Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast, with longtime author and pastor John Piper. Pastor John, as we near the end of this January, we arrive at Psalm 22. For those of you reading along with us in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, Psalm 22 has been in front of us now for a few days. It’s a haunting psalm, haunting from the very opening line: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). Very heavy. And it’s especially haunting because this line becomes one of the cries of Jesus from the cross. Psalm 22 is all about Christ, and it’s on his lips in the crucifixion accounts in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34. But to hear him recite Psalm 22:1 leads us to ask this: Was Jesus confused by the cross?

That’s what a listener named Bridgette wants to find out today. Here’s her email: “Pastor John, I love the Lord deeply, and my faith continues to grow, but I’ve always struggled with Matthew 27:45–46, where Jesus recites Psalm 22:1. Why would Jesus question the Father like this in asking, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ when he certainly knew the answer? It was for this very reason Jesus came to die — to be forsaken on our behalf! Could you give insight into this, so that this hurdle in my faith can be removed?”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Those terrifying words occur in two Gospels (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34) as Jesus is hanging on the cross near death. It says, “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice.” Amazing. How did he have any strength to do a loud voice? “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” — the Aramaic form. “That is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matthew 27:46).

Script of the Passion

Now, one very important fact to remember is that these words are the exact first words of Psalm 22. And that’s important because Jesus seems to have known that the whole psalm, in some way or other, was about him. Because at least three other parts of this psalm are quoted in the story of his death. You have Psalm 22:1–2; this is what the psalm says: “Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Then Psalm 22:7 says, “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads.” And those exact words, “they wag their heads,” are quoted in Matthew 27:39 — “Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads” — to show that this psalm is being played out in the death of Jesus.

Then Psalm 22:16 says, “They have pierced my hands and feet.” And then Psalm 22:18 says, “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” So, the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are part of this psalm that contains, as it were, a script for Jesus’s last hours.

Now, why did he say it? She wants to know, “Why the why?” Why did he say it? And here’s a three-part answer.

1. He was bearing our judgment.

First, there was a real forsakenness. That’s why. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” means he really did. He really did. He’s bearing our sin. He bore our judgment. The judgment was to have God the Father pour out his wrath on us, and instead, he pours it out on him. And that necessarily involves a kind of abandonment. That’s what wrath means. He gave him up to suffer the weight of all the sins of all his people. And the judgment, the judgment for those sins — we cannot fathom. I don’t think we can begin to fathom all that this would mean between the Father and the Son.

To be forsaken by God is the cry of the damned, and he was damned for us. So, he used these words because there was a real forsakenness. That’s the first reason.

2. He was expressing desolation.

Second, the why, it seems to me, is not a question looking for an answer, but a way of expressing the horrors of abandonment. I have a couple of reasons for thinking this.

“To be forsaken by God is the cry of the damned, and he was damned for us.”

Jesus knew ahead of time what he was doing and what would happen to him and why he was doing it. His Father had sent him for this very moment, and he had agreed to come, knowing all that would happen. Listen to these words (this is John 18:4): “Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to [the arresting mob], ‘Whom do you seek?’” He gave himself up. So, he knew. He knew it was coming. He knew everything.

Another reason is that the moment was one of agony, not theological curiosity. The moment was one of agony.

And a third thought — on the fact that he’s not asking a question so much as expressing a horror — is that the words are a reflex of immersion in Psalm 22, it seems. They’re a direct quotation, but when you’re hanging on the cross, you don’t say, “Oh, I think I want to quote some Scripture here.” It either is in you, as the very essence of your messianic calling, or it’s not. And if it’s in you, then you give vent at the worst moment of your life with the appointment of your Father scripted in Psalm 22. That seems to be right at the heart of what’s going on.

Let me read Psalm 22:22–24. It goes like this:

I will tell of your name to my brothers;     in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:You who fear the Lord, praise him!     All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,     and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!For he has not despised or abhorred     the affliction of the afflicted,and he has not hidden his face from him,     but has heard, when he cried to him.

In other words, this psalm ends with a note of triumph. So, Jesus isn’t curious or wondering, “How’s this going to turn out?” He had embedded in his soul the horrors of the moment of abandonment, and he had embedded in his soul the joy that was set before him. “I’ve got a promise, and God will not despise me. In the end, he will take me back.”

So, at some level, he knows it’s not a final cry or an ultimate cry. He endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). And the why is not a request for a theological answer; it’s a real cry of spiritual desolation with words that were second nature, because his whole life was scripted by God.

3. He was fulfilling Scripture.

I think the last reason we should say, therefore, is that this psalm was his life. Crying out reflexively in agony with the words of this psalm shows that, as horrible as it is, it was all going according to plan. All of it was the fulfillment of Scripture — even the worst of it was the fulfillment of Scripture. And that moment was probably the worst moment in the history of the world. And it was Scripture fulfilled.

So, he said these words, first, because there was a real forsakenness for our sake. Second, he was expressing desolation, not asking for an answer. And third, he was amazingly fulfilling Scripture in the horror of it all and witnessing to the perfection of the plan of salvation.

Spaghetti sauce bubbles in a pot on the stove, the rich red depths of the kettle wafting fragrance throughout the house. The annual ritual spans three decades: garden-grown tomatoes, handpicked and placed into a basket, become jars of winter provision. After all, my four sons could eat a lot of pasta.

But this pot of spaghetti sauce is different — momentous, really, because it’s not mine. My son and his wife grew these tomatoes in their own garden and brought them to my kitchen for transformation. “Canning for dummies!” they say with a chuckle, inviting me to hover over them throughout the process as we puree, add spices, watch over the slow simmer, and then preserve the thick, fragrant sauce in hot glass jars.

“Twelve quarts!” they exclaim as they high-five each other.

Having homeschooled my sons through high school, I’d like to think this isn’t the first time I’ve taught them something. I’d be kidding myself, though, if I imagined they always received my teaching with the same willing enthusiasm of this canning lesson. Unlike a daily algebra class or my arguments for a broad knowledge of world history, this day’s learning experience required no defense.

While gardening and canning are valuable life skills, Solomon had bigger things on his mind when he exhorted his son, “Forsake not your mother’s teaching” (Proverbs 1:8). Teaching here refers to direction, instruction, or even law. As mothers, we stand beside fathers in imparting the gospel to our families. In both structured teaching and purposeful living, truth is passed on and worn like “a graceful garland” on the heads of our sons and daughters (Proverbs 1:9).

Of course, the weighty question lands with a thud in parenting conversations for every life stage: How can parents pass along a vibrant faith? How can we communicate the truth we believe in a way that will not be forsaken by our children and our grandchildren?

Reminder in Chief

We know from Scripture that Peter, Jesus’s outspoken fisherman-turned-apostle, was married, and the fatherly tone of his second letter makes me wonder if he was also a parent. Step by step, Peter describes a kind of incremental discipleship, in which faith is supplemented “with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5–7). He sounds almost like a mother teaching her son how to make and preserve spaghetti sauce in simple, orderly steps.

Peter follows his instruction with a gentle warning: “Whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (2 Peter 1:9). Even though his readers have heard the truth before, Peter understands that even believers who know the truth need to hear the truth, and then hear it again. Instead of expressing frustration over the need to repeat himself, he celebrates his role as “Reminder of the Truth.” He writes, “Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have” (2 Peter 1:12).

As a mother, you may find yourself serving as Reminder in Chief in your home, and, like Peter, it’s your privilege — and responsibility — to “make every effort” to establish your children in the truth (2 Peter 1:5, 12). Naturally, this will look very different at every stage of parenting, as your sons and daughters change from children to teens, teens to adults.

1. Reminding Children

We’re laying a foundation in the years of early childhood. I remember well that my teaching and training had to be repetitive, simple, and scriptural. Regular routines of family devotions and the steady input of my example instructed my four sons with and without a word.

The books, movies, and other media we chose reinforced our teaching of godly living. My apologies for outbursts of temper or moments of impatience reminded my boys that I was also in the process of sanctification.

Like Peter, it was my intention “always to remind” my children of the beauty of the Christian life and the God behind that life (2 Peter 1:12). My four sons had four very different ways of being in the world, requiring me to become a student of their unique personalities. What connected with and communicated well for one child would likely completely miss his brother.

No matter what the culture at large may say, as the parent you are the main “reminder” in your children’s life. By grace, you can be the strongest, steadiest, and most compelling voice in their ears.

2. Reminding Teens

There were seasons of life with our teens when we felt as if we were holding onto the reins of a runaway horse. When you’re being dragged at high speed, it’s hard to think rationally. We didn’t always know precisely what to do, but we knew we had to hold on tight. And now we’re thankful that we didn’t let go!

