Bethlehem would prove to be the perfect town.

Ancient Israel had no better spot for this quiet yet promising birth — for a royal heir who would grow up in the boonies but come to die in the capital.

On its own, the little town was not great. It was far more like the rural village of Nazareth than celestial Jerusalem. But Bethlehem was iconic for its potential — the city of David — the place where Israel’s greatest king was born and raised, before ascending to the throne and founding the city of kings.

Unlike the splendor of Jerusalem, and unlike unimpressive Nazareth, Bethlehem had a veiled majesty. So did the day of Jesus’s birth. From all appearances, this newborn was ordinary, even earthy — wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid, of all places, in the spot where barn animals fed. So too his first visitors were plain and unsophisticated: shepherds keeping watch on the night shift.

Yet the majestic host of heaven had come to announce this birth. Something splendid was in the offing — but humbly, slowly, patiently. Big city Jerusalem would wait in the distance for more than three decades.

Bethlehem: From Majesty to None

Christmas marks the eternal divine Son “leaving” the majesty of heaven, so to speak. In truth, he came to earth without leaving heaven. Not ceasing to be God, he took to himself our humanity. He “did not count equality with God” and his divine majesty “a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,” and there, in the city of David, “being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7). He “emptied himself” not by losing divinity but by taking our humanity. And not only did he descend, in birth, to the veiled majesty of Bethlehem but even lower in his backwater childhood in Nazareth.

There, as Isaiah had foretold seven centuries before,

he grew up before him like a young plant,and like a root out of dry ground;he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,and no beauty that we should desire him. (Isaiah 53:2)

“No majesty” need not mean that he was especially ugly — that too might draw the wrong attention — but that he was pretty normal — “no form or majesty that we should look at him.” He was no Adonis, no sight of masculine beauty to behold. Not so handsome as to stand out and draw attention.

Veiling his divine majesty with humanity, he lived among us, as one of us, for more than three decades in the very “no majesty” of normal humanity that most of us know so well.

Galilee: Majesty Through Man

After decades in obscurity, Jesus “went public” in his thirties as a teacher of the masses, and a discipler of men. Those who followed him did so not because of his looks or wealth or political power, but they were won by his extraordinary words, and accompanying miracles, which he performed to give glory to God. So Luke 9:42–43 reports,

Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astonished at the majesty of God.

How striking, in such circumstances, that he had been so clear with his words, and so humble in his demeanor, that it was God’s majesty, not his own, that astonished the crowds. This is what majesty does: it astounds, it amazes, it overwhelms. It inspires awe and makes human hearts marvel. It portrays a kind of magnificence that is deserving of worship (Acts 19:27). Yet Jesus himself was so plain, so normal, so human. No one spoke like this man (John 7:46), and did what he could do (John 9:32), yet he relentlessly looked and pointed to heaven. When the crowds stood in awe of him, and saw his unnerving normalcy, they found themselves astounded at the majesty of God.

On the Mount: Majesty in Man

Still, the divine majesty the crowds saw through him soon became a divine majesty his disciples would see in him. His inner circle of Peter, James, and John would get the first glimpse, ahead of time, of his unveiled majesty to come.

At his “transfiguration” on the mountain, the Father showed them the coming majesty that was veiled during Jesus’s state of humiliation in the days of his flesh. Later Peter would tell about the sight they beheld. Speaking especially for James and John, he writes,

we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. (2 Peter 1:16–18)

Peter had the privilege of being one of the three who, ahead of time, witnessed his majesty — that is, Jesus’s own divine-human majesty that would be secured and revealed on the other side of the cross. In his resurrected, glorified state, the God-man — divine from all eternity, and now fully human forever as well — would come into his unsurpassed human majesty. The one who from all eternity shared in divine majesty (in heaven) and took on human no-majesty in his state of humiliation (Bethlehem and Nazareth), and pointed to divine majesty (Galilee), would soon shine in Jerusalem with divine majesty, and be the man of divine majesty forever (New Jerusalem).

Jerusalem: Majesty on the Cross

At that transfiguration, what still lay before him was the cross, inglorious and glorious, horrible and wonderful. Here, in Jerusalem, his last and culminating act of humiliation would also, in time, prove to be the first great act of exaltation and cosmic majesty. As he says in John 12:31–32, having arrived in the holy city, in his near approach to the cross,

Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

John then adds that Jesus “said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die” (John 12:33). His lifting up to the cross would be both his last great act of self-humbling and, simultaneously, his first lifting up to glory.

Zion: Majesty on the Throne

Three days later the veil was lifted. His Father raised him to fully human, glorified, new life. Then, for forty days, his divine-human majesty could shine out in fuller strength, before he would be lifted up yet again, now to heaven itself, there to sit, in ultimate honor, “at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3; also 8:1).

His mission finished, purification for sins complete, his majesty comes full circle: from heaven, to earth, to Nazareth and Galilee, finally to Jerusalem, and back to heaven, now to await one final move: the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth, where Jesus will reign with divine-human majesty beyond our imagining. Then will he fulfill, in finality, the great Bethlehem prophecy of Micah 5:

You, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,from you shall come forth for meone who is to be ruler in Israel,whose coming forth is from of old,from ancient days. . . .And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be greatto the ends of the earth.And he shall be their peace. (Micah 5:2, 4–5)

Human and divine. He is son of David, yet one whose coming forth is from of old. A ruler in Israel, and over all the nations, he shepherds in the very strength of God almighty, and as God almighty, and in the majesty of God’s own name. At long last, the king has come, with God-bestowed splendor and majesty (Psalm 21:5), Messiah who in his majesty rides “out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness” (Psalm 45:4).

Bethlehem was perfect for such a birth. Quietly and unexpectedly as he came, Christmas Day too would change everything, in time, and remake both heaven and earth.

Now, by faith, we see him exalted. Soon, by sight, we will behold his full majesty.

Words alone could never fully capture the meaning and wonder of Christmas — but we can sure do a whole lot better than the card aisles in stores today. “Many blessings and wishes to you.” “May your life be filled with warmth and good cheer this holiday season.” “Sending lots of peace and joy to you and your family this Christmas.” “It’s people like you who make this season so magical and bright.”

No, it’s not people like you (or me) that make this season merry, magical, or bright. In fact, by increasingly thinking we’re what makes Christmas so merry, we’re slowly siphoning off its true power. The Son of the living God was born human in a small town in the Middle East, sent to bear the awful weight of sin and shame, overpower Satan’s terrifying forces of evil, place death itself in the grave, and clear the narrow path to paradise, and yet how many settle for something superficial and fleeting instead — for greeting cards, newly released electronics, and a few LED lights?

Read enough cards and watch enough movies, and you begin to wonder if the actual “magic” of our modern Christmas is avoiding the real Christmas altogether.

Unfeigned Magic

The world can have its makeshift magic over these next couple days; we’re praying for a spiritual miracle — in us, freshly and more deeply, and then in everyone we love:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. (1 Peter 1:8)

Do you still love the King lying in the manger? Does your heart still rise to see him serve his friends, heal the sick, deliver the possessed, and then die for the world? Do you recognize yourself in the verse above, rejoicing “with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory”? If not, come and look again at the deeper, earth-shaking, heaven-filling magic of Christmas, all from just one paragraph in Colossians 1.

1. This Christ shows us God.

He is the image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15)

Those eight words really ought to be enough to drive the banality right out of our homes and pews. The man who was born to a real woman, with a real womb, in a real city, during a real time in history has made the infinite and invisible God seeable. Recognizable. Huggable. Human. This Christ was in the beginning, and all things were made through him. And then he took on the flesh that he had made, and ate the food that he had made, and walked over hills that he had made, and loved the people that he had made — all so that we might see God.

And not only did God make himself seeable in the child born in Bethlehem, but he’s opened our eyes to see his glory — in the manger, at the cross, on the throne. Before we believed, “the god of this world” kept us from seeing what we now see. And then, whether suddenly or slowly, we saw him differently. We came to see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). In this Jesus, we’ve seen God.

2. This Christ created and upholds all things.

By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16–17)

The man at the center of Christmas changes how we see God — we actually see him — and he changes how we see every other thing we see (and everything we don’t). Christmas isn’t only an opportunity to place Christ above all else, but to see him in and behind all else. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). The one who came to live on earth invented earth and life. This makes everything around us, everything in the universe, everything beyond our universe its own Christmas devotion about Christ.

He assembled the trees in our yards, wrapping their rings, stretching their branches, carefully placing leaves and fruit — billions and billions of trees, and yet each of them their own. And over all those trees, he painted a sky, that cosmic canopy of blue. And over that canopy, he taught the sun how to rise each morning and dance, in all its colors, each evening. And beneath that dance, he wove together the people we love, all the people we love, for all the reasons that we love them. Everything that is or will be, he made. He was and is the great Carpenter of creation.

This carpenter was in the beginning, but he wasn’t only in the beginning. He made all things, but he didn’t only make all things; he also holds them together — right now, as you read, and eat, and unwrap presents, and sing. “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).

3. This Christ came to receive the wrath of God.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. (Colossians 1:21–22)

As genuinely miraculous as his coming was, we celebrate what happened that night in Bethlehem because of why he was born. This Christ came and lived to die. The Son of Man did not come merely to be born, “but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He received the wrath of God so that we might enjoy his presence and favor.

In the end, it’s the death of this human Son that sets a Christian Christmas apart from all its pagan and commercial imitations.

We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:23–24)

Some may join us in celebrating the cute baby in a domesticated manger, but only Christians find peace and joy beneath the bloody cross. Their stumbling block is our cornerstone. We were once alienated from God and hostile to him — not neutral or indifferent, but venomous — and yet Jesus laid down his life, paying for all our hideous hissing and defanging our mutiny against him. Christmas is about the canceling and dethroning of sin.

