God kept Pharaoh upright and pummeled him until he and his army drowned as a stone, why? Why do we need to read of judgments against Korah or tour the tombstones of those who fell in the wilderness? Why include stories in Scripture such as two she-bears mauling forty-two boys for mocking a bald prophet? Or in new-covenant times, why were Ananias and Saphira carried away dead? Why does an angel of the Lord strike down Herod and feed his body to worms? Why are people in the early church falling ill, or even dying, for misusing the Lord’s Supper? Is it not to teach us the fear of God?

The fear of the Lord has fallen upon rather apologetic times, it seems. “God is certainly not to be feared,” some say. “What is meant by fear is really something more like respect. You shouldn’t fear him as a lion uncaged in your living room, but only go to him as confidant, best friend, non-judgmental ear bent to listen.” Attempting to hold tensions in balance, the fearsomeness of God seems to get the short end. The Lamb, too often, undoes the Lion.

With this, God is robbed of worship, and we of rejoicing. In the new covenant, it is a blessing to fear the living God. The difference between the old covenant and the new is not that God should no longer be feared, but that now every covenant member actually does fear him. Holy fear serves our perseverance, imparts wisdom to our souls, secures our eternal happiness; no one will make it to heaven without this fear.

So, let us behold four beautiful glimpses from Jeremiah 32:38–41, a wonderful introduction to the strange and spectacular fear of God for Christians today.

New Hearts to Fear

I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever. (Jeremiah 32:39)

What is wrong with the world today? People do not love God, and people do not fear God, because people do not have new hearts alive to his glory and sensible of his power. Neighbor after neighbor lives in open rebellion against his Majesty and does not know how to blush. They will not cease their suicidal sinning, seek his will, or cry to him for mercy.

“Fear serves our perseverance, serves our everlasting souls, serves our eternal happiness.”

This is the story of the Old Testament. We witness generation after generation experience the misery of a people with God’s law in their scrolls but without God’s fear in their souls. Story after story details the cursed inability to tremble at God’s word. Though instructed repeatedly, “The Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread” (Isaiah 8:13), most would do no such thing. Over and over came the same heartache and distress because they did not fear God. They were too comfortable, too smug — too lighthearted to be good-hearted.

But notice the promise of the new covenant: “I will give them one heart and one way.” And why? “That they may fear me forever” (Jeremiah 32:39). They are given new hearts endowed with the fear of God. And this fear will not have an expiration date. God makes a people new that they may fear him forever.

Our Deepest, Longest Good

. . . that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. (Jeremiah 32:39)

Now, we may think this fear of God to be hard news. Perhaps our minds involuntarily recall relationships where fear was a tool for evil: the abusive father, playground bully, controlling boss. They used fear to manipulate, to coerce, to sting into submission. How can it be good news to fear God forever?

Notice the promise: “. . . that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them.” Oh, this is different. This fear serves his people’s good, as when Gandalf grew tall and menacing to convince Bilbo to give up the ring that would destroy him otherwise. He deepens his voice to persuade us from peril. The heart of this King is for you, for your good, thus he gives you this fear of him. Doesn’t this purpose make all the difference?

The good father, his children know, is not to be trifled with. The heavenly Father lashes every son whom he loves (Hebrews 12:6), not because he loves to scourge, but because he loves to save. He disciplines us for our good, that we might share in his holiness and live (Hebrews 12:9–10). Feel enough of his heart to trust him: this God does not spare discipline from us, but neither did he spare his Son for us.

And notice that this new-covenant blessing of fear spills over the edges to one’s family: “for their own good and the good of their children after them.” The fear God gives a man blesses those closest to him.

Why You Wake Up Christian

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. (Jeremiah 32:40)

Again, Israel received the law of God as written by the very finger of God and delivered by angels, and yet they could not keep it. They saw their God redeem with wonders the world had never witnessed, and yet these same people died in the wilderness because of distrust. God was undeservedly good to them, and yet without explanation or provocation, they kept turning from him. The Lord asks, “What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?” (Jeremiah 2:5). Our Old Testament shows us where we would be without the fear of God.

Yet gaze at the blessing: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them.” He swears not to turn away from doing good to us; he makes an everlasting covenant with us. But what about our turning from him, as Israel did so often? Here it is: I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.

Why did you wake up a Christian this morning? Because God put the fear of himself in you. You fear turning away from him, going back to the city of destruction, being a child of his anger, displeasing your heavenly Father, departing from the church and proving to never have truly been of his people. You believe God when he talks about hell. You believe God when he talks about heaven. And you fear him, not by shivering under an expectation of wrath, as though you had no basis for confidence before him (his love perfected in us casts out this kind of faithless fear, 1 John 4:18). Yet while we do not now quiver about the judgment to come, we still believe that if we should turn from him or shrink back, such would be our portion. We are not yet home.

So what is the fear of God in this text? A fear of turning from him that keeps us near him. New-covenant fear is adhesive to keep us walking happily with Jesus, our life and our joy.

The Heart of Him We Fear

I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul. (Jeremiah 32:41)

So, the fear of God is not a cringing fear, a hiding under the bed or cowering in the fetal position from a severe judge. Rather, the fear of God is a healthy understanding that if you turn away from God, it will be to the everlasting ruin of your soul, a ruin from his own hand.

But saint, the kind of God we fear makes all the difference in our fearing him. “That they may not turn from me,” God says — but who is the me? We read that he means good for us, but who could imagine what comes next? “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” Be undone; be staggered. Here is the God we fear forever: he who delights to do good to you with all his heart and all his soul.

He is the God whose rod and staff strike and destroy his enemies. This shepherd terrorizes lions and bears and wolves and thieves. Yet because of his love for you in laying down his life for you, this same power now comforts you and keeps you near.

He is still dangerous — he wouldn’t ease us through the valley of death if he weren’t — but he is not dangerous toward you as he once was. Christian, you are his sheep now, under the shepherd’s love. He says, “I will make them dwell in safety” (Jeremiah 32:37). But this does not domesticate him. As long as you stay true to him, as long as you continue to fear him, his rod and his staff will keep you along the path, calm you, and protect you from all that threatens you. His love turns his fearful qualities away from you — as long as you abide in his love.

Safe from the Storm

Years ago, on a bitter and perilous winter night, I watched snowflakes fall gently outside my window. They mesmerized me, yet I knew that for some outside that night, they would prove deadly. I wrote,

The window frames tools of torture,As they caress the ground,By love’s fire I’m found;Is this salvation?

This captures something of the paradox. It’s not that danger does not exist any longer — God is perilous to those outside. Rather, it means that he has overcome us with his love, seated us inside at his fires of grace, and there, we no longer expect to perish. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). But we do fear facing him if we were to abandon the shelter of Christ.

So, we fear him, but this is the God we fear. The God who wants us in the house with him. The God whose very heart longs to do us good. The God who, to secure our blessing, gives us an indispensable gift: the fear of him.

One afternoon, when my son Nathan was six, he announced that he had prayed and asked God to bring his friend Asa over to our house to play. I was tempted to call Asa’s parents and arrange for him to come over, but I didn’t. I also thought to temper my son’s confidence, but I held my tongue.

Then, as I stood in my dining room, looking through the window, a car pulled up and stopped in front of our home. The passenger door opened, and Asa jumped out and ran across our front yard. He had asked his mom to bring him over to see if Nathan could play.

Few things thrill a parent’s heart more than hearing a child pray with earnest faith. But how do we help our children get there? What builds their confidence to call out to a God they cannot see? And along the way, how might we guard against formalism and hypocrisy in prayer? Given how many books are written to help us adults pray, our kids will need a little help.

Model a Life of Prayer

Our children are watching us; they learn far more from our example than we realize. So, as you might expect, our example as praying parents and grandparents is our most important training tool. The best way to teach your children to pray is to demonstrate a praying life yourself.

I grew up watching my parents and grandparents pray. I loved to spend time at my maternal grandma’s house and have always been an early riser, so I was already up when she would get down on her knees and pray. On Sundays, when we visited my dad’s parents after lunch, we would interrupt their afternoon prayers if we arrived too early. Today, I have burned in my memory the picture of my grandparents and Aunt Gene sitting around the coffee table in their living room, praying.

My dad led us in family prayer. His confidence in calling out to God for help is where I first learned to trust God. I will never forget the difficult Friday morning when he gathered the children together to pray for my mom, who was in the hospital awaiting heart surgery. He shared the sad news that my mom had suffered a stroke after a heart catheterization before surgery. She could not speak and had become paralyzed on one side of her body. Through tears, my dad called us to pray.

I was sixteen at the time and prayed with confidence for God to heal my mom. The doctors gave us hope; though they canceled her upcoming surgery, they said my mom could recover and gain back her function within six months. Later that day, the doctors reported my mom’s full recovery and rescheduled her surgery for the next week.

With my own children, we prayed consistently for the salvation of my brother. It became a prayer my children often repeated without prompting. More than a decade later, at my father’s funeral, my brother announced his saving faith in Christ and attributed it to my father’s example. That taught my children about persistence in prayer better than any lesson I could give.

“The best way to teach your children to pray is to demonstrate a praying life yourself.”

The more we love Jesus, the more that love will spill out into our prayers — even traditional prayers like the Aaronic blessing (Numbers 6:24–26). While such prayers have their place, let’s be sure to pray with our hearts bent toward God. Do your best to consider God himself as you pray, rather than simply repeating something you’ve memorized. Your children can tell the difference.

Teach the Way of Prayer

In addition to modeling prayer, teaching our children about prayer is important. Consider four lessons you can teach your children to help frame their understanding of prayer.

1. Prayer is talking to God as Father.

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he gave them a simple prayer that encouraged them to approach God as their Father. Review the passage with your children and walk through the prayer to help them understand each part. (If you use Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11:1–4, you can also include the disciple’s request.)

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. (Luke 11:2)

God is our Father in heaven who, like a good earthly father, is ready to hear us. A great way to begin our prayers is to tell God how wonderful he is and pray for God’s kingdom to grow.

It is through believing and trusting in Jesus that we come to know God as our Father. We trust God as Father by believing in the gift of his Son. Through his death on the cross, the temple curtain was torn, opening the way for those who believe to become children of God.

Give us each day our daily bread. (Luke 11:3)

God wants us to ask him for daily needs like food, shelter, clothing, and grace to obey his commands — the things we need to help us follow him each day.

And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. (Luke 11:4)

We can confess our sins to God in our prayers and ask him to help us forgive those who have sinned against us.

And lead us not into temptation. (Luke 11:4)

We all face temptations to keep sinning. God invites us to pray that he would keep us away from these temptations.

2. God always hears us, but he doesn’t always give what we ask for.

God gives us what we need, not always what we want — but as long as we are trusting in Jesus, he always hears us. Consider teaching your children these Bible verses:

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. (1 Peter 3:12, quoting Psalm 34:15)

You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. (James 4:3)

This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14–15)

3. We don’t need to use long or eloquent prayers.

God already knows what we need before we ask him. Consider what Jesus taught:

When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:7–8)

4. The Psalms can teach us how to pray.

Teach your children that the Psalms are the recorded prayers of David and other Old Testament saints, given to lead us in faithful prayer. Among the most helpful psalms you can pray with your children are Psalms 1, 23, 63, 100, 121, 139, and 150.

Image the God of Prayer

Finally, alongside modeling prayer and teaching about prayer, image the God who hears prayer.