I’m grateful to have had the gift of consistently building the truth into our children since birth. If this is your story as well, your teens may very well be on their way to having a sincere love for God and a biblical worldview that will carry them safely into adulthood. With that foundation in place, it may be time to soften your reminding role — but certainly not time to abandon it.

In the spirit of Peter’s epistle, why not send a short note commending your son or daughter for some trait that displays godliness and encourages your heart? A verse in a lunch box, a well-chosen book with a well-timed message, an open-door policy that says, “Every topic of conversation is fair game here” — practices like these will go a long way toward reminding your almost-grown children that faith in Jesus is a vital part of life and that you are willing to accompany them on their journey.

3. Reminding Adults?

For most of us, the longest phase of parenthood begins when our children leave home and become independent. Our role certainly changes, but our job is not done. For the rest of our days, for good or for ill, we will be living “a reminding life” before our adult children. How we honor boundaries, make room in our hearts for in-laws, respond to our grandchildren, and negotiate the inevitable disagreements that arise will either become a barrier or a bridge.

In 2022, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive and debilitating neurological disorder. While it has always been my goal to model strength for my children, I’m now discovering how to wisely model a gracious acceptance of weakness balanced by persevering discipline. I submit to the daily exercise routine that allows me to care for baby grandchildren and chase toddlers. And as I do, I work carefully at showing them what it means to maintain my focus on the things that are unseen and eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Perhaps the teaching opportunities we have not chosen, but which have nonetheless been assigned to us by our wise, loving, good, and sovereign heavenly Father, will have the most lasting influence on our families.

A Reminding Life

With a new grandbaby due any day, there will be fifteen Morins who will continue to receive loving reminders from me, because I agree with Peter: “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder” (2 Peter 1:13).

May our children embrace and not forsake the teaching that we impart throughout all the ages and stages of their lives, including the lessons that come to us in unexpected ways. As godly mothers and grandmothers, let’s embrace the weighty joy of living a reminding life.

Drunkenness is an unusually seeable sin. People can drink in secret, of course, but if they’re drunk around others (especially those who know them well), it’s generally not hard to tell. The bloodshot eyes, the flushed face, the inability to focus, the slurred speech, the slowed processing speed, the loud talking, the difficulty walking in a straight line, the erratic laughter. Unlike many others, drunk people wear their sin on their sleeve. And pants. And sometimes on the person next to them.

My freshman year at college was my jarring introduction to drunkenness. One night an especially inebriated rugby player ripped the drinking fountain off the dorm wall. Another night, a different guy (unknowingly) relieved himself in a friend’s dresser drawer. Drunkenness is a loud and ugly sin. We can probably all remember (unwanted) encounters we’ve had with it.

The more I’ve considered what excessive alcohol does to a person, though, the more I wonder if drunkenness isn’t something of a parable for a whole host of subtler abuses. What if God allowed rugby players to make a fool of themselves to warn us about more respectable and prevalent forms of drunkenness, all the socially acceptable ways we try to distract and numb ourselves?

Five Dangers of Abusing Anything

Alcohol, remember, was invented by God, not man, as a gift, not a curse — “to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15). Like so many gifts, however, it can (quickly) become a curse when it’s enjoyed carelessly or indulgently. In a previous article, I reflected on a wise father’s warnings to his son about drunkenness in Proverbs 23:29–35 (which I’ll rehearse below). Meditating on these dangers over months now, though, had me wondering if we might experience the same kinds of symptoms or consequences in other, more subtle patterns of sin. I think we do.

The first danger is confusion, or blurry eyes. “Your eyes will see strange things” (Proverbs 23:33). Abusing alcohol will rob you of the ability to perceive actual reality. You will see things that are not there, or you’ll see things that are there but not as they are.

The second danger is perversion, or a dull conscience. “Your heart [will] utter perverse things” (Proverbs 23:33). Under the influence of excessive alcohol, you’ll be more likely to sin, more vulnerable to temptation. Drunkenness makes a deadly pit look like a well (verse 27).

The third danger is instability, or unreliable hands. “[The drunk man] will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast” (Proverbs 23:34). Alcohol leaves a man asleep in grave peril, in situations where his alertness really matters (like while sailing or driving). When he’s needed most, he’s unavailable.

The fourth danger is a kind of paralysis, or a numb soul: “‘They struck me,’ you will say, ‘but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it’” (Proverbs 23:35). The drunk man’s senses have been so dulled that he cannot even feel when someone beats him. Spiritually speaking, he becomes numb to temptation and sin, to worship and holiness. Alcohol slowly paralyzes his most important abilities.

The final danger is futility, or an empty, restless heart. “When shall I awake?” the drunk man asks. “I must have another drink” (Proverbs 23:35). The drunk person desperately looks for satisfaction, searching and searching, drinking and drinking, but he never finds the bottom. Drunkenness is a well without water, a marathon without a finish line.

It’s not hard to see that excessive alcohol does these kinds of things to a person. The symptoms are loud and disruptive. It may not be much harder, though, to see how other, subtler indulgences can do the same.

Drunk Without Drinking

Can you think of anything you like to do that sometimes causes one of these symptoms? An inability to discern or feel spiritual reality. A greater vulnerability to temptation. A laziness or distractedness that makes you unavailable when needed. A numbness to spiritual things. A restless sense of dissatisfaction or frustration.

Doesn’t overeating do this to us? Doesn’t laziness do this to us? Doesn’t obsession with sports, or news, or social media? What about shopping, always hunting for the next deal? What about binge-watching that series for hours at a time? Don’t our phones hold this kind of numbing, distracting power?

Of course, in the right time and measure, the pleasures we experience in these moments are not bad. All of them can be blessings from God, like alcohol, given to help us enjoy him. And yet all become dangerous when they gain a measure of control over us.

Why might God allow alcohol to undo people like it so often does? That’s a weighty, sensitive question, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers to it. But might God ordain drunkenness, at least in part, as a kind of drama to awaken us to the consequences of abusing any of his gifts? These other abuses don’t often manifest themselves like drunkenness — they’re not as loud and ugly — but they can be every bit as dangerous to our souls.

The apostle Paul sounds a broader warning for us: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Not just alcohol, but anything. So, what in your life has the potential to dominate you? Another way to ask that question would be to ask questions like these:

What erodes your ability to discern truth from lies and good from evil, your ability to see the world, yourself, and God accurately?
What makes it easier for you to fall into temptation? What makes sin more appealing to you?
What compromises your ability to meet the needs of those around you, especially those who depend on you?
What numbs you to reality, especially spiritual reality — to God, to his word, to his will for your life?
What consistently leaves you feeling empty and restless?

Under a Better Influence

Then, having discerned your specific areas of weakness or temptation (and shared them with a brother or sister in Christ), you might also ask what does the opposite in you.

What in your life brings spiritual reality into clarity and focus? What makes Christ seem more real, trustworthy, and satisfying?
What makes temptation seem pathetic and unappealing and dangerous?
What stabilizes your soul through conflict and hardship?
What heightens your awareness and sensitivity to the needs around you?
What quenches your deepest thirsts and satisfies your deepest longings?

You could summarize questions like these by saying,

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18)

This was another light-bulb moment for me. What if God allows the pitiful misery and destructiveness of drunkenness, at least in part, so that he can turn to his children and say, “Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit”? Do you see how captive that man is to alcohol? Be that captive to God. Live so that someone might look at your life and say, “He’s been captured by something — by someone. He’s not his own anymore.”

Habits of Clarity and Joy

If you want to begin drinking at those wells, to be slowly arrested and transformed by the Spirit, I encourage you to read a book like Habits of Grace. The three core habits — the word of God, prayer, and fellowship — have liberated countless hearts from darkness (including mine) and filled them with light and life and joy. And they’re all the more effective when we intentionally enjoy them together, with other believers.

“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Avoid whatever, like drunkenness, undermines the work of the Spirit inside of you, whatever dulls and distracts your heart. Periodically audit the habits you’ve developed, the ones you’ve chosen and the ones you’ve fallen into, and consider how you might cut back (or out) whatever tends to weaken your soul. And then pursue, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, whatever increases and refines your love for Christ — whatever helps you run hard after him.

Knowing God as Father
Knowing that God is our Father is one thing; understanding how we should relate to him as such is another. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Malachi 1:6–14 to demonstrate how knowing God as Father should lead us to honor him.

“I’m just not feeling it today.”

How often have you reached for that excuse? Many of us can be quick to cast ourselves as the victim of a sluggish heart.

Now, making peace with a pokey heart is a very strange phenomenon, even as it now is a widespread assumption and typically goes unquestioned. It may be no big deal if we’re talking about whether you want peanut butter on your breakfast toast. But far more is at stake when this becomes an excuse for neglecting God, whether in his word, prayer, or Christian fellowship.

