 24–25, Jude soars with the most beautiful doxology in the Bible, and all of it is because of how amazed he is that God and God alone can keep us from stumbling and present us before God’s face — God’s glorious face. So, I think from time to time he allows us to slip into darkness so that we realize how desperately dependent we are on his grace for seeing him, which Jude so powerfully celebrates.

3. To remind us of our great salvation.

Finally, I think he does this to remind us what it was like to be lost without Christ. In Ephesians 2:12, Paul commands us, “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ.” He never wants us to forget what a wonder it is that God has revealed his beautiful face to us, removed separation, stepped in, lifted the veil, and made his face bright to us in the gospel.

So, from time to time he allows us to taste that former darkness so that we will come trembling back to the word, and prayer, and the cross, and lay hold on God in a fresh way and love our salvation more than ever.

So my prayer for all of you, all our friends who listen to these programs, is that when you walk through such a season, you would do what Isaiah 50:10 says: “Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.” Because as Hosea 6:3 says, “His going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

We have surrounded ourselves with screens. On the desk. In the family room. Even in bedrooms and kitchens. Increasingly in automobiles. One for every passenger on the airplane? And most importantly, hitchhiking on our person everywhere we go, the Precious in our own pocketses and handses.

Once upon a time, screens came attached to heavy, unwieldy boxes. Not anymore. Now they’re as thin as picture frames, and thinner. Some of us can count more screens in our homes than wall décor.

We are living in stunningly image-driven and visually-oriented times. We do well, then, to query ourselves regularly, and thoughtfully, about what images we’re allowing to pass before our eyes, and how they are shaping us. Moving pictures are powerful. They can arrest and extract attention we don’t mean to pay them (say, at a restaurant). And our habits related to screens don’t leave us unchanged.

Yet, in such days, it could be easy to be captivated by the screens and overlook the deeply formative and re-formative power of the great invisible medium that accompanies them: words. Words, especially spoken words, are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.

Words for Good, and Ill

Perhaps even more than our other four celebrated senses, our ability to hear makes us deeply human.

“Words are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.”

After touch (at three weeks), hearing is the next sense to develop in the womb, at about twenty weeks, and it is widely considered to be the last sense to go while dying. Which makes sense for us as creatures of the Creator who is (amazingly!) a speaking, self-revealing God. First and foremost, he made us to hear him, to receive and respond to his words. He created the world, through words, saying, “Let there be light.” He speaks new creation into our souls by effecting new birth through his word, the gospel (James 1:18; 2 Corinthians 4:6). And he grows and sustains our souls in the Christian life through his words (1 Corinthians 15:1–2; 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

When the serpent slid into the garden, he didn’t show Eve an Instagram video, or perform a TikTok dance. He spoke. He slid his poison into her heart through her ears. After all, God had spoken to create the world. He had given Adam instructions through words about how to live in the world. So too, when Satan attacked, he came with something more perilous than a sword or boulder. He came with words, leaning on the stunning power of the audible and invisible, seeking to unseat God’s words. “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1).

Who’s in Your Head?

In our day of striking media saturation and consumption, we will do well to remember the profound shaping, world-changing power of words.

Whether they are the words accompanying television and YouTube, or the written words of articles and tweets, or the purely audible media of podcasts and audiobooks, words form and fill our inner person, penetrate deeply, and quickly shape our desires, decisions, and outer lives — the whole of who we are. It’s not a matter of whether words are shaping us but whose.

Whose voice — whether through audio or written words or video, or old-fashioned face-to-face talk — whose voice is most regularly streaming into your ears, and going down into your soul? Whose voice captures your finite attention, and focuses you, or distracts you? Which voices do you long to hear most? Whose words are you welcoming most to enter into your soul, to sow seeds of life — or death? Whom do you welcome into that intimate space that is your ear?

Entertaining Demons

Do the words you hear and cherish most “follow the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2)? Are you becoming “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2) rather than “transformed by the renewal of your mind”? How “highly online” and “Internet-formed” are you? Some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2), but are we showing hospitality to demons?

Two lines from a recent Gospel Coalition email stopped me in my tracks:

Internet-formed Christians are increasingly being catechized by partisan politics and secular pop culture. The result? Divided and fragmenting churches, declining church membership, and weary leaders.

It stopped me in my tracks as a spot-on diagnosis. Christian parents, pastors, and disciple-makers were once the most formative catechizers. What happens when the words, and perspectives, of television and the Internet shape Christians more than their churches? We’re already seeing it.

Whose Words Are Changing You?

For many, the fight for faith in this generation — to not only survive but thrive as a Christian — is about not just what we see, but perhaps just as pressing (if not more so), what we hear and to whom we listen.

God made us for the gospel, which is first and foremost a message to hear. “Faith comes from hearing,” says the apostle Paul, “and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). And how did you receive the Spirit? “Hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:2). “He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you” does so not “by works of the law,” he writes, but “by hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:5). The voices we habitually allow and welcome into our heads have profound shaping power. “In the sensorium of faith,” writes Tony Reinke in his book on today’s countless visual Spectacles, “the ear is chief” (148).

“Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become like tomorrow.”

A new year is as good a time as any to take inventory of the audible voices and written words we encounter daily, especially those we habitually choose. Whose words do you welcome? Whose words do you not only hear, but listen to with rapt attention? Whose words fill your social feeds and podcast queues? What do you listen to on the way to work, or while you walk, exercise, or clean? To whom do you turn for advice? What podcasts, what shows and series, what musicians, what audiobooks? Are your choices governed by the pursuit of entertainment, or the pursuit of God? Instant gratification, or progressive sanctification? Shallow, mindless consumption, or careful, thoughtful growth?

Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become more like tomorrow. As Jesus himself says seven times in the Gospels, and then seven times more in Revelation, “He who has an ear, let him hear.”

New Year’s Defiance

As we continue to sort out the effects of new media and algorithms, and how the Internet shapes Christians and our churches in particular, we do have one clear, simple, ancient, decisive act of defiance.

To those of us willing to hear and heed the cautions, the solution, of course, is not to plug the ears that God has so wonderfully dug, but to open them and eagerly receive words and voices that are true, good, life-giving, balanced, and Christ-magnifying. Even more important than what we keep out of our heads, and hearts, is what we fill them with — and none are more worthy than the words of God himself.