The generous, loving, patient earthly father teaches with his life that God is a generous, loving, patient heavenly Father. But the selfish, short-tempered dad has hammered a deep dent in his children’s understanding. Remember, God compares his willingness to hear our prayers with a father granting his son’s request (Luke 11:11–13).

When your children ask, “Dad, can you play catch with me?” or, “Can you tell me a story?” what is your typical reply? While we need not always say yes, we should strive to be known for saying yes. One of the greatest ways we as dads image forth the character of God is by welcoming the invitation to be interrupted and demonstrating a history of saying yes to our kids.

So, what do you do if you are an angry, impatient dad? I found myself in that place when my oldest children were in grade school. After confessing my sin to my wife, I pulled our family together and confessed to my kids. I shared that I had become an angry dad, and because of my poor example, we had become an angry family. I asked my children to forgive me. My wife followed with her own confession, and my four older kids did the same. From that day, we pledged to help one another and prayed for God’s help. Guess what? God answered our prayers with an outpouring of grace.

It is important to remember that we can train our children even through our failures. When we live godly lives, we provide an example for our children to follow. But if, when we fail, we confess our sins and run to the cross, we demonstrate the application of the gospel to our kids and help them know what to do when they fail. Whether by our godly example or by our confessed sins and failures, we can say to our children, “Come follow me.”

Unconfessed anger and impatience will mar our children’s view of God. But when confessed, those same sins showcase the gospel and give our children a well-worn path to the cross. Your humble prayers for forgiveness, like the tax collector’s, stand in stark contrast to the prayers of the Pharisee who thought he could do no wrong (Luke 18:10–14).

Praying with Daddy

I’m still an early riser, and I spend my time praying in the early morning. When our oldest children (twins) hit kindergarten, I realized that they rarely saw me pray. So, I started waking them up, one at a time, early in the morning to join Daddy to pray. Once in the family room, I would ask them, “What do you want to pray for?” Then I would pray out loud for their request and invite them to pray out loud. If they got stuck, I would help. After we finished, I would carry them back to their room and slip them under the covers. The whole process took about fifteen minutes, and I only did this once a week. But over time, all my children learned prayer by praying with Dad.

If you’ve been slacking in your devotions, start back up with daily Bible reading and prayer. Once you’re up and running again, consider inviting one of your children to join you. They will never forget praying with Daddy in the morning.

Audio Transcript

This week we are talking parenting. A mom’s role in raising boys — that was Monday, in episode 2045. And today, Pastor John, as I look ahead in our Navigators Bible Reading Plan, coming up on the docket here between May 20 and June 2, we’re about to encounter three long, detailed, and related stories of rebellion. Children who rebelled. I’m thinking of Absalom, Sheba, and Adonijah.

On this trio of rebels, back in 2018, in a tweet you said to parents: “Read to your children the stories of the rebellion of Absalom against David (in 2 Samuel 15:1–18:33) and the rebellion of Sheba (in 2 Samuel 20:1–26) and the rebellion of Adonijah (in 1 Kings 1:1–2:25). Then look them in the eye and say: ‘Rebellion against the Lord’s anointed never, never, never succeeds.’” These three long stories are loaded with cautionary details. Can you point out a couple of things that strike you that parents would press home to their children in such a reading? And I presume the “Lord’s anointed” here you refer to in your tweet is Christ himself — is that correct? What other lessons stand out as you prepare us to read these sections for ourselves and to make use of them in our homes?

I wrote that tweet because it seems so painfully obvious to me that young people — and I suppose, as well, old people — need to be warned not to go down a path that has proved over and over again to be a path of self-destruction. Young people don’t always see the outcome of a path that they’re on. They need to be warned. They may not heed the warning — these three in the story certainly didn’t — but they might. And whether they do or not, it’s the parents’ God-given duty to sound biblical warnings for their children.

Three Failed Rebellions

I was struck in this passage as I was reading through it, like I always do once a year. One after the other, rebellions arose against King David. David is the Lord’s anointed. How he relates to Christ we’ll get to in just a moment, but God has chosen David to be king over his people. Samuel had anointed him king, and God had clearly warned in Psalm 2 what a foolish and deadly thing it is to plot against the Lord’s anointed. It’s utterly futile. The Lord sits in heaven and laughs.

Nevertheless, Absalom (David’s son), Sheba (who’s called a “worthless fellow” from the tribe of Benjamin), Adonijah (David’s son born next after Absalom) — one after the other, these three men raised their hand in rebellion against the Lord’s anointed, and every one of them is killed because of it.

Absalom steals the hearts of the men of Israel right under David’s nose by promising them better justice than David was giving them. And he leads a rebellion and winds up with his beautiful head of hair caught in a tree, and he’s dangling there and speared to death by Joab’s men.

Sheba tries to exploit a division between the ten tribes and Judah, who are squabbling over who gets to bring David back after the triumphs over Absalom, and he tries to lead a rebellion by mobilizing those ten tribes against Judah and David. But he ends up with his head chopped off (by a wise woman in the city of Abel) and thrown over the wall to Joab.

“We can never use the sins of our parents to excuse our own sins.”

And then Adonijah tries to exploit David’s old age to become king instead of his father’s choice — Solomon, his brother — recruiting even Joab now to switch sides. And both of them, Joab and Adonijah, die. So it’s not a very propitious prospect for anybody who lifts his hands against the Lord’s anointed.

Here are several lessons that I see in these stories, and maybe some more details can come out as I give the lessons.

1. Prophesied sin does not excuse sin.

First, a prophecy of misery and conflict in a family does not excuse those who caused the misery and the conflict. David began his reign with adultery with Bathsheba, murdering Uriah, her husband. Nathan the prophet says to David, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife” (2 Samuel 12:10).

So, all these rebellions from his children and others are prophesied as part of the consequences of David’s sin. But there’s not a hint in the stories that Absalom and Sheba and Adonijah are excused for their wickedness and their rebellion because of this prophecy. Prophesied sin does not excuse the sinner. That’s lesson number one.

2. Failed parenting does not excuse sin.

Second — and a very similar point, but maybe one that can be felt today by contemporary people even more than that one — young people need to hear this: Failed parenting does not excuse the sin of the children. We can never use the sins of our parents to excuse our own sins. We are responsible for ourselves regardless of our backgrounds. We will be held accountable for our own sinful actions, and the failures of our parents will not remove our guilt.

First Kings 1:6 says, “[David] had never at any time displeased [Adonijah] by asking, ‘Why have you done thus and so?’” This is an indictment of David’s sinful doting on his sons, a failure to discipline. And it seems to me that he treated Absalom in the same way as Adonijah because, near the end, his leniency toward Absalom’s rebellion almost cost him his kingdom. Nevertheless, in spite of this parental failure, both Absalom and Adonijah are responsible for their own rebellious attitudes and their sins. They can’t blame it on their dad’s failures.

3. Rebellion arises from high and low places.

Third lesson: Rebellion can arise from a sense of privilege and entitlement, and it can arise from a sense of worthlessness that seeks to take advantage of a situation and rise to power.

Absalom and Adonijah were both highly privileged, not only because they were the sons of the king, but because both of them were explicitly said to be very handsome. The author goes out of his way to make the point that they were handsome, well-liked, well-connected. Sheba was a nobody. He’s called “a worthless man” (2 Samuel 20:1). He hadn’t made anything of his life. Absalom and Adonijah used their privilege to gain power and overthrow their father; Sheba shrewdly took advantage of a brewing conflict between the king’s subjects.

But in both cases, whether from privilege or poverty, they failed. The point is that poverty and power, high position and low position, being somebody and being nobody, is no justification for rebellion against the Lord’s anointed. Sin lurks in the low; sin lurks in the high. So, beware, young people, that you could justify a rebellion against the Lord’s anointed by either one.

4. Self-exaltation ends in destruction.

Fourth, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12) — the words of Jesus. The beginning of Adonijah’s story makes explicit the root of the problem. It goes like this: “Now Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, ‘I will be king’” (1 Kings 1:5). And the same is true of Absalom and Sheba. This is the great sin, the deep, deep sin of all children and all parents: a craving to be seen as great, a craving to be seen as powerful or beautiful or smart or cool or handsome or gutsy or rich, somehow to be seen better than others. “I want to be better” — like the apostles squabbled with each other to see who was the greatest.

“Rebellion against the Lord’s anointed absolutely cannot succeed.”

The Old Testament abounds with stories like these, designed to make Jesus’s point: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). Noël and I are reading Isaiah right now. We just read last night about these oracles over and over again in Isaiah. The evil that God is punishing among the nations is pride, pride, pride — self-exaltation.

Submit to the Anointed One

So, finally, we should say that yes, David, the Lord’s anointed, was a type of Jesus Christ, a foreshadowing of King Jesus. Christ is the son of David. Christ is the final Anointed One. “Christ” (Christos) means “anointed.” And from these stories, we should warn our children — indeed, warn ourselves — that rebellion against the Lord’s anointed, David or Christ, absolutely cannot succeed. But to submit to him and see him as the great and glorious and wise and strong and just and gracious King that he is would satisfy our souls forever.

The glitzy promise of self-exaltation is a mirage, young people; it’s a mirage. Don’t go the way of Absalom or Sheba or Adonijah. It cannot succeed.

Almost seventy years ago, five missionaries entered the Ecuadorian jungle in an attempt to establish contact with the Waorani. As Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian prepared to embark, they worshiped together by singing the hymn “We Rest on Thee, Our Shield and Our Defender.” They knew the journey ahead was filled with earthly peril, yet their faith was fully in God as their shield and defender.

The men would never return from the journey. Instead, they passed “through the gates of pearly splendor” when they were killed on a sandbar on the Curaray River.

The “Ecuador Five” (as they came to be called) may be the most famous missionary martyrs of the last century, but they aren’t the only ones. The missionary endeavor, especially in the hardest-to-reach areas of the world, is fraught with danger. What compels men and women to sacrifice their safety for the gospel? What gives them the courage to risk their very lives? And what can give us non-missionaries similar courage to risk comfort and security for the name of Christ?

Only faith in the one “who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).

Taking Up the Shield

Taking up the “shield of faith” is necessary for every Christian, not only for missionaries in foreign and dangerous lands (Ephesians 6:16). Paul is careful to say we should take up the shield “in all circumstances,” whether good or bad. A soldier who left his shield behind was susceptible to attack, even when the battle wasn’t raging and all seemed well. A good soldier is prepared for attack at any time.

The Christian life is riddled with trials and persecutions. Our salvation does not exclude us from the temporal difficulties of a fallen world. In fact, trials and persecutions only increase as we seek to live a faithful Christian life. Wise Christians, then, are always prepared for an attack from the enemy.

When Paul tells us to take up our shields, he calls us to continually and actively place our faith in God and all he has promised to us in Christ. This is not a passive faith. It is neither lazy nor fatalistic. This faith leads Christians, in the words of William Carey, to “expect great things, attempt great things.” Knowing that our God is sovereign and that he will establish his kingdom allows us to walk boldly in the face of opposition. This is the faith that has led many Christians to take bold risks for the sake of the gospel, some of them even losing their lives in the process.

What Is the Shield of Faith?

A soldier’s trust in his shield is insufficient, however, if the shield itself is faulty. A shield made of feathers isn’t dependable. Regardless of the soldier’s own action of picking up the shield, the substance of the shield really matters. So, what is our shield?