Specifically, this excuse has served to undermine habits of spiritual health related to beginning each day with the voice of God in Scripture. Some of us are gaunt, frail Christians because we’ve learned, like our world, to cater to the whims of our own fickle hearts rather than direct them and determine to reshape them.

Your Pliable Affections

In what may be his most insightful and deeply spiritual book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (2014), the late Tim Keller introduces us to a side of the great English theologian John Owen (1616–1683) that is especially out of step with modern assumptions. Owen, according to Keller, would not be so quick to grant the excuse, “I’m just not feeling it today.” In fact, he likely would respond forcefully — and many of us might be better for it.

Owen would at least challenge whether our initial feelings determined anything significant at all. He surely wouldn’t say to skip God’s word (or prayer or church) to cater to whatever unspiritual inclination you woke up feeling. Rather, he might say, as Keller summarizes, “Meditate to the point of delight.” Don’t give in to your heart’s first inclinations. Rather, take hold of them, and direct them. Open the Bible, and turn your attention to the one who is supremely worthy, and keep your nose in the Book, and your mind on Jesus, until your sluggish heart begins to respond like it should.

That’s striking counsel for a generation conditioned to “follow your heart” and, in time, presume to reshape our external, objective world based on the subjectivity and flightiness of our own desires.

How often do we hear even Christians concede, as a veiled excuse, to be “wired” a certain way? Indeed, God has wired us in certain ways. But how often do we resign ourselves to being hardwired in ways we’re actually far more pliable? And the world’s not helping us with this. Our society has come to feign plasticity in precisely the places we’re hardwired (like biological sex) and to pretend hard-wiring in the places we’re actually plastic (desires and delights).

Long before anyone talked about neuroplasticity, Owen believed in what we might call “affectional plasticity” — that is, your desires and delights are not hardwired. They are pliable. You can reshape and recondition them. You can retrain them. You may be unable to simply turn them with full effect in the moment to make yourself feel something, but you can reshape your heart over time. Oh, can you. Your desires, good and bad, are not simple givens. Stretched out over time, as the composite of countless decisions, they are wonderfully (and hauntingly) chosens.

Recondition Your Heart

In chapter 10 of Prayer, Keller adds his commentary to Owen’s premodern insights for a much-needed perspective on the wedding of God’s word with our prayers through meditation. It’s a perspective on forming and reforming our pliant hearts that will challenge readers today. It will frustrate many, but certainly inspire a few.

In general, we are far too easy on our minds and hearts. We grant we can train the body. In fact, you’re always training the body, whether for the better or the worse. And most will agree that you can train the mind — “the mind is a muscle,” so to speak. You can set it on a particular object and learn to keep it there. It will take practice. Such training is vital for engaging with God’s word as we ought, and few skills are more difficult or important to cultivate.

And far more controversial, you can train your heart— not just in sinful emotions to avoid but also in righteous emotions to entertain. With a Bible open in front of you, you can learn, as Keller summarizes Owen, to “meditate to the point of delight.”

Three Stages of Meditation

Some well-meaning Christians set out to read their Bibles, don’t feel much (if anything), move on swiftly to pray a few quick, shallow petitions, and then embark on their day. Owen would say, with C.S. Lewis, you are far too easily pleased — that is, if you’re even pleased at all. Rather, Owen would have us wrestle like Jacob across the Jabbok, until light dawns. Wrestle with your own sluggish soul. Direct it. Turn it. Grapple with it until it does what it’s supposed to do, and feels more like it’s supposed to feel about the wonders and horrors of the word of God. Say, in effect, to the God of the word, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” and discipline your heart to receive the joy for which God made it.

Now, a few clarifications are in order to recover this lost art of meditation. Owen distinguished between study, meditation, and prayer. Meditation is the bridge between receiving God’s word (in reading and study) and responding back to him (in prayer). Meditation, says Owen,

is distinguished from the study of the word, wherein our principal aim is to learn the truth, or to declare it unto others; and so also from prayer, whereof God himself is the immediate object. But . . . meditation . . . is the affecting of our own hearts and minds with love, delight, and [humility]. (quoted in Keller, Prayer, 152)

Meditation, then — distinct from study and prayer, though overlapping with them — might be parsed into three sequential stages.

1) Fix Your Mind

Begin with Bible intake, through reading, and rereading — the slower the better. And as we encounter various knowledge gaps in what the passage says and means, we might turn briefly to some “study” to “learn the truth” or rightly understand the text. Beginners will have more questions and need to navigate how frequently to stop and study or just keep reading and pick up clues as they go. But the main point is that meditation begins with immersion in the words of God.

Unlike Eastern “meditation,” which seeks to empty the mind, biblical meditation requires the filling of the mind with the truth of God’s self-revelation in his Son and Scripture. We don’t just up and meditate — not in the deliberate sense. We begin with Bible, fixing our thoughts on God and his Son through the content of his word.

2) Incline Your Heart

Fixing our thoughts can be difficult enough, but inclining the heart is imponderable for many. Not because it can’t be done, but because we have been socialized to assume it can’t. So, this is where Owen (and Keller) seems forceful, and surprising. But Owen counsels us, having fixed our minds on God’s word, to “persist in spiritual thoughts unto your refreshment” (Works of John Owen, volume 7, 393). That is, meditate until you begin to feel the word. Preach to yourself until you begin to feel more like you ought. Does the word declare God’s majesty? Feel awe. Does it warn sinners? Feel fear. Does it announce good news? Feel joy.

The goal is not to meditate for a particular duration of time, but to meditate until the point of delight, to persist “unto your refreshment.” The apostle Peter speaks of the present, not merely the future — of joy the Christian experiences now, in this age, not only in the one to come — when he says, “Though you do not now see [Jesus with your physical eyes], you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). Inexpressible, glorified joy is offered even now, and by no better means than fixing our minds on the word of God himself and meditating until he smiles on us, and warms our souls, with some real measure of delight.

Owen offers hope for those who think this is impossible: “Constancy in [this] duty will give ability for it. Those who conscientiously abide in its performance shall increase in light, wisdom, and experience until they are able to manage it with great success.” Keller then comments, leaning on Psalm 1, “Trees don’t grow overnight. Meditation is a sustained process like a tree growing its roots down toward the water source. The effects are cumulative. You must stick with it. We must meditate ‘day and night’ — regularly, steadily” (161–162).

Questions arise not only because of our sin but our humanity. Owen knew this every bit as much as we do, if not far better. Anticipating our objection, Keller writes,

Owen is quite realistic. He admits that sometimes, no matter what we do, we simply cannot concentrate, or we find our thoughts do not become big and affecting, but rather we feel bored, hard, and distracted. Then, Owen says, simply turn to God and make brief, intense appeals for help. Sometimes that is all you will do the rest of your scheduled time, and sometimes the very cries for help serve to concentrate the mind and soften the heart. (Prayer, 161)

A huge difference lies between occasional realism and a daily pattern of resignation. There’s a world of difference between a lazy beginner and the wise veteran, who has learned the lost art and come to experience the third stage with regularity, despite the “sometimes” of dryness and distraction.

3) Enjoy Your God

In the final stage, we give vent, or give space, to the enjoyment (or crying out) begun in the second. We fan the flame of fitting affection for the truth in view. This is the high point of meditation — enjoying God in Christ — which fills our souls with “an answering response.” As Keller comments, we “listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds” (55, emphasis added) — which leads us to prayer. According to Keller,

meditation before prayer consists of thinking, then inclining, and, finally, either enjoying the presence or admitting the absence and asking for his mercy and help. Meditation is thinking a truth out and then thinking a truth in until its ideas become “big” and “sweet,” moving and affecting, and until the reality of God is sensed upon the heart. (162)

And this “sensing of God on the heart,” through meditating on his word, issues in our response of prayer.

Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality. We may be responding not to the real God but to what we wish God and life to be like. Indeed, if left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn’t exist. . . . Without prayer that answers the God of the Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves. (62)

So, we want our prayers to be prompted by and tethered to the intake of God’s word. “We would never produce the full range of biblical prayer if we were initiating prayer according to our own inner needs and psychology. It can only be produced if we are responding in prayer according to who God is as revealed in the Scripture” (60).

Not Just Truth but Jesus

Keller ends this blessed tenth chapter with Jesus himself as the chief focus of our meditation. Not only did the God-man delight in the word of God like the happy man of Psalm 1, but he himself is “the one to whom all the Scripture points” (163). As Christians, we learn to meditate both with him and on him.

In our reading and rereading and study and lingering over Scripture, we persist to know and enjoy not just truth but the Truth himself. For Christians, the final focus of our meditation is personal, and both perfectly human and fully divine in the person of Jesus Christ.