And he died not merely to forgive an enemy, but to have his bride — “he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). He’s not a mercenary Savior, but an adoring and devoted husband. He entered the filthiness of a stable, the indignity of human life, “that he might sanctify [the church], having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:26–27).

4. This Christ holds the keys of Death.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. (Colossians 1:18)

You could of course argue that we celebrate what happened on Christmas morning less because of how he died and more because of how he rose. The man who was born in Bethlehem did in fact die, but then he was “born” a second time when he shook off his grave clothes and walked out of the tomb. He didn’t merely come to die, but to put death itself in a grave.

“Fear not,” this Christ says again this Christmas, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). He’s not the cuddly, defenseless baby the world would prefer. No, his resurrection announced his awesome power and authority over all rivals. None can withstand this Christ, and none will avoid his judgment.

And all who take refuge in him will never die (John 11:25–26). Because of Christmas, death will now kneel to serve you, one day lifting you into the life you’ve always wanted and never deserved. In fact, God has already “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6–7).

5. This Christ will inherit and transform everything.

In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:19–20)

He may have been raised in the humility of a remote and obscure town, but he came to capture the world, to unite every throne on earth under his rule. And not just the cities and governments, but everything that is — mountains and oceans, grizzly bears and goldfish, evergreen trees, snow fall, and reindeer. And not just everything that’s here on earth, but everything in every realm, all the spiritual realities and forces that invade human life without being seen. “All things,” verse 16 says, “were created through him and for him.”

Christmas is as good a moment as any to stop and remember that God has already made known his “plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10). When this world comes to an end, we’ll look back at it all and see him. We’ll see how the wildness of creation and the even greater wildness of history all ties together into one stunning tapestry of the glory of Christ. Christmas, then, is the beginning of the end of history — the inbreaking of the one who both makes sense of it all and owns it all.

So, from all the depths and riches of all this Christ is and means for us, merry Christmas! As you prepare your heart and family to remember him, resist the safe and comfortable seduction of worldliness, and press into the Christ-exalting, world-offending, heart-stirring words God himself has given us for this wonderful day.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. (Matthew 2:1–12)

There are two ways to deal with Jesus Christ. I am thinking specifically of those of you here tonight who do not yet worship Jesus as the greatest treasure of your life.

Herod and the Wise Men

There are two ways to deal with Jesus: the way of Herod, and the way of the wise men. The way of Herod is to get rid of Jesus. It was pure hypocrisy when Herod said he wanted to go worship the child. He did not intend to worship him. He intended to get rid of him. And in a matter of days, he would kill every baby boy in Bethlehem under two years old to get rid of Jesus. He failed. Herod’s way always fails.

Of course, nowadays it’s too late to kill Jesus. He has risen from the dead and he is alive, this very night, reigning in heaven. He will come back someday as King of kings. But we can, with less violent and more sophisticated ways, try to get rid of him, evade him, follow the Herod way.

We usually get rid of him by recreating him in our minds in ways that strip him of his claim on our lives: he’s a mere legend, or a moral teacher like other gurus, or just another prophet, or a mere symbol of hope. When I was in graduate school in Germany in the 1970s, a very popular book was Jesus for Atheists. Lo and behold, Milan Machoveč discovered that Jesus is, after all, a perfect embodiment of twentieth-century Marxism.

For two thousand years, people have been trying to get rid of the real Jesus by reinventing him in their own ideological image. But the Herod way of dealing with Jesus has never worked and will never work. You cannot get rid of Jesus. And I plead with you tonight: Don’t live your life trying to evade Jesus.

“You cannot get rid of Jesus. And I plead with you: Don’t live your life trying to evade Jesus.”

Instead, deal with Jesus the way the wise men did. “Going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2:11). Falling down signifies submission, and worship signifies treasuring. Submission to Jesus as your supreme King. Worshiping Jesus as your supreme Treasure. This is a huge change for all of us. Nobody is born this way. Jesus calls it new birth (John 3:3–8).

News to Make the Angels Sing

When this change happens to us, by God’s grace, we become the beneficiaries of God’s Christmas purpose. A few chapters later, Jesus tells us why he came — why there’s a Christmas: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). That’s the best news in all the world, for two reasons.

First, every one of us in this room tonight is under the guilt and bondage of our sinfulness toward God. We deserve judgment, and we know it. It is a debt we can never pay. And Jesus, God in human flesh, says, “I have come to pay it. I give my life to pay this ransom.”

Second, when we experience this forgiveness and freedom through the death of Jesus, we discover that for the rest of our lives, and for the rest of eternity, Jesus works for us. Omnipotence works for us. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” — meaning, through all our pleasures and all our pain, Jesus is working to bring us to everlasting happiness in the presence of the all-satisfying God.

This is the good news of great joy that made the angels sing. It’s yours tonight, if you renounce the way of Herod and embrace the way of the wise men: they fell down and worshiped.

The song that we are about to hear, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” will end on a note that will be a perfect moment in the pilgrimage of your life to do what the wise men did: to say to Jesus, “My heart is not my own. It’s yours. I worship you, my King, my Treasure.”

The ache comes unexpected. The random sight of a yellow door turns a handle in your memory. A restaurant song plays a tune that returns you to former times. The passing smell of a backyard meal takes you to a table long ago. For a few moments, you grow quiet and thoughtful — remembering, reliving, perhaps reaching for something once loved, now lost.

We name it nostalgia. The wistful backward glance. The photo album of the mind. The string that tugs the heart from years gone by. The yearning to find a bridge across the gap of canyon time.

For many, nostalgia comes as infrequently as a stranger at the door, and leaves just as quickly. But others know the ache more intimately. Perhaps because they have lost more than most, perhaps because they have a sentimental bent, perhaps because their present life holds little pleasure, the past lives vividly before them. Nostalgia is no stranger.

Backward glances, even backward longings, have their good purposes in the lives of God’s children. If we allow it, nostalgia itself can become a prophet of the Lord. But nostalgia can also take a darker turn, can tell a sadder tale. As the winds of memory blow from yesterday to today, they can carry a whisper barely heard but deeply felt: “Your best days are behind you.”

Best Days Behind

The Greeks of old spoke of a Golden Age, a lost time of peace and prosperity, happiness and wholeness. Many of us, without pretending the past was perfect, likewise discern a golden glow in former days. The walls of our heart, if not of our home, hold pictures of better times, of youthful laughter and young romance, of beginning ambitions and a body less broken. Once, we lived in a land without shadow, or at least without these shadows.

We walk today in the Age of Bronze, it seems, or Iron. The pages of the present lie rough and plain; the golden days are gone. Even for those with happy lives, today may seem more sorrowful than yesterday. Amid present joys, many can still hear the soft sounds of children grown, of loves lost, of dreams that never took flight. Autumn comes to every life. The leaves fall from our happiest days.

And the future? We recite by creed “the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting,” but for many the light of such days shines dimly. The eye of memory often sees clearer than the eye of faith. Heaven will be a happy place, no doubt, and Jesus’s face a sight to cure all sorrow. But today, what was weighs more heavily than what will be.

So speaks nostalgia’s bleaker voice. But in the midst of such remembrances, we may hear another speak: “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). The pangs of nostalgia can lead us into folly if we let them. They can force past, present, and future into a familiar story often told but largely untrue. “Your best days are behind you,” we may hear nostalgia say. But wisdom says otherwise.

Ungild the Past

When the wise look backward, they do indeed see good days — even glorious days. To David, the past held the “wondrous deeds” of God, far “more than can be told” (Psalm 40:5). Past years are chapters in God’s own book (Psalm 139:16), and God knows how to write good stories. And yet, for all the wonders of yesterday, the past is not always what we remember.

Human memory does not tell objective history, though we often assume otherwise. Like even the best historians, it selects and emphasizes — and like even of the worst, it distorts and embellishes. Consider, for example, what the wilderness-wandering Israelites remembered of their stay in Egypt:

Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. (Numbers 11:4–6)

O dear and dangerous memory: faithful reporter and seditious scribe, beloved witness and bold perjurer! Egypt, the house of slavery; Egypt, the furnace of Pharaoh; Egypt, the land of forced labor — now Egypt, the oasis of the Lord? The mind, when distressed, can remember the melons and forget the misery.

Our own distortions may be less extreme. But the Preacher’s warning not to glorify the past (Ecclesiastes 7:10) suggests that we too can gild the pages of former days. Especially when the present feels unpleasant, we can fail to remember the more painful parts of the past. Then, as now, we dealt with apathy and discontent. Yesterday, as today, we carried wounds. The past indeed holds a Golden Age, but that garden was lost long before our lifetime.

Remember, dear saint, that even the happiest past grew not only flowers but thorns. If we could travel backward, we would indeed find many good gifts — perhaps even more than we now have — but we would not find all that we are looking for. Nostalgia’s longing leads us elsewhere.

Undim the Present

If the past is not always what we remember, we may then ask whether the present is more than we perceive. Might the backward glance, indulged too often, make us blind to present blessings?

However dim our days may seem when compared to the past, we still live beneath “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). Every past glory was a gift from his own hand, and though many years have perhaps rolled on, that hand remains open and unchanged. His gifts may differ between then and now, but he has not stopped giving.

Look around. Pause and consider. Stand like Elisha’s servant and ask for eyes to see (2 Kings 6:16–17). However bitter your cup, does it not hold some sweetness as well? Has God not surrounded your sorrows with comforts, or filled ordinary days with lawful pleasures, or given you some sphere of usefulness for Christ, however small? Has he not given you his words and his church — a song in the night and a choir of voices?

