The following is a lightly edited transcript.

We, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:5–8)

I want to add to that list, “the one who reads with . . .” What would you put there? The reason I feel okay suggesting that Paul could continue that way is because those last several gifts are not gifts that are unique to any Christian. Every Christian is supposed to be merciful:

Be merciful, as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)

That’s spoken to all Christians, and here in this passage it says, “those of you who show mercy as your gift, do it with cheerfulness.” Or what about giving? It says to do that with generosity. Every one of you men should be a giver, financially and in other ways. That’s not a unique gift. So if Paul can take contributing and say, “do that with generosity,” and to the one who shows mercy, “do that with cheerfulness,” then he can say something to the one who reads as well, because everybody’s supposed to be a reader, if you’ve been given the opportunity to learn how to read in this world. There are cultures that haven’t had that opportunity yet.

What would you fill in the blank with? The reason this feels so relevant to me, and the reason I’m starting this way, is because if there are merciful people (which all Christians are supposed to be), and Paul feels legitimate in calling out mercy as something you might be especially gifted at, that means that ordinary Christian duties and acts can be expressed in peculiarly, individually anointed ways, just like reading. So I paused and I thought about that for myself, thinking, “What about me?”

I’m going to tell you my story, because if you know me at all, you know me as a preacher and a writer. Maybe you know me as a family guy, for those of you who know me personally enough to be on the staff with me and so on for 33 years here. But you don’t know how I got to all those places and what limitations and giftings prescribed those paths. You’re all led by limits that you have — things you’re not good at — and a few things that you are more or less good at, and that’s why you do what you do.

So for me to fill in the blank, I would put it this way: In your mercy, be cheerful; in your contributing, be generous; and in your reading, be what? What’s your blank? You could fill in that phrase with “in your reading, be speedy,” or you could say, “in your reading, be really good at comprehension, memorization, and remembering,” or it could be “ in your reading, be especially adept at relating what you read to other Scriptures,” or, “in your reading, be especially adept at explaining to other people,” or, “in your reading, be especially adept at applying it to your friends.” The list could go on and on.

You may be more or less good at some aspects of reading and not so good at other aspects of reading. How would that affect your life? How would that affect your vocation or your fathering?

My Struggle to Speak

I grew up in a Christian home, and my dad was an evangelist. My mom and dad are both in heaven, I believe, right now. And I’ve always described my childhood as the happiest home I could have ever imagined. My mom and dad would sing. They’d sing in the front seat of the car while my sister and I sat in the back seat on the way to Daytona Beach, Florida, to do some deep sea fishing. Those are great memories of my life. And they would sing things like “Heavenly Sunlight.” That’s an old spiritual song from the 1950s.

I had a great home, but somewhere around the seventh grade something happened, and I discovered I could not speak in front of a group. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t like when a person has butterflies, or their knees knock, or their hands tremble. I shut down. It was absolutely humiliating from seventh grade until I was about twenty. It was horrible. I would not want to live my teenage years over again. I do not look back on my teenage years as happy years. I had acne, and that was probably owing to how anxious I was.

I didn’t accept any office proposals in school, even though academically I did okay in high school. If they nominated me for vice president or president I would say, “No way; you have to give speeches. I can’t give any speeches.” I couldn’t do a report in a biology class for 30 seconds in order to say what I was supposed to be doing with my science project. I couldn’t do any of it. I took a C in Civics because I was supposed to give an oral book report. I said to Mr. Vermilion, “I can’t give an oral book report.” And he said, “Well, if you don’t give an oral book report, you’re going to get a C.” I said, “That’s fine, I’ll get a C. I just cannot do it.”

My Struggle to Read

Accompanying that, and maybe related to it, was the fact that I couldn’t read fast, and therefore I disliked any kind of test that involved reading. There were these horrible tests you had to take for standardized stuff to get into college, where you would read a paragraph and then they would ask you ten questions about it. I couldn’t remember what was there, and if I were to go back and reread it to find out what the answer was, it would keep me from finishing on time. Inside I would just be churning with anxiety about tests like that because I couldn’t read. To this day, I cannot read faster than I can talk.

Since then I’ve talked to some specialists and I’ve taken all kinds of courses. I’ve had examinations done. Andy Naselli’s wife told me the other day, “I think, Pastor John, you have dyslexia.” I said, “Well, I don’t transpose things too often. When I write down phone numbers, I do sometimes switch things around.” She said, “Oh no, that’s not the only mark of dyslexia. All kinds of things that are going on with your brain.”

