The Wisdom Literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) is not simply insightful in its content, but delightful in its craft. As dwarves with rare jewels, these authors didn’t just discover golden nuggets of wisdom; they shaped them, forged them, hunched over their obsession, inspected them, held them up to the light, cut them, and framed them into sentences poetic and memorable.

We are wise to enter their mines and learn their skill, not just to discover beauty but to adorn it beautifully. Briefly, then, I want to travel into the mountain of these sages’ eloquence, exploring the deeps of their craftsmanship. Notice what was spoken of one such sage:

Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. (Ecclesiastes 12:9–10)

Handcrafted writing, beautiful writing that adorns God’s wisdom, weighs and studies, arranges with great care, and seeks out words of delight and writes words of truth uprightly.

Weigh the World, Study Scripture

Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying.

First, to write well, this master-jeweler prepared well. Superior gifting did not alibi sloth. That the Preacher possessed superlative wisdom (Ecclesiastes 1:16) did not shorten his preparation. He pored over the wise sayings of others; he wrote wise sayings of his own. And we, with lesser wisdom and ability, also measure and ponder, read and study, roast the truth over in our minds, never tire to hunt each morning for fresh discoveries in the forests of God’s Book.

Particularly, we do not just study how to write, but what we write about. We must have knowledge to teach. Here, some of us step along a cliff’s edge, tempted to preoccupy oneself with how we say over what is said. Many have lost their footing. Pride drags much of man’s toil over the edge to shatter upon the rocks. I grimace when I discover myself painting, like the worst of modern art, indistinct displays of my own artistry, instead of the landscape or the glories beyond.

No, the writing life gropes for metaphor and imagery and beauty because it has heard creation singing God’s praises and has seen his beauty in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, we love God’s diamonds more than our metal rings and sentences that hold them. In all things, his Son must have preeminence (Colossians 1:18). The wise never lose sight of a God greater than our pens can ever tell. “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as [the reader’s] servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). So, first, we weigh and study and place all in the light of God and his truth.

Arranging the Flowers

The Preacher did not merely weigh and study, however; he “taught the people knowledge, . . . arranging many proverbs with great care.” He made straight, he put in order, he composed. He forged proverbs, wisdom compressed into Hebrew poetry, what Robert Alter calls “the best words in the best order” (The Art of Biblical Poetry). He engraved the truth to be remembered, considering both style and structure. He knew that to add order was to add beauty and force. He knew a proverb or poem could be less or more than its parts.

Whether compiling proverbs of others or composing his own, he saw that truly beautiful writing has pleasing cohesion. One note out of place disrupts the recital — and is detected even by those who have never heard the music before. How? Because beauty has its anatomy, its symmetry, its mathematics, its order. Assonance, alliteration, metaphor, contrast, and more — the science of lovely prose.

Our God is a God of order and beauty, and he will not have his children fight. Beautiful writing is not a collection of notes struck on a whim, but a symphony; not a handful of casually picked flowers, but a pleasing bouquet. Marvel has their Avengers; Christian eloquence her Arrangers — of words and phrases and paragraphs and chapters. Such writers position their thoughts, others’ thoughts, and (most importantly) God’s thoughts into the vase with “great care.”

“The wise never lose sight of a God greater than our pens can ever tell.”

Again, the man to whom God gave “wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore” (1 Kings 4:29), had to work at writing (and rewriting) — but also in arranging (and rearranging). Solomon did not publish first drafts. We almost hear his exhaustion (and see his smile) as he finally puts down the quill: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11).

Words of Joy and Truth

You’ve experienced it, right? Halfway through the second paragraph, the writing tastes stale, unappetizing. You travel on, if you travel on, against the wind. It has words of truth, perhaps, but not delight. But then you turn to another writer whose beliefs all but nauseate, but whose prose allures. As in Athens, his verbal idols are well crafted. Here, we find words of delight, but not much truth.

The Preacher sought something different. He “sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.” He loved beauty and he loved truth, and he took great measures to wed the two.

He quested for sweet sayings. He climbed mountains, entered forests, dove as a merman into the sea, searching for words of delight. Not smiling, quirky words such as “platypus” or “whizzle,” but sayings that gratified, “‘words that would give pleasure [to the listener]’ — presumably because they were well phrased and elegant.” He hunted them with a fierce love. “Elegant expression, deep and satisfying meaning — these were the goals of [the Preacher’s] work as a thinker, a teacher, writer and collector of wisdom” (A Handbook on Ecclesiastes, 436).

Lovely Christian writing does not apologize for its poetry. For those suppressing creativity in unloveliness, be free to search for words of joy. We know secularism only pretends to hate beauty; dark angels still dress as angels of light. To fight only with aesthetics leaves the bow without arrows; to fight only with naked truth is to toss your arrows at the heart. But let the archer place the golden arrow into the bow of bronze, let earnest prayer draw it back, and who knows how mightily the Spirit of the living God will let it fly?

Pens of Pure Hearts

The writing of Solomon has a further detail easily overlooked: “Uprightly he wrote words of truth.” Straight words did not emerge from a crooked heart: “That which was written was upright and sincere, according to the real sentiments of the penman, even words of truth, the exact representation of the thing as it is” (Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible).

The painter, not just the canvas, is in view for the Christian writer. He speaks the truth truthfully, sincerely, as he knows it before God. Out of the overflow of the heart, the pen writes. He says with Job, “My words declare the uprightness of my heart, and what my lips know they speak sincerely” (Job 33:3). And with Augustine, “What I live by, I impart” (quoted in James Stewart, Heralds of God, 10). We err if we finely craft content but not our lives. Christian writing is done from a higher art.

Holiness adds to the force and wholesomeness of our writing, just as bad lives spoil otherwise good content: “Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless, is a proverb in the mouth of fools” (Proverbs 26:7). We don’t fit this paragraph after that because it fits together — while obeying neither. Here lies the grand departure from all sub-Christian writers.

This means we obsess over reality. “I talk of love — a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek,” Lewis once wrote in a poem (As the Ruin Falls). As far as it goes with us, we refuse to write of God’s truth, of the wonders of the world, of deplorable and enduring things as a parrot overhearing its owner speak what it doesn’t understand. We do not arrange and weigh and judge and search for words of joy and truth from a heart that loves none of it.

The words of joy and truth the Preacher found first pleased his own soul. He loved what he wrote for more reasons than that he wrote it. He searched the tropics because he valued beauty — not to cage and sell what he found. He didn’t love ingredients just to cook meals he never tasted; he really loved the food. He delighted in the spiritual taste of words because words were doors into reality.

Dispatches from the Shepherd

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. (Ecclesiastes 12:11)

What we’ve seen is that beautiful writing for Christ considers the object of its writing more than the writing itself, yet spares little expense to arrange words of joy and truth in the most pleasing and effective ways possible. Beautiful writing for Christ also passes from the pen of a pure heart. And now finally, striking Christian writing descends from the Great Shepherd.

We might imagine this Shepherd picking us up in his arms and laying us down in green pastures — and so we have warrant, given Psalm 23, perhaps the most beloved beautiful writing in the Bible. But here, the Preacher instructs us that wise sayings are not down pillows for the soul, but rather nails and prods spurring us onward. And here is one of the most important lessons for Christian writers today: the beauty of the writing must not blunt truth’s blade.

Otherwise, beautiful writing can devolve into flattery and man-pleasing when it never cuts to the heart. Too many skilled writers try to give the God-breathed word a breath mint. It doesn’t need one. Against purple prose that only soothes, what imagery did the lover of joyful words find to describe the carefully arranged sayings? “Goads” and “nails firmly fixed.” They stand behind readers as cattle drivers and prod us forward with sharp pokes. They animate us. They bestir us. They protect us from veering from the path of holy living.

Christian writing, eloquent and comely, crafted and arranged, will not always be comforting or encouraging. The message is not ours, but that of the One Shepherd.

After thirty years of ministry, I feel more burdened for the lives of young men than I have ever felt before. Has a more challenging time existed for a young man to figure out who he is supposed to be? I have two teenage sons. They will soon be out in the world, navigating life as believers in an increasingly post-Christian society. I long and pray that they will walk wisely with Jesus in this confusing world and treasure him more than anything. So, I wrote this letter to them and other young men like them, in hopes that God uses it to keep them near himself.

Dear Sam and Isaac,

Your mom and I love you deeply. You’ve both grown into such strong and delightful young men. You are gifted in so many ways and have been flourishing as you’ve developed the gifts God has given you. I’m so proud of you both. I’m also burdened for you, however, because the world you’re growing up in has a level of spiritual warfare and complexity I’ve never seen before.

The very existence of something that could objectively be called “manhood” is questioned, and if it does exist, it is often viewed as toxic and oppressive — it deserves to fade into the patriarchal past. Our image-obsessed and hyper-sexualized culture has certainly done great damage to young ladies, but men have suffered as well. Great numbers of young men live in bondage to sexual sin of all kinds. Paul’s command to his son in the faith, Timothy, to “flee youthful passions” (2 Timothy 2:22), still applies to young Christian men, but you face some unprecedented temptations. So, what is the way to flee foolishness and find God-glorifying wisdom? More than anything else, I think young men need to believe and depend on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

A few years ago, a friend and seasoned counselor told me that he thinks the best way to begin all his counseling sessions, no matter the primary issue, is to ask the person, “Do you believe Jesus rose from the dead?” He is a wise and loving man to point people to Jesus’s empty tomb. The answer will frame the way you deal with whatever life brings your way. Trusting in Jesus as the resurrected Savior changes everything.

Raised to Hope

First, the resurrection means that you can have assurance of victory, even in the darkest days.

Many young people are reporting increased depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and fear about the future. Many young men today also seem to think it’s cool to be cynical and apathetic. God doesn’t think that. In the resurrection of Christ, God “has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).

Sin, sickness, mental or physical illness, addictions, shame from our past, relational strife, war, pandemics, inflation, corrupt governments, ruthless leaders, financial hardship — these are all tragic symptoms of the fall. But because Jesus rose from the dead, none of these should lead us to despair. By faith and union with Christ, his resurrection is our resurrection. Because Jesus became truly human, he represents us not only in his life and death, but in his resurrection as well.

As C.S. Lewis said, “The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God. That is the whole point” (Mere Christianity, 179). If the Man in Christ rose again, then we were raised with him and can walk in joy, hope, and newness of life, even in the darkest times. We have nothing to fear because Jesus is alive and, by faith, we have been raised with him! We should not fear even death because one day we will be raised to new and eternal life together. The resurrection gives a future hope, but also a present daily hope that can give us confidence and peace in any circumstance.