But more than that, more than all of God’s gifts combined and multiplied, has he not given you himself? If you find yourself in a wilderness, has not the pillar of fire and cloud gone with you? “Behold, I am with you always,” says our Lord (Matthew 28:20). Does not his always include today as well as yesterday?

The pastor John Newton once wrote to a woman recently widowed, “Though every stream must fail, the fountain is still full and still flowing. All the comfort you ever received in your dear friend was from the Lord, who is abundantly able to comfort you still” (Letters of John Newton, 225). In Christ, our comfort comes not mainly from a where or a when, but from a who. And though time has changed life, has changed us, it has not changed him. The eternal God is still our dwelling place, and underneath remain the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

Unveil the Future

So then, a golden thread connects our past and our present. And if we continue to follow this thread, we will find ourselves facing not backward, but forward — looking now not for a lost Eden, but for the New Jerusalem.

Here lies the secret of holy nostalgia. If we heed the whisper that our best days lie behind us, if we allow a gilded past to dim the present and abolish the future, then nostalgia will prove a persecutor, imprisoning our joy. But if we follow the longing to the land that lies not behind but beyond, nostalgia will turn prophet and apostle, a preacher of the coming glory.

David Gibson writes, “Wise people who understand how God has made us to long for him and for heaven don’t look backward when they get nostalgic. They allow the feeling to point forward. They look up to heaven and to home” (Living Life Backward, 103). We traced nostalgia’s faded letters and thought they read here, but all the while they were telling us of heaven.

Past gifts, however wonderful, were only a taste, a whisper, a window, a trail — “the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited,” as C.S. Lewis puts it (The Weight of Glory, 31). They were firstfruits promising a harvest, olive branches heralding a new earth, the grapes of Canaan bidding us to look beyond the Jordan of death to the land of our inheritance.

As God once said to his backward-looking people, “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old” (Isaiah 43:18). Behold, the God of wonders does a new thing, dawns a new day. From the grave he has “brought life and immortality to light” (2 Timothy 1:10), and now he waits to receive us. Soon and very soon, we will dwell in a world where sadness cannot live (Revelation 21:4). Soon and very soon, we will see the Person behind all our past joys (Revelation 22:4).

Our past may hold the happiest life this world has ever seen. But compared to the future God holds for his people, even that past becomes shadow and mist, broken tune and burnt image. So, when nostalgia visits, by all means ache and long, crave and thirst, pine and yearn — but not for the past. Rather, hunger for heaven and for home.

In Christ, our best days always and forever lie ahead.

Remember that, in Luke 1:6–7, Luke tells us that Zechariah and Elizabeth “were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.”

They were too old to have a baby. They had dealt with infertility all their lives. And they were blameless before God: he held nothing against them. They were blameless. They were barren. And they were old. And in God’s way of reckoning, they were the perfect couple to give birth to John the Baptist. Because John the Baptist will be great. Very great. But not as great as Jesus. And that’s the point.

Great and Infinitely Greater

Luke 1:15 says, “He will be great before the Lord.” But Jesus will be the Lord. “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). John would be a great man. Jesus said in Matthew 11:11, “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” If you are a Christian, you are greater than John the Baptist.

He was part of the old order — the waiting, longing, hoping old order — wondering, When will Messiah come? John walked right up to the edge of the new order, the kingdom that Jesus was bringing, and he saw it and prepared the way for it. He pointed to it. But you are in it. He saw a whole new way of salvation opening before him in Jesus. And you are in that salvation. It is a greater thing to be a nobody in union with Jesus than to be the greatest prophet that ever lived.

So John is born from a barren womb of an old woman, through the seed of an old man. And Jesus is born from the virgin womb of a young woman, through the seed of God. What we see unfolding before us in the first chapter of Luke is the greatness of John the Baptist, in order to make plain the super-greatness of Jesus, who so far exceeds John as to make him nothing by comparison. He is not worthy to tie Jesus’s shoes, he said (Matthew 3:11). “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). That’s what we are supposed to see: John, born of barrenness and age, is very great. Jesus, born of a young virgin, is infinitely greater.

Name of Grace

The angel Gabriel comes to Zechariah in Luke 1:13 and tells him that he and Elizabeth are going to have a son. And he says to Zechariah, “You shall call his name John.” The name is Iōannēs in Greek, which is a transliteration of the Hebrew Yochanan, which means “Yahweh is gracious.” Indeed he is. As we are about to see, even toward Zechariah.

Zechariah responds to Gabriel in Luke 1:18 — a response he will very much regret — “How shall I know this?” Not like Mary’s question, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). She wants help to understand. Zechariah wants more evidence that what Gabriel said is true. Gabriel responds, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time” (Luke 1:19–20).

And that time comes in our text: Luke 1:57–80. “Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son” (verse 57). The relatives and neighbors gather round at his circumcision and are about to call him little Zechariah, after his father. But Elizabeth says, “No; he shall be called John” (verse 60). So they turn to Zechariah, who is not only dumb but deaf, as they make signs to him (verse 62), and he writes on a tablet, “His name is John” (verse 63). In other words, this baby’s identity and destiny will not be defined by human parentage, but by divine purpose — a gracious purpose. The angel said, “Call him John.” God is gracious.

And the moment that Zechariah obeyed the divine purpose for his son, “immediately,” it says in verse 64, “his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke.” Verse 67 calls this speaking a prophecy and says it is owing to his being filled with the Holy Spirit: “And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied.” And now we get to listen to the overflow of the Holy Spirit in verses 67–79.

Powerful to Save

There are two parts to Zechariah’s prophecy: verses 68–75 and verses 76–79. In verses 68–75, he describes the redemption accomplished by this “horn of salvation” in the house of David.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,     for he has visited and redeemed his peopleand has raised up a horn of salvation for us     in the house of his servant David. (verses 68–69)

Luke wants us to know that this “horn of salvation” in the house of David is Jesus, because back in verses 32–33 the angel said to Mary about her son, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

So, this “horn of salvation” in the house of David is Jesus. The word “horn” is not the kind of horn you blow, like a trumpet. It’s the kind of horn that makes a wild ox so dangerous. It is a symbol of power. And especially God’s power. Listen to Psalm 18:2:

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,     my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,     my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

So, according to verses 68–69, God is about to work a great redemption for his people through a horn of salvation — a powerful, triumphant salvation, namely, Jesus Christ. Then, from verses 70–75 that redemption is described.

Then the second part of the prophecy starts in verses 76–77. Zechariah says, “And you, child, [now he’s referring not to Jesus but to his son, John the Baptist] will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people.” And the rest of verses 77–79 describe that salvation.

“John, born of barrenness and age, is very great. Jesus, born of a young virgin, is infinitely greater.”

So, what we have in the two halves of Zechariah’s prophecy are two descriptions of salvation, first described as what Jesus, the horn of salvation, will accomplish, and second as what John the Baptist is preparing for. It’s the same salvation, the same redemption, in both cases — what John prepares for and what Jesus accomplishes. And in this way, Luke shows us again the greatness of John, “prophet of the Most High” (verse 76), but the far superior greatness of Jesus, the very power of the Most High, the horn of salvation (verse 69). The one pointing to salvation. The other accomplishing salvation.

Ten Great Realities of Salvation

I think what is helpful to do for our own encouragement and faith and holiness, is to gather up the realities of salvation in the first half and the realities of salvation in the second half, and put them all together to get a composite picture of what Christ came to do, what Christmas points to.

When Zechariah says in verse 68, “The Lord God of Israel . . . has visited and redeemed his people,” it is true that he is referring to the salvation of the Jewish people. That’s what he has in mind. And I think we could show that these realities of salvation are yet to be fulfilled for the Jewish people in our own day. But that they will be fulfilled when the hardness is removed from their hearts, and the veil is lifted, and they turn to their Messiah Jesus (as many of them have) and are grafted into the body of Christ.

And in the meantime, we know that God, in his mercy toward the Gentiles — that’s most of us — has granted us to be full fellow heirs of the promises made to Israel. If you are in Christ, the Messiah, by faith, you are an heir of the covenant made with Abraham, because “all the promises of God” are yes in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20). So, this prophecy of Zechariah is yours in Christ.

Salvation Purchased

So, what are the particular realities of this promised salvation in the first half of his prophecy (verses 68–75)? You can count them different ways, but I’ll point to six.

First, “[God] has raised up a horn of salvation for us” (verse 69a). That’s the first reality, the horn of salvation, Christ.

Second, “as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us” (verses 70–71). So, the second reality is rescue from our enemies.

Third, “to show the mercy promised to our fathers” (verse 72a). The third reality of this salvation is God’s mercy.

Fourth, “to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham” (verses 72b–73). The fourth reality is God’s keeping his covenant, standing by the word of his oath.

Fifth, “that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear” (verse 74). The fifth reality is fearless service of God: anxiety-free, glad-hearted participation in God’s service.

Sixth, “in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (verse 75). The final stage of this salvation is our own holiness and righteousness in his presence forever.

That’s the picture of salvation, or redemption, from the standpoint of what Christ, the horn of salvation, will accomplish for his people. For us.

Salvation Prepared

Now let’s turn to the second half of Zechariah’s prophecy (verses 76–79) and gather up the realities of this salvation from the standpoint of John’s preparing people for it. I see five. I think only one of them overlaps with the six we saw in the first half. See if you spot it.

First, “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins” (verses 76–77). So, the first reality of salvation in this half of the prophecy is the forgiveness of sins.

Second, “because of the tender mercy of our God” (verse 78a). The second reality is God’s mercy. That’s the one that overlaps with salvation in the first half (see verse 72).