Every believer desires spiritual intimacy with other believers. We may call it fellowship, community, or doing life together. God didn’t make us to be lone rangers. He saved us into the church. He called us out of the kingdom of darkness and into local expressions of the body of Christ.

And yet, spiritual community is still hard to come by. It doesn’t happen by accident. It comes as a gift from God, and he usually gives it as we intentionally cultivate Christian affection and mutual understanding. So, how might we begin cultivating this kind of life together?

One proven way to this kind of life together is that we pray together. What better way to be more united with fellow believers than to gather and bare our hearts before the throne of God together? What an opportunity and privilege! We get to go to him in prayer.

Shared Prayer Transforms Churches

Shared experiences — a concert, a vacation, an adventure — create a bond. Those memories often create deeper, more enduring affection. They can be a relational glue that holds people together. Dates and vacations with my wife have reinforced our marriage for times when life gets hard. These shared memories create tenderness, understanding, and love. In the church, similar kinds of shared life can lead to mutual appreciation, unity, and trust. I love my fellow elders more when we have endured trials together, fighting side by side in spiritual battle.

Gathered prayer can be that shared experience in a church. I’m not advocating for any particular program or event, but for prayer (formal and informal) to fill your church and bind you together. You might think of these prayer times as the furnace room of the church. Heat and warmth radiate out when God’s people gather together to pray. I’ve seen firsthand how this shared dependence on God transforms the ethos and culture of churches.

Each Sunday morning in our church, a small group gathers in the prayer room. Service will not start for another 45 minutes, but communion with the Lord has begun. We gather to call upon God to work for his glory and purposes. We sing together of his grace revealed in Christ. We lay hands on the preacher and ask for God’s word to run. We lift up our suffering saints, pleading that they would find comfort. We pray for our visitors and for our people, for our neighborhoods and for the nations. We cry out for mercy, and we confess our sins. It’s a holy moment. No fanfare, no fireworks, but again and again, we see God come, meet us, and answer our prayers.

These times of prayer together create Christlike affection for one another. What might happen if more churches devoted themselves to this kind of prayer?

Shared Prayer Unites Our Hearts

Praying together serves as connective tissue within the body. The apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, envisions the church as a physical body. Every believer functions as a vital part or organ in this body. Each is unique, but all are united under Christ. To be healthy, then, requires diversity within that unity. Each different part must work together. Otherwise, the body becomes dysfunctional and ceases to work.

Paul writes, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:21). The body cannot function as it ought without each part: hands, head, feet, ears, or eyes. Each part is indispensable. Yet how do we get diverse parts working together? How do we cultivate this unusual unity, like-mindedness, and cooperation? We pray together.

When we pray together, God unites our hearts with one another. In prayer, the motives and desires of my fellow brothers and sisters are on display. I gain insight into the deep wells of their faith. I see their heart of compassion. I hear their love for the lost. I discern their affection for Christ. I perceive their steadfast faith. We gain understanding of one another, and that understanding is critical for genuine, durable love.

Prayer also sets this unity in motion. The praises of my brother spur me on to love and good works. My sister’s petitions challenge and encourage me. Others’ prayers convict me of my own shortcomings. The confessions of some cause thanksgiving to well up in my heart. In short, I receive grace while listening to the prayers of others. The diverse prayers of the body reveal the glory of God and his works as a wondrous kaleidoscope. We see and hear so much more than we could have otherwise, and this inspires us to live more fully for Christ.

Shared Prayer Multiplies Joy

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, comments on why a believer needs other believers. He says, “The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure” (12). Have you had moments like that, when you need the stronger, fuller, more joyful heart of a friend? God very often brings the encouragement we need through someone else. We know the truth intellectually, but when we hear others believing it and rejoicing in it out loud, the truth can land with even greater power. Their joy often brings us joy.

This dynamic plays out, again and again, when we pray together. God calls a wandering heart back through the prayers of a fellow believer. When we lack the words to pray, we can still amen the prayers of someone else. When our compassion grows cold, we can join in on the heartfelt cries of a sister. Often, I find my heart warming next to the prayers of those around me. They spoke it, but my heart and spirit rise to agree. Drawing on an image from C.S. Lewis, Tim Keller writes,

By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived. . . . Knowing the Lord is communal and cumulative, we must pray and praise together. That way “the more we share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.” (Prayer, 119)

We hear and see more of Christ through fellow believers, especially through their prayers. Praying with others is a gift God gives us for the benefit of our faith. It enlivens our minds, strengthens our hearts, and empowers our hands.

No Christian runs well alone. No believer stands alone. No child of God fights alone and lives. So, devote yourselves to prayer. Get on your knees together, and pursue a supernatural unity and like-mindedness. Let Jesus knit your heart together with others through adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Praying together fans the flames of joy. So, what might God do in your church if you committed to praying more together?

Audio Transcript

In the last year, global tensions have risen to a boil. It’s hard to believe how often “World War III” has been a top trend on Twitter in the past couple of years. (Too often, to be honest.) And this leads to today’s question from Malcolm, who lives in Fishers, Indiana. His email resonates with a lot of other emails in the inbox in the past year.

Malcolm writes, “Pastor John, hello to you. I’m a 22-year-old and often anxious about the state of the world. For several years, we enjoyed relative peace, and things were looking calm. But now there are wars in Ukraine and in Palestine, and a threat of war looms over Taiwan. All the world’s major armies seem to be awakening from a long slumber. NATO is growing. Enemies of the West are uniting. The weapons manufacturers are in overdrive.

“As we step into this new age of global tension, and as you see the news — the wars and rumors of wars — what are your spiritual reflections about global conflicts? The Bible seems to say a lot about warfare between nations. How do you comfort yourself with biblical truth, and with God’s sovereignty, when it seems that the world is growing more hostile, and World War III is talked about more and more openly as a real possibility in the near future?”

Well, I could, I suppose, answer Malcolm’s question with a very general biblical observation about the absolute sovereignty of God over nations and over the church and over my life, and then combine that sovereignty with the sweet, precious promise that he works everything together for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). I could do that, and it would be wonderful. It would be glorious.

However, I want to answer his question with something much more specific, just because I saw it while preparing a message on missions last October. And it did for me just what Malcolm is asking: “How do you comfort yourself, Pastor John, in light of these kinds of upheavals in the world?”

And so, that’s what I want to do. I want to address one specific worry that rises in this setting that we’re in right now, wars and rumors of wars and social upheavals — namely, what happens to the global missionary enterprise in times of wars and rumors of wars? That’s the specific thing that creeps into my heart with anxious thoughts.

Missions in Wartime

I think many of us feel, from time to time, the anxiety arising that social upheaval and political and military disruption will so distract the church, and so intimidate the church, that we forsake or neglect or minimize the command of Jesus to make disciples among all the peoples of the world.

We just feel like, “Well, that’s got to be put on hold because the world’s about to blow up and go to hell in a handbasket. What good does it do to send the missionaries to so-and-so when the place is about to explode in war?” I think that’s the kind of feeling that rises in our hearts with regard to world missions in wartime.

So, I’m reframing Malcolm’s question to be more specific: Not just “How do I comfort myself in a world about to be engulfed in war?” but “How do I steady my hand and keep my focus and press on in the cause of world evangelization even while the world’s moving toward annihilation?” That’s the question I’m trying to face.

White-Hot Christians Will Go

And what I saw last October when I was preparing for my global-focus sermon at Bethlehem was from Matthew 24:5–14 and the connection between war and missions. I had never made this connection before. So, here’s what Jesus says about the times we live in — and I think these words from Matthew 24:5–14 are intended by Jesus, in every generation where these things show up, to make us lift our eyes and pray that our redemption is drawing near. Here’s what he says:

Many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom [these are the international upheavals, and now come the natural upheavals, the disasters], and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. (Matthew 24:4–8)

So, Jesus is picturing the coming of the kingdom of God that he will bring as a kind of new birth for the cosmos, and natural disasters are like labor pains. He goes on:

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:9–14)

Now, I have said in lots of missions conferences over the decades that even though in the very last days of history the love of many in the visible church will grow cold (verse 12), this promise that the gospel will be preached to all the peoples of the world — even while we are being hated, he says, by all these peoples — this promise is going to come true.

But the Christians who take the gospel to the nations during this time of great trouble will not be among those whose love has grown cold, right? They will be the people who have white-hot, not cold, love for Jesus in the face of persecution and killing. Not everybody’s love is going to grow cold in the last days, in other words. The Great Commission will be completed by faithful Christians, while millions are leaving the church like lukewarm coals rolling away from the fire.

All that I had seen before, but this time, while I was meditating on this passage, I saw the connection between war and missions — not just the de-churching of cold love and missions, but the connection between military upheavals and missions.