Raised to Favor

Second, the resurrection means you have nothing to prove.

The Bible teaches that Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). This is at the heart of what we believe as Christians. Jesus obeyed, suffered, died, and rose from the dead for us so that we could be saved to the uttermost and find our identity in him. On my best days, when I’m thinking rightly, I understand and rejoice that my whole life depends on God’s grace. But I realized a long time ago that something deep in my heart resists grace. It comes from the influence of the old me — even though he died with Christ when I became a new creature by faith.

Men are taught from an early age to find their identity in athletic accomplishments, the attention of girls, and academic and professional success. These sources of identity are bound to fail us. My pride and the father of lies tell me that I need to earn, prove, demonstrate, deserve, and somehow make myself worthy of God’s love and forgiveness. But when I remember that Jesus provides everything I need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), I find the peace and confidence I need. The resurrection frees us from the filthy rags of our so-called self-righteousness and the impossible burden of proving ourselves worthy of God’s kindness.

When Satan mocks you and throws your sin in your face, these words from Martyn Lloyd-Jones may help: “We must never look at any sin in our past life in any way except that which leads us to praise God and to magnify His grace in Christ Jesus” (Spiritual Depression, 75). If you are going to be confident men who can focus on the needs of others, you’ll need to live with nothing to prove. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves often, and, as Robert Murray M’Cheyne said, take ten looks at Christ for every one look at ourselves. Jesus is enough.

Raised to Power

Third, the resurrection means that you are no longer a slave to sin.

You are daily bombarded with messages that tell you that your desires, feelings, experiences, and personality type define you. You are told that, to be your authentic self, you need to fully express all that stirs within you, even if it dishonors God and hurts others. “Follow your heart” has become the cardinal doctrine of our time. Jesus teaches the opposite. He tells us that true life is found only in dying to ourselves and living in him through the power of the resurrection.

The apostle Paul said that his great aim in the Christian life was to “know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and . . . share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10). When I baptized both of you at church, you remember I said, “buried with him in baptism, and raised to walk in newness of life.” The same power that raised Jesus from the dead has made you a new creation in Christ and now lives in you. By the resurrection power of Christ, you can overcome sinful temptations and desires that conflict with God’s ways (Romans 6:4–5).

Romans 6 is worth your serious study, meditation, and memorization. Even though you may feel, at times, like sin has a death grip on your heart and life, God promises that the power of sin has been defeated by Jesus and that you are now slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:17–18). When you obey God, you are living according to your new identity. God promises that when we trusted Christ, he “made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5–6). Live like he has raised you from the dead.

Press On, Young Men

My dear boys, the resurrection is not merely a doctrine to be affirmed intellectually; it is the resounding affirmation that Jesus reigns over all. The power that raised him from the dead is your power for living the Christian life on earth and your assurance of eternal life in heaven. The resurrection changed everything, and you now have the hope, identity, and power to become the men of God that he created you to be — men who will walk in humble confidence, empowered by the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:11), to lay down your lives in Christlike service for the good of others and the glory of Christ. Press on, young men of God.

Audio Transcript

Learning is crucial to the Christian life — lifelong learning. The discipline is essential for local churches. So much so, I’m reminded of episode 1804, where you, Pastor John, encouraged pastors to build a lifelong-learning habit into their churches, so that as God’s people disperse out into the world, in all their various professions and fields of influence, they can learn how to bring biblical truth to bear in the world — at school, at work — without expecting the pastor to be the expert, to answer all the ethical challenges they will uniquely face. Pastors are equippers, getting their people ready to make wise and discerning decisions in their lives. To do this well, it all requires a congregation to learn how to learn on their own.

For the next few weeks, we focus on this discipline of lifelong learning. We focus here because, well, it’s important — and because it’s the theme of your brand-new book, titled Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. In the new book, as to be expected, you employ hundreds of Bible texts to make your points. It has over five hundred citations. Of the most frequently cited texts in this new book are Matthew 13:13 and Psalm 34:8 — texts that also factor prominently in your book Reading the Bible Supernaturally.

In your mind, how do these two books and two themes work together? What are the similarities and differences between talking about Bible study on one hand (as in Reading the Bible Supernaturally) and the purpose of education more broadly (the theme of Foundations for Lifelong Learning)? How does the wise study of Scripture set the stage for us to be wise Christian students of all of life? In the new book, you write that “if we never observe the world through books, especially the Book, we will be very limited in what we can know.” Expand on that.

Let me see if I can take all those different threads and weave them into some kind of coherent fabric of an answer. Let’s start with quoting those two passages. I found this really helpful, the way you posed the question. It was really helpful for me to think on how the books relate and how those texts relate to the two books, so let’s start by quoting those two passages and relate them to the two books.

‘Seeing’ Versus Seeing

In Matthew 13:13, Jesus says, “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” I’m pretty sure that the reason this text is a common question for our APJ listeners is because Jesus says that he’s actually aiming to conceal things, through his parables, from people who are resistant to truth.

A couple of verses later, he says this: “This people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears” (Matthew 13:15). Then Jesus says to his disciples, “But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear” (Matthew 13:16). The point is that there are two kinds of seeing: “seeing they do not see” is one kind of seeing, and “seeing” — that’s another kind of seeing.

“There is a seeing that is also a tasting of the goodness of God.”

Psalm 34:8 is the other text you mentioned, and it gives the key to the difference between a seeing that does not see and a seeing that sees. It says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” I take this to mean that there is a seeing that is also a tasting of the goodness of God. So, tasting of the goodness of God is the other kind of seeing.

Some people read the story of the gospel of Christ, how he dies for us, how he rises triumphant, how he reigns, and they “see” these facts. They see them, but they taste no goodness at all. These facts don’t taste good and delightful and pleasing and satisfying. They don’t taste anything pleasant. Their spiritual taste buds are dead. The only kind of seeing they have is natural seeing — seeing with the eyes of the head or the mind, combined with nothing supernatural, nothing spiritual, nothing from the Holy Spirit.

Someone else reads the story of the gospel, and that person tastes the sweetness of it, the goodness of it. They “taste and see,” and this is the second seeing. Paul calls it seeing with “the eyes of your heart” (Ephesians 1:18). Here, God has worked a miracle; he has made the taste buds of the soul alive.

It’s not nonsense to say, “Taste and see.” Suppose I tell you, “This dessert is really rich,” and you say, “Well, I’ll take your word for it.” I say, “No, no, no. Taste it.” You taste it, and you say, “Oh, I see.” Now, that’s not nonsense, right? This is what happens when we hear the gospel, and God makes our spiritual taste buds alive. We taste and say, “Oh, I see. This is wonderful.”

How the Books Differ

Now, here’s the connection between those two verses and the two books that you mentioned. The new book is called Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy, and the older book is Reading the Bible Supernaturally. There are two main differences between the books.

The new book, Foundations for Lifelong Learning, is built entirely and explicitly around six habits of mind and heart that form the foundations of lifelong learning or education. These habits are only assumed and implicit in the earlier book, Reading the Bible Supernaturally. That’s one difference: assumed in the earlier book, made explicit in the second book.

The other difference is that the newer book applies these six habits of mind and heart not just to the Bible, but to both of God’s books — the Bible and the world. Reading the Bible Supernaturally is about how to read the Bible, and Foundations for Lifelong Learning is about how to read the Bible and how to read the world. This book is built around the question, What habits of mind and heart are necessary for lifelong learning from the world as well as from the Bible?

The six habits of mind and heart that form the foundation of lifelong learning are observation, understanding, evaluation, feeling, application, and expression. There’s a chapter on each of those and how they are (at least to my taste buds) a delicious challenge for a lifetime of learning from the word and from the world. This is what we try to do at Bethlehem College & Seminary. We aim to build these six habits of mind and heart into our students so that they are catapulted into a lifetime of fruitful learning. That’s what I hope is happening on every APJ as well.

How the Texts Relate

The reason those two texts — Matthew 13:13 and Psalm 34:8 — are relevant to these two books is that the problem of seeing but not seeing is a problem not only for what we see in the Bible, but also for what we see in the world. In other words, not only do people look at the gospel and fail to see the beauty of its reality, but people also look at the birds, the lilies, and the ants digging in the ground and fail to see the beauty of the reality that God has designed for them to see and what he means to communicate.

Some people will say that if we would just study our Bibles more and more carefully, we wouldn’t have to study the world. Not to put it too strongly: that’s crazy. It’s crazy because the Bible assumes on every page — I mean, virtually every page! — that we have looked at the world and learned from it.

This way, we know what the Bible is talking about when it refers to vineyards, wine, weddings, lions, bears, horses, dogs, pigs, grasshoppers, constellations, businesses, wages, banks, fountains, rivers, fig trees, olive trees, thorns, wind, bread, armies, swords, shields, sheep, shepherds, cattle, camels, fire, green wood, dry wood, hay, stubble, jewels, gold, silver, law courts, judges, and advocates — for starters. Right?

The Bible assumes that we have our eyes open and are looking carefully at the world and at society, learning what things are and how they work, that we have a great store of knowledge of things of the world when we come to the pages of Scripture.

Not only does the Bible assume that we have paid close attention to the world that we live in, but it commands us to go back to the world and learn. Proverbs 6:6 says, “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” In other words, learn from her diligence. In Matthew 6:26, Jesus says to “look at the birds of the air” to learn how your Father will take care of you. “Consider the lilies of the field” (Matthew 6:28), and learn how your Father will clothe you.

“If you see the world accurately, you will bring a fund of knowledge to the Bible.”

The relevance of those texts — Matthew 13 and Psalm 34 — is that there are millions of people who seeing, do not see when they look at the world. They see birds and lilies and ants and sunrises and stars, bright blasts of God’s glory everywhere, and they don’t see it. They don’t see God. They don’t see his glory and what he’s revealing. So, the good effects of Bible-seeing and world-seeing go both directions.

Taste and See for Yourself

If you see the world accurately, you will bring a fund of knowledge to the Bible that will enable you to know many of the kinds of things it’s talking about. Even more importantly (and you picked up on this, Tony, in the last part of your question), if, in reading the Bible, God gives us eyes to see the glory of Christ, to taste and see that he is good, then when we turn to the world and look with these new eyes, the birds and the lilies and the ants and the sunrises and the stars — they all have a new message. They have a new glory. They show us something of God.