Third and fourth, “whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (verses 78b–79a). There are two effects of this sunrise: light replaces darkness, and life replaces death. Those in darkness no longer sit in darkness. Those overshadowed by death will no longer be overshadowed by death. The third reality is deliverance from darkness. The fourth reality is deliverance from death.

Finally, “to guide our feet into the way of peace” (verse 79b). Peace: all conflict removed, and the full flourishing of life experienced.

Good News of Great Joy

So, in the first half of Zechariah’s prophecy, there are six aspects of this salvation that the horn of salvation accomplishes. And in the second half, there are five aspects of this same salvation that John the Baptist is preparing for. One of them is the same, the mercy of God, which leaves ten aspects of this great work of salvation that is coming to us because of Christmas — because God has visited and redeemed his people. Let’s put them together into one amazing picture of our salvation.

Here’s my attempt to see them all in their proper connection.

Everything is rooted, first and most deeply, in the mercy of God. Zechariah speaks of “the tender mercy of our God” (verse 78) — his “bowels of mercy,” meaning his deeply felt mercy. Not mechanical. Not merely judicial. But emotional. Salvation of sinners begins in the bowels of God. The emotions of God. The heart of God. God did not become this way. He is this way. It all starts here.

His mercy inclines him to keep his covenant and his oath (verses 72–73). It is true that his righteousness inclines him to keep his covenant promises. But that first covenant was all mercy. Abraham did not deserve it. And we don’t deserve to be beneficiaries of it. When God remembers his covenant, it is the fruit of mercy.

To fulfill his covenant, he raises a horn of salvation (verse 69). He sends his Son, Jesus Christ. This Jesus pays for the forgiveness of sins by shedding his own blood (Luke 24:46–47). And that forgiveness of sins (verse 77) becomes the basis for the other blessings in this salvation, because we do not deserve any of them.

This forgiveness unleashes the power of God’s Spirit to take away our blindness and bring us from darkness to light and from death to life (verse 79). Indeed, in the end, all our enemies, and all those who hate us, will come to ruin, and we will be rescued (verse 71).

Rescued from every enemy for what? Peace. “To guide our feet into the way of peace” (verse 79). “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). And fearless service in righteousness and holiness forever (verses 74–75). No worry. No anxiety. No failures. No sin. No regret, ever again. Just doing the beautiful will of God with gladness forever.

Salvation on the Tongue

When the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah and gave the good news that he would have a son and should name him John, Ioannes — God is gracious — the next thing that righteous Zechariah did was sin against God. He doubted God’s word. Gabriel called it unbelief (Luke 1:20). And with holy indignation, Gabriel struck Zechariah dumb and deaf for nine months.

He was nine months cut off from hearing or speaking to another human, to deal in the silence of his heart with God. And at the end of those nine months, when he had come to his senses, and the tablet was handed to him, he repented: “His name is John” (verse 63). And the text says, “Immediately his mouth was opened” (verse 64) — and not just opened, but filled with the Holy Spirit (verse 67) to tell us two thousand years later about this great salvation:

God’s deep, deep mercy
A covenant of promise
A mighty horn of salvation
The forgiveness of sins
Rescue from mortal enemies
Peaceful, fearless service toward a gracious God in holiness and righteousness forever

There’s not a person in this room who has not sinned the way Zechariah did. And because of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins, you can return from that path of regret, and start over with your mouth full of salvation, like Zechariah.

Careful readers of the Narnian Chronicles have often wondered about the presence of Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Though his appearance is brief, it is highly significant for the plot, signaling the end of the Witch’s wintry reign in Narnia as he lays a feast for the beasts and gives gifts to the future kings and queens. He is a symbol of resistance to the evil that enslaves Narnia and, as such, may instruct us today.

But to understand Father Christmas, we must first grasp Lewis’s conflicted view of the Christmas holiday as it was celebrated in Great Britain in his day. He expressed his view of Christmas in two essays. Lewis writes the first, “What Christmas Means to Me,” in basic prose, and the second, “Xmas and Christmas,” as a fictional lost chapter from Herodotus, written in the style of the ancient Greek historian and discussing the customs on the island of “Niatirb” (Britain backwards). Both of them highlight the same tensions in the Christmas holiday season.

Meanings of ‘Christmas’

Lewis distinguishes three things that go by the name of Christmas in his day. The first is a religious festival observed by a minority of Christians in Britain, which involves a sacred feast celebrating a sacred story, featuring a mother, a child, angels, animals, and shepherds. This is what sincere Christians celebrate every December 25 with hymns, carols, and joy.

The second is a “popular holiday, an occasion for merry-making and hospitality,” loosely related to the first meaning of Christmas in English history. Lewis likely intends to include the broader Christmas season, perhaps the immediate run-up to Christmas Day, as well as the season immediately following (often celebrated as the Twelve Days of Christmas leading up to Epiphany). Lewis quite clearly approves of both the religious festival and the season of merry-making.

However, the third sense of Christmas draws both his ire and wit. He expends much of his energy in the two essays lamenting and excoriating this third season, which he calls Xmas (or Exmas in the chapter from Herodotus).

Eclipse of Exmas

Exmas is a great festival in the middle of winter that includes fifty days of preparation known as the Exmas Rush. During this season of preparation, every citizen sends cards to each other with pictures of birds and branches and pine trees and snow and carriages.

And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also. (God in the Dock, 335)

Additionally, citizens exchange gifts with each other, but in a peculiar fashion. Everyone seeks to anticipate the value of the gifts his friends will send him so that he may send one of equal value. And many of the gifts are quite useless, the sort of items no man would ever buy for himself — “gaudy and useless gadgets, ‘novelties’ because no one was ever fool enough to make their like before” (339).

Lewis particularly emphasizes the crushing effect the card-buying and gift-giving have on all involved. It is a “great labour and weariness.” Everyone becomes “pale and weary” because of the crowds and fog (335). The entire ordeal gives “more pain than pleasure,” degrading almost into a form of blackmail since the rule is that anyone can force you to buy him a gift simply by sending you an unprovoked one (339).

Lewis attributes the rise of Exmas to consumeristic capitalism. “The whole dreary business must go on because it is good for trade.” It has “been forced upon us by the shopkeepers” (339). Anticipating the words of the great sage Lucy Van Pelt in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Lewis describes the whole thing as a “commercial racket” (338), a symptom of the lunatic condition of a country that is enthralled to buying and selling.

The result is that, by the time Christmas Day arrives, “everyone is worn out — physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think out suitable gifts for them” (339). They arrive at Christmas Day exhausted, sleep in till noon, get drunk and overeat, and then fall into the post-Christmas blues, reckoning up all the money they’ve spent on gifts and wine.

Thus, those who sincerely try to keep Exmas are unable to celebrate either the religious festival or the popular holiday. They are “in no trim for merry-making,” nor are they prepared to participate in a sacred feast (339). All of the hustle and bustle distracts from anything holy or reverent. In this way, Exmas effectively eclipses and overcomes Christmas.

Commercial Racket

Such was Lewis’s assessment of the holiday season in mid-century Britain. If we turn to twenty-first-century America, the situation is perhaps even more bleak.

The American Christmas season is bookended by football on Thanksgiving Day and College Football Bowl Week after Christmas. Our own American “Holy” Week kicks off the whole affair: Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday, each complete with its own hashtag. And this is only the beginning. The next few weeks is a season of incessant bustle, frenetic activity, endless buying and selling, all building up to the big binge at Christmas. America fully embraces the commercial racket.

So, if we share Lewis’s lament over the confusion of Christmas and Exmas, if we see the effect of this confusion in our own emotions (excitement for Christmas but worry and dread over the coming chaos, crowds, and cost), then what should we do? How should we live?

Resist the White Witch

We begin by rejecting one particular dead end. In our desire to resist the tyranny of the commercial racket and the trivialization of all that is good and holy, we do well to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Merry-making, hospitality, and gift-giving are still good, even if Big Business seeks to exploit them. Abuse does not abolish right use.

This means that we still feast and celebrate, even as we seek to avoid conformity to the world. In resisting worldly excess, we also beware of worldly asceticism. Never forget that Father Christmas laid the feast for the Narnians, while the White Witch responded with, “What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self-indulgence?” (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 163).

Practically, this means that we still feast (both at Thanksgiving and at Christmas) and that our gratitude should be as piled high as our plates. Giving gifts to our children and friends is still a grand and glorious thing. After all, Jesus insisted that even evil parents know how to give good gifts to their children.

Advent Jollification

Perhaps, however, we can reorient our feasting by pairing it with expectation and waiting. In other words, perhaps the way to resist the tyranny of Exmas is through a celebration of Advent, the season of waiting that leads up to Christmas. Rather than the harried anxiety of the Exmas Rush, we can stir our hearts to hopeful expectation, reminding ourselves that we dwell in a land of deep darkness, longing for the light to shine on us. Advent chastens us in the midst of the Exmas season, reminding us that Christ has come and Christ will come again.

And then, having built expectation for the month of December, we are freed to rejoice with great joy on Christmas morning as we celebrate what Lewis called the Grand Miracle — when God became Man, descending from the heights of glory into this broken, rebellious, and enslaved world in order to reascend, carrying human nature (and indeed all of Nature) back up with him.

You might even celebrate this Grand Miracle for the full twelve days, filling it with merry-making and hospitality, since we do indeed have good news of great joy for all the people, and Christ has welcomed us back to the Father. This is why Father Christmas is in Narnia, as the herald and forerunner of Aslan, as the one who brings joviality and jollification in the midst of winter, as the glad-hearted giver who points to his namesake — Christ who gives himself for his people.