That’s like one of my sons, so I passed some of this on to one of them. I can remember my son was ready to drop out of high school a week before he graduated from Roosevelt High, and I said, “Why?” He said, “I can’t do what she wants me to do.” And the teacher said, “If you don’t do this, you’re going to fail this class.” What she wanted him to do was listen to her in class and write down the main points and hand that in at the end of the class. That’s all he had to do to pass the class. But he said, “I can’t do that. I could tell her verbatim what she said when she’s done, but I cannot write and listen at the same time.” Those are the peculiar things that you can pass on to your kids.

So anyway, the point of all that was that I came to college as a very slow reader with a poor memory — the very two things that are necessary to be academically successful, at least in my mind. And I was also not able to speak.

Let the One Who Reads

I fell in love with reading in the 11th grade, but it didn’t change the speed of my reading. I just wanted to read fiction, so I became a literature major in college, which is crazy.

I avoided every single class on novels and took every class on poetry. Do you know why? Novels are long, and they wanted me to read six novels in a class, but I couldn’t read one novel in a class, let alone six. Whereas with poetry you take a poem that’s very short and analyze it and write a paper about it. I could do that. That’s why today I’m a preacher and not an academician. I tried teaching at Bethel for six years. I was a competent teacher, but as I looked around at my colleagues and what’s expected of an academician — namely to read everything, remember everything, and write books about everything — I said, “I’ll never be able to do that.”

Do you know what preachers do? In season and out of season they remember Bible verses. On Sunday they have a paragraph, and they understand it, love it, and tell people what they see in it. I thought, “I could do that!” And I did it for 33 years, and people thought I was good at it. I became a pastor in large measure because I can’t read fast, and I can’t remember much of what I read, but oh, can I analyze a paragraph. If you give me enough time, I can analyze a lot of them and write books like that. I mean, when you write a book it looks to people like, “Whoa, to write a book like that you must read everything!” No, the reason I write books like that is because I don’t read everything.

So as I finish my phrase here — “let the one who reads . . .” — I do not say, “let the one who reads be a speed reader, or, “let the one who reads be one who remembers everything he reads.” I don’t and I can’t. But I will say, “let the one who reads read slowly and deeply, and with tears, and with longing to live it and speak it as he sees it. Then I talk.

“Let the one who reads read slowly and deeply, and with tears, and with longing to live it and speak it as he sees it.”

And I would just say to you brothers, as you finish that sentence, you fill it in for yourself. God made you the way you are. If you have a great memory, memorize books of the Bible. I work like crazy to memorize Scripture. I wake up every morning and before I get out of bed, I recite a chapter in Philippians until I’ve got the whole book, and I also quote a chapter in 1 Peter until I get the whole book. I know those two books by heart. I could recite both those books by heart right now. Do you know what that cost me over the last eight years? It was constant work. Those things would go out of my mind within a week if I wasn’t doing a chapter a day on Philippians and 1 Peter. So the fact that I have a lousy memory is no excuse for not memorizing Scripture.

The Place of the Bible in Daily Life

Here’s what I want to do the rest of the time. Given my limitations that I can’t read fast and can’t remember much of what I read without an enormous amount of labor to memorize, how do I read my Bible daily? How does the Bible function for me in my life daily? That’s what I want to talk about for the rest of our minutes together. I have it boiled down to something like the following categories: Reading and my life, reading and God, reading and the devil, reading and witness, reading and crisis, and reading and family. I have a little story to go with each of those regarding how reading relates to those things in my life.

Reading and My Life

The gist of it is this: I read my Bible every morning and pray for about an hour. I’ve done this as long as I can remember, and I say, brothers, it is my life. So I’m going to start with my life. When I say reading and life, this is what I mean. Here’s 1 Peter 1:23:

Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

Understand that. The statement “you have been born again” means you have been made alive from spiritual death by the living and abiding word of God. If any of you men are alive in Christ, you owe it to the word of God. That was 1 Peter, now here’s what James does with a similar thought. First he says:

Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth. . . . (James 1:18)

That means you were born again, brought to spiritual life, and made a believer by the word of truth. Then he continues:

Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. (James 1:21)

What a strange phrase. He says, “receive the implanted word.” It’s already implanted in you. That’s what happened when you were born again; God planted his seed in you. His word has taken root in you. That’s why you’re a Christian. But now James says, “Receive it. That will be your life. Your life is given and your life is sustained by the power of the word at the beginning and the receiving of the word.” That’s been every morning for me for about 60 years, because I started when I was about 15. I have a Bible that my parents gave me when I was 15. I look at it and how it’s marked up in red. I have memories of lying in my single bed with the trolley cars on the wallpaper on the wall above me, reading my Bible late at night, desperate because I couldn’t speak.