That’s what I want for myself. That’s what I want for our students at Bethlehem College & Seminary. That’s what I want for everyone who reads my new book. That’s what I want for our listeners every time you and I talk on this podcast, Tony. I want us all, when we see the word and when we see the world, to really see, to taste and see that the Lord is good, the Lord is glorious.

I waited in the cavernous student center at King Saud University in Riyad, Saudi Arabia. I pondered my surroundings as the bright Middle Eastern sun streamed from high skylights in the massive hall. Apart from some South Asian workers cleaning tables and floors, the hall stood empty and quiet; the only sounds came from the distant echoes of metal tables and chairs on polished white marble floors. The workers did their job well; I could have eaten off that floor.

Weirdly, I sat between Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut counters in the food court. Then the afternoon Dhuhr prayers finished, and hundreds of students and faculty streamed into the hall, all dressed alike in flowing white dishdashas and red checkered head coverings called ghutras. I stood out in my suit like a crow among a flock of swans. I felt alone, out of place, and useless. But then a student glided his way to my table and politely asked if he could sit down. He held a tray with a slice of pizza on it.

“Sure!” I said. We exchanged greetings for a few minutes, and then I asked him why his English was so good.

He leaned forward and said, with a conspiratorial whisper, “I watch all the American movies.” He smiled.

Ah, I thought to myself, a rebel. I smiled back.

“There was one movie I watched that I would like to ask you about,” he said.

“Of course — which one?”

“It was called The Passion of the Christ. What was that about?”

And there it was — my opportunity for the gospel. God had gone before me.

God Before Us

I am reminded of a saying an older missionary told me about his time on the field. Never, in all his years of service, had he gone to a place and discovered that he got there before the Holy Spirit.

Not to belabor the obvious, but he spoke of God’s omnipresence tongue-in-cheek. Perhaps he sensed that I had forgotten this simple but wonderful truth, a truth many workers on the field can forget: God is with us and goes before us, even before we get there.

You don’t have to go to the mission field to understand this truth. We all know the experience. The sermon is preached as if precisely for you. Or suddenly, just when you screw up your courage to speak to a neighbor about the gospel, he tells you he’s been thinking about spiritual things lately.

We all need to count on God’s presence with us, especially in places particularly resistant to the gospel, the “gospel deserts” of the world. But we can easily forget God’s presence on the mission field. That’s why Jesus tells us in his Great Commission not just to go, not just to make disciples, and not just to teach them everything he taught, but also that he will be with us always, “to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19–20).

‘I Will Be with You’

Perhaps we tend to take God’s promise of presence for granted. But such a promise is precious and rare compared to other faiths.

In the Bible’s first book, God promises his presence when he tells Isaac, “Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you” (Genesis 26:3). Later, Moses gave solid and pragmatic objections to God’s absurd idea that he was to return to Egypt and confront Pharaoh. Yet God’s great promise made all the difference: “I will be with you” (Exodus 3:12). Not long after, Moses and the people would consider it a “disastrous word” when God threatened to remove his presence (Exodus 33:3–4).

King David asks the rhetorical question in Psalm 139:7, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” David knew that God is everywhere in time and space. And then we remember the great promises of Isaiah 8, quoted in Matthew 1:23: “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us).”

So, what are some take-home lessons from God’s promised omnipresence for those on the field? Consider three qualities this truth cultivates in us: humility, patience with perseverance, and boldness.

1. Humility

First, the offer of God’s presence is a call for humility that slays self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is a Holy Spirit quencher. Our efforts, skills, or methods in missions do not ultimately bring the gospel to people. Of course, God uses effort, skills, and methods, but when we chase after those means as if they were ends, they easily become idolatrous replacements for a humble dependence on God.

One litmus test of self-reliance is prayerlessness. Check yourself on this. Those who have not been on the field full-time may struggle to imagine that a missionary would struggle with prayer — but believe me, faced with the tsunami of difficulties that come with cross-cultural living, prayer can easily fall to the wayside.

Do not neglect your prayer life. “Pray without ceasing,” as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Live constantly aware of the presence of Jesus, which brings true reliance on him that kills self-sufficiency.

2. Patient Perseverance

Second, when you don’t see progress or fruit, have patience and persevere. Patience is part of the fruit of the Spirit and vital for our hope when we can’t see traction in the work (Galatians 5:22–23).

Missionaries, by nature, are doers; just going to the field requires some chutzpah, which is a good thing. Yet such an impulse can easily become a desire to manufacture results. If the litmus test for pride is prayerlessness, the litmus test for an impatient heart is drivenness that manufactures human results instead of waiting on God’s timing. Manufactured human results are a scourge on modern missions. The desire for quick results and impact (and, frankly, a desire to justify our work) can trump the patient hand-to-the-plow work Jesus calls for (Luke 9:62). Our best method is methodical, faithful, long-term work. We need to live in the GMT time zone: God’s Methodical Time.

Our team labored in the Arabian Peninsula for seven years without seeing much fruit. But the next seven years were some of the most fruitful I’ve had in ministry. Sometimes, it just takes time. (I need to add, however, that patience is not the same as coasting. The call to patient perseverance is not a call to inactivity.)

We didn’t go to the Arabian Peninsula for church planting or church reform, but as we labored hard to establish student fellowships, we saw the need for healthy churches and decided to focus on church revitalization. The result was an outpouring of church plants and church reform. Now, in hindsight, we see that the resulting student work needed those churches to receive the young people who later came to faith. That was God’s timing for us.

3. Boldness

Finally, remain expectant with ready boldness. The promise of God’s presence gives us confidence and courage in our steps for him.

We read in Acts 18:9–11,

The Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.

After being badly treated in Corinth, Paul had good reasons to bail, but God promised his presence and called Paul to be unafraid. We too must be ready to speak the truth of the gospel, trusting that God has many more who are his people.

If the litmus test of self-sufficiency is prayerlessness, and the litmus test of impatience is fleshly drivenness, the litmus test for fear is silence in the face of opportunity. Biblical boldness does not mean shouting or being obnoxious. Boldness means putting our fears aside and speaking up.

Ready to Speak

I sat in my Maasai friend’s house in the small town of Ngong, Kenya. My friend’s name was Kishoyian. One evening, when he went to run some errands and left me alone, someone knocked on the door. “Hodi? Kishoyian?” the person on the other side said. “Karibu,” I answered (“Welcome”), and I opened the door. A friend of Kishoyian’s traveling through town needed a place for the night. Surprised that a white guy had opened the door, he looked at the house next door, thinking he was in the wrong place.

“Kishoyian’s not here, but he will return soon,” I said.

I had been in Africa long enough to know this was common. And I knew the drill. Later, a mattress would be produced and rolled out on the concrete floor. After breakfast the next morning, the friend would be gone.

We sat together on a couch. After serving him some chai, I faced a decision. We could just chat, or we could watch Kenyan news on Kishoyian’s small TV, or I could ask questions to find out if he was a believer.

Eventually, I asked, “Are you a follower of Jesus?”

“No,” he told me, but then he added that, lately, he felt he should become a follower of Jesus.

“Really? I would love to help you with that,” I said, thrilled with this divine encounter.

I walked him through the gospel; I made sure he understood. It seemed that he genuinely believed. We prayed together. Then Kishoyian arrived home and found us talking on the couch. This friend told Kishoyian that he was now a Christian. Kishoyian took his hands, looked at him with shining eyes, and said, “Oh, my friend, I have longed for this day for so many years.”

The next day, Kishoyian told me, to my amazement, that the man lived hard-hearted to the gospel for years despite Kishoyian’s best efforts. Kishoyian despaired that this man would ever come to faith.

Of course, it was a privilege to see this man believe in Jesus, but I was also amazed at how God had gone before me, preparing the way and placing me in exactly the right spot with the right words. The moment had nothing to do with me. God had gone before me, and all I needed to do was be ready to speak the truth of Jesus.

Before romance became an ally for me, it was a terrorist, because it had become a god.

It was a subtle god, of course. But subtle gods — money, sports, career success, relationships — often wield more functional authority than the gods of organized religion. You may find more devotion in sports arenas, movie theaters, board meetings, and social media threads than in many pews. And the worshipers of those gods gather seven days a week. Through my teens and twenties, I read my Bible regularly and rarely missed church, but if you watched really closely, you might have assumed that marriage, not God, was the only pleasure great enough to fill my restless soul.

I dated too young, and too often, and took those relationships too far, emotionally and physically. Through those failures, I discovered just how desperately I needed forgiveness and redemption. And I learned that dating (and marriage, and sex, and family) would never satisfy all I desired. Because romance had become a god, I betrayed God — the one true and living God — to serve my golden calf. Relationship after relationship, I was burning down the gold he had given me to fashion something that might more immediately meet my longings.

By God’s grace, like Saul along the road to Damascus, romance was dramatically converted in my story from murderous terrorist to servant of Christ. So if you, like me, have bowed at the altars of romantic affection and intimacy, I hope to open your eyes to a greater Love (and a greater, more fulfilling vision for earthly love). I hope you’ll begin to see how romantic love is simultaneously at the core of what’s right and beautiful about this world (hence why dating and marriage can be so thrilling and satisfying), and yet also at the core of what can be so wrong (why the two can be so destructive and devastating).

Your Good Desires for Love

My desire for romantic love, even as a naive, impulsive teenager, wasn’t totally dysfunctional. I was experiencing something that God had created in me. After all, he himself says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22). That means he who wants a wife wants a good thing, and wants favor from God.

“Healthy and happy marriages find their health and happiness in that future marriage.”

We see the goodness of romance in the very first paragraphs of Scripture. Notice how the first six days of God’s masterpiece come to a climax: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness . . .’” (Genesis 1:26). He’s lit the stage, hung the moon, carved the seashores, formed the mountains, planted the flowers, unleashed the birds, and uncaged the bears. Now he’ll put something of himself on that wild and wondrous stage — he’ll pick up handfuls of dust and mold the kind of creature his Son will one day be.

So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him . . .

But that’s not all he said. And that he says more gets to why I innately had such high, even unrealistic expectations of romance.

So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created him;male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26–27)

Not just male, but male and female. And a few verses later, they were no longer separately male and female, but one flesh. When God sculpted his image into creation, he didn’t just make a man — he made a man and a woman, together. He made a marriage. Marital love, at its best, tells the story the universe was made to tell, about the love within God himself (Father, Son, and Spirit), and the love of that Son for his bride, the church.