The shield of faith is God himself — it is he who thwarts the plans of the evil one. As Iain Duguid writes, “Paul is not saying that faith in itself has remarkable defensive power against Satan. Rather, he is saying that faith protects us from Satan’s attacks because faith takes hold of the power and protection of God himself.”

“The Christian’s shield is nothing less than the omnipotent God of the universe.”

The Christian’s shield is nothing less than the omnipotent God of the universe: he who spoke the world into being and who now upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3; 11:3). Neither “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword” can separate you, Christian, from God’s love (Romans 8:35).

Every Arrow Extinguished

Notice also the shield’s efficacy. The shield doesn’t just deflect the enemy’s flaming darts. It extinguishes them (Ephesians 6:16). It renders them impotent and obsolete. The sovereign God of the universe, the object of our faith, extinguishes the hell-bent attacks of Satan.

The world, and more specifically Satan, the prince of the power of the air, want to take you off course and tempt you to return to the trespasses in sins in which you once walked (Ephesians 2:1–2). Whether you’re tempted to be disunified, drunk, bitter, sexually immoral, selfish in your marriage, or angry with your children — all temptations Paul addresses in Ephesians — trust that the God who has saved you will sustain you and protect you from the enemy. When tempted to wander, cling to the shield of faith and believe that “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

Christian, the enemy’s attacks will never ultimately prevail — even if he takes our lives. When God says he will do something, he will surely do it — and he has promised that the full number of the elect will be brought into his kingdom. This assurance leads us to lay down our lives for the sake of the gospel. And when God uses even the death of his saints to gather his chosen people and expand his kingdom, evil is extinguished.

The death of the Ecuador Five was the spark that led to the eventual conversion of a number of Waorani. Those precious believers would one day pass through the gates of splendor and live forever with the very men who were killed so that they might be reached with the gospel. Flaming darts — extinguished!

Taking the Shield Together

When God calls us to put on his armor, he doesn’t expect us to do so alone. Just as an isolated soldier is prone to attack, so is a Christian separated from his community, the local church. I remember watching a movie in which a number of soldiers were surrounded by a far superior number of enemies. The soldiers locked their shields together and covered themselves from all angles — front, back, and even above. The soldiers were stronger together. If one soldier dropped his shield, the others would adjust their shields to ensure the group was covered.

We sometimes grow weary from the battle. We often need others to lock arms with us for reinforcement. When we gather in our local churches, we sing together, pray together, read the Scriptures together, and sit under the preaching of those Scriptures together. We hold each other accountable and take part in the ordinances together. We worship God together and confess our sins together. We remind each other to take up our shields of faith and put our trust in the God who saved us and united us to his Son. Like the missionaries, we sing,

Thine is the battle, thine shall be the praise;When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,Victors, we rest with thee, through endless day.

The Ecuador Five knew that they were not promised safety and security in this life. But they did know they were promised safety and security for eternity. The spears of men may have taken their earthly life, but their active faith in God carried them through the gates of splendor to rest with Christ for all eternity.

Here’s a little outline of where we’ll be going in these sessions. In this first one for the Sunday School hour, we’re just going to talk about the idea of means of grace. First of all, that God is gracious and that he has his particular, chosen, appointed means for our lives to live in the supply of his grace. Then the sermon this morning will focus on God’s word as a means of grace. Jonathan Edwards called the word of God the “chief” and “soul” of the means of grace.

Tonight the topic is fellowship, and we’ll also have a special accent on the Lord’s Supper as part of the means of grace that are related to the fellowship of the local church. And I believe we get to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together tonight. Then tomorrow night will be a focus on prayer and on fasting. Fasting in particular is an accent to prayer.

My heart for these sessions is that I would love to clarify, simplify, and inspire, and here’s what I mean by that. I want to clarify the source of the Christian life as God’s ongoing grace. Christianity is not to encounter grace in the past and then live in your own strength; Christianity is to live on God’s ongoing supply of grace. So we want to talk about those means. What are the means that God himself calls us into, to live on the ongoing supply of his grace?

Then I want to simplify the pursuit of his grace. Sometimes we think about spiritual disciplines and we make a long list, like, “Oh, there’s 12 things you need to do, or actually 18, or more like 24.” Think of your full list of spiritual disciplines. If you were to try to do those disciplines at all times in your life, it would be your full-time job. So what I want to do is simplify that list and ask, what are the main principles? What does God want us to know about his ongoing means of grace? And then how might we, in our various seasons of life, with our particular bent and our particular calling, see the principles of God’s grace be operative in our lives without just checking off somebody else’s boxes from some long list of spiritual disciplines?

Then lastly, I want to inspire you to cultivate habits of grace through varying seasons of life, and to do so for a lifetime. So I’ll speak about the grace of God, then the means of grace, and then “habits of grace” is my way of talking about our own lives, our own application, and the ways in which we access God’s timeless means of grace in our various seasons of life, so that we might know and enjoy him, and in enjoying him, we glorify him in our lives through our actions and words.

My hope is that I want to put and keep the gospel and the energy of God at the center of this whole pursuit of spiritual disciplines or means of grace. And as I hope we see tonight, by taking a full session to emphasize the corporate dynamics of the Christian life, I want to emphasize those corporate dynamics in a way that I think often gets overlooked in discussions about spiritual disciplines. Often spiritual disciplines are really focused on what I do and what I do alone, like Bible reading and prayer by myself. And I think a very important dynamic — we’ll see this in biblical texts and we’ll talk about it at length tonight because it’s critical in the Christian life — is the covenant fellowship of the local church that we are means of grace to each other. And then I want you, however old or young, to know, to enjoy, and to glorify Jesus, and to have some sense of how to do that for a lifetime.

It is my prayer that this seminar would help you make God’s means of grace, and your own habits that develop around his means, not just accessible and realistic but truly God’s means for your knowing and enjoying Jesus for a lifetime. And you see there how the connection is made between looking at Jesus (seeing him), as we prayed before with Bill and Dan, and savoring him. I love that language. We want to employ the means of grace as a means to that end.

Faucets and Light Switches

So here in session one then we want to talk about the means of grace. I love this encouragement from Jonathan Edwards. We’ll get to the quote in context here in a few minutes. He says, “Lay yourself in the way of allurement.”

When I talk about means of grace, it’s helpful for me to think about faucets and light switches, maybe because as I was teaching this material to college students, I was becoming a homeowner for the first time, and I was beginning to think about things for the first time that I hadn’t thought about before. You grow up and turn the faucet and the water comes on. With the light switch, somebody else takes care of that. If you have the problem of turning that faucet and no water comes out, somebody else is going to deal with that. When you’re a homeowner, ain’t nobody else going to deal with that. You have to take care of what’s going on there.

The main thing that’s helpful about faucets and light switches (though it’s not a perfect illustration) is that it helps to demonstrate what means of grace are like in the Christian life. Because for me, I don’t provide the water. For me, the city of Minneapolis does that, and I’m not a plumber. I didn’t put it in my house, and I don’t know how to fix it if it goes awry. Fortunately, I married into the family of a plumber. My father-in-law is a plumber, but he’s two hours north. If we start to have a problem, that’s a long time before he can get onsite. I feel this now as a homeowner.

When I turn that faucet on and water comes out, I don’t celebrate what I did, saying, “Look at me, I turned the water on.” As the kids go to the sink to get water, as they shower, as they do whatever they do in the house, I don’t say, “Look what your dad did. Your dad gave you water.” They turned on the faucet and they engaged the means, the appointed means. The water was there waiting, and the power, the electricity, was there waiting because somebody else is supplying the power and we need to just release that power in the appointed place. We don’t walk around the house saying, “Water,” and water comes out. No, if you want water, you turn the faucet. If you want electricity, you flip the switch, or tell Alexa to turn the light on. But you do the appointed means to release the supply of power.

There are similarities in the Christian life. We can be prone to think, “Oh, I want God’s power. I want to walk in the wilderness and have God give me his power.” But God has given us appointed means. He has provided water, and he has plumbed the house, and he has put in a faucet, and he has told you, “That’s where the water comes from.” He has provided the electricity and he tells us where the switch is, as if to say, “That’s where it happens.” And get this, it’s not automatic. Just because I flip the switch doesn’t mean the lights will always go on. But if I don’t flip the switch, the lights aren’t going to turn on. Likewise, with God’s means of grace he has given us his regular places where he wants us to go to access his ongoing supply, his ongoing grace for the Christian life.

The Grace of God

Here is our outline for session one. We want to talk briefly, but not just briefly, about the grace of God. I don’t want to skip over this. I don’t want to assume this. We don’t want to say, “Oh yeah, God is gracious, move on.” We want to linger over the God of all grace and his graciousness. That’s so important in coming to him, because our awareness, our consciousness matters to him. He doesn’t want to just supply grace anonymously. He loves to give donations of grace that are connected to the name of his Son. So we want to talk about his grace. Then we’ll look at his appointed means of grace. And then at the end, I’ll say something very briefly about our cultivation of habits to regularly access his means of grace. Then I have to talk about the end of the means again. We want to end with that.

I’ve already given you a glimpse of the end of the means, but let’s come back because we have means, and means are means to some end. Means means something, and it means going to some end, and we’ll rehearse that at the end.

The Grace of Justification

First, let’s focus on the grace of God. It is so important that we duly acknowledge God and appreciate him in all his import, as he’s revealed himself to us as the God of all grace. That’s why I have 1 Peter 5:10 here. It says, “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace . . .” Brothers and sisters, this is the God who made you. This is the God who is, this is the God who sent his own Son, this is the God who has appointed means and wants to sustain you in the Christian life. He is the God of all grace. All true grace for your life, for your ongoing health, and for your ongoing survival as a Christian, is in him. He provides the grace. He’s the God of all grace. He has called you to his eternal glory in Christ. He himself will restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you in suffering and in times of life that aren’t acutely difficult. In all seasons, he’s the God of all grace, supplying the grace of our Christian life.

But let’s say that with a little more specificity. We can do this big category of grace in general, but what are some of the specific manifestations of his grace in the Christian life? First and foremost, let’s rehearse the foundation of his grace. Before we do anything or participate in any way, he has a foundation of grace, and there is 100 percent acceptance of us apart from what we do in Christ Jesus. We call this the grace of justification by faith. We could go to many texts, but let me give you two and summarize the grace of justification by faith alone. This is Romans 4:4–5:

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due (we’re talking about a gift; wages are not the way to pursue acceptance with God). And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

We all need righteousness to stand before the living, holy God. We cannot, as sinners and as humans, provide that righteousness. But God sent his own Son to live out that righteousness in our human flesh, and die for us to cover our sins, so that being joined to him by faith we might have our sins paid for in him and have his righteousness in order to be fully, 100-percent accepted before his Father. This is the foundation of the Christian life in the grace of justification by faith. Before we do anything, before we act (we don’t deserve it in any way), he justifies us by faith by connecting us to his Son, in whom is righteousness.

Titus 3:4–7 says:

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness (hear the language of righteousness that is not by works and is the foundation of our acceptance), but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace (justification is a manifestation of God’s grace) we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

First and foremost, God’s grace meets us before we’re engaged. We receive by faith. Before we’re engaged with our will, our energy, our actions, and our works, he justifies us in Jesus. This is remarkable grace.