Far from Stopping the Advance

So, verses 6–7 and 14: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. . . . And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” This connection makes plain that “wars and rumors of wars” will not stop God’s mission. That’s the lesson that I saw fresh in this text. The mission will be completed in spite of, sometimes because of, nation rising against nation.

Now, even as I say it, I know there could be an objection, even a biblical objection, because peacetime is good for the church. We’re not naive. We know that, historically, wars and social upheavals have hindered missions. Yes, they have. That’s true. But how many of those setbacks proved to be advances in disguise?

For example, the removal of missionaries from China, which felt like such a setback, between 1949–1953 — was it a setback? Thirty years later, it appeared that the church had grown by tenfold in China without the missionaries.

So, who knows what are advances and what are setbacks in God’s strange ways? Whatever disruptions in missions are caused by wars and rumors of wars, the words of Jesus stand firm. Wars and rumors of wars will not stop world evangelization. In the midst of hatred, coldness, and wars, this gospel will be preached to all the peoples, and then the end will come.

What History Has to Say

To test my new insight against historical experience, I did a little research, and here’s what I found. What has God done in missions during wartime?

During the American Civil War (1860–1865), Sarah Doremus founded the Woman’s Union Missionary Society for sending single women to Asia. The Episcopal Church opened work in Haiti. The Paris Evangelical Missionary Society opened work in Senegal. The London Missionary Society published the first dictionary of the Samoan language. The China Inland Mission (today OMF) was founded by James Hudson Taylor, which has sent — what? — thousands of missionaries to Asia. All of that while Americans are consumed with the Civil War.

What about World War I (1914–1918)? C.T. Studd was glorying in a great revival movement in the Congo during the First World War. The Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, IFMA, was founded during World War I.

What about World War II (1939–1945)? William Cameron Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators. New Tribes Mission was founded with a vision to reach the tribal peoples of Bolivia. The Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society was founded, now named WorldVenture. The Baptist General Conference started its own missionary-sending agency, which is the denomination that our church belongs to, during the Second World War. Mission Aviation Fellowship was started, Far East Broadcasting Company was founded, Evangelical Foreign Missions Association was formed — all during that horrific Second World War.

What about the Korean War (1950–1953)? The World Evangelical Alliance was organized. Bill and Vonette Bright created Campus Crusade for Christ. Trans World Radio was founded.

You get the picture. This is just a tiny taste of the truth that wars and rumors of wars are not going to stop God’s promise to complete the task of world missions. So, Malcolm, this is what the Lord has been using recently in my life to strengthen my heart, and encourage me to press on in this great work.

Some call it “the beauty bias.” Others prefer “lookism.” Either way, several studies over the last couple of decades establish the point apparently beyond dispute: It pays to be beautiful. Literally.

The more physically attractive you are, the more likely you will get interviews and job offers, receive raises, and obtain loan approvals, even if others alongside you are just as qualified. On some subconscious level (that hazy realm where bias lurks), we lean toward the beautiful. We favor the fair. We show partiality to the pretty and the handsome — financially, yes, and also in many other ways.

But we didn’t really need studies to tell us that, did we? From ancient times, the wise have warned against our proneness to get stuck on the surface, to prize skin over substance. The danger may be more acute for men, and particularly younger men, single or married. We are visual creatures, we younger men, with many of us still learning just how deceitful charm can be, and just how vain its beauty (Proverbs 31:30). Wisdom adds depth to a man’s vision, but wisdom also takes time.

To help speed the process, the book of Proverbs comes alongside young men and makes a daring move. Consider, it says, “a beautiful woman without discretion” (Proverbs 11:22). Fair outwardly, foolish inwardly, she has caught many a man’s eyes — and kept most eyes on the surface. She shines like silver, glitters like gold.

But now, Proverbs says, step back and take a better look. Notice that her golden beauty is part of something bigger: “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.”

Gold Rings and Monstrous Pigs

If such an image startles you, good. It’s meant to. The pig’s nose ring is supposed to disturb us into a different way of seeing. Whereas we might typically call a foolish beauty “a little disappointing,” Derek Kidner goes so far as to say, “Scripture sees her as a monstrosity” (Proverbs, 88). As long as physical beauty masks inward folly, it amounts to a swinish jewel, a piggish pearl, a golden snout decoration.

The image startles, in part, because God really did wire us to see and appreciate outward loveliness. In itself, beauty is no evil. God created a world of splendor, after all, and human attractiveness often taps into created principles of harmony, symmetry, and balance we can’t help but notice.

Nor does Scripture hesitate to mention the beauty of the beautiful — to note that “Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance” (Genesis 29:17), or that Abigail “was discerning and beautiful” (1 Samuel 25:3), or that David “was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome” (1 Samuel 16:12). These beauties, and so many more, glimmer with the glory of their Maker, whom Augustine called the “Beauty of all things beautiful” (Confessions, 3.6.10; see Psalm 27:4; Isaiah 33:17).

In God’s ideal design, outward beauty illustrates inward dignity — and in many cases, beauty today still functions that way. And yet, in this fallen age, where “the lust of the eyes” often governs our vision (1 John 2:16 NASB), and where outward splendor often hides a heart opposed to God, Scripture warns against trusting our vision too quickly. Some of the brightest beauty tells a lie; some gold rings hang from pig snouts. And alternatively, some of the deepest beauty hides from men of superficial sight. As a wise mother tells us later in Proverbs,

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,     but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. (Proverbs 31:30)

The verse holds a world of wisdom for young men. Here, single men learn to discern the kind of woman worth pursuing (and the kind of woman to hide their eyes from) — and married men learn to see their wives with a depth only wisdom can give.

Vain, Deceitful Beauty

On the surface, Proverbs 31:30 puzzles a little. “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain” — the judgment against outward attractiveness seems sweeping. But Scripture appreciates outward beauty elsewhere (as we’ve seen), and even in Proverbs our young man is told to rejoice in his “graceful” wife (Proverbs 5:19), which translates the same word for “charm” in Proverbs 31:30. So, what kind of charm deceives, and what kind should we rejoice over? What kind of beauty is vain, and what kind should we admire?

First, Proverbs would have us beware of any supposed charm, and any vaunted beauty, that does not fear the Lord. If a woman’s charm doesn’t submit to Christ, and if her beauty doesn’t quietly boast in God, then her highest attractions become hollow. They draw eyes downward, not upward. They betray the God who gave them.

More specifically, charm becomes “deceitful” without godly fear. The word often refers to verbal lies. In this case, the deceit is visual rather than audible: men who chase mere charm, without caring whether it leads toward God or away, are in the grip of a lie. Likewise, beauty becomes “vain” without godly fear. The same word blows through Ecclesiastes like a swift wind, suggesting that beauty’s vanity lies largely in its brevity. “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field” (Isaiah 40:6): here today, gone tomorrow; smooth today, wrinkled tomorrow; blond today, gray tomorrow. Those who grasp for beauty, without loving beauty’s God, are trying to bottle the breeze.

Second, although Proverbs 31:30 contrasts charm and beauty with “a woman who fears the Lord,” such a woman will not be charmless, at least not to a godly man. Not only is a God-fearing young man meant to find his wife charming (Proverbs 5:19), but even the Proverbs 31 woman has a kind of radiance. “Strength and dignity are her clothing,” we read (Proverbs 31:25), with the word for “dignity” often rendered as “splendor” or “majesty” elsewhere (Psalm 21:5; Isaiah 2:10; 35:2).

The godly woman’s charm and beauty differ, however, from what worldly eyes expect. Whereas discretion-less beauty often dresses to be seen, godly beauty is often a secret splendor, a quiet glory. It may not immediately catch eyes. But the more our vision becomes like God’s, the more we will turn away from the flaunted beauty of this fallen age and prize the beauty that cannot wrinkle, shrivel, or gray.

Beauty Soul Deep

If foolish men fix their gaze only on the surface, the path to wisdom begins by looking deeper, past a woman’s skin to her soul. Here, in the soul, lies the true excellence of “an excellent” woman (Proverbs 31:10). Here is a jewel that age cannot tarnish, a crown that time cannot take, a splendor the grave cannot steal.

Of course, seeing soul beauty takes time and attention; it does not shine as obviously as fair skin. But shine it does for men patient enough to observe. The Proverbs 31 woman is beautiful, but her beauty shows best in what she does, not how she looks. While the gold-ring-pig-snout woman agonizes over her appearance, this woman works hard, even sacrificing perfect nails in the process (verses 13, 16). She applies godly skill to both her household and the marketplace (verses 18, 21, 24). She hands gifts to the poor and wisdom to her children (verses 20, 26). She fears the Lord (verse 30).