Our desires for romantic love (again, at their best, when they’re burning as God himself kindled them to burn) draw us into the love that formed the earth and every other planet, the Milky Way and every other galaxy. Marriage is a wondrous gift, given by a generous Father, to help lead his sons and daughters to their greatest possible joy.

Your Bad Desires for Love

It didn’t take long, though, for that one-flesh sculpture to crumble. The honeymoon was devastatingly short (at least in the story we’ve been given). Almost as soon as we find the two together, naked and blissfully unashamed, Satan slithers between them and turns them against each other.

When we read Genesis 1–2, we can hardly imagine what a relationship like that might be like, a love without fear or suspicion, without secrets or grudges, without sin or pain. Neither ever needing to say sorry. Then the serpent raided their home, overturned the marriage bed, and started a fire in the living room. It’s stunning, isn’t it, just how quickly sin turns this love story into a horror film.

Now, for the first time, they’re hiding (Genesis 3:8). They’re suddenly afraid of the God who had been their safety (verse 10). Within a few sentences, the husband’s pointing fingers (verse 12). They’re having their first fight as a couple (verse 15), the wife wrestling her groom for the steering wheel. They meet pain (verse 16), which shows up at their front door and never leaves. And their work grows hard, and not just hard, but frustrating and ineffective (verses 17–18). Worst of all, they’re evicted from Paradise, leaving them wandering without God (verses 23–24). His presence had been their address, their foundation, their first and only home. And when it comes time to have children, they give birth to anger, rivalry, and death (Genesis 4:1–8).

As soon as God was uprooted from the center of their union, and they from the safety of his garden, romance was no longer spiritually safe. Their nakedness was now a vulnerability. And two thousand years later, it’s really not any safer or easier out on the dating scene. Adam and Eve’s fall is a warning that, for as beautiful, even divine, as romance can be, it can also be dangerous, even deadly.

Rehearsing for the Real Thing

I wasn’t completely wrong about romance, even as a teenager. I was wrong because I expected from romance what I would find only in God, and then demanded that the true God deliver my god (and that he overnight it). And then I was surprised when I didn’t get what I wanted and ended up lonelier and more miserable than before.

Make no mistake, romance captures worship. Idolatry like mine explains why sexual sin runs rampant. It’s why the demonic empires of pornography make billions of dollars every year. It’s why we see so much divorce. It explains a lot of depression and suicide. Our desires for love, however, in their deepest, purest, most intense expressions, are desires for a Marriage beyond marriage. You won’t be freed from all the frustration, confusion, and heartbreak of romance worship until you see this.

One day, heaven will come to earth, Christ will return on the clouds, and we’ll have a wedding:

Let us rejoice and exult     and give him the glory,for the marriage of the Lamb has come,     and his Bride has made herself ready;it was granted her to clothe herself     with fine linen, bright and pure. (Revelation 19:7–8)

Then Jesus will sing the Groom’s anthem over us: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). He came to pursue her, he died to redeem her, he rose to secure her, and he’s coming to bring her home. How will we remember these brief years of unwanted loneliness, or persistent conflict, even of paralyzing betrayal when we see the blazing fire in his eyes, when we hear the warm rumble in his voice, when we feel the passionate strength of his embrace?

Healthy and happy marriages find their health and happiness in that future marriage. They’re content because their contentment doesn’t rest finally in each other. They receive these years of matrimony, even decades together, as a blessed rehearsal for the real thing.

Romance of Orthodoxy

In this case, however, we don’t have to wait for the wedding to enjoy the pleasures of the romance. Through faith, Christ is already yours. Even though you are not yet the glorified you that you one day will be, you already have “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” in him (Ephesians 1:3). G.K. Chesterton famously writes,

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. (Orthodoxy, 143)

The apostle Paul, an unmarried man himself, had tasted that sweeter, fuller romance: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). And if he had married, he still would have said the same. He knew no wife could have possibly made him happier than Jesus could (and so he actually may have made a good husband).

Your desires for love are, at root, good. They’re innate, inescapable desires for Christ. And yet sin distorts our desires for love and leads them astray (sometimes far astray). That means romance can be a friend or a god, an ally or an enemy. So don’t run from your holy desires, and don’t idolize them. Make your earthly loves (or potential earthly loves) serve your first and greater love for God.

ABSTRACT: The opening chapters of Genesis often get swallowed up in modern discussions about the age of the earth or the extent of the flood. Reading these chapters wisely requires not getting sidetracked from the original context and audience. Genesis 1–11 forms the introduction to the Pentateuch, the books of Moses given to Israel to guide them in covenant faithfulness in the promised land. By understanding the nature and purpose of these chapters (an outcome achieved by asking the right questions), Christians today are strengthened to fight against temptation and to pursue our calling in the world as the people of God.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Old Testament scholar C. John “Jack” Collins (PhD, University of Liverpool), Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary, to help us read the opening chapters of Genesis well.

If we want to be good readers — of whatever it is we’re reading — we try to get what the author aims to give us. Depending on the author, we might do more than that: we might find ourselves making connections the author doesn’t, or we might disagree on matters small or great. But we show respect to an author if we start with what he meant us to get.

When it comes to the Bible, our approach is similar and a bit different. The Bible is a sacred text, claiming authority from God, and believers accept that claim. That doesn’t make the process of reading the Bible simple, but it does enlist our cooperation. After all, the Bible, for all its theological unity, is a library of diverse books, each of which can do different things to us and for us and do them in different ways. I’m going to look specifically at one part of the Bible, Genesis 1–11, a part that holds plenty of interpretive challenges. (I dare to hope that the ideas here can be extended to other parts of the Bible, but that’s for another day!)1

We should approach any biblical passage with the conviction that God inspired the Bible to be the right tool for its job. If we can get a good idea of what kind of tool our passage is, we can discern what job God intended it to perform. And that means we need to be willing to adjust what we’re looking for and be willing to find other ways of addressing some questions.

Let me sum up what I hope you’ll get from this essay: If we want to be good readers, we must cooperate with the author, and to do so requires that we exercise a disciplined imagination. And thankfully, some ideas from C.S. Lewis point the way.

The writings of Lewis have taught me, in addition to good thinking, skills in good reading. I begin with the opening line of his lectures on John Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost, where Lewis puts the interpretive task into a nutshell:

The first qualification for judging [and interpreting] any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know what it is — what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used.2

Here Lewis draws our attention to three aspects of a work of literary craftsmanship:

What it is: What is its, say, literary form, style, and register?
What it was intended to do: What effect does the work aim to produce in its users?
How it is meant to be used: What kind of users are envisioned by the work? What knowledge and beliefs do they share with the author? What kind of social setting is the normal locus of use?

But since we’re talking about the Bible, we have to add another question: What does it mean for us to believe and appropriate this work today? This additional element will enrich our thoughts about Lewis’s second and third questions.

1. What Is Genesis 1–11?

So, what is Genesis 1–11? The first thing to say is that these chapters are part of the book of Genesis — in fact, the front end, and Genesis is the front end of the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. The books of Moses serve as a kind of constitution for Israel, God’s people whom he chose so that, through them, he could bless the whole world (see Genesis 12:1–3; Exodus 19:5–6). This constitution comes in the form of a continuous narrative, which gave to ancient Israel a Big Story: it explained who they were and why they were in the world, and it invited them to take their place in the story as it went on from there. For Christians, it is part of our Big Story as well. Everyone notices that Genesis 1–11 is a narrative, a story of persons and events. But it’s part of a larger story, and it serves to get the larger story underway.

Genesis 1–11 is a narrative, but not all narratives are the same. This narrative certainly doesn’t aim to be complete: no matter how much time we think these chapters cover, there were many more events that the narrator didn’t tell. Indeed, all narratives are selective, and no biblical narrative claims anything like comprehensiveness (not even the Gospels; see John 20:30–31). Beginning in Genesis 12, there is much more narration for a much shorter time span, so the sparse narrative of Genesis 1–11 creates for us a sense that the events lie in the distant past.

Not only that, but the events, coming early in the story, set the stage for everything that follows. The world we see has a mixture of beauty and danger and hardship. Why is that? Why do people have so much trouble doing right? Why must we approach God through so many ceremonies that deal with sin and impurity? Why are there so many families or clans in the world, and why do they speak so many different languages — and yet why do they seem so similar? Can we really be a vehicle of blessing to them all?

The events of the first two chapters are especially distinct and incomparable: God brings the world into existence, populates it with plants and animals, and makes humankind to rule over it. The writing style, especially in Genesis 1, is also distinctive: the stately rhythms, the repeated “and there was evening, and there was morning, the nth day,” the broad-stroke taxonomies of plants and animals (no farmer could put these to “practical” use), the high-level name for the sky (“expanse”), and God’s “rest” on the seventh day — which rest the ancients (including New Testament writers) took to be the ongoing history of the world — all these features have led some to call the passage a “poem,” or, better, “poetic prose.” The best label for it is “exalted prose narrative,” and that label will help us as we wonder how these early chapters relate to some of the questions about science and history that we cannot avoid.

Bible writers have all taken these events to be history, but we must be careful about that word. It simply means the people really existed and the events really happened, but it doesn’t prejudge how the author might have represented them. For example, he might use pictorial elements or leave things out. He can portray the sky as if it were an extended surface, without meaning for us to treat that as if it were “scientific.”

2. What Was Genesis 1–11 Intended to Do?

If you listen to some people, you’d get the impression that God inspired these stories so that we’d have something to argue about! How long ago did these events happen? How long did it all take? What kinds of “evidences” might we find in scientific research? In my judgment, the text really doesn’t do much to answer these questions in detail, though it does set some boundaries.

We already touched on some of what the passage was intended to do when we saw that it serves as the front end of the constitution for the people of God. But there are a few other purposes we need to add.

Light to the Nations

First, the people of Israel are about to follow Joshua into the land, where subsequent generations will live. Genesis 1–11 sets out the aspirations for the ideal human community, both in its positive presentation (“the image of God,” Genesis 1:26–27; walking with God, Genesis 5:22) and in its depiction of the horrors that follow the fall of our first parents (murder, bigamy, and vengeance, Genesis 4; corruption and violence, Genesis 6:11; hubristic seeking of a “name,” Genesis 11:1–9) — in spite of which God still seeks to bless “all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3) with knowledge of himself.