Audio Transcript

2023 ends for us here in ten days, Pastor John. To close out one year and enter another, we like to set aside some time to look back on God’s grace to us over the past twelve months, and then to lay out some plans that we have for the twelve months ahead. That’s our goal today in this episode.

Obviously there’s no guarantee for our future, but we plan. We prepare, we resolve, and we labor toward future goals. And we do this because so many of you listening right now are generously invested in supporting our future endeavors. So, it’s good for us to talk about all of this with you, our partners in the work, and with those of you who may be listening and feel ready to become a partner with us. This is for you as well. Thanks for listening.

As we look back on 2023, start with a personal update. Just tell us how the year was for you personally and for your labors.

I have said this many times, Tony, and I’m going to say it again: God has been very kind to me in making me a part of the ministry of Desiring God. I feel the same way about being a part of Bethlehem College & Seminary, but Desiring God is where I spend most of my time. And I don’t take it for granted, because not every pastor who comes to the end of his pastoral work, like me, after 33 years at Bethlehem, can step into a ministry whose mission he loves with all his heart.

I love the mission of Desiring God. It is not an overstatement to say it is my life. We exist to move people to live for the glory of God by helping them to be satisfied in God above all else, especially in their suffering, by communicating the truth and beauty and worth of all God is for us in Christ, grounded in, governed by, and saturated with the infallible Scriptures. I love this mission, this life. And I love the dozens of utterly devoted people to the mission of Desiring God that I get to work with. So, that’s my dominant feeling as I look back over the year. That’s my update in a nutshell.

It was a thrill, it really was, to be with about forty of our global partners in Amsterdam earlier this year. I spoke four times, just to encourage them in their partnership with us in this very mission. God has raised up publishing ministries and online ministries around the world, in dozens of different languages, that share our passion for this kind of mission. We don’t own these ministries; we serve them. What that means is that anybody who supports Desiring God supports a growing global network of like-minded ministries.

New Podcast and Anniversary Edition

There really were two major initiatives this year that are — well, to me personally — just amazing. I’ll tell you why.

“I love the mission of Desiring God. It is not an overstatement to say it is my life.”

One was the launching of the new podcast, Light + Truth, five twenty-minute sermons each week. And what amazes me about this is the enormous planning and work it takes to make something like that come into being and stay in being. But even more, I’m amazed at the excellence of Dan Cruver’s editing and perfectly toned envelope around those messages each day. So thank you, God, and thank you, Dan. Light + Truth is remarkable, for those reasons at least.

The other initiative this year was the twentieth anniversary of the publishing of Don’t Waste Your Life. That’s a book (for people who don’t know) that I wrote twenty years ago. We celebrated that moment by spearheading the publishing of this edition in forty different languages. The ongoing global expansion of the ministry of Desiring God — in that, for example — is what I mean by being amazed.

Looking at Paul’s Letters

Of course, I spent most of my time in the year on Look at the Book. That’s what fills my day when nothing else is filling it. In the summer, I had this blitz of eight weeks where I did nothing else but that. My goal, as many people know, is to prepare these video episodes on all of Paul’s letters. I finished 1 Corinthians during that LAB blitz last summer, and I’m now well into 2 Corinthians, with only Romans to go.

Only Romans.

Only Romans to go, right? What a ridiculous word! So, obviously I need our friends’ prayers if I’m going to finish up 2 Corinthians, probably in 2024 sometime, if God gives me life, and then we move on to Romans.

Of course, this — Ask Pastor John — with you, Tony, remains a happy rhythm of life. I usually prepare on Tuesdays, and then we record on Wednesdays. It seems to me that after ten years with you, doing this, people never run out of amazingly difficult, perplexing questions about the Bible and life. As long as you and I have energy, they’re there, ready to ask their questions. I just think this podcast is as vital as it ever has been.

‘Ask Pastor John’ — the Book

And looking into the new year, APJ is going to be more vital than ever, I think. Because you have written a book based on the distillation of Ask Pastor John for ten years, which will be published next year. And I know our listeners really want to know about that book, because it is remarkable. I’ve seen some of the endorsements, which blow me away. Would you take the rest of our time and tell us about that book and anything else you see coming down the pike?

Honored to. The new book is titled Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions. A big book, as you can glean from the title. It launches on March 5 from Crossway. People hearing about it for the first time ask me, “What is it, Tony? Why did you write a book about a podcast, especially when the whole archive is transcribed online, just a Google search away, for anyone who wants it?” Great question.

Well, over the years, friends and partners of ours — donors — would email me, asking about some pressing question that has come up in their life, their family, their church — asking me for an APJ episode that could answer a dilemma. And I would go to the archive, gather all the relevant episodes, and respond with an email that was basically a digest of all the episodes, and parts of episodes, that I thought could help answer a given challenge, all from different angles.

I think it’s easy to do a search, find one episode, click, listen — and then that’s it. You miss the other episodes and other angles. So, these little digests seemed to be useful for people who listen to the podcast regularly. I think we underestimate just how hard it can be to navigate a massive archive of over 220 hours of content, and growing by the week.

“We exist to move people to live for the glory of God by helping them be satisfied in God above all else.”

So, I collected all those digests into one document, and at some point I realized I could do this with the broader archive. I set aside two years of my book-writing time, and I identified our 750 most popular episodes, the ones that really seemed to resonate broadly with our audience. And I took those, summarized them, and organized them into one comprehensive guide, one huge digest, to help you find the episodes that you need when you need them. And all in one book that is significantly longer than Providence.

Way to go — longer than Providence. Love it!

Well, I wasn’t trying to win that comparison, but I do hope it’s a fraction as helpful as Providence.

Encouraging Endorsements

And from what I’m hearing, it might be. This is the first time I’ve ever sent out a book for endorsements, and everyone I asked agreed and delivered a glowing endorsement before the deadline.

That, to me, is a very good indicator that people want to get behind this project. Sinclair Ferguson likened it to Richard Baxter’s classic, massive book, A Christian Directory. What a comparison. And then Dr. Ferguson called the APJ book “one of those rare contemporary books that can be described as ‘should be in every Christian home.’” My jaw dropped when I read that. I mean, that’s an amazing endorsement of the book, but even more of your labors in this podcast, Pastor John, for a decade. A ringing endorsement.

And Kevin DeYoung, another friend of ours, said, “I can’t imagine any Christian who wouldn’t be helped by and fascinated by the hundreds of topics covered in this amazing resource.” Again, he’s talking about the podcast, which I have now tried to wrap my arms around, those 220 hours of audio recordings, into one guide you can easily thumb through and browse. Scanning on paper hundreds of popular episodes just reinforces the breadth and scope of this podcast.

And then our friend and avid APJ listener Joni Eareckson Tada — she’s listening right now, I’m sure. So hello, Joni.

Hey, Joni. We love you so much.

Yes, we do. She wrote, “As a podcast listener, I couldn’t be more pleased. Thank you, Tony, for compiling this encyclopedia.” So, if these endorsements are right, I have high hopes that this book will serve present listeners, to help them benefit from the archive, in 2024. That is my first prayer for the book: to help you who are listening to us right now.

My second prayer is for future listeners to the podcast, who are not listening right now, and who haven’t even started listening yet. Imagine that: there’s an audience of people who have never listened to APJ who will go online and listen to our content in the future. I want to help them to see the ground we covered in the first ten years of the podcast so that they can catch up.

So, those are my prayers. This is a book you can buy and hand to someone who has never listened to APJ. How powerful is that? Stay tuned. More on March 5.

I feel helpless as I watch and wait with my friends.

Friends with debilitating chronic pain who have no contact with the outside world. Others with all-consuming family situations that leave them exhausted and desperate, with no end in sight. Still more whose lives have been marked by disappointment, by shattered dreams and unfulfilled longings that keep escalating.

As I watch and wait, pray and grieve, I also wonder whether heaven will bring added reward for those who persevere in suffering. Will there be any compensation for those who respond to the loss and the emptiness by leaning into God for fulfillment? Will there be any prize for the sufferer who looks to God for the grace to endure the physical or emotional pain that screams through the night?

Rewards in Heaven?

When I first heard the idea of “rewards in heaven,” I wondered whether it was inconsistent with the doctrine of grace. But then I saw that Scripture is full of references to different rewards in heaven — all of them in response to the working of God’s grace within us.

Among the various rewards Scripture mentions, some will come from the foundation we build on and the work we’ve done (1 Corinthians 3:11–15), and others will be related to our perseverance in afflictions, which are producing unrivaled glory for our future selves. As 2 Corinthians 4:16–17 reminds us, “We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

Paul didn’t grow weary in his suffering or lose heart, as God was renewing him daily and assuring him of the coming glory. And Paul understood pain: he was brutally beaten, scourged, and stoned; at points he was near starvation; he was continually burdened for the churches (2 Corinthians 11:23–29). Yet he knew that his pain had a purpose.

The Greek word for “preparing” in 2 Corinthians 4:17 (katergazomai) means “producing, accomplishing, or achieving.” Paul knew affliction would bring about or produce something magnificent later on. Suffering not only develops perseverance and character, teaches us to rely on Christ, enables us to comfort others, and refines our faith on earth; it also results in greater coming glory.

Everyday Surrenders

This hope applies not just to extraordinary suffering like Paul’s, but to all suffering that we surrender to God. When we turn to God and not to the world in our pain, when we bless God rather than curse him, when we trust his goodness rather than doubt his love, we store up heavenly reward. It will draw us closer to Christ today and will result in greater glory later. As John Piper says,

All our troubles — all of them — are on a continuum from easy to horrible . . . whether it is a pimple on prom night to the loss of a child. . . . Any trouble, from the smallest hiccup to the greatest horror . . . [has] the potential for working for us an eternal weight of glory, because the issue is this: Does it throw us on God as our help and our treasure and our joy?