The Grace of Sanctification

Sometimes people stop there. It is amazing grace, the grace of forgiveness, the grace of justification by faith. May we no way ever minimize the grace of justification by faith. And God’s even more gracious than only to justify us and accept us fully based on the righteousness of Christ. Calvin and the Reformers had this Latin phrase: duplex gratia.

Anybody know what that means? It means double grace. It’s grace times two. We all want God’s grace and justification. Amen. Never minimize it. And, what Calvin emphasized — probably with Luther’s weakness in the background — is that we believe in double grace. He gives us the grace of full acceptance in Christ and the grace keeps going. He gives us the grace of being practically rescued from the misery of sin. It would be an amazing grace to have our sins covered and then still have to live with the misery. But the double grace of sanctification now begins to remove us from the misery of sin.

Sin is not a good thing. It’s not joyful in the end. Pleasurable as it may feel in the moment, it will not be good for you in the long run and for eternity. It is a double grace to be rescued from the power of sin, not only pardoned from your sin. This is the grace of sanctification, and I rehearse it because it relates to means. These means of grace, we locate them in the part of the Christian life that is about sanctification, about becoming more holy, about being engaged in the progress that the Holy Spirit is making in us. Justification is apart from works, apart from our means. We’re not doing anything. We’re not reading any Bibles or doing any prayers for justification. But in sanctification we have the dignity of being engaged, of discovering the joys of holiness.

Here’s Titus 2:11–12. The appearance language is very similar to Titus 3:4–7. Titus loves to talk like this. Before he said, “God our Savior appeared,” and down here we have, “the grace of God appeared in Jesus.” So grace for the Christian has a face. Grace came. The God of grace has come in grace incarnate in Jesus.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people . . . (Titus 2:11)

Think of how that corresponds with the aspects of grace that are in justification and forgiveness. He continues and says this grace is “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age . . .” (Titus 2:12). So grace not only receives us apart from our training to get us right with God, but grace also then begins to go to work on us. Grace trains. It’s like an athlete being trained. You engage, you work, and you train, and it changes shape over time. The person is changed. They become a better runner, a better player, or a better actor as they do the training. Likewise, grace begins to work on us, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright godly lives in the present age. There’s a double grace here — the grace of salvation coming and the grace going to work on us that trains us. Grace trains us.

A Holy Work Ethic

In 1 Corinthians 15:10, I love Paul’s expression of this training, changing, transforming grace. He says:

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them . . .

You know who the “them” is here? It’s not lazy Corinthians. The “them” are the other apostles. He says, “I worked harder than any of them,” and I’m assuming Paul is not prideful at this point. I’m assuming he had such an industrious, Herculean work ethic that the differences were manifest, so that he could talk about them with humility and not brag. Everyone knew Paul worked so much harder than Peter and John. That’s okay. That was Paul’s particular gift, whatever it was. He worked harder than all of them. But you know what? It was the grace of God. He says, “Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

So God’s grace not only met him on the road to Damascus, changed his heart, and saved him apart from him doing anything, but the grace of God went to work in him and he was a manifest worker. Paul’s a work ethic guy. He talks a lot about work, and that work is work that is done by the grace of God. So God’s grace not only saves, forgives, and justifies, but God’s grace trains and goes to work in and through us.

Philippians 2:12–13 is another place to show this dynamic of God working and our working. We need to have a place in our Christian life where we think of how God works and we don’t. That’s the place of justification. It’s a very important category to have in our reception of grace, and seeing God as the God of all grace. And we need to have a category for God working through our working. Philippians 2:12–13 says:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .

Then we’re given the reason why. Now, notice he doesn’t say “work for your salvation.” They’re justified. They’re accepted 100 percent, based on Christ alone and not their works. He is saying, “You’re accepted, now work that out.” Don’t work for it, work it out. And here’s why. Here’s why you work it out. It’s not in your own strength. He says:

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:13)

God goes to work by the power of his Spirit in the Christian. He begins to change us, he begins to, by his word and by the Spirit, give us good desires and inspire us for holiness, and not sin. He gives us the will, and we want to work it out and do it in such a way that we’re not earning God’s favor. But because we have his favor, we are delighted to work it out with joy for his glory and the good of others.

The Grace of Glorification

Then finally, to bring this to a close in this parsing out his grace, we’ve spoken of the past grace in our experience of justification, present grace in sanctification, and now we have future grace in glorification. It’s amazing. I don’t know what the Latin phrase would be for triple grace. We should probably do triple grace too. The grace that is coming is the grace of glorification. Isn’t it crazy that we talk in that language, that God will glorify us? It’s amazing. Second Thessalonians 1:11 says:

May [God] fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power . . .

Just note here this idea of “work of faith.” Because there’s faith, the Christian works it out, and does so by his power, which is what we’re talking about in the means of grace, spiritual disciplines. And then Paul says, “So that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). Yes, it’s the glory of Christ. Amen. That’s what we’re for, the glory of Christ. May Jesus be glorified. And then Paul says, “and you in him” (2 Thessalonians 1:12). May he be glorified in you, and then you will be glorified in him. He will be glorified in you according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. So God’s grace accepts us apart from our works, goes to work in us, rescues us practically from the miseries of sin, and his grace will glorify us as we glorify Jesus.

The last text here on this section is Ephesians 2:4–7. This is about the ongoing grace of God into eternity. Don’t think that first and foremost we’re saying grace is a past thing. We don’t live the Christian life in gratitude for grace, as if grace happened in the past and now we live in gratitude. That’s not how it works. And even going into the future it will be ongoing grace, upon grace, upon grace. Paul says:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved (a reference to justification) — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages (this is future) he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

“Before we’re engaged with our energy, our actions, and our works, God justifies us in Jesus.”

It will take eternity for our God to continue to show us the bounty of his grace. That’s what’s coming. That’s a way to capture what’s going to happen in heaven, and in the new heavens and new earth. God is going to continue to show us the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Jesus Christ. He’s the God of all grace. First and foremost, we have to start with God being gracious. Don’t take that as a given or an assumption. Let’s love it and let’s rehearse it.

The Means of Grace

The second thing we will focus on is that he has appointed means. There are means of his grace. In the last generation or so, there has been a revival of this language of spiritual disciplines. Maybe it’s a revival, and maybe the first time the language has been used was in the late 1970s. Richard Foster had a book on the celebration of disciplines, and there have been many good books that have talked about spiritual disciplines. That is the subject we’re talking about here. This is about spiritual disciplines.

However, by starting with this accent on God’s grace and wanting to use that term “means of grace,” I think there’s some significance in it. I find this personally helpful. I found it helpful with college students and as I’ve talked with folks over the years. Casting it in terms of means of grace rather than spiritual disciplines puts the accent in some different places. It really helps how we think about the concept. D. A. Carson has said that “means of grace” is a lovely expression, and is less susceptible to misinterpretation than “spiritual disciplines.” You can interpret spiritual disciplines appropriately. It’s okay to have that in my subtitle. That’s the language people are using, but I really want to accent that these are means of grace.

Reading J. I. Packer was the first time I saw the connection between spiritual disciplines and means of grace. This is actually an endorsement for Don Whitney’s book, and remember that being a disciple means being a learner. J.I. Packer wrote:

The doctrine of the disciplines (disciplinae, meaning “courses of learning” or “training”) is really a restatement and extension of classical Protestant teaching on the means of grace.

Then he summarizes these means of grace in his parenthesis in an endorsement for a book. I love it. Packer endorsed many books. I think he saw these as teaching opportunities. He doesn’t typically just say, “Hey, I like this person. Get the book.” He usually sees it as a little teaching opportunity. He lists the means of grace as the word of God, prayer, fellowship, and the Lord’s Supper. I’ve already told you our outline. The word of God is the sermon this morning, prayer is tomorrow night, and fellowship and the Lord’s Supper I’m putting together tonight.

The Necessity of Means

We’ll see more about this phrase. I find that J. C. Ryle is particularly helpful here. I really like the way that Ryle talks about the means of grace and the categories he puts them together in. Here’s what Ryle has to say. We’ll probably come back to this tonight as a quick summary before talking more about fellowship. He’s writing over 100 years ago, so see the timelessness of this. This is not trendy. This isn’t a big means of grace trend. This is not trendy, this is timeless. He says:

The means of grace are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in church . . .

So at least here we have the word, prayer, and fellowship. And he talks about regularly worshiping, which is a corporate means of grace. He says, “Here, one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper.”

You have the word being taught, and the word is the Bible. Then there is this connection with Lord’s Supper. These guys keep wanting to mention the Lord’s Supper. We’ll see why in just a minute. Ryle continues, and this is a very important sentence:

I lay it down as a simple matter of fact, that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make progress in sanctification.

That’s amazing. He says, “No one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make progress in sanctification.” What are the “such things”? It’s the word, prayer, and fellowship (the local church, corporate worship). He continues:

I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul, and strengthens the work which he has begun in the inward man . . . Our God is a God who works by means and he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them (the means of grace).

A similar observation I’ve heard before and seen in my own life is that I’ve never met a strong leader in the church or a Christian (someone who’s strong in the faith and benefits others) who has ignored the means of grace — in particular, accessing God’s word on a regular basis, praying about it, and being part of the local church. Let any of these slip, any of these three, and the matrix of strength for the Christian life goes away. And barring unusual circumstances of suffering, anyone who’s just languishing in their faith, very rarely (or ever) have I spoken with someone like that who couldn’t identify some lapse or pattern of neglect related to the word, or prayer, or the local church.

I’m not saying there’s a precise relationship where if you miss a day of devotions and you’re doing terrible spiritually. However, over the patterns of our life, there is a remarkable correspondence between attending to the ways God has told us that he has appointed for ongoing grace and spiritual health. We’ll come back to the Ryle quote.

Laying in the Way of Allurement

Let me give Zacchaeus and Bartimaeus as an example of what I mean by positioning ourselves. The title here on “laying yourself in the way of allurement” is important. Sometimes spiritual disciplines to me seem like they accent my doing. I have to take the initiative and I have to make this happen. This is on me. I need to muster up the strength and make it happen.

With means of grace, I want to accent the positioning of ourselves and the posturing of ourselves. God is the God of all grace. He has told us the places in which his grace is flowing, so the responsible response on our part is to position ourselves and posture ourselves to receive his grace. This isn’t first and foremost a posture of action, it’s a posture of reception. See that here in these back-to-back stories in Luke’s gospel about Bartimaeus and Zacchaeus.

As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. (Luke 18:35)

This is interesting. Bartimaeus was not wandering in the wilderness, and lo and behold, the Savior of the world comes upon him in the wilderness. He was sitting by the roadside. There was a path, and he was sitting by the path. The passage continues:

And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. (Luke 18:36–43)

Now, we can emphasize several things in this passage. The reason I’m emphasizing the positioning or the place where Bartimaeus was for our purposes regarding means of grace is that the next story is also along the path.

Positioned in the Pathway of Grace

Now let’s focus on Zacchaeus, a wee little man, maybe you know the song. Zacchaeus illustrates this better than Bartimaeus.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. (Luke 19:1–3)

This comes upon Bartimaeus in a way he didn’t expect, but he’s along a path when it does. He’s the kind of guy who wants help. He’s blind and he needs help. So where do you go to get help? Where people are. Where are people? On the path. So there’s a reason Bartimaeus was there. But it’s all the more here in this passage because Zacchaeus is seeking Jesus. He wants to access grace. So how do you access the grace in Christ? You go to the path where he’s coming. The passage continues:

He was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. (Luke 19:3–4)

He postured himself and positioned himself along the path where the grace was passing. Then it says:

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. (Luke 19:5–6)

He positioned himself to receive the grace as it came. Here’s a quotation from Jonathan Edwards:

Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites.