After Genesis come the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which are filled with all manner of laws and regulations. These laws deal with human nature as we find it in a post-fall world; they take for granted that even among the people of God there will be those who do wrong, and they provide remedies for the civil, criminal, social, and religious predicaments that arise. They don’t generally describe the ideal community; they rather protect it against violations.3 What we call the “ceremonial” material is there to guide the priests in maintaining Israel as a holy community of worshipers.

But if these laws do not depict the ideal community, where do we learn what that community is to be like? First and foremost from the creation story: humans were made to know and love the one true God, Maker of heaven and earth, and to form communities in which the embodiment of God’s own character is realized. Academics dispute the meaning of the terms image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) and puzzle over why there is no exposition of them in Genesis. But there is if we are attentive.

The creation story (Genesis 1–2) presents God going through his work week as if he were an agricultural laborer. God works for six days, “resting” after each day’s work (evening followed by morning brackets the nighttime, the daily rest of the worker), and has his whole seventh day given over to holy “rest” (Genesis 2:1–3). In all his work of creation, he exercises authority, creative thought, generosity, and artistry. Israel, in their life in the land, were to see themselves as aiming to embody these very qualities in their work, families, and communities.

More broadly, the ideal human community is one in which the imitation of God’s character (such as “steadfast love and faithfulness,” Exodus 34:6) flourishes among the members. This kind of community would serve as an invitation to the rest of humankind to come and be blessed (Deuteronomy 4:6–8; 1 Kings 8:41–43). Even though these other peoples adhere to false deities, God remains committed to bringing them to his light and calls Israel to join him in that disposition.

Loving, Loyal People

But there is something else: when I read Genesis 4–11, I recognize many features of life as I encounter it and feel shame as well as sorrow. When I read Genesis 1–2, I see something pristine and beautiful, and I feel an ache for the loss that Genesis 3 brought. Deep within me — and, I suspect, within most people — is the mournful yearning to know God without barriers, to participate in a community of fellow worshipers who share in this great task of learning to embody, in our finite way, the very character of our Maker.

Genesis 1–11 is there to help ancient Israel and the modern Christian aim for that life. But it also begins the great work of preparing them to meet temptations to defect, to assimilate to the mighty nations around them with their higher cultures and superior power. Its goal is to recruit, and to foster, a people loyal to the true God and his ways.

3. How Is Genesis 1–11 Meant to Be Used?

To answer the question of how the passage is meant to be used, let’s think a little about the first audience. The text invites us to picture the people who are to follow Joshua into the promised land as that audience. Every future generation of Israel — and of Christians too — are the heirs of this first audience. While many features of our daily experience differ from theirs, the story still forms us.

And what was the daily life of these folk? They belonged to communities: families, clans, tribes, and the whole people. Their daily life consisted of subsistence agriculture, tending animals and growing crops to feed their household year by year. (The modern developed world is an anomaly in human history. The lifestyle in the Little House on the Prairie books is closer to theirs than it is to ours!) We mustn’t think that they were just simple farmers, however; you need a lot of knowledge and savvy to survive forty years in the Sinai wilderness.

They knew a lot. They already knew, as “primitive” peoples generally know, that it takes a man and woman to make a baby and that families and clans ideally work together to raise children. They knew that other peoples had stories about the world’s origin and purpose, stories that centered around multiple deities with competing interests.

As humans, they certainly faced temptations to steal, to backbite, to exploit, to disbelieve. And as peasants, they were utterly dependent on external conditions like the weather, the fertility of their animals, and even the fertility of their own families. Palestine gives you just the right combination of soil type, latitude, and climate cycle of rain and sunshine to allow you to grow certain kinds of crops and raise certain kinds of animals. You depend on the rains coming in the fall, starting soon after Rosh Ha-Shanah (the biblical Feast of Trumpets), and finishing in the spring (around Passover). And you need enough of it to fall, about 23 inches (the same as London). Then, of course, you worry about pests, not to mention invading armies or marauding bandits. And you need a stable social system with reliable justice.

How do you ensure the reliability of this pattern? The deities that other peoples worshiped promised to do exactly that — to give the right mix of rain and sunshine, to make the livestock fertile, to bring babies safely into the world (and lots of them), and to avenge violations of the social order. It’s easy for us, when we read the prophets, to think how stupid the people of Israel were to resort to these other deities, including them along with the true God in their worship. Yes, such idolatry was wrong, but we should understand how vulnerable these people were to the temptation.

Now, there is a long and distinguished tradition of readers in Judaism and Christianity who have seen just this point about the audience and their needs and have read Genesis in its light. One of them was John Colet (1467–1519), the premier English theologian and man of letters at the dawn of the Reformation. In a series of letters to his friend Radulphus, he put it thus (in a passage that C.S. Lewis loved and cited several times, mistakenly attributing it to Jerome):

Moses arranged his details in such a way as to give the people a clearer notion, and he does this after the manner of a popular poet, in order that he may the more adapt himself to the spirit of simple rusticity.4

If we are to read Genesis 1–11 wisely, we must ask how its parts fortify such folk in their loyalty to the Lord and resistance to temptation, and then ask how it does the same for us.

And how was Genesis 1–11 to do the fortifying? I just saw the cover for a new release of an old book on reading the Bible; it has a picture of a young man sitting on a chair with his Bible, alone. (A related book has a young woman in a lounge chair alone with her Bible.) Now, personal Bible reading is valuable; I wouldn’t do without it. But in ancient Israel, a believer encountered the Scriptures primarily as it was read aloud and expounded by a priest in public worship — initially every seven years (Deuteronomy 31:9–13), and eventually in the weekly Sabbath “holy convocation” (Leviticus 23:3), portion by portion (cf. Leviticus 10:11; Deuteronomy 33:10).

We have some biblical examples of public readings at crucial moments in Israel’s history, such as before King Josiah’s reforms (2 Kings 23:2) and as the restored community pledged to be true to God under Ezra’s leadership (Nehemiah 8:3). These are moving scenes, and we can guess that they were heightened examples of what we should normally expect: the public reading helps the community to refresh its sense of identity: This is who we are. This is where we came from. This is why God called us into being. This is how we got to where we are now. These are the aims we should be striving for.

Certainly, families were expected to discuss the material: “You . . . shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7). This everyday teaching, I think, depended on the faithful reading week by week, and it put into action the members’ responsibility to love God deeply and sincerely, with all their heart, soul, and might (Deuteronomy 6:5–6).

God’s People in God’s Story

Now we can pull everything together and answer the questions that C.S. Lewis posed to us: What is Genesis 1–11? What was it intended to do? How was it meant to be used?

We have in Genesis 1–11 the beginning of the Big Story that defines Israel, but that also defines everyone. The basic shape of that Big Story includes God making a good creation. That creation was then marred by the human fall into sin, but God is active in his world to redeem his human creatures and all that they affect. He will bring all the world to final judgment and complete fruition on the last day. That’s why the account was to be read in gathered public worship, where the people want to be most truly themselves. It’s also why the story is told in such an attractive fashion: to grab their imaginations and to hold their loyalty.

They also should allow this Story to help them admire the God who made the world. The mountains and valleys, the forests, the rivers and plains, the deserts, even the seas — the God who redeemed them from Egypt and called them to be his faithful people made all these marvels. The plants and animals living in these balanced ecosystems are an incredible work of craftsmanship! God doesn’t view the world as a rival for our affections; we can love and admire him more fully as we love and admire the world he made. (Now, an Israelite would have been mostly concerned with figuring out how to farm well; we have the advantage of adding to that the development of science, which opens up even more avenues for wonder.) The deities other peoples served were at odds with each other, but the one true God rules the world in truth and grace, and he made us all to know and love him.

In this light, we can see that Genesis 1–11 doesn’t really concern itself with specific scientific theories about the objects or events it describes — it’s not outmoded ancient science, and it’s not authoritative science that sets itself against modern theories. Rather, Genesis 1–11 reinforces the boundaries that good critical thinking has set for such theories — especially when it comes to questions of human uniqueness and God’s action in the world. We know full well that we are different from every other animal and that it took something extraordinary on God’s part to bring into being the world and living things, especially humankind. Genesis reinforces that intuition by taking it for granted. Good science is the disciplined and critical study of the world around us; it doesn’t of itself have to exclude God or miracles.5 And science is done by scientists, by human beings who must satisfy the criteria for good thinking, and who are not usually experts in fields outside their specialty.

So, what constitutes reading Genesis 1–11 wisely? How do we cooperate with God’s intention as expressed through Moses, exercising a disciplined imagination? We start by putting ourselves in the sandals of the first audience, our spiritual forebears (even we Gentile believers have been grafted into Abraham’s family; see Romans 4:11; 11:17). What concerns of theirs do these chapters speak to? How do they enlist the loyalty and admiration of these peasants to the true God and fortify them against fear and temptation? How do they shape the people’s stance toward other ethnic groups of humankind, fostering a sense of being in the world as a vehicle of blessing to the Gentiles? How do these chapters form in them aspirations for an ideal community that combines the sacred and the benevolent and nurtures a yearning to imitate God?

The apostles have taught us Christians to see ourselves as heirs of Israel’s privileges and calling (1 Peter 2:9–10), as was promised long ago in the Hebrew Scriptures (Romans 1:2–6). We are scattered among the nations and do not live in a church-state nexus as ancient Israel did. How does Genesis 1–11 build our loyalty to our Maker and Redeemer, who has shown more to us than he did to ancient Israel? How do these chapters help us to stand firm in the face of temptations to assimilate to the powerful cultures around us so that, instead, we can be salt and light among them? How can our churches serve as communities that enable the imitation of God to flourish? How can we talk openly about the raw wound in every soul, that yearning for what God made us for, and rest assured that there is an answer for that yearning in God’s redeemed family?

May God make us wise with his own wisdom.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back on this Monday. Today we have a wonderful ministry question on preaching — right in your wheelhouse, Pastor John. A young pastor writes in to ask you this: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast. I listen every time a new episode is released, and I’m thankful for the impact that your biblical insights have made on my life. My question for you is about expository preaching and its place in student ministry.

“I am the student pastor at my church, responsible for sixth- through twelfth-grade ministry. Whenever we gather for our youth worship time on Wednesday nights, I typically preach through books of the Bible in an expositional way. I try my best to apply the text to them in ways they can understand. However, I sometimes question whether I should preach expository sermons to the students because I don’t believe it’s common practice in youth ministries. I love God’s word and want my students to come to love God’s word, but should I teach my students in a way that is more application-focused? I would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thank you.”