God made us to meditate, not flit endlessly from one message to the next. It is a remarkable design feature of humans, that we can pause and ponder, ruminate and think, that we can stew over truth (and not just lies), and over the good God has done (and not just the evil of others). Perhaps, if you’re honest, you find your mind fragmented. Texts and notifications, tweets and memes, audio and video ads and clips seem to have eroded your capacity for serious, meaningful attention, and you’re not sure where to turn next, but just hit refresh. Make the word of God be where you turn.

Make his voice, in Scripture, the first you hear each day. And his voice, above all, the one that you welcome most, and try to take most deeply into your soul through his words. Let his words be your unhurried meditation, in the morning, and the place you return to regain balance in spare moments. Pray for, and aim to have, his word be “on your heart,” and central in your parenting, and present in conversation, with you “when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).

Discover Good

Let meditation on God’s word be one great new-year’s act of defiance in our media-driven age. Half an hour of such unhurried, even leisurely, lingering over and enjoying God’s words just might fortify your soul for the unavoidable drivel of distant dramas, hot takes, and idle words we seem to encounter at every turn in this world. “Whoever gives thought to the word will discover good, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord” (Proverbs 16:20).

You will find, over time, that God can indeed restore what the locusts have eaten. He can rebuild your mind, and your capacity for focus and sustained attention, and he can restore your heart, and give you wisdom and stability.

How different might the next year be because of what you resolved to do with your ears?

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14991835/can-imperfect-christians-please-the-lord

As I walked briskly through downtown on a cold January morning, I asked my friend, a family lawyer, a typical small-talk question: “How are things at work?”

“It’s our busiest time of year,” he responded, “so I’m currently getting crushed.”

“Really?” I said. “That surprises me.”

“The week kids return to school following the holiday break, our office gets hammered with divorce inquiries,” he said glumly.

Initially, I was shocked. Yet as I thought more, I realized his experience as a family lawyer matched my own as a counselor and pastor. My email inbox, text messages, and voicemail go crazy in the days and weeks following the new year. Before you know it, if someone wants a counseling appointment, they are being booked into the spring.

Five Shades of January Blue

Why do so many people feel crushed after the holidays? Why are so many people hurt, sad, angry, and confused coming off a season usually marked by joy, peace, and anticipation? In my counseling, pastoring, and experience with my own heart, I’ve encountered at least five reasons January can hit us so hard.

Exhausted

First, some are simply exhausted coming out of the holiday season. We planned and attended parties. We acquired gifts. We made mad dashes to stores because someone was left off the list, or one kid had too few items. The church calendar teemed with a plethora of worship services and events from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve, half of which required some sort of extra practice or manpower. The pace of these responsibilities and opportunities, especially in contrast to the rest of the year, can seem breakneck, leading to an exhausted, strung-out feeling when the second week of January hits.

Hopeless

Second, the holidays themselves can become the foundation of our hope rather than just an expression of our joy. We can end up hoping in the sights and sounds, the people and presents, instead of simply enjoying these gifts. Anticipation of favorite flavors, favorite carols, favorite people, and what we hope will be our favorite new possession can propel us through this busy season. But when the food is eaten and the last carol has been sung, when people return to their normal lives and the presents turn out to be just more stuff to fill our homes, our spirits can crash as our hope seems to evaporate.

Dark

Third, do not discount the power of darkness. I’m not speaking metaphorically about Satan and his minions; I mean actual darkness. In the Northern Hemisphere, the short days and long nights can dramatically influence our mood and energy level. This change is just beginning to happen when the holidays arrive, but as we emerge from the holiday season, the nights are long and cold, the days are often dreary, and the world around us seems bare and lifeless as winter has had its effect. All of nature seems to reflect something of our internal assessment that life is a sad, dismal affair.

Lonely

Fourth, while the parties, worship services, and service opportunities may be demanding, they do get us around others consistently. Conversely, once the holidays are over and life returns to normal, many of us find ourselves living our modern lives of relative isolation. No more groups of people laughing and merrymaking — instead, one day bleeds into the next while we retreat to our secluded abodes, and the voices of friends and family are replaced by the digitized voices of our favorite on-screen characters.

Disappointed

Last, while the holidays can be a time of exuberant joy and excitement, for many they turn into another season of disappointment. Family interactions are difficult and painful. Husbands and wives who hope the holidays will provide respite from seasons of bitterness and disdain discover new occasions for those feelings to grow stronger. The hustle of busyness can hide a desperate loneliness. Movies, songs, and made-for-television specials trumpet how happy this season was meant to be, and you feel anything but.

Restoring Our Souls

If the holidays can leave us feeling exhausted, hopeless, dark, lonely, and disappointed, what are we to do? Praise the Lord, he does not leave us alone to muster ourselves through the January blues. Through his word, he gives us guidance for how to restore our souls.

Rest

If exhaustion is one of the primary culprits of the post-holiday crash, then one of its antidotes is genuine rest. By genuine, I do not mean simply ceasing activities, as that often accelerates the decline. Rather, I mean intentionally engaging in those activities that restore the soul, bring peace, and reinforce the safety we have under the restful yoke of Christ (Matthew 11:28–30). Putting ourselves at the feet of Christ intentionally — through worship, prayer, scriptural meditation, fellowship, singing, and even serving — strengthens and enlivens our souls.

“If exhaustion is one of the primary culprits of the post-holiday crash, then one of its antidotes is genuine rest.”

At the same time, rest is not merely a spiritual reality, but a physical one. When the fleeing, exhausted Elijah was so tired he wished his life away, God granted him the physical gifts of sleep and food (1 Kings 19:4–8). The holidays bring with them many added tasks, late nights, and imbalanced meals. If you are feeling exhausted from this season, allow your body as well as your soul a season of recovery.

Refocus

The holidays are a season of joy, and rightly so. But when a passing joy becomes the foundation of our hope, we set ourselves up for disappointment, hurt, and hopelessness. If you fail to find hope in the wake of the holidays, it may be time to readjust your heart’s focus beyond the holidays themselves.

The shining star over Bethlehem points us to the empty tomb in Jerusalem: what began in a wooden manger finds fulfillment on a wooden cross. Only when our hearts are swept up by the hope of our risen and ascended Savior will the holiday season not be the end of our joy but merely its beginning.