Perhaps, like Abigail, she both fears the Lord and attracts the eye (1 Samuel 25:3). Or perhaps her physical beauty is muted. Either way, the godly man who watches her sees a splendor slowly rising, beauty deep as a well and strong as an underground river. Fools pass by her quickly, chasing gold-ring glitter (and missing the pig). But to a man with eyes to see her, she will seem like “a lovely deer, a graceful doe” (Proverbs 5:19).

I don’t mean to imply that a godly man should find any and every godly woman romantically attractive. Holiness does not make us blind to physical beauty, and physical beauty plays a real (if complex) role in our attractions. But if we belong to Jesus, we know what it feels like to find beauty where others see none. “He had . . . no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2), but oh, how beautiful he was (Isaiah 52:7)! How sad, then, if we who have been captured by the unexpected glory of Christ should look no deeper than the surface.

Greater beauty lies beneath. And surprisingly, wonderfully, those who behold such beauty often find that it casts a glow on everything else.

Skin Transfigured

The more a godly husband knows his godly wife, the more he realizes that her outward appearance doesn’t remain fixed, nor does her inward beauty stay inward. Over time, the splendor of her soul spills through the cracks of her skin like the light of a lantern. And the two beauties, the inner and the outer, begin to merge and play.

Proverbs leads us to expect as much. How else can we understand the father’s command to “rejoice in the wife of your youth,” delighting in her body “at all times” and “always” (Proverbs 5:18–19)? When the wife of your youth is no longer youthful, her heart still holds its beauty, and her body still holds her heart. Decades past the marriage vows, her gray hair is no garland of ashes, the burnt remains of her former beauty. Rather, her gray hair sits upon her head as “a crown of glory” (Proverbs 16:31), at least to the man who knows her as queen. Her soul transfigures her skin.

This attentive, patient vision, this gaze that dives into a woman’s depths and brings treasures back to the surface, is nothing less than a participation in God’s own sight. “The Lord sees not as man sees” (1 Samuel 16:7). “The hidden person of the heart” is his pleasure; “the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” his delight (1 Peter 3:4). And we men — husbands and fathers, brothers and sons — have the privilege of telling the true story of beauty in this age obsessed with skin.

The world tells women a lie about beauty. Our wives and daughters, sisters and mothers hear in a thousand ways that true beauty rests on the surface. They are told to become gold rings and not to care whether a pig wears them or not. And we men can either endorse that lie or renounce it. We can show partiality to the pretty among us. We can refuse to consider as a marriage partner any woman who doesn’t fit our precise type (assuming, along the way, that our desires are fixed rather than flexible). We can hint a subtle displeasure in a wife’s changing appearance. Or we can rise up with the Proverbs 31 man and praise not charm, not mere outward beauty, but the kind of “woman who fears the Lord” (Proverbs 31:30).

Such a man becomes a herald of the coming age, a forerunner who anticipates the day when every righteous woman “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of [her] Father” (Matthew 13:43) — and when her body will perfectly match the Christlike splendor of her heart.

ABSTRACT: Contemporary scholarship (almost) universally argues that Elihu’s speeches in Job 32–37 should, like the speeches of Job’s other friends, be considered unorthodox in their portrayal of the justice of both God and Job. However, the careful weighing of culturally biased interpretive decisions and a better grasp of the context of Elihu’s speeches within the book indicate that a positive reading of Elihu has greater merit than most suppose.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Christopher Ash, Writer-in-Residence at Tyndale House in Cambridge, to explain why Elihu’s speeches in the book of Job should not be considered in the same light as those made by Job’s three other friends.

Many of us struggle to know what to make of Elihu’s theological perspective in Job 32–37. After an introduction in Job 32:1–5, Elihu delivers four speeches (32:6–33:33; 34:1–37; 35:1–16; 36:1–37:24) that comprise almost one-seventh of the book. We breathe a sigh of relief when we get to chapter 38 and bow in reverence before the Lord God’s majestic monologue. Yet we may be left scratching our heads over the lack of response to Elihu’s speeches.

Part of the problem is that Elihu is not named when the Lord God says that Job’s three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) have not spoken rightly of him (42:7). Does the silence mean Elihu is implicitly included in this rebuke? Does it imply that he is different? What shall we do with Elihu?

Over the years, I have changed my mind about Elihu. In my first book on Job, I argued that while Elihu was not to be dismissed out of hand, what he says is nevertheless “not authoritative.” He “is not a prophet, speaking accurately for God; but neither is he a false prophet to be utterly condemned.”1

However, while writing a full commentary on Job, I became persuaded that Elihu is indeed a true prophet of God.2 My introduction reflects this change of view: “Although many scholars disagree, and I myself used to feel that his was an ambiguous voice, I am now persuaded that Elihu speaks by inspiration of the Spirit as a true and prophetic voice.”3 Why have I changed my mind?

Soundings from Church History

My positive evaluation of Elihu cuts across the grain of much scholarly opinion. I have twelve commentaries on Job in my study. Eleven of them think poorly of Elihu.4

Nevertheless, some theologians from the past agree — or at least see Elihu in something of a positive light. Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604) thinks Elihu’s teaching is orthodox, even though he repeatedly accuses Elihu of pride.5 Gregory thinks the rebuke in Job 38:2 (“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”) is addressed to Elihu, in spite of the fact that 38:1 explicitly says these words are spoken to Job, and Job is the one who responds in 40:3–5.6

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) agrees that Elihu’s wisdom is superior to that of Job and the three friends, but, like Gregory, he accuses him of seeking empty glory.7 Both Gregory and Aquinas regard Elihu’s teaching as orthodox but criticize his motivation.

John Calvin, however, has not a word to say against Elihu. In her scholarly study of Calvin’s exegesis of Job, Susan E. Schreiner argues, “There are few people in the Bible Calvin admires more than Elihu,” who speaks “as a true doctor of the church.” Indeed “Calvin’s elevation of Elihu is as decisive as that of Maimonides; like Maimonides, he sees Elihu as teaching essentially the same truth declared in the whirlwind speech.”8

Against Elihu

Despite my change of opinion, criticisms of Job 32–37 remain. Critiques in modern scholarship have taken one or more of four forms. I will consider each in turn.

1. Elihu’s speeches are a later interpolation.

Since Matthias H. Stuhlmann in 1804, many critics have regarded Job 32–37 as a secondary interpolation (despite the fact that there is no manuscript evidence for this).9 Arguments for this claim have tended to be of two kinds.

First, Elihu is not mentioned anywhere else in the book of Job and, some scholars suggest, these chapters can be removed from the book without losing anything of value.10 In answer, we might say that if Elihu has the role of a forerunner leading to the Lord’s speeches, then there would be no need to mention him at the end of the book.11

Second, it is argued, the language and style of Job 32–37 differ from the rest of the book. These arguments are usually predicated on the assumption that the book of Job is a literary construct — indeed, a literary fiction, like an extended parable — which would make us expect some degree of uniformity of style.

These supposed differences, however, are now generally reckoned not to be indicators of different provenance.12 And if Elihu is a historical character (an idea that would horrify many Old Testament scholars!), then it would not be surprising if his speeches had a distinct style and vocabulary, even after making allowances for the style of the author in reporting them.

2. Elihu’s speeches are in poor style.

Many scholars have lined up to sneer at the style of Job 32–37. For example, John Eaton writes that even when we read the prose introduction (32:1–6), “we may notice that the style is inferior to that of the Prologue, being laboured and repetitious.” When we come to Elihu’s speeches, there is a “markedly inferior” style that is “prolix, clumsy and often obscure.” Indeed, “the pomposity of Elihu is so conspicuous and at times laughable (32:17–22; 36:2–4) that one could almost think the author intended a caricature.”13

These criticisms, however, tell us more about the cultural milieu of those who make them than about Elihu himself. Judgments of style are notoriously subjective. Just because we Westerners dislike the style of a text does not give us liberty to denigrate it.

3. Elihu’s motivation is wrong.

Criticisms of Elihu’s motivation focus on three areas: anger, pride, and cruelty to Job.

First, the narrator mentions Elihu’s anger four times in the introduction to his speeches (32:2–5). Some, therefore, deride him as “an angry young man,” or one who is “passionate and hotheaded.”14

But anger may or may not be a bad quality. Jesus got angry, after all. Elihu is angry with Job “because he justified himself rather than God” (32:2); that is, he placed himself in the right in such a way as to place God in the wrong. Elihu is angry with the three friends “because they had found no answer” (32:3); that is, they had failed to persuade Job of the wrongness of his words. These motivations are arguably virtuous. It seems to me that Elihu’s anger is a commendable ire. Besides, God himself will later rebuke Job for justifying himself rather than God. So, in this respect at least, Elihu is on message with the divine speeches that follow.