The first time I realized the importance of acknowledging and offering every loss to the Lord was in a conversation with Joni Eareckson Tada. We were having dinner, and I noticed how she couldn’t have each bite of food quite as she wanted, couldn’t get her coffee at exactly the right temperature. When I mentioned it, Joni responded, “With quadriplegia, nothing is exactly the way I want it. But it’s all these little decisions, these everyday things I surrender, the choices I make daily, that will one day shine in glory. These will all count.”

While Joni has been through monumental suffering, our conversation reminded me that she faces the everyday choice, just as we do, to turn to God and depend on him in loss and disappointment. From the unexpected layoff before the holidays, to the relentless sickness that confines us to bed for days, to living for years with a cold and disengaged spouse — in all these trials, as we lay them before the Lord and ask for grace to endure, not only will we grow in our faith, but we’ll also store up a reward.

Broken Ankles to Final Cries

God sees all our suffering. He tenderly cares for us in it. He knows every sleepless night, every unspoken hurt, every agony we endure. We are seen, known, and loved by the God who brings purpose to all our pain.

Even seemingly unseen suffering at the end of our lives has a purpose. While this pain may not change our character or be an earthly example to anyone, God is witness. And as he watches what we endure, our faith will glorify him and receive a reward. As John Piper, addressing those suffering in their final hours, would say,

As God gives you the grace to endure to the end without cursing him, resting in him as much as you can, these next twenty hours are going to make a massive, precious difference in the weight of the glory you experience on the other side. These hours are not pointless. . . . They won’t make your character here shine because you are going to be gone. There will be no character left to shine. But as soon as you cross that line from now to eternity, in some way God is going to show you why those twenty hours were what they were and what they did for you. That’s good news.

This is great news for all of us. All our suffering matters. All our losses and longings, as we turn to Christ in them, will produce a reward for us. From a sprained ankle to a life-changing diagnosis, from the daily sacrifices of quadriplegia to the painful last hours of life, none of it will be wasted.

Sorrow Turned to Joy

One of the greatest joys we can experience is the joy of restoration after loss. Both Psalm 126 and John 16 — the two chapters in the Bible that use the word joy most frequently (in the ESV’s translation) — are about restoration. Psalm 126 says, “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. . . . Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” (Psalm 126:1, 5). And John 16 says, “You will weep and lament . . . but your sorrow will turn into joy. . . . Your joy [will] be full” (John 16:20, 24).

Jesus tells us that the joy of finding the lost coin is greater than the joy of never losing it. The joy of finding the lost sheep is greater than the joy of simply staying with the sheep in the pen. And the joy of a repentant sinner leads to more joy in heaven among the angels (Luke 15:7). While no one seeks loss, restoration brings us more joy. For everything we’ve suffered, every loss we’ve endured, every unfulfilled desire for which we’ve longed, our joy will be that much deeper when it is restored and fulfilled in heaven.

And as Jonathan Edwards says,

It will be no damp to the happiness of those who have lower degrees of happiness and glory, that there are others advanced in glory above them. For all shall be perfectly happy, everyone shall be perfectly satisfied. Every vessel that is cast into this ocean of happiness is full, though there are some vessels far larger than others. And there shall be no such thing as envy in heaven, but perfect love shall reign through the whole society. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 50:53)

In heaven, no one will begrudge the faithful sufferer’s rewards, because everyone will be overflowing with joy. We all will be fully satisfied, fully happy, completely fulfilled. But some may be larger vessels of happiness, containing more of heaven’s joys, than others. And perhaps the added reward for persevering through affliction will bring this capacity for more joy.

If you are suffering today, whether through a minor setback or a massive tragedy, don’t lose heart. Turn to the Lord Jesus in it, as you ask for grace to endure it. Trust that your struggle is producing an eternal weight of glory that will far surpass your pain. Let God be your treasure even in your affliction. And as you trust him to the end, your reward will be great.

Forty-four years ago, on October 14, 1979, John Piper felt himself irretrievably called to pastoral ministry. He was on sabbatical after teaching six years at Bethel College. He was studying Romans 9. Reflecting on that season, he would say later, in 2002,

As I studied Romans 9 day after day, I began to see a God so majestic and so free and so absolutely sovereign that my analysis merged into worship, and the Lord said, in effect, “I will not simply be analyzed — I will be adored. I will not simply be pondered — I will be proclaimed. My sovereignty is not simply to be scrutinized — it is to be heralded. It is not grist for the mill of controversy — it is gospel for sinners who know that their only hope is the sovereign triumph of God’s grace over their rebellious will.”

In 2019, on the fortieth anniversary of John’s call to the pastorate, Justin Taylor published an article at Desiring God called “This Word Must Be Preached,” which quotes extensively from John’s 1800-word journal he wrote longhand that night he first felt called — and very much relates to our second session here today.

First, Justin comments, “It is remarkable how realistic [John] was that night. He knew himself well.” Then a quote from John’s journal:

I know, really know, I would despair as a pastor. I would despair that my people are not where I want them to be, I would despair at ruptured study and writing goals, I would despair at barren administrative details. [But he asked himself:] “Who shall shepherd the flock of God? People who love barrenness? People who feel no flame to study God and write it out? People who weep not over the tares and the choking wheat? Is the criterion for judging one’s fitness for the ministry that one feels no pain in the mechanics of ‘running a church’? Is the calling so managerial in our day that the Word burning to be spoken and lived and applied is no qualification?”

Second, another quote from John’s journal, contrasting himself with his father, who was a traveling evangelist: “My heart is not in one-time shots or one-week shots. I am not a gifted evangelist. My heart leans hard to regularity of feeding [that’s the work of pastor-elders]. I believe little in the injection method to health. I believe in the long, steady diet of rich food in surroundings of love.”

Third, Justin comments about John that “he had a hunger to be the direct instrument of the Word.” For John, that meant being a local-church pastor, not a seminary professor. He wanted to be “a vessel of [God’s] Word” in the church. So he left the academy for the pastorate. He became a preacher, but he emphatically did not cease to be a teacher. Because pastors are teachers.

In our second session, we turn to the two qualifications for eldership that correspond most directly with the two main tasks of the elders. The two tasks are feeding and leading. Pastors feed the flock and lead the flock. The two qualifications, then, are “able to teach” and “sober-minded.” And we’ll end with how all of us, young and old (and perhaps especially young, and those aspiring to the work), might grow in these two central qualifications.

1. Feeding the Flock (Able to Teach)

Perhaps you can imagine a scenario in which a man is being considered for eldership, and the question “Is he ‘able to teach’?” comes up. Let’s say the man is not a known teacher, but the one who is advocating for his candidacy responds, “Teaching is not his strength. He’s rarely willing to do public speaking. But if you put a gun to his head . . .”

Stop. Such a minimalistic understanding is not what Paul means by “able to teach.” Rather, what he’s after, and what we should be after, is the more maximalist assertion: “He’s the kind of man who will hardly stop teaching — even if you put a gun to his head.”

Pastors and elders, paid and unpaid, full-time and lay, are to be teachers. “Able to teach” (one word in the Greek, didaktikos) is the most central of the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 (listed eighth of the fifteen) and also the most distinctive. The single qualification that most plainly sets the pastor-elders apart from the deacons is “able to teach” — or perhaps even better, “apt or prone to teach.”

Such teaching bent and ability in pastors is not to be minimal, but maximal. We want the kind of man who will hardly stop teaching, even if you put a gun to his head. As he learns, he wants to teach. As he studies, he thinks about teaching. He breathes teaching. We might say he’s a teacher at heart. He loves to teach, with all the planning and discipline and patience and energy and exposure to criticism that good teaching requires.

A pastor who is didaktikos, “able to teach,” is not just “able to teach if necessary,” but rather “eager to teach when possible.” He’s bent to teach — not only able in terms of skill but also eager in terms of proclivity.

In English, we have the word “didactic,” built on the Greek didachē for “teaching.” But we don’t have an easy equivalent for the Greek adjective didaktikos. Maybe we need something like “didactive” or “teachative.” If “talkative” refers to someone who is “fond of or given to talking,” “teachative” would mean someone “fond of or given to teaching.”

The point is that New Testament local leaders — the pastor-elders — are teachers. Christianity is a teaching movement. Jesus was the consummate teacher. He chose and discipled his men to be teachers who discipled others also (Matthew 28:19; 2 Timothy 2:2). After his ascension, the apostles spoke on Christ’s behalf and led the early church through teaching — and when their living voices died, their writings became the church’s ongoing polestar, along with Old Testament Scripture (but surpassing it), for teaching the churches.

And so, fitting with the very nature of the Christian faith, Christ appoints men who are “teachative,” didaktikos, which entails at least three important realities we would be wise to keep in mind today: we look for men who are equipped to teach, effective at teaching, and eager to teach.

Equipped to Teach

First of all, a man may be off-the-charts teachative, and be little more than a liability if he has not been sufficiently equipped in sound doctrine. The miracle of new birth does not include instantaneous miracles of equipping for leadership. Now, we might grant a kind of miracle status to any sinner coming, in time, to have genuinely sound theology, but this would be a long-range miracle worked out through diligent training over time, not the endowment of a mere moment.

As Walter Henrichsen wrote fifty years ago (in 1974), disciples are made, not born. And so teachers. Jesus spoke about a righteous scribe being “trained for the kingdom of heaven.” He “brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). “A disciple is not above his teacher,” he says, “but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).

To become a Christian requires no training, just faith: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). But one does not become a teacher (nor practically holy) by faith alone. Rather, grace trains us, in life, over time, “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:12). And those whom Christ gives to his church as pastor-teachers, he sees to their “being trained in the words of the faith” (1 Timothy 4:6).