Well, I have endless thoughts about preaching. I could just go on and on and on. I love preaching. I believe God has appointed preaching to be part of the gathered worship of his church, on the Lord’s Day especially, and I think all of it, all the time, should be based on and saturated with Scripture. That’s what preaching is. It is a God-ordained way of saving sinners and sustaining and growing saints. I think it’s relevant for old people, middle-aged people, young people, children.

So, I’m thrilled that our young pastor-friend is in a church and leading a youth group where he is doing exposition. Originally I had in my head a lot of thoughts, but I boiled it down to three, so here are the three thoughts I can squeeze into our few minutes together.

Deal with the Reality-Factor

First, as you unfold the meaning of particular biblical texts, be sure to stress what I call the “reality-factor.” Now, you don’t need to use that phrase. That’s just my phrase, but here’s what I mean.

Some years ago, it hit me that it is possible to do a great deal of explaining about how the thought of the text actually flows, how the words and clauses relate to each other, without actually dealing with the reality of what the words are trying to communicate. It just clobbered me that we can do this. We can stay at the surface of grammar and not get to reality.

“Preaching is a God-ordained way of saving sinners and sustaining and growing saints.”

For example, in Philippians 2:12–13 it says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Now, suppose in your exposition that you point out to the students how the first clause is an imperative command: “Work out your own salvation.” Then you explain how the second clause is not a command but an indicative, a statement of fact: “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work.”

Finally, you draw attention to the connection between those two clauses with the word for, pointing out that the second clause, the statement “it is God who works,” is the basis or the ground or the motive (which is what for means) for the first clause, the command to “work out your salvation.” Maybe you even go further, and you say, “This is typical in the New Testament, that indicatives ground imperatives.” Then you stop — end of exposition.

Well, the problem with stopping there is that we haven’t even touched the reality behind the clauses and their logical connection until we answer the question, How does this work in life? Why does it work for me to work out my salvation because God is at work in me?

Real Exposition Exposes Reality

There’s a vast difference between words and clauses on the one hand and the realities they reveal on the other hand. Here you can see how artificial is the distinction between exposition and application. This just blows people away when I point it out (at least some people, those who have particular ideas about preaching), so let me say that again. How artificial it is to distinguish between exposition and application! Because we’re not really doing exposition of the reality behind the words until we are dealing with real life and telling how it works.

The question is, at ten o’clock tonight, after these students are at home, having heard this exposition, and now they’re in their bedroom with their computer or with their family in the den — what will it look like for these students to work out their salvation? What is that reality like? What will it feel like for them to experience the reality of God working in them? Do they have any sense at all what that verse is talking about? What’s the reality? How does it feel? How does it work? How will they make the connection between those experiences of God working in them and them working?

We really don’t know what this text means until we can explain not just the words, clauses, logic, and grammar, but the realities as they arise later tonight, at ten o’clock in the bedroom, in the kitchen — in other words, how the text works in people’s lives.

No Small Task

That requires huge effort on the part of the preacher because he’s now working at two levels. There’s the level of words, grammar, and logic — we call that the text — and the effort to explain how the parts of the text fit together. On the other level, we ask, What realities is this author, with these words and this grammar and this logic, trying to communicate to my mind and my heart and my hands?

Language and reality, the two levels, are both absolutely crucial. You can’t do a shortcut around the grammar, around the logic, around the words, but if you stop there, you haven’t done the kind of exposition that needs to be done.

It is real head-work, and it is real heart-work, but the payoff for the students will be huge. So, that’s my first suggestion — deal with the reality-factor as well as the text-factor. Your students will love it because it will touch their lives, their reality.

Take Doctrinal Depth-Tours

Second, in your exposition through texts, take doctrinal depth-tours — not doctrinal detours, but doctrinal depth-tours. Now, I just made that up. I have never in the history of the world said that before. This is my new term, which I thought of for this pastor.

Here’s what I mean. Depth-tours are like detours, but they’re depth-tours because you’re not going away from where you should go. That’s what a detour is — you go away, and you wish you didn’t have to go. But a depth-tour? You want to go on this road because it will build doctrinally strong people.

Without depth-tours, I just don’t know how you can build doctrinally strong youth groups, doctrinally strong people. What I mean by that is people, youth groups, who have a clear, deeply rooted understanding of really important biblical doctrines.

Roads to Take

Now, you can’t do everything as a youth pastor. You’re working in tandem with other groups, worship services, sermons, lessons, and classes in your church, maybe even in the home or in the school.

What I mean is to take depth-tours on doctrines like God’s sovereignty, God’s holiness, God’s grace, God’s justice, the deity and humanity of Christ, the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit, the nature of sin both as action and disease of the heart, the nature of redemption and propitiation and regeneration, calling, faith, justification, sanctification, walking by the Spirit, perseverance of the saints, the nature of the church. What happens when you die? The second coming, eternal life, the new heavens and the new earth.

If a young person studies texts of Scripture without ever taking doctrinal depth-tours, he’s like a person who lines up all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but never puts them together to see the beauty of the picture that they make. In fact, you can be pretty proud of putting those pieces in line. You can say, “Look, my pieces are all lined up!”

For example, someone might recite the entire first chapter of Ephesians by heart and never have paused to study the doctrine of election. It’s the totality of the big picture that holds a person, isn’t it? It’s the picture that takes hold of a sixteen-year-old and keeps him for sixty years, holding him for a lifetime — who God is, what he’s doing. How did Christ save sinners? How does the Christian life work? Where’s it all heading?

Various Methods

Now, there are different ways to do this. You can do an expository series of messages through texts, and then you can do a doctrinal series separately. You could say, “We’re going to do five weeks, kids, on election and predestination, and we’re going to do five weeks on sin and what it is, on what kind of disease you have in your heart” — and so on.

I’m not at all opposed to topical messages like that because they’re all expository — meaning, if I’m going to explain anything, it’s going to be exposition of the Scripture. That’s where my explanations come from.

Or you can take these doctrinal depth-tours that I’m suggesting within the time of exposition. Fifteen minutes, say, of your thirty-minute message might be devoted to painting the big doctrinal reality behind one word in your text, like justification. It’s not either-or. You can mix it up in various ways.

I think students love to see how reality actually fits together, really fits together, and they love to see how texts actually work. Some combination of exposition of texts, where they get their noses in the grammar, and efforts to build their doctoral knowledge — both of these are crucial.

Ask Provocative Thought-Questions

The last thing I would say is this. If your students hear good preaching on Sunday morning, I probably wouldn’t turn the Wednesday-evening teaching time into another sermon. I would create a more interactive Socratic method of teaching, probably.

Now, you know your situation better than I do, but this is what I would do if I were the youth minister and I had a good pastor who was doing real preaching on Sunday. I probably wouldn’t try to do the same thing on Wednesday, but would train these students on how to look at the text, how to look at the Book, and how to ask really good thought-questions, because questions are the key to understanding.

“Train students on how to look at the text, how to look at the Book, and how to ask really good thought-questions.”

Lots of times, people hear me say “participatory” or “interactive,” and they think, “Oh, I’ve been in those kinds of groups. Everybody shares their ignorance.” That’s not at all what I mean. I teach like this generally. I stay in control. I’m asking the questions, right? If students ask stupid questions, then you delicately and wisely guide them toward good questions. You don’t let everybody just share their ignorance. You know where you want to take them, and you take them there by training them to get there themselves.

You’re modeling how to pose really good questions about what you see in the text and getting them to look and think and speak — and then correcting them so that they get better and better at reading their Bibles. It is possible to do very serious exposition and doctrinal teaching this way. You can do this Socratically.

The key is really good questions, provocative questions. I’ve been in so many groups where the leader says, “Who said this?” The students are looking at each other and saying, “That’s the most stupid question. It says that Peter said this. Why is he asking me that? That is such a stupid question. ‘Who said this?’” Those are not the kinds of questions that get anybody excited about anything. They have to be thought-questions, hard-thinking questions, questions that really have to pay off in textual understanding and real-life experience.

So, those are my three suggestions for handling the word with your youth group. Deal with the reality-factor, take doctrinal depth-tours, and ask provocative thought-questions. Then of course — and this would be a whole different episode — soak it all in earnest prayer, because if God doesn’t show up, then everything is in vain.

I have one friend on the mission field in impoverished Mongolia. Every time she enters a home, the hosts are eager and polite. They bend over backward to show her honor and listen carefully to what she has to say. She often finds them ready to accept the gospel message, perhaps too ready — it takes time to know whether they’ve really understood and embraced Christ or were simply being polite to important guests.

I have another friend who has ministered in Paris for many years in a small evangelical church. The tents, eager faces, and humble hospitality of a sparsely populated region contrast sharply with the upscale apartments, bored faces on the subway, and chic displays of urban sophistication.

When each friend describes her experience, it’s exactly what I would expect. It’s often easier to minister to people in the likes of Mongolia, who tend to think of you as their social superior. But how do you minister to those who are looking down long noses at you in places such as Paris?

Resolved — and in Bondage

When I was a teenager, I remember settling a firm resolve in myself, just in case God called me to the mission field: I would be happy to work in a remote village in Africa, an overflowing orphanage in India, or a backwoods town in the States. But I never would work among people who were rich, good-looking, and sophisticated. In other words, I’m happy to reach “downward” with the gospel but, Lord, don’t ever make me reach “upward.” Don’t make me share the gospel with people who make me uncomfortable with their external blessings.

I didn’t realize this as a teen, but my resolution about where God was allowed to call me revealed a heavy yoke around my soul, one that I would later identify and name: I was in bondage to envy.

In my twenties, the Lord did a lot of surgery on me to extricate envy from my closest relationships with sisters and friends. But it wasn’t until recently, when I began comparing the callings of my two missionary friends, each spreading gospel hope in two very different contexts, that I realized I had never thought seriously about the way envy might be hamstringing ministry in my life.

If an envious disposition once made me shy away from the idea of big-city missions, does an envious disposition ever affect the way I do ministry now, as an ordinary church member in small-town America?

Sin of the Inferior

Envy exists because inequality exists. We live in a world made by a glorious Father who has sprinkled his glory all over creation and imbued human souls with a special portion of this glory. Because of sin, the people he has made are cracked mirrors, walking around in T-shirts and jeans, but we are still made in his image and so possess trace amounts of his glory.