Your desires for God, your holy desires for the one who made you and showed you himself in his Son, and rescued you, you need to put no bounds on those appetites. We need to put bounds on various earthly appetites, and yet in our spiritual appetites for Jesus and for God, put no bounds on them. Edwards continues on how to pursue it:

Rather, they ought to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and obtain more spiritual pleasures.

That’s what we’re after in means of grace. These are not mere duties to check the box, as if to say, “You must do this.” We want to inflame desire and obtain more holy, spiritual pleasure. And Edward continues on to say, “Endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement.”

Because of the nature of our God as a God of grace, and because he has given us his typical patterns, his appointed means of grace, the counsel is, “Do you want to know him? Do you want to enjoy him? Do you want to increase your spiritual pleasure? Lay yourself along those paths. Know what the paths are, and then cultivate habits of life that put you along those paths.”

The Lifeline of the Early Church

Here’s an example in the early church. This is Acts 2:42–47. What an amazing moment. It’s like the honeymoon moment of the local church before things get really bad with increasing persecution.

They devoted themselves (habitual language) to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)

The apostles were teaching the word, people were praying, and people were devoting themselves to the fellowship. In that context, there was the breaking of bread, which probably meant eating together. And in that eating together, they were taking the Lord’s supper together as well. We want this, and people want this. This is exciting:

And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:43–47)

We all want this effect, but do we want the means of grace? The wonder, the signs, the generosity, the sharing, and the adding to their number comes out of Acts 2:42. This is their patterns, their habits, and their devotion. It’s the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, and the prayers.

Historic Confessions and the Means of Grace

I’ll skip through this, but I just want to mention that means had such an important foundation in the Reformed and Baptistic confessions for centuries. This is why Packer referred to the classic Protestant doctrine of the means of grace. The language of “means” comes again and again in the New Hampshire Confession of 1833, which is a Baptist confession. It’s used over and over again. It also goes back to Westminster and the Belgic Confession, which is almost 100 years before Westminster. It talks about “our gracious God” — make sure to cast him in terms of grace — who “nourishes and strengthens our faith through the means where he works by the power of the Holy Spirit.” And Jesus Christ is presented as the true object of them.

The Canons of Dort from 1619 refers to means again and again, and the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1648. Again and again it speaks of “the use of means.” And so, we come back to Acts 2:42, where they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, the fellowship, and the breaking of bread, and the prayers. These are a means of God’s ongoing grace.

Hear His Voice, Have His Ear, Belong to His Body

So here’s how I summarize them. This is what we’ll be doing in the sermon tonight and tomorrow. How do we put ourselves, how do we position ourselves along the path of God’s grace? Number one, we hear his voice in his word. Number two, we have his ear in prayer. Number three, we belong to his body in the fellowship of the local church.

The reason I’m putting them in those terms is that I want to capture the personal nature of the Christian life, the personal nature of a relationship with God in Christ. We shouldn’t think of word, prayer, and fellowship as merely things, but aspects of relationship with God and with each other. So we hear his voice. You’ll see in the sermon here, I’m not going to accent hearing his voice apart from his word. The voice that’s in your head is you. Do you want to hear God speak? Open the book, hear the book, and hear him speak by the power of the Spirit in his book. I have to stop myself before I get into the sermon.

Then have his ear in prayer. It is amazing that we have the ear of God Almighty. The fact that he revealed himself is amazing, but even more the fact that he stops, and stoops, and listens, and says, “I want to hear your response to my word.” It is such a privilege we have in prayer that we’ll linger it over tomorrow night.

And then we belong to his body. We are means of grace to each other in the body of Christ. In particular, I’m going to linger in Hebrews. The sermon this morning will be Hebrews, and these will be the texts that I’ll use in the sermon. You can talk about having his ear in Hebrews through these two big exhortation passages that parallel each other. Do you want a nice Bible study? Take Hebrews 4:14–16 and Hebrews 10:19–23 and work through them together and see the connections, and be drawn into prayer. And then the main focus for tonight before we talk about the Lord’s Supper will be to look at Hebrews 10 and Hebrews 3 about being means of grace for each other.

Habits of Grace

Let me finish quickly with this. I told you the last two points are very brief. This is about our various habits of grace. What is a habit? It’s kind of a negative word. There’s been a kind of revival of the language and it’s becoming more positive. People talk about habit formation.

There were two books that were very popular to help bring about this idea of habits and tap the neuroscience of habit formation, which is really new in the last generation since MRIs were available. I mean, neuroscience has been huge in the last 25 years, and habit formation has been part of those discoveries. Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.

Now, here are a couple of things that are important in spiritual life related to that. I’ll summarize it in a second. The real key to habits is decision-making, and more accurately, the lack of decision-making. Part of this in trying to cultivate habits in our Christian life is to not drain down the power of decision-making that we could be putting toward God’s word, and prayer, and fellowship, and also not go through making the decision over and over again so that sometimes you decide not to make it. And then you choose other less valuable things than his word, prayer, and fellowship in their proper proportions and patterns.

Here’s a summary: Habits free our focus to give attention and be more fully aware in the moment. Habits protect what is most important; that is, they keep us persevering in the faith. And habits are person specific. I’m not trying to lay on you Saul’s armor, as if to say, “Here’s how I do my devotions and here’s how I pray. And here’s the patterns of Cities Church, and you should do the same ones.” This is not Saul’s armor. You’re not supposed to have somebody else’s armor on, but you can develop these in your season of life with your bent. And then, habits are also driven by desire and reward. Habits are formed because you are being rewarded in some way. You don’t form habits when there’s no reward, and all the more in the Christian life.

The End of the Means

So we end the morning session here with the end of the means. I want to put text with this. I don’t want to just say, “Jesus is the end, Jesus is the end.” Let’s put two texts on it, among others. We’re talking about means here. Means are means to some end. This is the end:

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

That’s the essence of eternal life, knowing the Father and the Son in him. And in our means of grace, we want to move toward that great end. That’s the goal. That’s the reward that would inform and cultivate our habits.

In Philippians 3:7–8, the apostle Paul says:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

So brothers and sisters, in talking about these spiritual disciplines (the means of grace) this morning, this evening, and tomorrow night, this is what we’re pursuing. It’s the surpassing value of Christ. It’s not the value of achievement, nor the value of feeling good about myself, nor checking boxes, nor the value of doing what somebody else told me to do, but the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord through his word, through a relationship with him in prayer where I respond to him based on who he’s revealed himself to be, and doing so in the body of Christ, in the covenanted local church community where we are means of grace to each other, so that we know more of Jesus in and through each other.

Audio Transcript

Happy day after Mother’s Day to all the moms listening in. Thanks for listening to the podcast. We’re often asked parenting questions. You know that, Pastor John. And it is not uncommon to hear from moms who want advice on how to raise young boys into men. This applies to single moms and their special challenges in parenting, which we got into back in APJ 1075 in the archive. But share with us, Pastor John, just broad counsel that would apply to Christian mothers — whether they’re single moms, or moms married to non-Christian men, or moms married to Christian men. In these various situations, what’s a mom’s role in raising boys?

The first thing I would say to a mom is teach your son. Teach him especially the word of God, and how to see the world through that lens. If you’re married to a believer, you and your husband together teach the whole counsel of God to your son. “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching” (Proverbs 1:8). Or, “My son, keep your father’s commandment, and forsake not your mother’s teaching” (Proverbs 6:20).

Remember, there’s that wonderful story of Lois and Eunice in 2 Timothy, where Paul says to this young man, “Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it” (2 Timothy 3:14). And who’s that? That’s his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois (from 2 Timothy 1:5). We know that. And we know from Acts that his father was not a Christian. I think that should be encouraging to mothers — that Paul chose, for his missionary band, a young man who was largely formed in his faith by his mother and his grandmother.

Require Obedience

The next thing I would say is expect obedience from your son. “Children, obey your parents” — not just your father, but your parents. Mother, get your son to obey you. May he obey “in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1). It’s dismaying to me to watch one-year-olds, two-, three-, four-year-old kids make their parents miserable because the parents have not required obedience at home. So in public, they have no control over them. They don’t get any kind of respect in public. The kids just do what they want to do; they wrap their parents around their finger.

Mom, you can require and receive obedience from your son. Teach this little one, from the earliest times, with words and with spankings if necessary, that you have God-given authority in his life. He does not decide what is acceptable behavior. You do, all the time. Reward him joyfully. Make him happy in the boundaries that you set for him. Do all the good possible for him, and punish him appropriately for the bad that he does. That’s so crucial, if you want to have a happy home and a happy public life with your children, and to be just plain obedient to the Scriptures.

Model Strong Womanhood

Then I would say, model strong womanhood. Peter says, speaking to the women in the church, “You are her children” — Sarah’s children — “if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Peter 3:6). I just love that verse. The godly woman in the Bible is fearless because she hopes in God. That’s what it says. She puts her hope in God.

“Teach your little one, from the earliest times, that you have God-given authority in his life.”

Or Proverbs 31:25: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” Oh, how needed in our day is that, right? Everybody’s trembling and wringing their hands about the time to come, and the Proverbs 31 woman is laughing at the time to come. A son should look to his mother not as a weak woman who is always anxious about tomorrow, but as a stable oak of righteousness who laughs at the time to come because she trusts in a sovereign God.

Honor Your Husbands

Then I would say, honor the leadership and protective instincts of your husband. Let your son see this. “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (Ephesians 5:24). A son should see a strong woman joyfully deferring to the initiatives, leadership, protection, and provision of her husband — the spiritual leadership of a strong man. Of course, a Christian wife does not follow a husband into sin (that should be obvious). She makes clear, “There is one, supreme Lord in my life: Jesus Christ.” But under that lordship, she delights to honor her husband’s leadership.

One Strong Mom

And I can’t help but be a little bit autobiographical here because I think some of my thinking about competence in complementarianism was shaped by my home. I grew up in a home where my father was away two-thirds of the year: weeks gone, week at home, weeks gone, week at home. He was an evangelist. My mother, in his absence, did everything. She was, in my view, omnicompetent.

She taught me just about everything practical that I know to this day, and she made me a worker. She made me love diligence. She never once gave me the impression that she couldn’t do anything. She paid the bills. She ran the little laundromat. She tried her hand at Amway. She climbed a ladder and painted the eaves of the rotting house. She pushed a wheelbarrow — I watched the sweat drip off the end of her nose as we were digging our own basement. She pulled the Bermuda grass out and taught me how to get it by the roots so they wouldn’t grow back. She loved flower beds. She taught me how to cut the grass so that you overlap and you don’t get skippers when you do the grass cutting.

She said, “Johnny, cut the potatoes like this and wait until the oil is boiling, because if you put the potatoes in before the oil is boiling, they’ll get soggy, and you won’t get good fries. And when you make pancakes, wait until the bubbles around the edge are forming, because if you try to flip them too early, they’ll flop all over the place.”