Training is necessary for maturity (Hebrews 5:14), and training requires the discipline of persisting in momentary discomfort, even pain, for the reward set before us (Hebrews 12:11). So when we emphasize in pastors the necessity of a proclivity and ability to teach, we do not overlook a critical component of Christian teachers: training. Pastors must be equipped in sound doctrine to teach sound doctrine. It doesn’t happen without work.

Effective at Teaching

Second, the pastor-elders of the church must also be effective teachers. That is, they must be skillful — able in the sense of good. It’s not enough if they want to teach, and have been trained in sound doctrine, but they’re not any good at teaching. Then the church becomes a sitting duck, or unprotected flock. If the pastors aren’t effective teachers, it’s only a matter of time until wolves carry the day and feast on the lambs.

And so Paul says, as his culminating qualification in the Titus 1 list, the pastor-elder “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). That is, he must know “the trustworthy word,” and be trained in it, and genuinely “hold firm” to it.

But then begins the work of teaching in its twofold sense: feeding the flock (“give instruction in sound doctrine”) and defending the flock (“rebuke those who contradict it”). And if the pastors and elders are poor or ineffective teachers, the sheep go hungry — or get eaten.

So pastors and elders, as a team, must be effective teachers — that is, effective in the context of the particular local church where they are called. They need not compete with the world’s best orators on popular podcasts or television. But they must be effective teachers of their people, in their context. When push comes to shove, the pastors-teachers must get the job done, or the wolves take the sheep.

Eager to Teach

Third, we come back to where we started and the heart of the teaching qualification — that is, the heart of a teacher. We need men who are eager to teach — not just willing to have their arm bent once in a while to fill a slot, not with a gun to their heads. But men who are teachers, the pastor-teachers.

“Remember your leaders,” says Hebrews 13:7, “those who spoke to you the word of God.” Hebrews could assume that their leaders were those who spoke God’s word to them, because their leaders were teachers.

Christianity is a word-critical, teaching-critical faith. The leaders teach. And good teachers, in time and with sufficient maturation, come to lead. The pastor-elders, then, are called not only to lead or govern, but first and foremost to labor in word and teaching. And since the work, at its heart, is the work of teaching, we want men who want to teach. They are eager to do it. (And brothers, this too can be cultivated.)

Such didactive men think like teachers, not judges. Their orientation toward the church is not mainly as those rendering verdicts but envisioning possibilities, providing fresh perspective and information, faithfully teaching the Scriptures, making persuasive arguments, patiently reviewing and restating and illustrating, and praying for God’s miraculous work in life change.

Is it not amazing that when Paul speaks into how Timothy should carry himself in the midst of the conflict with false teachers in the Ephesian church, he says, “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:24–25)? Look at what company “able to teach” keeps: not quarrelsome but kind, patient, gentle — not apart from correction, but gentle in “correcting his opponents.”

“Able to teach” is not minimal competence but a kind of virtue — a magnanimity — arising from the heart and proper training.

2. Leading the Sheep (Able to Govern)

Now, pastors are not only teachers. As overseers, they “watch over” the flock. As elders, they counsel and guide the people. As shepherds, they muster the collective forethought to envision where to go next for green pastures and still waters, lead the sheep in that direction, and wield the “comfort” of their rod to crack the skulls of wolves to protect the sheep.

So, not only does Christ gift his church with leaders who have such a proclivity, being teachative, but he also — strange as it may seem to us — puts these teachers in charge as the church’s lead officers. The elders feed and lead. Teaching and oversight are paired in 1 Thessalonians 5:12 and 1 Timothy 5:17, and 1 Timothy 2:12 provides that particularly memorable coupling of the elders’ teaching with their exercising authority in the local church, particularly in the gathered assembly: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.” (Then, three verses later, come the qualifications for those who exercise authority through teaching: the elders.)

Amazingly, the risen Christ, in building his church on his terms, not the world’s, is so audacious as to appoint teachers to lead, which is both surprising (because teachers, as a group, can be so idealistic and inefficient) and fitting (because Christianity is a teaching movement). That Christ made teachers to be pastors (and pastors, teachers) confirms what a few sharp souls might have suspected all along: that Jesus really is more interested in the church’s effectiveness than its efficiency.

So, pastors teach. They are, at heart, teachers. The plurality of elders is, in an important sense, a team of teachers who also govern. The call to pastoral ministry is not for specialized administrators of large departments. Nor is it a call for brawlers and pugilists, more apt to quarrel than to teach (as we’ll see in the final session). Pastors teach, and are the kind of men who will graciously hardly cease — even if you put a gun to their heads.

Now, what are we to say about their governing? If “able to teach” (didaktikos), as we’ve said, is the most central and most distinctive of the elder qualifications, “sober-minded” might be the most underrated or underappreciated.

I remember on several occasions, sitting as an elder among elders, brainstorming names for future additions to the council. By God’s grace, the voicing of some names elicited words of praise. Sometimes there was largely enthusiasm, with some minor misgivings. On occasion, it seemed as if many of us intuited that “something’s not right” or “doesn’t resonate” when thinking of this man as an elder. Over time, I came to learn that often the language we were groping for was right here in the eldership qualifications: sober-minded.

It is a remarkable turn of events that Jesus appoints a team of teachers, in essence, to lead his local churches. However — this is where we come especially to “sober-minded” — Jesus does not call these pastor-teachers to teaching alone. He calls the pastor-elders, under the gathered assembly of saints, to lead the people — leadership that requires they be, both individually and collectively, sober-minded.

Levelheaded, Not Imbalanced

As I said, of the fifteen pastor-elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, sober-mindedness might be the most underrated. Not only is teaching (with preaching) central to the pastors’ work, but also vital is “exercising oversight” (1 Peter 5:2). Pastor-elders not only “labor among you” as teachers but “are over you in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 5:12). They both feed and lead. The elder “must manage his own household well” because, as a team, the elders are charged with caring for God’s household, the church (1 Timothy 3:4–5, 15).

Not only are pastors who preach and teach well worthy of honor — and “double honor” (remuneration) when laboring at the work as a breadwinning vocation — but also as governors, that is, “the elders who rule well” (1 Timothy 5:17). The pastor-elders teach and rule — that is, lead or govern — and to do so requires a kind of spiritual acuity the New Testament calls “sober-mindedness.”

Men who are sober-minded are levelheaded and balanced. They are responsive without being reactive. They are not given to extremes, not suckers for myths and speculation and conspiracy theories, and not dragged into silly controversies. They are able to discern what emphases and preoccupations would compromise the stewardship at the heart of their work (1 Timothy 1:4), and they stay grounded in what’s most important and enduring. Keeping the gospel “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3), as their center, they are able (like increasingly few modern adults) to “keep [their] head in all situations” (2 Timothy 4:5 NIV).

Together, the team of sober-minded elders is able to navigate complicated challenges, like church-size dynamics and generational dynamics and digital-versus-analog dynamics and, perhaps above all, issues of timing in the life of the local church. Many, young and old, are able to see various problems and feel various tensions in church life, but the pastor-elders are those with the sober-mindedness, and the accompanying “superpower of patience” (as Dan Miller calls it), to know how and when to address the challenges.

Sober-minded pastor-elders, together as a group, keep the church on mission (Matthew 28:19), keep the gospel central, and demonstrate that the essence of leadership is not personal privilege and preference but self-giving, self-humbling, and self-sacrifice for the church’s good.

Such sober-mindedness, without doubt, is also critical for teaching — for determining what to teach and when and how — but such spiritual acuity especially maps on to the call to govern or lead, and the untiring vigilance it requires. “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). The pastor-elders are those who “are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17). So they must be sober-minded (1 Timothy 3:2) — in fact, “always . . . sober-minded” (2 Timothy 4:5).

How to Get a Sober Mind

In Acts 6, we are not yet dealing with pastors and deacons, per se, but apostles and “the seven.” But we can see a kind of analog here for what was to come in local congregations. As “the seven” were appointed to “serve tables” that the apostles might not “give up preaching the word of God” (Acts 6:2), so local-church pastor-elders have a particular calling to lead and spiritually feed the flock — that is, to “devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). Word and prayer.

We teach and preach the word to feed the church. And sober-minded men pray to God, and take counsel with each other, to lead the church in the ups and downs on the raging seas of real life. It will not be enough to have balanced thinkers who do not pray. (Besides, prayerlessness would betray their imbalance.) Nor would it be enough to have prayerful men without sober minds. We need both prayer and prudence, even as we need both teaching and leading. And Christ appoints that his local-church leaders be such prayerful, sober-minded teachers.

All well and good, you might say, but what about the gaffs in my own sober-mindedness that I’m aware of — not to mention the many of which I do not even know? Whether already a pastor-elder, or aspiring to the office, or not, How might I become more sober-minded?

The good news is that sobering our minds is part of the work the Holy Spirit is doing on all those who are in Christ. And in particular, this is work he does over time, through the word of God. However naturally balanced and levelheaded you might be, the word of God is critical in giving us real balance in a destabilizing world and sobering us up to what really matters in God’s economy. Sober-mindedness is not a miracle God does in just a moment, but the effect of thousands of quiet early-morning miracles over his word day after day, for years.

In the days to come, as in the last two thousand years, the church needs men who keep their heads under pressure, in conflict and controversy. And in just the normal, steady-state life of the church, we need levelheaded, wise, spiritually and emotionally intelligent leaders rather than those who are impulsive, imbalanced, rash, and reactive, because pastor-elders are not just God-appointed teachers but God-appointed governors.