Recover Light

As the season’s darkness lingers, and our bodies and souls seem to languish, many of us need to be more intentional about finding light. As with rest, this truth is both spiritual and physical. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) — and the more common subsyndromal seasonal affective disorder (SSAD) — may seem silly to some, but many who live in regions where sunlight is sparse know its effects. Recovering light physically may include getting outside while the sun is out, using daylight lamps, and even taking vitamins.

Spiritually, recovering light means bathing our souls in the glittering beauty of the gospel. Isaiah pleads with his hearers, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:5) — and Jesus, twice in the Gospel of John, affirms, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5). Someday, when he returns to be with his people, we will live in a city that knows no darkness: “The city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). That lamp will abolish SAD and all dark-driven sadness. Until that day, our souls need the Son as much as our bodies need the sun. Do not let the darkness of the season rob you of the light to be found in worship.

Reconnect

If you find yourself down because the season’s gatherings have ceased, and life has returned to its lonely norm, strive to reconnect in meaningful ways. While holiday get-togethers are fun, they have limited ability to provide the sort of “one-another” support Scripture is so interested in creating (see, for example, Romans 12:10; Galatians 6:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:11).

“Genuine Christian community is the reality to which all other get-togethers can only point.”

God made us to belong to a group of believers with whom we can be candid in the joys and sorrows, in the crushing stress and sheer boredom of life. Locating these communities may be difficult. Connecting with them may be awkward. And meeting with them may be inconvenient. Nonetheless, genuine Christian community is the reality to which all other get-togethers can only point.

Reshape

Many of us struggle to keep our expectations in check when we are inundated with the message that the holidays should be the greatest season of joy and satisfaction. No reality, on this side of glory, can measure up to such a fairy tale. While the season may bring some special joys, for the most part, our lives and the people in them will continue to be what they were before the holidays. Contentious relationships will likely continue to be so, and lives that cannot be satisfied by the things of this earth will return to their normal level of discontentment.

But we are not consigned to frustration, hurt, or even boredom. Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians,

I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. (Philippians 4:11–12)

How does Paul accomplish such personal resilience? By nurturing his relationship with Jesus Christ and setting his expectations on a life that reflects the character of Christ, even in hunger and need (Philippians 4:13). The key to not getting crushed in a disappointing holiday season is to reshape our hearts to find ultimate satisfaction not in the trifles of this world, fickle and frail as they are, but in the glories of the next. For there, and there alone, will our expectations not only be met, but abundantly exceeded.

A recent experience stirred in me a desire to share a word for fathers. I have fathers of younger children particularly in mind, those on the front end of their fathering days, when a man is seeking to establish godly habits so that, by his example, his children might see the shadow of their heavenly Father. This word, however, is also relevant to fathers of teens and young adults, like me, as well as for elderly fathers whose children are well into adulthood. I hope even those in situations where a father is absent will be able to draw out applications for themselves.

But before I unpack this threefold word of biblical counsel, allow me to share my recent experience with you, since it both inspired and illustrates what I have to say.

Because I Love You

One Friday morning a few months back, I sent a text to my sixteen-year-old daughter, Moriah. Before sharing the text, let me share a bit of context.

I began giving each of my five children a weekly allowance when they were around the age of seven. Then, at different points as they grew older, I sought to help them put age-appropriate budget structures in place to equip them to handle money well. When each approached age sixteen, I let them know that their allowance would end when they were old enough to be employed.

A few days before I sent my text, Moriah began her first job, which meant it was her last allowance week. So, early that Friday morning, I transferred the funds into her account. I wasn’t at all prepared for the tears. Why was I crying? I tried to capture why in this (slightly edited) text I sent to her shortly after:

I just transferred your allowance into your account. In the little memo window, I typed “Mo’s final allowance payment,” and suddenly a wave of emotion hit me, catching me by surprise. I’m standing here at my desk, alone in the office, my eyes full of tears, swallowing down sobs. Another chapter closed, another little step in letting you go. A decade of slipping you these small provisions each week to, yes, try and teach you how to handle money (not sure how well I’ve done in that department), but also, and far more so (when it comes to this father’s heart), out of the joy of just making you happy in some small way. At bottom, that’s what it’s been for me: a weekly joy of having this small way of saying, “I love you.” I’ll miss it. Because I love you.

I still can’t read that without tearing up. I so enjoy every chance I get to give my children joy. As I stood there, trying to pull myself together, a Scripture text quickly came to mind:

Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9–11)

And as I pondered this passage, I thought of some friends who are fathers of young children and jotted down three lessons I wanted to share with them.

Pursue Your Pleasure for God’s Sake

God means for you to taste the great pleasure it gives him to make his children happy through how much pleasure it gives you to make your children happy.

“Fathers, become a student of what gives your children joy.”

So, pursue your pleasure in making your children happy! Give them good things — things they value as good and really want. And really, authentically enjoy doing it. It has God’s endorsement, since he too takes great pleasure in giving good gifts to his children.

What’s wonderful about this pleasurable experience is that, for a Christian father, it is multidimensional: we get the joy of blessing our children and the joy of tasting our heavenly Father’s joy in blessing us. This becomes an opportunity to exercise what C.S. Lewis called “transposition” (in his essay by that name in The Weight of Glory) — we see and savor the higher, richer pleasure of God in the natural pleasure of giving pleasure to our children.

Pursue Your Children’s Pleasure

God means for your children to taste how much pleasure it gives him to make his children happy through how much pleasure it gives you to make them happy.

So, pursue your children’s pleasure in making your children happy! Become, through your joyful, affectionate generosity, an opportunity for your children to experience transposition too — to see and savor the higher, richer pleasure of God in the natural pleasure of their father giving good gifts to them.

Become a student of what gives them joy. Watch for those few opportunities during their childhood to bless them with a lifetime memory (think Ralphie’s Red Ryder BB rifle in A Christmas Story). But know that often it’s the simple, smaller good gifts in regular doses that make the biggest, longest impact. Because the most lasting impression of any of the good things you give your children will be how much you enjoyed giving it to them.

This is important, because when, out of love for them, you must discipline them or make a decision that displeases them, or some significant disagreement arises between you, and they’re tempted to doubt that you care about their happiness, your history of consistent, simple, memorable good gifts, given because you love to do them good, can remind them that even now you are pursuing their joy. It can become an echo of Jesus’s words: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). And it will model for them that God too really does take joy in their joy, even when his discipline is “painful rather than pleasant,” since later it will yield “the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

“Often it’s the simple, smaller good gifts in regular doses that make the biggest, longest impact.”