Not About Competence

She taught me everything there was to know, practically, in our home growing up. Which taught me this lesson: the biblical roles of a wife’s submission and a husband’s headship in marriage are not based on competence — like, “You do this because you’re good at it.” That’s not the point. They are based on the deeper realities of how God designed male and female, and how we flourish in those kinds of relationships.

But when my dad came home from being away for weeks, my mother beamed with joy that now he could lead. He’d lead in the discipline of the children. He’d lead in giving counsel. He’d lead in prayer. He would lead by saying, “Let’s go to church. Let’s get there on time.” He’d lead by saying, “Let’s go out to eat.” He could model the small courtesies that a man offers a woman and that a boy needs to learn in the dynamic between a mother and a father: pulling out her chair, opening the car door, checking out strange noises in the house, and on and on and on.

“A son should look to his mother as a stable oak of righteousness who laughs at the time to come.”

A man is a man, and a woman is a woman. And a boy watches this; he absorbs it. So, as a boy, I watched that dance, that choreography, and I marveled at my mother. In his absence, she could do everything; in his presence, she loved it, she flourished when he took that kind of manly initiative. That’s what we need to show our sons, that they are not belittling or demeaning when they take initiative to protect, to provide, to lead a woman.

Give Him Examples

I would also say, point your son to strong manhood in Scripture, in history, in fiction, in media, and in your husband. I don’t mean, necessarily, when I say “strong manhood,” physical brawn. What I mean is true, masculine, responsible, mature, sacrificial, protective initiative with courage and strength. You don’t have to be a football player to be that kind of man. If there’s no husband to be the model, if you’re a single mom, find ways to point your son to the kind of men who embody mature manhood. I think my mother was very jealous that that happened in my father’s absence.

Expect Strong Manhood

One last thing. Expect strong manhood from your son. Give the boy responsibility early on. Require as much as you can, as he grows older, of his manly behavior. Insist on politeness toward his sister or toward you, other women, other girls. My mother taught me, “Don’t you go through a girl’s purse — ever.” Walk on the street side when you’re walking beside a young lady, in case there’s a splash or some danger. Offer to open the door. Pay for the date. Use respectful language. Take responsibility. Be willing to sacrifice. You build into your son, as a woman, what the appropriate dynamics are between a man and a woman, to be biblical in your understanding of headship and submission.

Now, I know there’s so much more that we could say, oh my goodness. So, seek God’s wisdom in creating a healthy, Christ-exalting home. Seek his wisdom. He’ll help you. If Dad is there, that’s just great. He is crucial in raising daughters, just as you are crucial in raising sons. And if he’s not, if he’s not there, and you’re a single mom, trust God to make up the difference. He’s done that for thousands. God is faithful, and he works for moms who wait for him.

Genealogies matter. The biblical narrative is fundamentally a record of events — births, deaths, kings enthroned, kings deposed, covenants made, covenants broken, and so on. The Bible’s genealogies are the backdrop against which these events unfold. As such, they are a basic part of the fabric of Scripture. They tell us when events happen and who is involved in them. And, by extension, they often give us clues as to why.

But before we dive into the (sometimes murky) details of the Bible’s genealogies, it will be helpful for us to consider them in broader redemptive terms.

Forming, Naming, Filling

At the outset of the biblical story, God creates the heavens and the earth. They start out like a blank canvas, formless and empty (Genesis 1:1). Then, over the course of six days, God carries out three important types of activities: he adds form to what he has made (e.g., by the division of night and day); he names what he has formed; and, last of all, he fills what he has formed (e.g., the day with the sun; the night with the moon and stars).

Afterward, God commissions man to continue his activities. More specifically, God commands man to be fruitful and multiply and to fill and subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28). The Bible’s genealogies are thus firmly anchored in the events of Genesis 1. They are a record of how and to what extent mankind lives out God’s commission as he forms, names, and fills God’s creation.

Genesis 1–11 Redux

In Genesis 4, Eve forms three children and assigns to each of them a name.1 “I have [formed] a man with the help of the Lord,” she says after Cain’s birth (Genesis 4:1). (The verb “formed” — Hebrew kanah — is generally translated as “acquired” in this verse, but it often means “formed”; indeed, it is the verb used in Psalm 139:13, where David says to God, “You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”) Needless to say, Eve’s statement about the world’s first childbirth is significant. Like God, Eve adds form to what is formless, as her daughters have done ever since.

In the aftermath of Abel’s death, the lines of Cain and Seth begin to fill the earth. To some extent, the two lines unfold in parallel. For instance, both culminate in a threefold division — in Cain’s case with Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Cain (Genesis 4:20–22), and in Seth’s with Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis 5:32). And before that, each line reaches a mini-climax in the rise of a Lamech, who is a man of sevens. Cain’s Lamech is the seventh from Adam, heads up a family of seven (him, his two wives, his three sons, and his daughter), and says his death will be repaid with a seventy-sevenfold vengeance (Genesis 4:24). Meanwhile, Seth’s Lamech lives for seven hundred and seventy-seven years (Genesis 5:31), and he fathers Noah — the life of a man of eights who heads up a family of eight (1 Peter 3:20). Hence, while Cain’s line is terminated by the flood, Seth’s lives on to inhabit a new creation.

In the aftermath of the flood, the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth begin to multiply and fill the earth (in answer to a repeat of God’s command in Genesis 9:1). The result is the “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10.

“History unfolds in line with God’s pattern and purposes.”

Then, in Genesis 12, God chooses Abraham from the midst of the nations — or, more specifically, from the midst of the descendants of Shem. God does not, however, simply give Abraham the same command he gave to Adam and Noah. Instead, he gives Abraham a promise: “I will make you exceedingly fruitful,” he says (Genesis 17:6), which is exactly what he does. And so, as Abraham’s generations unfold, they recapitulate the structure of Genesis 1–11.

The events of Genesis 1 establish a twelve/thirteenfold structure composed of six environments (night, day, heaven, earth, sea, and land, formed on days one to three) filled by six created things (moon/stars, sun, birds, animals, fish, and humans, created on days four to six), or seven if we count plants (created on day three).2 In answer, the branches of Abraham’s family tree yield an array of twelve/thirteenfold generations: Nahor’s line opens into a generation of twelve (Genesis 22:21–24), as do Ishmael’s (Genesis 25:12–16) and Esau’s,3 and, last of all, Jacob’s line opens into a generation of twelve, or thirteen if we count Joseph’s sons (Genesis 48:5).

Meanwhile, just as the lines of Cain and Seth emerge from a background of three streams and divide into three streams, so too does the line of Abraham: Abraham is one of three sons, and his posterity divides into the sons of Hagar, Sarah, and Keturah (Genesis 11:27–28). Furthermore, just as the line of Noah culminates in a family tree of 75 individuals (the so-called “Table of Nations”),4 so too does the line of Jacob (Jacob, his four wives, and their seventy sons: Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5; Deuteronomy 10:22).

God’s Unfolding Story

Similar creationary echoes can be observed within the text of 1 Chronicles as the line of Judah becomes the inheritor of God’s promise. The genealogical path from Adam to Abraham consists of three distinct stages: first it descends a single genealogical line (1:1–3), then it splits into three streams (1:4–27), and finally it opens into a pool of nineteen potential inheritors of Abraham’s promise (1:28–33), ultimately to be taken forward by Isaac (1:34). In much the same way, the genealogical path from Judah to David descends a single genealogical line (to Hezron, 2:1–8), then splits into three streams (Caleb’s, Ram’s, and Jerahmeel’s, 2:9–55), and finally opens into a pool of nineteen potential inheritors of David’s promise (3:1–9), ultimately to be taken forward by Solomon (3:10). The chronicler even counts David’s sons for us to make sure we haven’t missed the point (3:1–8).

These patterns are not coincidental. They reveal the artistry inherent in the biblical narrative and, more fundamentally, God’s sovereignty over the course of history. History unfolds in line with God’s pattern and purposes. And in the Bible’s genealogies, we see precisely how it unfolds and comes to its fullness in the person of Christ — the one whose death and resurrection gives birth to a new creation, and who breathes life into a generation of twelve apostles (or thirteen if we count Paul), and who continues to give life to Abraham’s seed today as the church bears fruit and multiplies.

Redressing the Past

But the Bible’s genealogies aren’t merely intended to paint a big picture of the progression of God’s purposes; they are also rich with detail. They enable us to connect particular events in biblical history and to read them in light of one another.

Ruth’s Redemption

By way of illustration, consider a couple of the more unsavory ways in which family lines have been perpetuated in biblical history. In Genesis 19 and 38, an uncannily similar sequence of events unfolds: a resident of Canaan departs from his brother(s) in order to sojourn elsewhere (in Judah’s case in Chezib, and in Lot’s in Sodom). Soon afterward, his two sons die (or in Lot’s case his sons-in-law), which leaves his family line in jeopardy. The man’s daughters (or daughter-in-law) conceal their identity in order to sleep with their father (or father-in-law). And via such dubious means, the family line survives.

The Bible’s genealogies help us to see that these events are not isolated incidents in Scripture. Later in the biblical narrative, when Ruth approaches Boaz at the dead of night, it looks as if we are about to see a repeat of Judah’s and Lot’s transgressions. Earlier in the story, a resident of Canaan has departed from his brothers in order to sojourn elsewhere (Elkanah has left Bethlehem for Moab); his two sons have died and left his family line in jeopardy; and his daughter-in-law has now concealed her identity, possibly in order to take matters into her own hands. Happily, however, the behavior of Boaz and Ruth confounds our expectations. When Boaz sees Ruth, he does not seek sexual gratification; rather, he wants to know who she is. In response, Ruth discloses her identity. And soon afterward, Boaz takes Ruth as his wife in the full knowledge of what it will entail, and he thereby continues Elkanah’s line.

Given the above considerations, Boaz’s and Ruth’s genealogies/backgrounds are important for us to be aware of. Boaz is a descendant of Perez and by that token is a descendant of Judah and Tamar (Ruth 4:18–22). Meanwhile, Ruth is a Moabite and by that token is a descendant of Lot and his firstborn daughter (Genesis 19:37). These details are significant. Boaz and Ruth aren’t isolated actors on the stage of the biblical narrative. They are people with a rich and tangled past. And their actions redeem that past and weave it into God’s good purposes through the messianic line.

Esther Against Agag

A similar notion underlies the story of Esther. When we first meet Mordecai, we are provided with his genealogy. Mordecai is “the son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish, a Benjaminite” (Esther 2:5). At least two of these names should be familiar to us. In 1 Samuel 9, we are introduced to a Benjaminite named Kish, who turns out to be the father of the infamous Saul (1 Samuel 9:1; see also 1 Chronicles 8:29–33), and a little later we encounter a Benjaminite named Shimei, who turns out to be one of Saul’s descendants (2 Samuel 16:5).

Apparently, then, the biblical author wants us to associate Mordecai and Esther with the house of Saul. (The names Kish and Shimei may have been common Benjaminite names, passed down from father to son and borne by many members of the tribe of Benjamin.5) If so, it is a significant detail, since Esther and Mordecai’s enemy, Haman, is a descendant of Saul’s old enemy, Agag the Amalekite (Esther 3:1) — the man whom Saul failed to make an end of (1 Samuel 15:9).