C.S. Lewis observed that “the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which — if you saw it now — you would be strongly tempted to worship” (The Weight of Glory, 45). This has been my exact experience of life among humans. I bump into glory all the time. I meet another woman who is beautiful or charming or intelligent or wealthy or well-connected — and I simply have to respond. Glory demands response, even the fleeting human glories that are only faint reminders of our origin.

I may respond with admiration, the impulse to get close and warm my hands on the glory, or with covetousness, resentment, and even hatred. The latter response is called envy. Envy is seething discontent over glories that God gives to other people. It is offense over inequality, a burning awareness that someone nearby is your superior in some area of life that you particularly value.

It usually strikes among peers. Sisters. Coworkers. Two girls at the top of their class. Two men in the same field of expertise. If envy is given free rein in our hearts, it can lead to broken relationships with those most intimate to us, as well as to further sins, ranging from gossip to murder (Matthew 27:18; Genesis 4:1–16).

But the envious heart could change the shape of your life’s story in another, subtler way. It could affect where you choose to minister, whom you choose to befriend, and how powerful you believe the gospel to be. Indeed, it could hamstring your effectiveness in telling people of Christ.

Reach Up, Not Just Down

What if we become so nearsighted that the borrowed glories of man obscure our vision and appetite for the original source of glory? There is a reason why so many of the New Testament Epistles contain warnings for the early church about covetous cravings for material glories.

“You desire and do not have, so you murder,” says James. “You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:2–3). And Paul asks, “While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Corinthians 3:3).

The implication of these warnings is that, obviously, it is only human to get all coiled up over the glories we see with our eyes. Our appetites for glory are strong. But to mistake our ingrown need for God himself with the powerful craving to see glory distributed equally to ourselves and our neighbor — this is to live according to the flesh. It thwarts our ability to walk by the Spirit and obstructs the power of the gospel.

How can we love our neighbors when we’re too busy looking at their houses? How can we tell our friends that Christ is a spring of water welling up to eternal life when we’re salivating over their Instagram profiles, replete with perfectly matched children’s outfits and marriages to capable men? How can we climb over fences to tell people the good news when those fences are erected not by poverty, but riches?

How heartbreaking when our love is big enough to offer hope to those who have less than we do, yet we have no love for those with more. Is the gospel too small for these people? Is it so small in our eyes that the size of our neighbor’s paycheck is enough to obscure it?

Even Among Siblings

What about inside the church? Is inequality interfering with our ability to love and speak truth to one another inside our communities? Remember James’s warning: “If a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing . . . have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:2–4).

But for someone with an envious heart like mine, sometimes the opposite impulse is at play. I would prefer to put distance between myself and the person who is richer than me, in whatever exterior glory, than to creep close to them for leftovers. Either of these forms of materialism — preferring the rich because you hope to benefit from proximity, or preferring the poor because inequality makes you uncomfortable — demonstrates a painful blindness to the kingdom of God.

Instead, we are to see rich and poor alike as human souls in need of refreshment and exhortation. The longer we live in this world, the clearer we see God’s work through the giving and taking of material blessings. His plans demonstrate to us, over and over, that he provides our every need and intends nothing short of freedom from sin. His sovereign caretaking teaches us, with Paul, how to be brought low and how to abound, how to face plenty and how to face hunger — thanking and praising him all the same (Philippians 4:12).

In other words, we need to get comfortable with the idea that God works according to his pleasure, to give and to take at will, and always for his glory and for our good. He calls us not only to weep with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice. God is Lord of us all.

Eyes on the Glory

There’s only one way to learn to face plenty and hunger, abundance and need alike with serenity, joy, and self-forgetful love. We feast our eyes and our appetites on glory himself. In Christ, we are no longer cut off from the source of glory. We no longer have to unsettle ourselves over the derivative glories possessed by the little kings and queens he has made. Their glories are only ever whispers, made to draw our eyes to the thunderous noise of God’s pleasure in his own glory.

With our bellies full of his mercy and grace to us, with our eyes enamored by the beauty and splendor of Christ’s humility and might, we no longer have to stay hungry for our neighbor’s house or enamored with our neighbor’s husband. Inequalities are not flattened in the presence of God, but they trouble and distract us less and less. In him, we are all wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations. In his presence, the most intimidating individual we’ve ever tried to love becomes creaturely and dependent. Our envious hearts, once they are satiated on this God, are free to reach upward with the gospel, and not just downward.

Joan of Arc (1412–1431) was a Catholic mystic and military prodigy. At age seventeen, she was appointed commander in chief of the French army and led her forces to decisive victories over the English. Mark Twain — the pen name for Samuel Clemens (1835–1910) — was a world-famous writer who was also famous for being a grizzled skeptic, a religious agnostic, and an outspoken, scathing critic of the Christian faith.

So, who do you suppose was Twain’s historical hero? Yep, Joan of Arc. He even wrote a biographical novel about her astounding life, which I read with astonishment 25 years ago. Twain said the Maid of Orleans was “by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced” (452). To call this ironic is an understatement. What in the world did Twain see in Joan that inspired his supreme admiration?

Well, if you trust the historical records — and Twain did — there’s a lot to admire. Over a number of years, this anti-religious curmudgeon took his fine-toothed comb to the original court documents and the many firsthand witness statements that still exist in various European archives. And at the end of his research, he found it impossible to deny a few astounding claims:

This kind, humble, illiterate, teenage, peasant girl, with zero prior exposure to or training in the art of war, inexplicably possessed military genius.
With no prior leadership experience, she quickly became the most effective, courageous leader in the French military, and in a career that lasted barely a year, she achieved a series of unparalleled victories.
As someone given to frequent ecstatic spiritual experiences, she somehow exercised more levelheaded wisdom in decision-making than her sovereign or the high-ranking officials around her.

By all historically credible accounts, Joan was a phenom.

Sacrificial Love Conquers a Skeptic

But the Maid’s astonishing skill in warfare isn’t what most captured Twain’s heart. What captured his heart was Joan’s heart. In the “Translator’s Preface” at the beginning of his book, he wrote,

[Joan] was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can be found in any word or deed of hers. (20)

What Twain calls unselfishness the Bible more accurately calls love. We can see this more clearly in a description of Joan that Twain later wrote in an essay (included as an appendix in my edition of the book):

She was full of compassion: on the field of her most splendid victory she forgot her triumphs to hold in her lap the head of a dying enemy and comfort his passing spirit with pitying words; in an age when it was common to slaughter prisoners she stood dauntless between hers and harm, and saved them alive; she was forgiving, generous, unselfish, magnanimous; she was pure from all spot or stain of baseness. (451)

Four centuries after her death, it seems Joan of Arc achieved another victory: she conquered a jaded skeptic. She made Mark Twain a believer, not in the existence of the true God, but in the existence of Christlike, sacrificial love. He saw in Joan a person who actually loved God supremely and followed what she believed was his will with pure, childlike faith, all while seeking to love her neighbor as herself — even when her neighbor was her enemy.

The Heart Has Its Reasons

Whether or not Joan of Arc was, in reality, as selfless and loving as Twain believed her to be is beside my point here. What’s remarkable is his admiration of the self-sacrificing love he saw in her. Why did it move him so deeply?

We can ask this another way. If Christianity isn’t real, and the world is governed merely by pitiless naturalistic forces, then it strikes me that Joan of Arc ought not to be glorified as a historical hero, but pitied as an example of what the real world does to those whose love ethic is informed by a delusion. Twain would have known this, but it appears he couldn’t help himself. Why?

I believe it’s because, as Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know” (Pensées, thought 423). Let’s let Pascal expound a little more on what he meant:

We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. (thought 282)

As Twain applied his reason to the claims of Christianity, he found numerous reasons to be skeptical. Having been raised in the Christian tradition, he knew the Bible well. He knew Jesus’s commandment that Christians were to sacrificially love one another as Christ had sacrificially loved them (John 13:34), and he took cynical delight in pointing out ways professing Christians had failed miserably to keep that commandment. For he knew that “anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).

But in Joan, it seems to me, Twain’s heart discerned a truth, a first principle, his reason could not refute: “Love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). In this case, Twain’s heart was better than his head. Being an image-bearer of God, unbeliever though he was, he recognized the real thing when he saw it. Something deep inside, the part of him designed to admire and be drawn to sacrificial love, couldn’t help but find such love in a real person captivating.

By This All People Will Know

Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Why? Because deep down, their hearts acknowledge a truth their reason may deny: God is love. And so, while “no one has ever seen God,” people intuitively recognize that, “if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). This is why years ago I wrote,

Christlike, sacrificial, forbearing, hopeful, enduring love is the greatest apologetic to the existence and nature of God. It is more compelling than brilliant, well-reasoned arguments (which can be brilliantly countered) and more powerful than signs and wonders (which can be counterfeited, Matthew 24:24). And any Spirit-filled Christian, man or woman, of any ethnicity, social class, age demographic, intellectual capacity, or spiritual gifting, can demonstrate love.

They will know we are Christians by our love. This is why Jesus made love his last and greatest commandment for Christians. And it’s why, when all is said and done, Paul tells us that “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Because God is love.

‘Best of All My Books’

Near the end of his life, Twain said, “I like Joan of Arc best of all my books, and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.” The irony of this has not been lost on many of his ardent fans. As one expert on Twain has observed,

By the time he’s writing [Joan of Arc] he’s not a believer. He is anti-Catholic, and he doesn’t like the French. So he writes a book about a French-Catholic martyr? Ostensibly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

No, but the heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. In spite of Twain’s anti-Christian bias, in spite of his anti-French bias, in spite of his anti-mystical bias, who became his historical hero? The French mystic warrior, who was, in his view, “the most noble life that was ever born into this world save only One.”

Save only One. That’s a notable qualification, given this grizzled skeptic’s religious views. I think it’s a haunting indicator that Twain perceived in Joan of Arc’s sacrificial love a type and shadow of the One who, like no other, laid his life down for his friends and enemies. And Twain couldn’t help but admire it. Because in his heart he knew there is no greater love than this (John 15:13).

Four hundred years before the events of the book of Exodus, God said to Abram,

Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. . . . To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. (Genesis 15:13–14, 18)

And the cricket chirps up to the Lion, “You are God! This is your people. You mean for them to have this land? Then give it to them. Now! Not after four hundred years of affliction.” To which the Lion, with his ten thousand reasons for doing everything he does, 99.9 percent of which this God-counseling cricket knows nothing, says, “They shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16).