If your children experience their father’s good pleasure in giving them joy, what is likely to stay with them, long after the good gifts are gone, is this: the gift you were to them. The real treasure wasn’t their father’s good things; it was their father. And in this is an invaluable parable, if our children have eyes to see.

Let Your Pleasure Speak for Itself

God means for your pleasure in giving your children pleasure to first speak for itself.

One last brief word of practical counsel. For the most part, avoid immediately turning the moments you give gifts to your kids into a teaching moment. Don’t explain right then that what you’re doing is an illustration of Matthew 7:9–11. Let your pleasure in giving them pleasure speak for itself, and allow them the magic moment when the Holy Spirit helps them make the connection.

In fact, don’t talk too much to them about your experience as such. Wait for meaningful moments, and then take them when they come. Like an early Friday morning text message to your sentimental sixteen-year-old while she’s sitting in a crowded high school classroom, forcing her to text back, “Stop! ur gonna make me cry!”

Audio Transcript

2022 has begun, and the start of a new year is always a great time to consider our habits, specifically which new ones we want to start. It’s a great time to ask, How can God’s word abide in me more deeply? What can I do? How can I improve here? And the answer — or one of the answers — is found in a sermon clip taken from John Piper’s sermon “If My Words Abide in You,” a sermon title taken from Jesus’s phrase in John 15:7.

The sermon was preached on January 4, 2009 — thirteen years ago, yesterday. It has the New Year in view, as you’ll hear as we now jump into the end of the sermon. Here’s Pastor John now, and he is here talking about Bible holsters. Have a listen.

The Holy Spirit awakens through the word — transforms through the word. “You have been born again . . . through the living and abiding word” (1 Peter 1:23). “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). So, new birth and sanctification are the work of God, not any other way than by the word. The word is huge.

Irreplaceable Connection

So you need to ask, “Well, how then does it work?” This is the word. So, I’m going to make a little harness, sort of like a pistol. I’m going to wear this all day on my heart, and I’m going to walk around. Will God sanctify this to me and transform me because I’m carrying it here? What’s the answer? The answer is no.

The answer is no because God created you with a brain. He didn’t have to. He created you with a consciousness. He created you with a will, and emotions, and thought. And the way he ordains for Christ to be magnified through his word is for there to be a connection created with the words of the Bible and our brains. Then the will and the heart. That’s it. If you just try to carry the Bible around and never read it, so there’s no connection between the meaning of these words and your brain, then it has zero effect in your life.

“Nothing can replace Bible memory in forging a connection between the Bible, our minds, and our hearts.”

“Meditate on the law of the Lord day and night” is because a connection is established. By the connection of the meaning of God in his holy word and my construction of that meaning in my brain, and its effect on my will and my heart, I’m changed by the Holy Spirit’s using all that seemingly natural process for our change.

So, my answer to “What’s all this got to do with memorizing the Scripture?” is this: when we memorize the Scripture, we make that connection between the Bible, our minds, and our hearts more constant, more deep, and more transforming. I’ll venture this. Realistically, nothing can replace it. Nothing can replace it — Bible memory — in doing what it was designed to do, in forging a connection between the Bible, our minds, and our hearts.

Rehearsing Uncountable Wonders

Closing testimony from Noël and me. On December 21, we celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary. We went away for two days, and among other things we read — this is funny — Psalm 40 and Isaiah 40. We talked. We talked about the year and the years. That’s what anniversaries are for, right? Past and future, taking stock, regretting, repenting, resolving. And we thought back how many times we had sat at a lunch, say at Eddington’s, or Famous Dave’s, or Leeann Chin, or Jimmy John’s. (This is our style.) We thought back how many times we did our date lunch on Monday and we sat across from each other and rehearsed for half an hour the pain of the years, and the reasons for discouragement now, and we never once quoted any Scripture at all.

Then we read in Psalm 40:5. We paused and we said, “We’ve never done this before. We are going to make a verse our year marriage verse.” We’ve never had a year marriage verse (if we have, I’ve forgotten it). We’re working on memorizing it, and for some reason I’m finding it a tough verse to memorize. “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us. None can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told” (Psalm 40:5).

“You will sink if you only listen to the voices of the circumstances that are giving you problems.”

Now here’s the relevance. The number of the wondrous deeds of God is uncountable. The number of his thoughts toward our marriage —his thoughts as our Father toward us, our children, our grandchildren, our marriage — the number of those thoughts is beyond counting.

And as a husband, though — this is a little tiny exhortation here to the men — I believe those lunchtimes of God’s silence is my fault. The number one responsibility of a husband is to lead with the word of God. When a thousand reasons are being accumulated and moped over for why we are sad, it’s my job to rise and call down some of the wondrous deeds of God, some of the thoughts of God, and proclaim them and tell of them. That’s what we decided we would do. So you can ask us in June or July, “How’s Psalm 40:5 going?” I went to my little Apple computer, and I entered it as a daily reminder for every Monday at 11 a.m. in the year.

His Better Voice

You will sink, folks — you’ll sink in your marriage, you’ll sink in your parenting, you’ll sink in your singleness, you’ll sink in your studies if you’re a student — you will sink if you only listen to the voices of the circumstances that are giving you problems. They speak so loud, and they have nothing good to say.

This is a very thick book. He has so many wondrous deeds and so many thoughts towards his children, hundreds and hundreds of thoughts towards his children. “I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told” (Psalm 40:5). Well, that’s my testimony and our marriage testimony. May the Lord make his word dwell richly this year.

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.

When we give someone our full attention — our patient, focused, self-forgetful gaze — we look a little like God. The glory of God consists partly in the fact that he, unlike the gods of wood and stone, pays attention to his people (1 Kings 18:29; 2 Chronicles 7:15; Psalm 34:15). No distraction averts his gaze; no interruption snaps his focus. The true God is a perfectly attentive God — and when we offer our full attention to others, we look a little like him.

At the same time, of course, our attention is amazingly unlike God’s. God can give his full focus ten trillion places at once; we must choose one among the trillions. God’s sight can range through all space and time; our two little forward-facing eyes frame our sight here and now. God can walk through the million-acre orchard of life and see every piece of fruit; we must stop before this tree, this branch, this apple.