Like the story of Ruth, then, the book of Esther doesn’t recount an isolated incident; it describes a resurgence of an age-old rivalry and, importantly, an opportunity for Esther and Mordecai to make amends for their ancestor’s failures. Indeed, viewed against that backdrop, some of the more unusual features of the book of Esther make good sense. Why does the book go to such lengths to tell us the Jews were allowed to plunder their enemies’ goods yet declined to do so (Esther 8:10–13; 9:10, 15–16)? The answer is that what takes place is a reversal/rectification of Saul’s failures. Whereas Saul wasn’t permitted to plunder Agag’s goods and yet disobediently did so, thrice proclaiming his innocence (1 Samuel 15:13, 15, 20), the Jews were allowed to plunder their enemies’ goods and yet thrice declined to do so (see above).

Significant for a similar reason is Esther’s attitude toward Mordecai. Why does Esther go to such lengths to have Mordecai exalted alongside her in Esther 8–9 (which seems to needlessly prolong the book’s conclusion)? As before, one answer is that what takes place is a reversal of Saul’s failures: whereas Saul sought to oust a man who had been like a son to him (David), Esther sought to promote a man who had been like a father to her (Mordecai).

Hence, just as Boaz and Ruth put right what their ancestors got wrong, so Esther and Mordecai put right what their ancestor (Saul) got wrong. And such mini-redemptions set the stage for a greater redemption to come — for a redeemer who will atone for what Israel and Adam got wrong (hence Matthew’s genealogy takes us from Jesus back to Abraham, and Luke’s takes us from Jesus back to Adam).

Navigating Genealogies

Far more can be said about the Bible’s genealogies and the role they play in the biblical narrative, but the topics outlined above give us a feel for the kind of questions we can ask ourselves when confronted with a genealogy. What is its shape and structure — and what does that remind us of? Do we recognize any of its names and contents from elsewhere — and which biblical events might that prompt us to connect and read in light of one another?

Thus interrogated, genealogies can greatly further our comprehension of the biblical text as well as our place in today’s generation.

As moms and dads, the odds of being perfect parents are the same odds of being perfect human beings: nil.

We’re not omniscient. The parent who thinks he has learned all he needs to learn and is finished maturing remains immature. We have much to gain, and our children can be a way for us to grow up. I used to think the sequence was this:

Grow up.
Get married.
Have children.

But no. You get married, grow up a bit, have children, and then grow up lots more. Our children help to raise us.

Home as a School for Parents

A parent taught only by adults possesses an incomplete education. Parents cannot appreciate everything they are told about parenting until they experience children of their own.

When I taught in public schools, one of my colleagues had raised no children of her own, but because of her master’s degree, she considered herself quite knowledgeable in raising them. Sadly, she didn’t know what she didn’t know. The experience of parenting provides an unparalleled school. The tests may seem a bit tough at times, but to become a parent is to enroll.

In normal school, the tests are generally preceded by lessons. In life, including parenting, the tests arrive prior to the lessons and are in fact part of the lessons.

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

Raising children brings a conveyor belt of tests and trials, and as instruments in the hand of God, those tests produce mature parental character.

A Child’s Many Lessons

Becoming a parent, then, is no license to stop learning, and the household is a wonderful, God-given school. What are some of those lessons parents might expect to learn in this school of the family? Consider just a sampling.

Children teach us that life is brief. Childhood goes by in a flash. We are older than we think, closer to the finish line. Even when life may seem to be dragging, it flies by, with less and less sand left in the hourglass. My own children are now middle-aged with their own children becoming adults. How did that happen so fast? Since life is brief, wise parents sort priorities so that main things take precedence, deferring lesser things accordingly.

Children remind us of lessons we are continually forgetting, such as the centrality of enabling grace to do what we ought to do; the need for humble realism, pointing us back to the enabling grace we need; and the bigness of God, who always provides enough of that enabling grace. “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

“You get married, grow up a bit, have children, and then grow up lots more. Our children help to raise us.”

Children picture for us (and remind us) what receiving God’s kingdom is like: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:15).

Children can model faith, amazement, yearning, and delight. They can teach us that the universe God created is a fascinating place. Alert parents are on the lookout for ways to imitate these living, God-given signposts in our homes. From them we can learn how to try things, to experiment.

Children are also mirrors, reflecting back to us our priorities and our character. Where did that child learn to use that tone of voice? The home serves as an excellent laboratory in which to practice setting a guard at our lips. The mirrors are listening.

As mirrors, children teach us about ourselves, that we (parents and children) are a race of sinners, born with a sinful bent, with none of us fulfilling righteousness — no, not one (Romans 3:10–12). We all tend to be self-centered, making foolish efforts to self-justify. To parent without a conscious awareness of our sin nature is to garden without an awareness of weeds.

Children also have reminded me that mercy covers a multitude of sins. They can be models of forgiveness. Don’t waste the models.

Aiming Bottle Rockets

Over time, children also teach us just how much we depend on God himself to raise our children.

Even though parents are extremely influential in shaping the lives of their kids, if your children don’t eventually disabuse you of the notion that you are responsible for everything they become, then let me relieve you of that unbiblical idea right now.

Once, when I set off a package of “identical” bottle rockets launched from the same pop bottle and aimed the same way, they launched in wildly varied directions, some curling and swirling, some darting straight to the heavens, and a few blowing up before leaving the launching pad. In the providence of God, children vary like bottle rockets. Yes, you can aim them, but you can’t guarantee they’ll end up in the same place. Not all variables are within parents’ control. Children teach us this lesson, illustrated with their lives. The uniqueness of each child (at any age) points us to God’s matchless creativity.

It’s true that some parents do a terrible or indifferent job of “aiming” their little rockets, and the above paragraph is not aimed at soothing their guilt. I’m saying that rockets from the same package, manufactured the same way, aimed by the same aimers, go off in different directions. If parents don’t know this going in, the arrival of actual children provides a field exercise in recalibrating expectations.

Embrace Your Home as a School

Learning from our children depends, in part, on embracing the reality of our deep, ongoing imperfections. Such humble and realistic self-awareness serves healthy and wise parental openness, helping us not run from the painful lessons we see in the mirror of our kids.

I have found it helpful to consciously ask, “How is God refining me by means of his word, these children he has given me, and the circumstances in which I now swim?” In addition to being mightily encouraged by the glimmers of progress that occasionally burst through, I am served by the adversities I encounter as a parent. As messengers of God, the challenges of parenting humble me, point out where repentance is due (or overdue), pull weeds of selfishness and immaturity in my heart, and spread fertilizer on the soil from which grows the fruit of the Spirit.

Parenting challenges prod me to refocus and make not just a home but a life. They spur me to plant seeds and water the seeds planted in my own heart by my God-given children. Lord, make it so.

My wife and I have often told our children, “You raised us.” God be thanked.

I have a story I want to share with you, based on another you likely know. Jesus tells the original in the fifteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, and many have called it “the parable of the prodigal son,” though it’s actually about two rebellious sons.

Jesus’s parable requires no literary embellishments. The more I’ve meditated on this story over the decades, the more of Jesus’s brilliance I’ve seen in the parable exactly as Luke records it. I wasn’t moved to write my story by some delusion of self-grandeur, but as an attempt to enter into the parable, something I believe Jesus invites all of us to do.

As we age and our roles and relationships evolve, we are likely to see ourselves and others in the parable’s different characters. Whether we see ourselves more in the younger brother or the older brother, Jesus is calling us to think deeply about what it means for God to be “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 103:8) — not only as it relates to us, but as it relates to how we judge other younger or older brothers.

A lot of teaching is contained in this one parable. It is part of what makes the parable of the two sons, in its profound simplicity, a work of genius. I wouldn’t want to change a word. That said, I’d like to share with you the way I’ve sought to engage my imagination as a means of meditation by putting myself in the parable. In the following story, I imagine myself primarily as the older brother, who is trying to come to terms with the seriousness of his own sin.

The story takes place the day after the younger brother’s homecoming, sometime in the early afternoon. The older brother (whom I’ve named Judah) is standing on a small rise at the edge of the family property, gazing down the road that had guided his younger brother (whom I’ve named Benjamin) back home the day before. Ben has kept his distance from Jude, knowing how angry his older brother had been the night before. But wishing to somehow own up to his disastrous sin, Ben seeks Jude out and tentatively approaches him.

Prodigal’s Point

“Hey, Jude,” Ben said. “Am I interrupting anything?”

Judah glanced at his brother, then returned his eyes to the road. “Just my thoughts,” he said.

Ben was trying to get a read on his brother. “I can connect with you later, if this isn’t a good time,” he said. “I’d like to talk for a few minutes — if you’re willing.”

Judah shifted his gaze to the ground. “I guess this is as good a time as any,” he said.

Ben had rehearsed this moment many times in his mind. But now, nerves and the palpable tension muddled his thoughts. “I . . . um . . . I’m sure I’m not going to say this right, but I’m going to try. I know how angry you must be with me, and God knows you have good reason to be angry with me. And I know that nothing I could say will ever undo what I’ve done. I should be kicked out of the family. So, if you want to disown me, I understand. But I still . . . somehow . . .” Ben paused to quiet the sobs that wanted to come. “I want you to know how sorry I am for what I’ve done to you and to Dad and to the family’s honor through my . . . my terrible selfishness.”

For a few moments, Judah said nothing. Then, looking back down the road, he said, “The day you left, this is where Dad stood, watching you till you were out of sight. And he came back here so often that I started calling this place ‘Prodigal’s Point.’ If someone couldn’t find Dad, I’d say, ‘Check Prodigal’s Point.’ He never stopped hoping he’d see you coming back home.”

Ben squeezed his eyes, but still had to wipe the tears.

Judah glanced at him again. “Yeah, I know. Our poor father and his prodigal sons.”

“Prodigal son, you mean,” replied Ben quietly. “Only one of us fits that bill.”

“A few weeks ago, I would have agreed. Yesterday morning, I would have at least pretended to agree,” said Judah. “But not today.”

Disoriented, Ben asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Dad has two prodigal sons,” said Judah. “One who sailed off down that road to sow his wild oats in worldly fields, and one who stayed home to sow his wild oats in more respectable fields.”

“I’m not following you,” said Ben.

Sinful Secret

“You just apologized for all the damage you did to me, right?” said Judah.

Ben gave him a perplexed nod.

“Well, the truth is, I didn’t feel damaged by what you did; I felt vindicated,” said Judah. “I thought I was so much like Dad. He worked hard; I worked hard. He was careful with his money; I was careful with my money. When you took off to blow your inheritance on whatever your heart desired, you didn’t damage me; you made me look good. You were a scandal. But me? I was the upstanding, responsible, faithful, diligent son — a chip off the old block. You didn’t damage me. You embellished me.”

“Well, it was deserved,” said Ben. “I mean, obviously you’ve been a better son to Dad than I’ve been.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” said Judah. “At least at first.” Then, looking at Ben, he said, “But here’s the secret: it wasn’t true. It started to dawn on me before you came home. I started noticing how not like Dad I was. I’d have my hand to the plough, and then I’d see him up here gazing into the distance, hoping to see you. It used to really irritate me. You know why?”

Ben shook his head.

“If you had asked me at the time, I would have said it was because Dad staring down the road wasn’t going to bring you back. That he was wasting valuable time. But that wasn’t the real reason. It made me angry because when I saw Dad longing for you, it felt to me like he missed you more than he appreciated me. Like he didn’t value all I was doing for him. Like he didn’t think our relationship was special, like I did.” Judah paused, looking at the ground.