Second, Elihu is confident that he is right. Therefore, those who think he is wrong consider him to be proud. But what if he is correct? To speak God’s truth with confidence is not pride. So, the key question (to which we shall come) is this: Is Elihu right or wrong?

Third, some have criticized Elihu for a lack of sympathy toward Job.15 Against this, Katharine Dell argues that “we should adopt a more favorable attitude to his motivation for intervention than has traditionally been the scholarly case.”16

Along with others, Dell notes that, unlike the three friends, Elihu addresses Job by name (33:1, 31; 37:14). She suggests that Elihu “takes a genuine interest in carefully summarizing the arguments of Job, and indeed of the friends, before he makes his own view clear. He is like a listening friend who, before moving to any kind of opinion, carefully seeks to understand what he is hearing out of respect and consideration for his friend.”17 When he disagrees with Job, “The key point is that he is not against Job in a personal way, it is Job’s theological stance that he objects to.”18 Elihu, argues Dell, speaks as a true comforter, a constructive mediator, a wisdom instructor, and one who answers both Job and the three friends.19

Assessing Elihu’s motivation is very difficult. It is at least arguable that his concern for God’s honor coexists with a robust kindness toward Job, that his words are the faithful wounds of a friend (Proverbs 27:6).

4. Elihu is simply wrong.

This is the most important question. Whatever we think of Elihu’s style, and however we assess his motivation, the critical question is this: Is he right or wrong in what he says?

Before venturing an answer, let me say first that it is not at all easy to assess content in the speeches of the book of Job. The characters say so much, and usually in poetry, that it can be quite bewildering to try to sort out the core convictions that underlie their words.

Assessing Elihu

We can consider Elihu from two angles. First, where does he appear in the book of Job, and how does this section (chapters 32–37) fit into the flow and purpose of the book? This angle, if you like, considers Elihu from outside of his speeches. Second, we need to ask what Elihu actually says, to consider not simply the context in which he speaks but also the content of his speech.

1. Contextual Factors

Content (what someone says) cannot be understood except in its context (where he says it). Indeed, someone may say something formally similar to what someone else says, and yet the different context puts a different slant on his words. I believe this is so for Elihu. Understanding the context of Elihu’s speeches will help us to determine how best to understand their content. Four contextual arguments weigh with me.

THE NARRATOR’S INTRODUCTION

Elihu is “the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram” (32:2). In general, a genealogy indicates that someone is a person of weight. We may rightly expect, then, that Elihu is going to prove himself a man of significance in the book. Robert Gordis notes that “Elihu is the only character who bears a Hebrew name,” a name similar to Elijah. His elaborate pedigree (32:2) “would suggest to Hebrew readers . . . that as the scion of a distinguished family (Ram) he was the authentic defender of God’s cause.”20

ELIHU’S CLAIM TO INSPIRATION

In 32:8, Elihu speaks of “the spirit in man, / the breath of the Almighty” as giving someone understanding. And then in 32:18–20, he describes himself as “full of words,” constrained by “the spirit” within him, like a wineskin ready to burst (cf. Jeremiah 20:9). It is natural to understand Elihu as claiming inspiration. God has filled his spirit with understanding such that he simply must speak. In Calvin’s words, “God has imprinted such a mark on the doctrine of Elihu and . . . the celestial spirit has appeared in his mouth so that we ought to be moved to receive that which he says.”21

It seems to me that unless we are given strong reasons to reject this claim, we ought to accept it. Elsewhere in the Scriptures, when false prophets speak, we are given clear indications that their words are false (see, e.g., 1 Kings 22). The narrator gives us no such indication with reference to Elihu.

ELIHU’S PROMINENT PLACE

Many have noted the uniquely significant placing of Elihu in the book of Job. He speaks, in four unanswered speeches, after “the words of Job are ended” (31:40) and before the covenant Lord speaks directly out of the storm (chapters 38–42). If he is a forerunner — rather like Elijah or John the Baptist — then this prominence makes complete sense. If, however, he is something else, then those who think so must persuade us as to why he is given this prominent position.

Three main suggestions have been made. First, some argue that chapters 32–37 form a kind of interlude after the debates have run into the ground.22 The reader needs a break, and Elihu provides it. Elihu “is reinvigorating and renewing an exhausted and stalled debate.”23 But an interlude that comprises 13 percent of the book and includes some detailed arguments seems like a strange sort of breathing space.

Second, others contend that Elihu is like a comic turn. John Hartley writes that the portrayal of Elihu as an angry young man “offers comic relief to the tension built up by Job’s solemn oath [31:35–37]. . . . An ancient audience, feeling the full weight of that tension, would be relieved and amused by the bombastic Elihu.”24 But humor is profoundly cultural, and we ought to be cautious about appeals to supposed humor, especially when they shape — in this case deeply — the understanding of a text.

The third suggestion (and the most significant) is that Elihu voices the views of moral orthodoxy, much as the three friends have tried to do, before being overridden by God’s speeches.25 If this is so, then perhaps Elihu offers an alternative resolution of the book, such that the reader is forced to choose between the “orthodoxy” voiced by Elihu and the words of God himself. Elihu is the fool who makes us realize how wise God is by contrast.26

Janzen suggests parallels with Genesis 3 and 1 Kings 22, in each of which false words (the snake, the false prophets) are followed by true words (God in the garden, Micaiah the true prophet).27 This might be an attractive solution if there were any explicit indication in the book of Job that this is the case (as there is in Genesis 3 and 1 Kings 22).

Dell wonders “whether the author of Job is not playing with us just a little when he introduces us to Elihu. He gives us, through the mouth of this unexpected arrival, a first answer, more along the lines of the answer that we might be expecting. Then he gives us the second answer — from God himself. We are given a choice as to which answer to listen to.”28

The key question, therefore, is this: Does Elihu offer an alternative resolution to that given in the Lord’s speeches, or is his answer essentially the same as God’s?

ELIHU IS NOT CONDEMNED

Arguments from God’s omission of Elihu in 42:7 necessarily build from silence. Many consider that God omits Elihu because he is beneath contempt; he is “treated with contemptuous silence,”29 “not even deemed worthy of separate mention in 42:7–9.”30 But perhaps he is not condemned because he does not merit condemnation.31

Further, if Elihu claims to be a prophet, then he must be either true or false. If he is a false prophet, it is surely imperative that he be rebuked. The fact that he is not suggests — at least to me — that he is a true prophet.

Elihu’s final speech also prepares the way admirably for the Lord’s first speech; his final words set an appropriate tone for the Lord’s first words.32 There is, if I may put it this way, no crunching of gears as we move from 37:1–24 into 38:2–40:2. If Elihu were offering a resolution that conflicts with God’s, we might expect a sharper disjunction.

These four contextual factors ought, I think, to predispose us to expect that Elihu will be a true spokesman of God.

2. His Message

This brief essay cannot address the details of Elihu’s contribution. (For my attempt to understand each of Elihu’s speeches, see my commentary Job: The Wisdom of the Cross.)33

Some suggest that Elihu does little more than repeat the arguments of the three friends. Elihu may claim, “I will not answer [Job] with your speeches” (32:14), but many think this is, in fact, what he does.34

But Elihu offers several distinctive answers to Job. Gordis argues that Elihu cites, and then answers, Job’s three main contentions, as follows:

Job says God has ignored his sufferings (33:8–9); Elihu rebuts this charge (35:1–16).
Job says God is unjust (33:10–11); Elihu contradicts this assertion (34:1–37).
Job says he is innocent (33:12–13); Elihu attacks this claim (33:1–33).35

Hywel Jones writes, “Elihu does not address Job in the way that the Friends had done. They said that Job was suffering because he had sinned. Elihu says that Job has sinned because he was suffering. That is a vital difference to bear in mind.”36 I agree. The rebukes Elihu levels at Job are in this important respect different from the accusations of the friends. And these rebukes are echoed in the divine rebuke in chapters 38–41.

Let me return to Calvin’s positive appreciation of Elihu. Calvin perceived in Elihu an understanding of the deep sinfulness of human nature, the impossibility that any human being has natural merit with God, the underlying justice, therefore, of suffering, the inability of human beings to plead against God, a correct doctrine of providence, and a perceptive recognition of the hiddenness of God such that his providence is inscrutable.37

It has not been possible in this brief essay to consider Elihu’s speeches properly. But I hope I have given at least some headline reasons as to why I came to agree with Calvin that Elihu is a faithful spokesman for God.

Audio Transcript

One final time we dip back into the online controversy, into the “brew-haha,” as it was called. Pastor John, on September 30 you tweeted about coffee. You posted Hebrews 12:28, which says, “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” And in light of that reverent vision for our worship, you posed this open question: “Can we reassess whether Sunday coffee-sipping in the sanctuary fits?”