Which means human attention is one of the most precious gifts we have to give. By it, we offer another creature the dignity of our loving regard. We humble ourselves to know and be known. We invite someone or something to stamp us, even for just a moment, with their unique, surprising existence.

And perhaps never more so than in an age like ours, when human attention is an endangered species.

Lessons for Stewarding Attention

Over half a century ago, the great Martyn Lloyd-Jones groaned,

The world and the organizations of life around and about us make things almost impossible; the most difficult thing in life is to order your own life and to manage it. . . . There are so many things that distract us. . . . Every one of us is fighting for his life at the present time, fighting to possess and master and live our own life. (Spiritual Depression, 209)

There are so many things that distract us. Lloyd-Jones had distractions like the morning newspaper in mind. What would he say of a society where most live with a newspaper-television-camera-telephone-radio-mailbox strapped to our hand? We are all fighting for our lives — and whether we realize it or not, fighting for our attention, fighting to possess and master and give our attention, rather than having it taken from us.

And fight is the right word, for the stakes are high. We cannot follow Jesus without giving him our attention (Mark 4:24; Hebrews 2:1). We cannot become like Jesus without attentively beholding him (2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 12:1–3). And we cannot love like Jesus without offering others our unhurried, undistracted, calm, attentive regard.

How then can we steward our limited, precious, endangered attention? In short, by living as humans made in the image of God, rather than as gods made in the image of the Internet.

Simplify your inputs.

If you’re like most people in the digital age, you take in far too much information every day — at least, far too much information to process, much less store as long-term knowledge. You wake up every morning subtly tempted to attend to the world as God does. And as always, those who reach for deity forfeit their humanity: by trying to give our attention everywhere, we weaken our ability to give it meaningfully anywhere.

“By trying to give our attention everywhere, we weaken our ability to give it meaningfully anywhere.”

We could look for support from neuroscience, which assures us that an abundance of information, especially the kind shot at us from the Internet’s hundred firehoses, impoverishes memory and addicts us to distraction. In his landmark 2010 book The Shallows, for example, Nicholas Carr writes, “The influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal lobes to concentrate our attention on any one thing” (194).

But neuroscience only confirms the anthropology we find in Scripture. Humans are far more tree-like than computer-like: information becomes knowledge and wisdom only as fast as water becomes fruit on the branch. Water cannot travel into roots and up trunks and through limbs in a moment; it takes time, and often requires the painfully slow process of meditation (Psalm 1:3). An abundance of information processed rapidly makes for distracted, superficial souls; a limited amount of information processed slowly makes for knowledge and that increasingly rare quality so lauded in Scripture: wisdom.

Consider, then, simplifying your inputs. Read less, but read better. Learn less, but learn better. Listen to less, but listen better. You cannot eat all the apples in life’s information orchard; you would be foolish to try. So make peace with your gloriously limited humanity, and learn to choose and savor just a few.

Prioritize near over far.

For most of history, humans had no choice but to give their attention to those people and things that lay near at hand. Adam and Eve not only did not know what was happening outside Eden; they could not know. There was no Ancient Near East Times back then. So, what could they do but spend their waking hours devoted to what they could see?

Today, we are just as limited as our first parents, with just as many hours in the day and just as much capacity for focus, but with billions more objects vying for our attention. We no longer need concern ourselves with people who can talk back or with the sensory world. We can spend all our time on the digital side of the globe.

Such availability, however, has not fundamentally changed our responsibility. Though we can know nowadays about matters far beyond the garden called home, God still holds us responsible, first and foremost, for how well we love, care for, and attend to those people and callings within arm’s reach.

What was once an inevitable fact of creaturely life now needs stating: proximity heightens responsibility. The Ephesians were to care for the whole church’s households, but especially for their own (1 Timothy 5:8). The Galatians were to do good to all, but especially to fellow believers (Galatians 6:10). Israel fell under judgment, not for neglecting Edom’s poor, but the poor within their own gates (Amos 8:4–6).

“What was once an inevitable fact of creaturely life now needs stating: proximity heightens responsibility.”

And if you are a normal, busy person, your nearest circles likely need all the attention you can give. Few of us can attend well to spouse and children, church members and neighbors, while also attending well to digital controversies, international news, and high-school friends’ Instagram posts. Something must give, and we need not feel guilty for prioritizing the near over the far.

Don’t just see, but notice.

The muscle of attention strengthens or atrophies, in part, during everyday, ordinary moments. What do you do when you arrive somewhere five minutes early, or when you wait in line at the grocery store? Like so many, I find myself reaching for my shiny pocket rectangle, that beloved window into distant realms. But this window is also a shutter, closing my eyes to the realm right in front of me.

Creation has grown dim to many. We see without seeing and hear without hearing. The world’s ecstasies have become a background hum; the color spectrum has turned to shades of gray. We have grown unrighteously unlike the God of Psalm 104, that Wonderer who never grows weary of gushing springs and valley beasts, branched birds and growing grass, schools of fish and the hidden deeps (Psalm 104:10–11, 12, 14, 25–26).

We have also become unlike the attentive Jesus, that Psalm-104 God made flesh. He had a way of noticing what others only saw, didn’t he? The disciples saw some birds and flowers; he noticed God’s fatherly hand (Luke 6:22–31). The crowds saw seeds and yeast; he noticed the coming kingdom (Matthew 13:31–33). The multitudes saw a blind beggar; Jesus noticed Bartimaeus himself, in all his desperate need (Mark 10:46–52).

In Jane Austen’s Emma, as the heroine finds herself waiting at a storefront with only a dull street outside, the narrator tells us, “A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer” (174). Yes, a mind lively and at ease — a mind attentive — need not reach compulsively for the pocket. It can do with seeing what seems like nothing, because in that “nothing” is the handiwork of God, ready to answer our gaze. Do you notice?

Live in the attention of God.

Scripture’s charge to “pay attention” almost always includes God or his words as the object. So, he calls his people to pay attention to “all that I have said to you” (Exodus 23:13), “my words” (Jeremiah 6:19), “the prophetic word” (2 Peter 1:19), or simply, “me” (Isaiah 51:4). Yet when we give him our attention, we find that he has already given us his (Psalm 34:15).