Ben said, “Jude, there’s no doubt that Dad valued —” Judah cut him off. “No, let me finish. It’s just embarrassing to say out loud. You know, Dad asked me a few times to join him up here so we could pray for you together. That irritated me in the same way. At first, I made convenient excuses, but finally I told him what I really thought. I told him he could pray for you if he wanted, but I wasn’t going to waste another minute on you. And that if you had squandered all that hard-earned money, I never wanted to see you again.” Judah closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “God . . . have mercy. What a horrible thing to say.”

Loveless Anger Can’t Be Righteous

“I can understand why you felt that way,” said Ben.

“Well, Dad couldn’t,” said Judah. “What I said grieved him deeply — because he loved you. And his grief made me angrier, because — I’m ashamed to admit it — because I didn’t love you.” Judah paused and dropped his eyes. “In fact, I don’t think I loved Dad, at least not like I should have loved him. I loved me, though it still took a while for me to see this. I still thought my anger toward you was justified, righteous even.”

“I’m sure it was, at least in part,” said Ben.

Judah shook his head. “I’m pretty sure none of it was. You know, I asked Dad once why he wasn’t more angry with you. He said it was because ‘the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love’ (Psalm 103:8). I took this as Dad avoiding coming to terms with what you did and trying to use Scripture to make it look holy. So I reminded him that other Scriptures clearly show that God gets angry over sin, and so should we. To which he said something like, ‘When men get angry, God’s righteousness is rarely seen.’

“I said to him, ‘So, we’re never supposed to get angry. Ben can walk off to only God knows where with all that money you worked so hard for, blow it on whores and whatever else, and we’re not supposed to get angry? We’re just supposed to bow our heads and meekly pray that God brings him back home? I don’t think so!’

“Dad said, ‘I’m not saying we shouldn’t be angry. But the Scriptures say, “Be angry, and do not sin”’ (Psalm 4:4). I wanted to pull my hair out. ‘Tell me what you think that’s supposed to mean, Dad!’ I don’t think I’ll ever forget his answer. He said, ‘Jude, I’ve been trying to figure that out for decades. And, honestly, I don’t know if I’m getting the balance right with Ben. But what I do know is this: if God’s mercy and grace and steadfast love make him slow to anger toward his sinful children — of which I am one — then when my children sin, that’s what I want them to experience from me.’”

Both men were quiet for a moment. Then Judah said, “That’s when I realized loveless anger cannot be righteous anger. It’s also when I realized just how not like Dad I was, not to mention just how not like God I was.”

The Other Prodigal

After another pause, Judah said, “But you know, at least I hadn’t blown my inheritance and ruined my reputation, right? That was something! Maybe I wasn’t as godly as Dad, but I was still better than you! Or so I thought . . . till you came home. Then Dad threw you your big party and invited everyone, and everybody was celebrating the dead brother who came back to life. Everybody except me. I was angry — at you, at Dad, at God, at everyone at the party. I knew my anger wasn’t righteous, and I didn’t care. When Dad came out and pleaded with me to join the party, I lashed out at him. I was mean. No way was I going into that house. I wasn’t happy to see you. And I wanted to make Dad feel bad.”

Ben couldn’t help but cringe at these words. They were hard to hear. But they were harder for Judah to say.

Judah went on. “It wasn’t until Dad had gone back in the house and I was alone with myself that I saw the whole ugly truth: all my efforts over the years to please Dad, all my hard work, all the time I was pouring into everything I did — none of it was really for Dad’s sake. Or for God’s sake. It was all for my sake. My anger toward you and toward Dad, it was all about me — me not getting the recognition I craved and me having my shameful selfishness exposed. And it suddenly hit me: I was as much a prodigal as you had been. I was blowing my inheritance on myself as I chased my heart’s desires. I was doing it in more socially commendable ways, but they were just as selfish at the core. And I was as distant from Dad as you had been.”

Returning Home

Ben wanted to say something, but no words came. This conversation had gone wildly different from the ones he’d rehearsed.

Judah wasn’t quite done though. “Now look at us, you and me. How fitting: two prodigals standing here on Prodigal’s Point. But how ironic: the wandering prodigal has come home, while the homebound prodigal has not. That’s why you found me here, Ben. I’ve been trying to get up the nerve to return home.”

Ben, simultaneously laughing and crying, said, “Well, Jude, if you’re looking for an experienced guide, I’m your man — having recently become something of an expert in returning home. But I should warn you: when you speak to Dad, you won’t get more than a few words out before you find yourself swept away in a current of fatherly affection.”

“Yeah, I know,” Judah said, smiling. “Our father and his prodigal sons. But before you so expertly guide me home, I need to say something to you, and I’m probably not going to say it right. But forgive me, Ben, for what I’ve done to you through my terrible, sinful selfishness.”

Ben’s wordless bear hug was all the response Judah needed.

In the hinterland of Senegal, in the middle of a remote field on the outskirts of a village, stands a white metal sign. Emblazoned in blue is the name of a humanitarian organization and the date of its mission: August 2015. According to the sign, the organization’s mission is “to provide water for the waterless.” Behind the sign stands a small, concrete water tower, about ten feet in height, positioned next to an open well. Surprisingly, however, when I came across this well in January 2016, there were no footpaths to the site, no signs of recent use. Upon inspection, the well was dry.

To the one who thirsts, there is nothing quite so disheartening as an empty well. Parched tongues long for water, and God prepares his people to be cupbearers for the thirsty. He intends for us to dig new wells, to feed hungry mouths, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and imprisoned (Matthew 25:35–36). Yet as Christians move toward need, we do so not as the world does. For we know that even if we could provide access to water throughout the whole world, only Christ can fill the soul’s deepest well. Christian charity is unlike the world’s because, in every act of serving, we aim to meet a deeper need and slake a deeper thirst.

Churches for the Poor

From their earliest days, Christian churches have served the needs of surrounding communities, especially the poorest among them. Members of the early church were quick to sell their belongings in order to care for those among them who had need (Acts 4:34–35). And this generosity overflowed beyond the church. The Roman Emperor Julian (who reigned from 361–363), known in history as “the apostate” for his total rejection of Christianity, famously wrote in a letter to a pagan priest, “The impious Galileans [read Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well” (Mission in the Early Church, 128).

One such “impious Galilean” was the fourth-century bishop Basil of Caesarea, who served during a time when a famine in the region brought economic devastation. “I shall be like Joseph,” he declared, “in proclaiming the love of my fellow man” (137). Basil opened the storehouses of the church, advocated for the relief of the hungry, and even oversaw the construction of a complex outside Caesarea called the basileas, which included housing, a hospital, and opportunities for work and the development of job skills. In a funeral oration for the beloved Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus said of him, “According to the Scripture [he] dealt food to the hungry and satisfied the poor with bread” (Oration 43.35).

The annals of Christian history are replete with examples such as Basil, followers of Christ who have understood that pure and undefiled religion includes visiting orphans and widows in their affliction (James 1:27). True faith, James explains, expresses itself with material care, giving those in distress “the things needed for the body” (James 2:16). The poor are everywhere and always with us, and one of the church’s tasks, and privileges, in the world is to care for their needs.

True religion basks in the abundance of God’s generosity and joyfully gives to others as an expression of the overflow of love received. Christians know that the fullest expression of God’s generosity is the gift of Christ, who left wealth and took up poverty so that he might make us rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). As recipients of God’s generosity, we are free to lavish on others what we have received, since we know that our heavenly Father will richly provide for us.

On its own, however, even the greatest humanitarian aid offers just a few drops of water to parched tongues. All who drink from these wells will thirst again, for suffering people’s greatest need is not the alleviation of their temporal suffering.

One Well Never Runs Dry

Adam and Eve’s cataclysmic fall from grace fractured every relationship for which they were designed. It fractured human relationships, generating strife between husband and wife (Genesis 3:16), brothers (Genesis 4:8), and mankind in general (Genesis 4:23–24). It also fractured their relationship with the rest of creation (Genesis 3:17–19). Their lives in the world would now be marked by untold suffering.

“In every act of serving, we aim to meet a deeper need and slake a deeper thirst.”

But the worst result of sin goes deeper. Their decision also fractured their relationship with God, leading them to hide from God’s presence rather than delight in it (Genesis 3:8). Restored relationship with God is every person’s greatest need. Service that stops with restoring human relationships or relieving physical or emotional suffering provides only momentary relief by comparison. Without calling people to repent of their sin and turn to the God who offers eternal life, all the humanitarian assistance in the world is like trying to extinguish a forest fire with a thimbleful of water. As Jeremy Treat writes,

While Christ makes us whole again, the greatest accomplishment of the cross is that we are made at-one with God. And this is the key. If all the ills of the world were healed, all the injustices made right, and all the sadness undone, but we still were not right with God, then it would only be a momentary relief in our suffering and in our eternal longing for God. (The Atonement, 158)

Christians’ work in the world doesn’t stop with serving at a local soup kitchen or helping a next-door neighbor with a meal in a time of distress. We move relentlessly toward suffering and need with the knowledge that everyone we meet has a deep thirst in the soul. Our primary aim as Christians is to point people to living water, a well that never runs dry (John 4:13–14).

How to Love Your Neighbor

Jesus said that the two greatest commandments, on which depend all the Law and Prophets, are “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

Reflecting on the two great commandments, Augustine writes, “Our good, the final good . . . is nothing other than to cling to [God]. . . . We are enjoined to love this good with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength.” That is, God himself is the final good, “the source of our happiness” and “the end of all desire.” Turning then to consider what it means to love oneself, Augustine says, “He who loves himself wants nothing other than to be happy.” And true happiness is found only in clinging to God. What then does it mean to love one’s neighbor as oneself?

When a person who now knows what it means to love himself is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, what else is he commanded to do but, so far as possible, to urge his neighbor to love God? (City of God 10.3)

To put it simply, if we want to do people the most good, we will point them to God.

To really love our neighbors, to serve others in this world as Christians, our ministry cannot simply supply people with the sorts of wells that will soon run dry. Reflecting further on Basil’s ministry to the poor, Gregory says that he also provided “the nourishment of the Word . . . wherewith souls are fed and given to drink . . . a food which does not pass away or fail, but abides forever” (Oration 43.36). Basil saw what Augustine discovered: the truest fulfillment of every need, longing, and desire can only be found in the one who is the source of all happiness and the end of all desire.

After rising from the dead, Christ sent his disciples as his witnesses into the world (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8). He made them ministers not of mere alleviation but of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18–19). Their message concerned the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of relationship with God in Christ. This hope is ultimately what we have to offer. And we offer it as we express with deeds of kindness and service the generous grace of God. While we work hard to alleviate the ills in the world due to the curse, we ultimately point people to the curse lifter.

Come and Drink

Opportunities to offer water to the thirsty surround us every day. We find them in our family members, our neighbors, our friends, and our coworkers. We see them on the street and in the news. People suffer from broken and damaged relationships, unexpected losses and failures, deprivations of basic human needs, and much more. As individuals and as churches, we rightly steward what God has given to meet those needs.

True religion still expresses itself in selfless, humble giving and serving. But our service is always designed to point people to the one who offers them eternal life. As we minister to the poor, we tell them about the one who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9); as we offer food to the hungry, we speak of the bread of life (John 6:35); as we visit the sick and dying, we point to him who took our illnesses and bore our diseases (Matthew 8:17); and as we give cups of water to parched tongues, we tell them of him who said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37).