Such men the Spirit loves to produce through years of quiet Scripture meditation and real-life accountability in the local church. And such men, years in the making, the risen Christ then loves to give to his church to feed it through faithful, effective teaching and guide it through patient, composed, reasonable team leadership.

Which leads to our concluding focus on how a young or aspiring pastor-elder might go about pursuing growth and development in his teaching.

How to Grow as a Pastor-Teacher

With this short list, I’m assuming eagerness. Without some initial aspiration or eagerness, there would not be interest in growth. So assuming some measure of eagerness, here are six avenues to consider in seeking to develop yourself as a teacher.

1. Know the Word himself, that is, Jesus.

How? In the word itself, the gospel. How? Through the word itself, Scripture. So, know the Word (Jesus) in the word (gospel) through the word (Scripture).

Read, study, and meditate on the Bible — and all the Bible. Those who lead and aspire to lead the church would be wise to have all the biblical text pass before their eyes every calendar year. Obviously, there will be (many) passages you not only read but study and meditate on and teach on, perhaps multiple times in a year, but reading through the Bible with some plan each year at least lets each biblical text pass before you each year. As you do, you’re increasingly understanding Scripture as a whole — and most of all, knowing and enjoying Jesus in it.

2. Self-educate in the information age.

This is a step in equipping. Leverage the amazing availability of books, messages, and essays (meaty articles). Perhaps some limited social media exposure would help you to be aware of new books, essays, and articles, but I would highly caution you against any more than a pretty modest, controlled portion of social media. (Make the web serve your interests, rather than letting the algorithms harvest you for their interests.)

Beware the radicalizing effects of social media. Algorithms are no friend to the pursuit of sober-mindedness.

3. Pursue some formal program of training.

This is a distinct step in equipping that goes beyond self-educating. I’m talking about some curriculum and course of study, designed by someone other than yourself, to develop in knowledge and skill, and fill in areas you’ve never gravitated toward studying on your own.

4. Take what at bats you can and make them count.

Now we’re moving to effectiveness, which grows, over time, with the Spirit’s help and hard work. You need hundreds of at bats, not dozens. Teaching, like singing (not like athletics), is a life skill. Work to peak in your sixties (or seventies!), not twenties.

5. Always keep learning and be ready.

After Paul says to “preach the word” in 2 Timothy 4:2, the very next charge is this: “Be ready in season and out of season.” Then again in verse 5: “Always be sober-minded.”

And this is for those who continue to learn and grow. In 1 Timothy 4, after just telling Timothy to “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching,” Paul says, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:13–15). Our people ought to see our progress, our growth — in all areas, but particularly in our teaching. Which means — this should be encouraging — you grow in teaching. It is not fundamentally a gift you have or do not.

6. Rejoice more in being saved than in being a fruitful teacher.

I love the words of Jesus in Luke 10:20, and I often go back there to steady my soul in ministry: “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you [as your teaching ability and effectiveness improves and matures], but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” The language is stark, but I think Jesus means to provoke, not speak absolutely, as if there is not any holy joy to be had in faithful, fruitful teaching. But we dare not let the joy of teaching the faith eclipse the joy of the faith itself.

Brothers, rejoice most that your names are written in heaven. Being a Christian is ten thousand times more important, and sweeter, than being a pastor-teacher.

“Oh, my. You have to pull over!” the woman pleaded from the passenger seat. “My head hurts.”

Her head hurt because my son was screaming his head off.

Rewind five minutes to when I first pulled up to her apartment building, towing a fussing baby. My one-year-old hates the car, but the ride to church is short (usually). This morning we took a detour, and he knew it. Complaints mounted to cries as we waited for the woman and her son to come outside.

She’s a single mom, and he’s a high school boy. They’re refugees, new to our country, culture, language, and (as I later realized) traffic laws. Neither of them has an American driver’s license, but what they do have is a church — our church. Just a few months back, when they took vows before the congregation and became members, others started coordinating rides for them each Sunday.

So there they were, in my car. And there we all were, listening to a baby wail at soaring decibels. His cries had become fever-pitch screams when two relative strangers, with skin far darker than mom’s or dad’s, opened the doors. I flung crackers and toys into the backseat, but there was only so much I could do while driving.

Then she had an idea: “Put him on your lap! Put him on —”

Before she could finish, her son began to protest, explaining how “they don’t do that here.” I nodded vigorously, even gratefully, as he spoke, my own voice wobbling between saying sorry and making shushing sounds. “Well, in our country,” she replied, “the police would pull you over. They would think you stole this child.”

Lost in One-Anothers

It’s far easier only to drive people you (and your shrieking baby) already know well to church. Just like it’s far easier only to invite like-minded people into your home, only to comfort or encourage those you understand, only to forgive the friends you want to keep around. It’s far easier — and far less like the “one-anothers” of Scripture.

Upwards of fifty times in the New Testament, we read of particular ways we are to treat “one another.” As our eyes speed over these commands — all the so-called “one-anothers” — our mind is quick to acknowledge two things. We understand what is commanded (verb), and we understand that it’s commanded of us (subject). We know we should

“love one another” (Romans 12:10),
“welcome one another” (Romans 15:7),
“[forgive] one another” (Ephesians 4:32),
“comfort one another” (2 Corinthians 13:11),
“serve one another” (Galatians 5:13),
“build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

Without realizing it, though, have we missed the who at the end of each of these commands? Have we neglected to even ask who it is that God commands us to encourage, love, welcome, forgive, comfort, serve, build up? When we do not ask God to define “one another” for us, we slip into choosing those people for ourselves. And the people we choose tend to be the people we like. And the people we like tend to be the people like us.

But have we really obeyed the one-anothers when we apply them only to those we handpick? If we never stumble our way through the one-anothers, have we been obeying them, or have we simply been spending all our love on all our favorite people? Apart from that chaotic car ride, I can’t think of a time when it was truly difficult to press into the one-anothers. Never had my efforts to care for someone been met with so much misunderstanding, not to mention screaming. I began to wonder: Who are the one-anothers really — not as we make them out to be, but as God’s word presents them to us?

1. They are part of the (global) church.

The New Testament Epistles contain most of the one-another commands. In them, “one another” refers to fellow believers. Consider Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, where the phrase appears five times. Long before he says, “Greet one another with a holy kiss” (1 Corinthians 16:20) — that is, with certain affection — he tells us he’s talking to

those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. (1 Corinthians 1:2)

The command is not given to Christians, “to those sanctified in Christ Jesus,” to apply to whomever they wish. Instead, Paul calls Christians to heed his words as “saints together.” And he doesn’t just mean the saints who live on nearby streets. He means “all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Which means he’s talking to me, and you, and the Christian in Kolkata, India. Were we ever to meet, the three of us are to greet one another as saints together, as those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ side by side, though several seas apart. Our mutual favor stems not from personal preference, but from our standing before God in Christ. One day he will greet us with pleasure, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21). Warm welcome on earth anticipates the open arms of heaven.

Of course, we also should strive to apply many of the same commands to unbelievers far and wide. “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil,” says 1 Thessalonians 5:15, “but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.” At the same time, we do love the watching world when we love one another especially. When we visibly care for those within, we offer a glimpse of God to those without. The one-anothers extend a compelling vision of what it means to be “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19).

2. They are a part of our (local) church.

“One another” ties all believers together, and then it anchors us in the local church. Look with me at a second one-another passage in 1 Corinthians: “When you come together to eat [the Lord’s Supper], wait for one another” (11:33). I imagine you and I (and especially our sister in Kolkata) do not stand in the same line for communion. How do we respond?

We aim this command — indeed, every one-another! — toward our local church in particular, the fellow believers in our weekly (even daily) midst. That’s why Paul begins his letter by addressing

the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. (1 Corinthians 1:2)

Though we are “saints together” with Christians across all seven continents, we belong uniquely to “the church of God that is [insert the name of your church].” It’s here, among our local body of believers, that we park beside one another on Sunday, talk with one another as we walk inside, stand next to one another while we sing, bow by one another in prayer, and listen alongside one another to the word preached. Then we “wait for one another,” bread and wine in quiet hand.

And that’s just the Lord’s Day. God filled the church’s week with opportunities to devote regular time to one another. And these opportunities aren’t limited to a church building, but God plants individual members in particular neighborhoods, that we might open our doors to one another. We often talk about a local church’s “worship style.” Oh, that onlookers would say of our lifestyle, “One thing is sure: they never neglect to gather” (Hebrews 10:25).

3. They are every part of our church.

Even after we understand “one another” as fellow believers, and especially as those in our local church, we still often err while living out the commands. Whom do we gravitate toward, Sunday upon Sunday, after service? And whom do we seek out, almost exclusively, during the rest of the week? If the answer is only our dearest church friends, we have yet to hear the distinguishing mark of the one-anothers: love despite difference.

The words Scripture commands reflect the one Word pulsing behind its pages: Jesus. Apart from this Person, the one-anothers lack purpose and power. Upon whom does he lavish the one-anothers? Upon those like him, those he finds comfortable? Wonder of wonders, the answer is me. It’s you. In a word, it’s sinners. It’s rebellious, undeserving men and women. It’s fallen humans with whom the exalted Son of God had near nothing in common — that is, until he chose to humble himself, becoming one of us:

Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (Philippians 2:6–7)

Who is “one another” to this Man? Not people like him already, but people he chose to become like. Not people he likes already, but people he committed to love “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Now he bids us, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34).

It’s no small task, going out of our way to love brothers and sisters unlike us, saints we may struggle to understand, sometimes even to like. But this is the love Christ has shown us, and his love empowers us to do the same for others. So may that love wash over any selfishness or natural inclination in us, and may we plunge our preferences into what brings him pleasure: showing his steadfast, widespread love to one another.