Perhaps many need a Hagar moment, a moment of waking up to the presence of El-Roi, the God who sees us (Genesis 16:13) — and in Christ, the God who sees us graciously, ever and always. We do not find, when we look to him, a God who gives us half his attention, or half of himself, but all: his full gaze, under his full grace, now and for endless ages.

Nothing so shapes our attention like living — daily, adoringly — in the loving attention of God. Turn your eyes upon him at first rising, and see his eyes turned to you. Speak to him in the day’s lulls, and find his ear open. Return to him before shutting your attention off for the night, and then lie down knowing his will not.

In 1539, about twenty-two years after the Reformation had begun, a Catholic cardinal named Sadoleto wrote a letter to Protestant Geneva, trying to convince the city to return to the Catholic Church. John Calvin had been a pastor in Geneva, but he was exiled the year before. Even so, Geneva turned to Calvin to write a response to the cardinal.

In it, Calvin identifies the main issue of the Reformation as this: the glory of God. Calvin says to the cardinal, “[Your] zeal for heavenly life [is] a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God.”

In other words, Catholic theology is man-centered, and does not honor God as it ought. “It is not very sound theology,” writes Calvin, “to confine a man’s thoughts so much to himself, and not to set before him, as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God.”

Three hundred and fifty years later, in 1891, New Testament scholar Geerhardus Vos identified this “zeal to illustrate the glory of God” as what enabled Reformed theology to grasp the fullness of Scripture unlike any other branch of Christendom. He said,

Reformed theology took hold of the Scriptures in their deepest root idea. . . . This root idea which served as the key to unlock the rich treasuries of the Scriptures was the preeminence of God’s glory in the consideration of all that has been created. (Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 241)

So this morning, on Reformation Sunday, and on Reformation Day itself, we remember our heritage as Protestants as “zeal to illustrate the glory of God,” as Calvin argued, and taking hold of “the preeminence of God’s glory,” as Vos later wrote. It is a sweet providence, as we continue our Exodus series, to open together to where Moses prays, “Please show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18).

From Ten Words to the Golden Calf

This fall we have journeyed from Exodus 20, the giving of the Ten Commandments, to the refracting of the Commandments in the case law of chapters 21–23, and to God formally making a covenant with the people in chapter 24. Then Moses goes up the mountain for forty days and nights (Exodus 24:18) and there receives God’s plan for the nation’s worship: detailed instructions for a traveling temple, called the tabernacle, along with its furniture and utensils, and garments for the priests and their consecration. All of this is in chapters 25–31.

Then we saw last week the screeching, tragic fall of Exodus 32. Just as God finishes speaking with Moses on the mountain, he informs him that the people “have corrupted themselves” (Exodus 32:7). “They have turned aside quickly out of the way that [God] commanded them” (Exodus 32:8). In their impatience, and pride, they “have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it” (Exodus 32:9). Within forty days of making a covenant with God, they have broken it, flagrantly. God says to Moses in 32:9–10, “Behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.”

Moses implores God not to destroy the people, for the sake of God’s own name and reputation, and in faithfulness to his promises. And God relents. At least for now, he will not wipe out the nation, great as their sin is. Chapter 32 ends with Moses wondering aloud whether atonement might somehow be made, whether God might somehow forgive their sin. That’s the question in the air as we come to chapter 33.

Reformation Truths in Exodus 33

On this Reformation Day, let me draw your attention to three great Reformation truths on which the account of Exodus 33 turns.

1. Total Depravity

First, the people receive a “disastrous word” about their sin and how it separates them from the holy God — which is not just a word for Israel. Look at Exodus 33:3–6, which begins with God saying,

“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey [so God is fulfilling his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob]; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’” Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

Stiff-necked. Twice God says here (to the people) what he had said (about them) to Moses in 32:9. Then: “Behold, it is a stiff-necked people.” Now: “You are a stiff-necked people.” It isn’t that chapter 32 made them stiff-necked. The great sin of the golden calf didn’t cause their necks to be stiff with pride; it revealed the stiffness of their necks. They were arrogant. They did not submit to God’s law and God’s timing. They were haughty. Stubborn with pride.

“In our sin, we do not have untainted hearts that can see God for who he really is and sin for what it really is.”

Another way to speak about this stiff-necked people, and the condition into which we ourselves were born, is the Reformation term “total depravity.” In our sin, whether at Sinai or in the modern world, we do not have untainted hearts, or untainted minds, with which to see God for who he really is, and sin for what it really is.

Total depravity does not mean we are as depraved as we could be, but that we are depraved in all our faculties. Sin has infected every aspect of our being. We do not have the ability to think or feel or choose or achieve our way out. We are “dead in our sins” (Ephesians 2:1, 5), “darkened in [our] understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in [us], due to [our] hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18). We are born totally depraved, as Israel was. Stiff-necked as Israel was.

Exodus 33:4 calls it a “disastrous word.” Because of their sin, God will not “go up” among them to the promised land. He will fulfill his word and send them on, but he will not be among them, lest his holiness consumes them. (This is a ray of hope, and Calvin would be pleased, that the people are not content to have the promised land without the presence of God — at least in this humbling moment.)

So Israel’s honeymoon with God is over. Their sin has been exposed; his holiness has been revealed. The nation has been humbled. They remove their ornaments in Exodus 33:4: “When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.” Now they know their sin, and what they deserve; now they will put away triumphalism and pretense, and walk with a limp, from Sinai to Canaan.

2. Unconditional Election

Moses’s advocacy for the people that began in chapter 32 comes to its culmination in his brief and audacious request in Exodus 33:18, and in God’s response in Exodus 33:19–23.

By this point, Moses is caught in the tension between God’s holiness and the nation’s need for mercy. On the one hand, the people deserve to be consumed. And God, in his holiness, cannot simply be among them, in their sin.

Given God’s holiness and the people’s sin, how can Moses confidently “go up” from Sinai to the promised land? Will this not end in disaster? So Moses wants to know more about this God. Who is he? What kind of God is he? Will he forgive? And so Moses says in Exodus 33:18, “Please show me your glory.”

God’s response, then, in Exodus 33:19–23 has two parts: a revelation and a limitation.

God’s Goodness Revealed

First, the revelation. God says,

“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’ [Yahweh, as we saw in Exodus 3]. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” (Exodus 33:19)

This is the kind of answer Moses was looking for. When God says, “I will make all my goodness pass before you,” he addresses Moses’s fear about the badness of the people, their depravity, their stiff necks. God does not point to the people’s lack of goodness, but to the reality of his own.