The tweet was loved. The tweet was hated. The tweet was spread all over the Internet to the point that after a couple weeks it had over 1,000 retweets, 1,500 comments, 3,000 likes, 2.7 million views, and feature articles online from Fox News and the Daily Mail — none of which you saw.

That tweet led to this little series on the podcast. In part one, in APJ 2011, you got to the crux, saying, “The heart of the matter is not the coffee mug in hand. It’s the absence of a kind of experience with God that would make a Christian soul long for regular encounters with God and his people that are so profoundly satisfying in the depth of their being, with his majesty and his sweetness, in the seriousness of their joy and the weightiness of his glory, that a coffee mug would simply feel strangely out of place.”

And then last time you dropped into the nitty-gritty, with five appeals to preachers on how to move a casual church toward a more reverent and more deeply satisfying encounter with God on Sundays. That was in APJ 2012. But fostering such healthy reverence on Sunday mornings requires more than just sermons. We’ve talked coffee. We’ve talked preaching. But now, what about dress codes and music and announcements, and all the other factors at play here on Sunday mornings?

One of my points so far, Tony, in this — which is turning out to be a three-part series on a sense of reverence and transcendence in worship — has been that we will never out-entertain the world. Therefore, it’s not only foolish to try, but we shouldn’t try because we have something better — far, far better — than entertainment to offer our people, something our souls were made for, something profoundly stabilizing, strengthening, refining, satisfying in the depths of our being, which we experience in moments of reverence and awe in the presence of God. That has been one of my main points.

So, I began last time to point (what I hope is) a way forward for pastors especially, but also for churches or people in general in churches, to move a church gradually from the atmosphere of a casual, chipper, coffee-sipping, entertainment-oriented gathering to a more seriously joyful, reverent, deeply satisfying encounter with God. I started by referring to the preaching of the pastor, and today I simply want to give a few suggestions about the rest of the service.

Meeting God on Two Mounts

I know this is not the only way that we meet God — that is, to meet him in a joyfully serious moment of reverence and awe. I know that’s not the only way we encounter each other and God. We used to say at Bethlehem, where I was pastor for 33 years, that Sunday morning is the Mount of Transfiguration, and Sunday evening — we had Sunday-evening services — was the Mount of Olives.

On the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples met the majesty of Christ, and they fell on their faces speechless (or they began to say foolish things). On the Mount of Olives, Luke tells us that Jesus got away with his disciples customarily. I picture them on the Mount of Olives, sitting on the grass with each other, talking about life and ministry, getting help from Jesus, telling him the problems they’ve had in trying to heal the sick. These are two very different ways of meeting Christ.

And my argument was — namely, to my church, when we talked about these things — that one hour out of our entire week to devote to a serious meeting with God in a more transcendent and reverent way was not excessive. The whole world, all week long, is urging us to equate pleasure with what’s casual, happiness with entertainment. But on Sunday morning, our people can taste in corporate reverence and awe something far deeper, far better, far more satisfying.

So, on the Mount of Transfiguration, I wore a suit. I stood behind the pulpit, a big wooden pulpit, representing God’s word, and the whole service was designed with a relentless, vertical God-focus. In the evening, I did not wear a suit. I dressed differently. I came down out of the pulpit. I used an overhead projector. There was interaction with the congregation. And so on. You get the difference between the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Transfiguration.

In all my pleading for a sense of reverence and awe and wonder and transcendence, for the sake of God’s glory and for our own hungry souls — we’re starved for transcendence, I think — in all that pleading, don’t hear me denying the preciousness of meeting Jesus together in informal, interactive, casual ways. God is for us in both of these encounters. Our hearts need both, but we don’t live in a day where there’s an excess of reverence and transcendence.

Here are just a few suggestions for the rest of the service, the Sunday-morning service, where I think it more naturally adapts itself to this kind of experience with God.

1. Consider how leaders dress.

The pastor can lead the way in how the leaders, the people up front, or the congregation dresses. We never prescribed a dress code for our people — and there was a lot of variety — but we did for those who lead.

Clothing speaks. What you wear says something about your understanding of the situation: a wedding, a funeral, interviewing for a job, meeting the president of the United States, playing tennis, sleeping, addressing the United Nations, attending a fundraising gala. What you wear speaks. It does. You cannot avoid it. It sends a message about your understanding of the event.

And the message of clothing in the last forty years in the church has largely become, “God does not require any particular dress or nice clothes” and “God accepts us as we are.” Both of those messages are true. It’s not a sin to send those messages. But they’re not the only message worth sending.

The up-front leaders of the service will have to decide, What do we want to say about God in the various gatherings of the church? Is there one gathering anywhere in the life of our people, in the life of this church, just one, where it would be worth saying with our clothes and in every other way something about the respect and reverence and awe that we have for God? Clothing is not a big thing. It’s not the main thing. It’s just one part of what church leaders can do to move a church toward a serious joy of reverence and awe.

2. Strive to stay Godward.

Give serious attention to the Godward flow of the service. Strive to linger in the presence of God, to focus on God, uninterrupted for a significant time. For example, avoid unnecessary spoken sutures — meaning, the way different acts of worship are connected, how you move from one to the other.

If you’re just finishing the song “I Love You, Lord,” and the next planned act of worship is a pastoral prayer, the one who comes to pray does not need to say, “Let’s pray.” We are praying. That’s what we’re doing when we say, “I love you, Lord.” We, as a congregation, are loving God. We’re praying to God. We’re telling God.

So, the aim of the one leading the people in the pastoral prayer is to catch that powerful moment when the Holy Spirit is at work. We’re carrying our people Godward, and he picks up on it, so he helps the people just to stay right in the prayer and carries them into communion with God in the pastoral prayer.

Another example would be to work hard to do the necessary horizontal acts, like announcements or a word about the offering, in a Godward way. I spent hours preparing my announcements and preparing other things in the service that you have to do as a pastor. If something is happening in the life of the church that week, you have to tell the people it’s happening. And you can do it in a worshipful, Godward way that doesn’t jolt anybody out of the sweetness of the communion with God that they were just enjoying in the hymn.

You don’t need to joke about things. You don’t need to ramble with trite words that you say over and over because you didn’t prepare anything, with a bunch of “you knows” and “ums” and “ers,” and everybody is now deflated from where they just were in their moment of worship.

Suppose there’s going to be a fire drill — we did this recently at our church. You’re doing a fire drill for the kids in the nursery during the service because you’ve got to train them for what you’re going to do if there’s a fire. The people in the church are going to see their kids walking up the stairs, and they’re going to be panicked, like, “What’s going on here?” if they don’t know there’s going to be a fire drill.

Now, this is a worship service. How do you do that? What do you say? Well, you get on your knees at home, and you ask God, “Show me how to take this word about the fire drill and make you the center of it.” You conclude, “I’ll say this: ‘Jesus loves our kids. You know that. He loves kids. Jesus threatened terrible things for those who would make our children stumble. So, we take good care of our kids for Jesus’s sake, and you’re going to see them filing out here on a fire drill.’”

And you have a big smile on your face, but you’re not going to joke here. You’re not going to turn this into a joke. You’re going to say, “Let’s give thanks. Let’s give thanks when we see those kids. What a gift from God they are to us! What a weighty responsibility. God is sufficient. Oh, how he loves and how we love our children.”

That’s the way you do it, or something like that. There is always a sweet, good, deep, powerful, wonderful alternative to slapstick. Lots of pastors and other worship leaders have no idea what I’m talking about when I say, “You just don’t need to turn everything into lighthearted, jokey.” Okay. Enough on that.

3. Let the congregation sing.

Let the sound of the congregation singing be the main sound of the music in worship. Don’t let the instruments or the lead worshipers dominate the sound. That’s what entertainment does.

Let every song be singable. It needs to have a melody that people can grasp and enjoy, and make sure that the song is keyed so that the men can sing all the notes. It’s crucial that the men of the church sing. And they will sing — they’ll sing like an army — if the musicians choose the songs and calibrate the songs and the range of the notes so that the men can sing.

If half our songs are singable only by women, we are saying to the men, “This is not for you, and you might as well grab your coffee.” So, let the songs be singable, and let the congregation singing be the main sound of worship, not the worship team and not the instruments.

4. Saturate the service with Scripture.

Finally, saturate the song lyrics, the prayers, the readings, and the confessions with Scripture and rich, deep, sound doctrine. This will communicate that nothing here is random or careless. It’s all designed to help the people sustain a relentless focus on God, and that’s the focus that will make coffee-sipping seem increasingly out of place.

So I end, Tony, where I began in the first episode in this series, a couple of episodes ago. Coffee-sipping in the worship service is not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is Hebrews 12:28: “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” Is there in the church a longing for this?