“So, yes,” the Lion essentially replies, “I will bring them back. And I will drive out the nations, and I will give my people this land. But I will make it clear that it will not be because of their righteousness, as if they deserve anything good from me, but it will be because of the wickedness of these nations (see Deuteronomy 9:4).

“You see, my dear little cricket, I am zealous for the justice of my punishments, and I am zealous for the freeness of my mercy. When I destroy, it is because wickedness is full, and I am just (Deuteronomy 9:5; 18:12). When I bless, it is because, though stubbornness abounds, my mercy is free (Deuteronomy 9:6–7). Don’t begrudge me several hundred years to teach these things. They are not quickly learned.”

So, for the next almost five centuries, God shows that he is God, and that the nations are wicked, and that his people too are rebellious and stubborn, and that his covenant blessings are free and undeserved — that they are grace.

He brings into being Isaac, as it were, out of two old people, as good as dead, Abraham and Sarah (Romans 4:19). He chooses Jacob over Esau that his purposes of election might stand (Romans 9:11–12). He summons a famine on the land (Psalm 105:16). He sends Joseph into slavery by the hands of his sinful brothers (Psalm 105:17). He makes a despised Hebrew prisoner the lord of all Egypt (Psalm 105:21).

Why? Joseph puts it like this, in one of the most important sentences in the Bible: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Genesis 50:20). Yes, kept alive to serve four hundred years in bondage in Egypt.

Unassailably, Unhurriedly Sovereign

As the book of Exodus begins, at the end of those four hundred years, God is about to do something astonishing. “The people of Israel . . . multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. . . . The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied. . . . And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel” (Exodus 1:7, 12).

And in the midst of government-sponsored mass infanticide of all the baby Hebrew boys, God rescues one with a jaw-dropping turn of affairs. Pharaoh’s daughter, instead of killing the baby Moses as he floats in the river, pities him, and then unwittingly hires his own mother as a nurse and raises the boy in the very court that he would ruin.

“God is not in a hurry. He has purposes for his deeds, and he has purposes for his pace.”

In eighty years! As you can see, God is not in a hurry. He has purposes for his deeds, and he has purposes for his pace. Eighty years later, God calls Moses to be the deliverer (Exodus 7:7). A bush burns without being consumed (Exodus 3:2). A rod turns into a snake and back again. A hand turns leprous and back. And if needed, a cup of Nile water will become blood (Exodus 4:1–9). “So go, Moses, in my sovereign power. Go deliver my people.”

After all of which Moses replies, “Lord, I am not eloquent . . . but I am slow of speech and of tongue” (Exodus 4:10). That was not a good response. But as so often happens, a foolish response from us gets a glorious statement of God’s sovereignty: “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’” (Exodus 4:11). “Don’t give me excuses about your mouth, Moses. I’m God! I made your mouth!”

Eventually, the reluctant prophet goes. And by his hand, God brings ten plagues upon Egypt, followed by a spectacular deliverance through the Red Sea — and all of it according to God’s inviolable plan. We know it was according to plan because before Moses ever approaches Pharaoh, God says to him,

I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. . . . I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will . . . bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. (Exodus 3:19; 7:3–4)

And in the midst of these God-planned wonders, God states his purpose to Pharaoh:

For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. . . . I will get glory over Pharaoh. . . . And the Egyptians shall know that I am [Yahweh]. (Exodus 9:16; 14:4, 18)

Which brings us now to the main text of the message, and I invite you to turn to it, to Exodus 3:13–15.

All to Proclaim God’s Name

Up until now, the point of the message has been this: from the first prediction of the bondage in Egypt in Genesis 15:13 to the deliverance itself in Exodus 14, God’s ultimate purpose has been to show that he is God, absolute, sovereign, so that his mercies are free and his judgments are just.

Which is what we just heard in Exodus 9:16: “For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” Or, to use the language of glory in Exodus 14:4, his purpose is that “I will be glorified over Pharaoh.” Then, back to his name: “And the Egyptians shall know that I am [Yahweh]” (Exodus 14:18). “That is my name.”

What does that mean? Exodus 3:13–15 is the most important text in the Hebrew Scriptures for understanding the personal name of God. That name is translated “LORD,” and it occurs about 6,800 times in the Old Testament (compared to 2,600 times for the word for “God,” Elohim). God chose to reveal the meaning of his personal name on the brink of the greatest deliverance of Israel, a deliverance whose purpose, he says, is to show his power, his glory, his name, so that all the nations would know it.

Three Steps to ‘Yahweh’

Here’s how he does it. Exodus 3:13–15:

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I Am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘[Yahweh], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”

In three steps, God reveals his name to Moses, and to us.

First, Exodus 3:14a: “God said to Moses, ‘I Am Who I Am.’” He did not say that was his name. He said, in effect, “Before you worry about my name, where I line up among the many gods of Egypt or Babylon or Philistia, and before you wonder about conjuring me with my name, and even before you wonder if I am the God of Abraham, be stunned by this: ‘I Am Who I Am.’” In other words: “I absolutely am. Before you get my name, get my being. That I am who I am — that I absolutely am — is first, foundational, and of infinite importance.” God is.

Second, Exodus 3:14b: “And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I Am has sent me to you.”’” Here he has not yet given Moses his name. He is building a bridge between his being and his name. Here he simply puts the statement of his being in the place of his name: “Say . . . ‘I Am has sent me to you.’” He’s saying, “The one who is — who absolutely is — sent me to you.”

Third, Exodus 3:15: “God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “The Lord [in Hebrew, “Yahweh”], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is my name forever [the Lord, Yahweh].’”

In those three steps, God has finally given us his name. It’s translated “LORD” (all caps) in the English Bible. But the Hebrew would be pronounced something like “Yahweh” and is built on the word for “I am.”

“God is not becoming anything. He is who he is. Absolute perfection cannot be improved.”

Every time you hear the word “Yahweh” (or the short form “Yah,” which you hear every time you sing “hallelu-jah,” meaning “praise Yahweh”), or every time you see “LORD” in the English Bible, you should think, “This is a proper name, like Peter or James or John, built from the word for ‘I am’” — reminding us each time that God absolutely is.

That All Would Know

Writing the book of Exodus, Moses leaves us no doubt about the aim:

Exodus 7:5: “The Egyptians shall know that I am [Yahweh].”
Exodus 7:17: “By this you shall know that I am [Yahweh].”
Exodus 8:22: “That you may know that I am [Yahweh] in the midst of the earth.”
Exodus 10:2: “That you may know that I am [Yahweh].”
Exodus 14:4: “The Egyptians shall know that I am [Yahweh].”

If I repeated over and over in this message, “That you may know that I am John,” it would mean nothing. But if my name were John Power, and I said (as Ezekiel does with “Yahweh” 72 times), “That you may know that I am Power!” you would understand that this is more than a personal name. It has meaning. It is not just a name — it is reality. So it is with Yahweh. “Say to the people, ‘I Am sent me to you.’” That is, “Say to the people, ‘[Yahweh] sent me to you.’” Because Yahweh means “I am who I am. I am absolute being.”

And what does it mean for God, the God of Israel, our God, to be absolute being — to be “I Am Who I Am”?

1. God has no beginning.

I Am Who I Am means he never had a beginning. This staggers the mind. Every child asks, “Who made God?” and every wise parent says, “Nobody made God. God simply is and always was. No beginning.”

2. God has no end.

I Am Who I Am means God will never end. If he did not come into being; he cannot go out of being, because he is being. There is no place to go outside of being. There is only he. Before he creates, that’s all that is: God.

3. God is absolute reality.

I Am Who I Am means God is absolute reality. There is no reality before him. There is no reality outside of him unless he wills it and makes it. He is not one of many realities before he creates. He is simply there as absolute reality. He is all that was eternally. No space, no universe, no emptiness. Only God, absolutely there, absolutely all.

4. God is entirely independent.

I Am Who I Am means that God is utterly independent. He depends on nothing to bring him into being or support him or counsel him or make him what he is.

5. All else is entirely dependent on God.

I Am Who I Am means, rather, that everything that is not God depends totally on God. All that is not God is secondary and dependent. The entire universe is utterly secondary — not primary. It came into being by God and stays in being moment by moment because of God’s decision to keep it in being.

6. All else is as nothing compared to God.

I Am Who I Am means all the universe is by comparison to God as nothing. Contingent, dependent reality is to absolute, independent reality as a shadow to substance, as an echo to a thunderclap, as a bubble to the ocean. All that we see, all that we are amazed by in the world and in the galaxies, is, compared to God, as nothing. “All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness” (Isaiah 40:17).

7. God is constant.

I Am Who I Am means that God is constant. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He cannot be improved. He is not becoming anything. He is who he is. There is no development in God. No progress. Absolute perfection cannot be improved.

8. God is the absolute standard.

I Am Who I Am means that he is the absolute standard of truth, goodness, and beauty. There is no lawbook to which he looks to know what is right. No almanac to establish facts. No guild to determine what is excellent or beautiful. He himself is the standard of what is right, what is true, what is beautiful.

9. God does whatever he pleases.

I Am Who I Am means God does whatever he pleases. There are no constraints on him from outside him that could hinder him in doing anything he pleases. All reality that is outside of him he created and designed and governs. So, he is utterly free from any constraints that don’t originate from the counsel of his own will.

10. God is the most valuable reality.

I Am Who I Am means that he is the most important and most valuable being in the universe. He is more worthy of interest and attention and admiration and enjoyment than all other realities, including the entire universe.

11. Jesus Christ is absolute being.

I Am Who I Am, God’s absolute being, means that Jesus Christ is absolute being, because Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

They responded, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” (John 8:57).

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). He could have said, “Before Abraham was, I was.” But he didn’t. He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Because he is the I Am. Very God of very God. Absolute being. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).

12. Absolute being dwelt among us.

I Am Who I Am “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Absolute Being united with humanity in such a way that we can say, when Jesus died, God purchased us by his own blood (Acts 20:28).

Enthralled with Who He Is

It is an electrifying truth that God simply is. Explosive. Wild. Untamable. Changing absolutely everything.

And that this God, this Yahweh, this absolute I Am Who I Am, came to us in the man Jesus Christ, and made a second Exodus (Luke 9:31) to bring us out of the misery of condemnation into the promised land of God’s happy presence — that is thrilling beyond imagination.

O Lord, make us a God-besotted people. To know you, and admire you, and love you, and treasure you, and make you known, as Yahweh. I Am Who I Am. Jesus Christ. Savior. Friend.