“God will uphold the covenant with his people — not because of their goodness, but because of his goodness.”

He will uphold the covenant with his people — not because of their goodness, but because of his goodness. His choice of Israel to be his people is not based on their deservedness. His election of his people is without their meeting any conditions. That is, unconditional election — true at Sinai, true of the church.

God is utterly free to choose whom he will as recipients of his mercy, with no external constraints. He is not dependent on Israel’s choice. He is not dependent on our goodness. He is free to choose any people, and any persons, he so chooses. You want to know why you can count on his commitment to his people? Not because of their goodness, God says, but because “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19).

And this goodness of God on display in his grace and mercy is his glory — his weight, his character, his heart. And this is the answer Moses needed to go forward. This is not on the people. And this is not on Moses. This is on God. He has chosen his people. He will see them through. His goodness and sovereign freedom in choosing whom he will sustains the covenant. And so the Reformation slogan was soli Deo gloria — to God alone be the glory.

So, God’s unconditional election of Israel was a precious word to Moses and to the people. And it is a precious balm to God’s people today, and especially to the weak in faith, to those who doubt, to those who are honest with themselves about their own lack of goodness, to those who wonder, “Can God really show someone like me grace? Can he really have mercy on me? Can he forgive? He knows how bad I am.”

If that’s you this morning, I want you to hear your Father reply, without equivocation, and with a smile, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19). Hear him say, “I choose you not because you are good, but because I am. Your badness cannot stop my choice. Your evil cannot spoil my freedom when I set my love upon you. I am free to show you mercy, free to show you grace, free to choose you, despite your sin; free to love you, however unworthy you feel.”

God’s Glory Concealed (for Now)

But God is not done. There is not only the answer Moses needs — the revelation — but also a limitation. God continues with “but” in Exodus 33:20–23:

“But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

Moses will get to glimpse the glory of God, but it will be only a glimpse — not God’s face, but his back. Moses may know more of God, but not all of God, a glimpse Moses will have to be content with for now. But God is not done revealing himself to Moses and to Israel.

As God has shown his glory in redeeming his people from Egypt, he will show his glory in preserving them in the wilderness for forty years, and in making the walls of Jericho fall, and in bringing his people into the promised land, and in delivering his people through the time of the judges, and in taking a humble shepherd boy and putting him on the nation’s throne. And God will show his glory as he justly punishes the nation’s idolatry in decline and exile, and when he raises up prophets to proclaim hope beyond exile.

And he will show his glory when he himself enters the world as a humble infant, laid in a manger, and lives in obscurity for thirty years. He will show his glory when he calls and trains disciples and heals the sick and proclaims good news. And climactically he will show his glory on a hill called Calvary outside Jerusalem, where God himself, in the person of his Son, bears the sins of his people — like Moses could not do — and takes upon himself all the destruction we deserved for depravity and stiff necks. And then the glorious God will rise again in triumph.

“What Moses could not yet see of God’s glory, we see far more fully in Jesus, especially at the cross.”

What Moses could not yet see of the glory, we see far more fully in Jesus, especially at the cross. When Moses cried, “Show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18), it’s as if God responds, “Just you wait. For now, Moses, I’ll proclaim my name. I’ll renew the covenant. You’ll see part. And one day, I’ll show you and the world far more of my glory.” And that glory is the gospel message that Jesus, who is God himself, died to save idolaters like us. The gospel of Jesus is the culminating revelation of God’s glory.

3. Alien Righteousness

Now, finally, with Jesus already in view, let’s marvel at the Christlike intercession of Moses in Exodus 33:7–17 as he leverages his own favor with God for the sake of the people.

Verses 7–11 create a striking tension with verses 1–6 and the “disastrous word” about the people’s stiff necks and depravity. Verses 7–11 present an amazing contrast in God’s favor on Moses. God has said to the people, “You are stiff-necked; if I go up among you, I’ll consume you.” Yet, the holy God speaks “to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11).

You might wonder at this point, Didn’t we just see in Exodus 33:20 that God said, “You cannot see my face,” and in Exodus 33:23, “My face shall not be seen”? But here, in Exodus 33:11, God speaks “to Moses face to face.” How? That’s a good question. As one wise commentator says about verse 23, “The attempt to describe the indescribable strains language to its limit” (Alec Motyer, Exodus, 299). And verse 11 includes “two idioms for direct communication” (Robert Alter, Hebrew Bible). The point is God’s stunning favor on Moses, and that Moses cannot see God without accommodating and limitation.

Watch, then, in Exodus 33:12–17 how Moses leverages his favor with God (he mentions it four times!) to intercede for the people — the people that God has been saying to Moses are “your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:7; 33:1):

When Moses asks in Exodus 33:12 about the identity of the angel, he slides in, at the end of Exodus 33:13, “Consider too that this nation is your people.”
Then in Exodus 33:15, after God has promised to go up with him, Moses moves from “me” to “us”: “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here.”
Then twice in Exodus 33:16, he identifies himself with the people: “How shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

In other words, Moses, knowing he has found favor in God’s sight, seeks to leverage that favor for the sake of the people. And God is not tricked by it but welcomes it. He’s prompting this from Moses, and he grants Moses his request. Exodus 33:17: “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

And if God would do that for Moses, how much more for his own Beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased (Matthew 3:17)?

Jesus’s Favor and Faith Alone

“Alien righteousness” is the term Protestants have used to talk about the righteousness on which we are justified, fully accepted, before the holy God.

On our own, we, like the people of Israel, are ungodly, stiff-necked, totally depraved, unrighteous. But Jesus Christ is righteous. He is God’s beloved Son. He has found full favor with God, and deservedly so. Christ is our righteousness before God. It is not our own. So, our righteousness is an alien righteousness, not native to us.

Jesus is not only the better glimpse of divine glory but also, as man, the better Moses who leverages his favor with God for the sake of his stiff-necked people, joined to him by faith alone.

Audio Transcript

Welcome to 2022 and to the first episode in our tenth year on the podcast. Amazing. I had no idea we were launching something that would last a decade. Here we are, Pastor John. The year begins with a question over idolatry, of all things. It’s a good one too. It’s from an anonymous man.

“Hello, Pastor John. What exactly is an idol? Christians use the term all the time, especially in sermons. So, I go to my Bible. There I find that idols were statues or figurines, worshipers bending down to ‘gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone’ (Daniel 5:4). Sometimes it seems idols were talisman-like items to ward off bad things — trinkets in the form of golden tumors or golden mice. I’m thinking here of 1 Samuel 5:6–7:2. But today’s idols are very different. They seem to be desires of the heart for money, sex, power, and things like that. How did this come to be? Idols used to be carved things; now they are heart obsessions. I don’t understand the link between statues and heart-idols. In fact, when I look at Old Testament idols of tumors and mice, I don’t really understand those either. Can you explain both forms of idolatry and how they’re connected?”

Well, I’ll try. Let’s start with a definition. I think to cover all the cases, we should probably define an idol (and I think this is a biblical definition) as anything that we come to rely on for some blessing, or help, or guidance in the place of a wholehearted reliance on the true and living God. That’s my working definition of idol. So you can see that would cover, for example, a rabbit’s foot in your pocket, or a picture of a saint hanging on your wall, or a relic from some sacred shrine sitting on your mantle, or the more forthright images taken from Hindu or Buddhist temples, or the golden calf that Aaron made while Moses was on the mountain.

What makes all of those idols is that we are looking away from a wholehearted reliance upon the true and living God through Jesus Christ, and we are looking at the rabbit’s foot, or the relic, or the picture for some special protection, or blessing, or guidance, or help that we don’t think we could get by just looking to God.

Anatomy of an Idol

Now, our friend who sent this question in is right, I think, that in the Bible the word idol is uniformly used for an actual object from nature or, more often, made by human hands. You don’t find the word idolatry used to describe excessive love for your wife, or your lands, or your money, or your pocketbook. So I think he’s right that in the Bible there’s this distinct focus on a manmade object or something from nature, rather than just this strong craving and desire for stuff.

Now behind that is, correctly, the second commandment:

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God. (Exodus 20:4–5)

In other words, God is so jealous for our direct, personal dependence on him, and reverence for him, and adoration of him, that he disapproves not only of competing so-called gods represented with idols, but even the creation of idols presuming to represent him — not just false gods being turned into statues, but himself being represented with some manmade object that we look to. I think if we ask why — that is, why is he so jealous for that kind of direct, personal dependence of reverence and adoration? — then part of the answer is found in Psalm 96:5: “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.”

In other words, one of the problems with idols is that they contradict the transcendent nature of God as Creator. Any representation of God made with human hands leads to the misunderstanding of God’s transcendence. It gives the impression, if not the direct assertion, that God is somehow in our power — we can carve him, or paint him, or put him in our pocket or on our shelf, or carry him on a cart. And so the psalmist says, “No! The Lord made the heavens.” In other words, he’s absolutely transcendent, and you can’t carve him or control him in any way.

Another reason why God is so averse to images, either of so-called gods or of his very self, is found in, I think, Psalm 115:4–8:

Their idols are silver and gold,     the work of human hands.They have mouths, but do not speak;     eyes, but do not see,They have ears, but do not hear;     noses, but do not smell.They have hands, but do not feel;     feet, but do not walk;     and they do not make a sound in their throat.Those who make them become like them;     so do all who trust in them. (Psalm 115:4–8)

“Not only do images misrepresent the nature of God, they destroy the nature of man.”

In other words, not only do images misrepresent the nature of God, but they destroy the nature of man. They turn human beings into mindless, powerless clumps of unspiritual flesh. We become like those statues. The nothingness of idols turns human beings into nothingness.

Exchanging God’s Glory for Images

So now we come to our friend’s question. Okay, if that’s what the Bible treated as idols, then “today’s idols,” he says, “are very different. They seem to be desires of the heart or for money, sex, power, things like that. How did this come to be? Idols used to be statues, not just heart obsessions.”

And I say, “Very good question.” How did that come to be? Here’s the first thing I would say — namely, that this change of focus in defining idolatry is owing to the fact that we live, in the West, in cultures where outright use of images for religious worship is less common than in some other cultures. So the question then arises, Well, do these biblical teachings about idolatry have any relevance for those of us who live in cultures where the use of statues before which people actually bow down and worship is less common? Is there any relevance to it at all?

The answer is yes. I don’t think the use of the term idolatry to refer to God-demeaning love of money, sex, power is a misuse of the term idolatry when one presses into the essence of what is really going on with an idol in the Bible. Here are a couple of New Testament pointers in that direction to show why I think it’s okay to use idolatry the way he says modern people tend to use it.

First, Romans 1:21–23 refers to people who don’t have direct knowledge of the gospel, but they do have general revelation in nature, so they can know God that way and be held responsible to glorify him and thank him. Here’s what it says:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Now, I think this text points to the essence of the problem beneath the outward display of idolatry; namely, we exchange the glory of God for images. The first kind of image that Paul mentions is images resembling man, and I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that the foremost image of man that threatens to replace God is the image we see in the mirror. We are lovers of self-exaltation, which threatens continually our love of God-exaltation. I think it’s right to call this exchange a form of idolatry.

Keep Yourselves from Idols

So, back to my broad definition. It went like this: anything that we come to rely on for some blessing, or help, or guidance, in the place of wholehearted reliance on the true and living God. If we come to crave, love, depend upon, and trust for a blessing people’s praise to enhance our self-exaltation, or money, or power, or sex, or family, or productivity, or anything else besides God himself for the greatest blessing, help, guidance, and satisfaction, then in essence we are doing what idolatry has always done.

“Anything in the world that successfully competes with our love for God is an idol.”

Let me give you one more passage from 1 John 5:21. It’s the very last verse of John’s letter, and it says this: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Why does John in his letter end that way? He had never even referred to idols in the whole book. He never referred to idols in his whole Gospel. Out of the blue comes this closing sentence with the very word idol that ordinarily means a statue of something that we use to replace God with. “Don’t give in to idols; keep yourselves from idols.”

So why did he end that way? Here’s my closing suggestion. He had said in 1 John 2:15–16, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world.”

Now, John the apostle may have had literal material images in mind when he said, “Keep yourselves from idols.” But I think he is also thinking of the more general deadly problem that anything in the world that successfully competes with our love for God is an idol. So keep yourselves from idols — that is, love God and all that he is for us in Christ more than you love anything.