That was a great gift to me by the way, that God shut me down socially and cut me off from all fast tracks, all party tracks, and all cool-guy tracks. I was just shut down into my little world of going hard after God when I was 15. So I’ve been reading my Bible every day since I was 15, and it has been my life.

That’s my first point — the Bible and life, or reading and life. It doesn’t matter whether you feel like it, though you want to feel like it. The idea is to enjoy it with all your heart, but you’re like farmers. Farmers cultivate the field because the crops won’t come. It doesn’t matter whether they’re weeping. You go forth weeping, sowing your seed, and you will come forth rejoicing. So weep on, reader; that’s not the criterion of whether you should read or not. Life comes through this word.

If you want to know how I do it, by the way, I use a Bible plan that’s called the Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan. It’s a plan where you read the whole Bible in a year with four chapters a day, roughly, and you’re in four different places of the Bible at the same time. You get five days off without reading at the end of every month. That’s the genius of the program because everybody gets behind and the reason people give up on reading the Bible in a year is because they’re behind by February and they feel like there’s no point to continuing. It helps if you start drifting. The devil is an expert at using drifters to do nothing. So what a wonderful thing this is. I’ve been using it for 30 years. It’s just gold. I can never find anything better.

Reading and God

Reading is not an end in itself; we want to know God and we want to trust Christ. We want to be filled and led by the Holy Spirit. The word is the key to all of those. So let me just say a word about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, and how reading relates. I just cannot overstate to you, men, what a precious thing it is to know with a few clear sentences, why you are alive and what you’re doing every morning and every night. In other words, why do you exist and why do you read your Bible?

God the Father

With regard to God the Father, it is for his glory:

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Now, wouldn’t that include reading your Bible? So I know the goal of my reading the Bible. I know it beyond a shadow of doubt. God is to be made to look glorious in my life because I read the Bible. That’s clear as daylight to me as I look at the whole range of Scripture. So every text I read, I know I’m reading it to the glory of God. I want God to look great because I’m reading this book. I want to know him as great, see him as great, savor him as great, and show him as great. That’s number one. I read the Bible for the glory of God the Father.

God the Son

What about the God the Son? I think of Romans 8:32, which is probably the most important verse in my theology:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

The logic is that if God didn’t spare Christ, but handed him over to torture and shame for sinners like me, would he then withhold any omnipotent effort to give me everything I need for his purposes? No, the logic would break down if he did. Christ would have died in vain if he did. Therefore, every good thing that you get from the Bible is blood bought. And that’s how Jesus relates to every text you read. Second Corinthians 1:20 says:

All the promises of God find their Yes in him.

So if you have him, if you are in him, if his blood is covering your sins, every page of this book is yours. The whole promise, the whole inheritance, and everything good that you could possibly get out of this book that’s really there is yours because of Jesus and God not sparing his own Son. If he didn’t spare his own Son, will he not with him freely give you all things that are in this book for your good and for your eternal welfare? Yes, he will. So the goal of all of all things is the glory of God, and the foundation of all things is the blood of Jesus, the Son of God.

God the Spirit

Third, let’s speak about the Holy Spirit. We have texts like, “be led by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:18), or, “bear the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22–23), or, “walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16), or, “put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit” (Romans 8:13). Everything we do is to be done in the power of the Holy Spirit, by relying on him. That’s true for the Bible.

The book you’ve got in your hand there, Reading the Bible Supernaturally, is my lifetime of effort to describe what’s that like — what is it like to read the Bible in reliance upon the Holy Spirit. There are 300 pages about that. And by the way, don’t feel intimidated, thinking, “Oh my goodness, he gave me this book. Now I have to read it.” You do not have to read it.

Here’s my suggestion. Most of you probably do not read 300-page books, but you read short things. A book like this doesn’t have to be read straight through. You can just flip through the table contents, and if you see a chapter that sticks out, just go there. It might help. So regarding God the Father, read to his glory. Regarding God the Son, every benefit that is promised in the Bible is yours on the basis of his blood. Regarding the Holy Spirit, he’s the one who illumines. He’s the one who opens the eyes of the heart. He’s the one who gives a spirit of wisdom and of revelation. Read in reliance upon his help.

Reading and the Devil

The devil is real brothers. I think the devil is on a leash, and God holds the leash. The devil may be the immediate cause of all kinds of horrors in the world, but God holding the leash could have jerked it at any time. Therefore, behind everything is God with his infinitely wise purposes.

When I think of the devil today, I think of the way we treat each other on the internet. I think of the kind of tensions that are seething in the church right now between maskers and non-maskers and between Trumpers and non-Trumpers. The kind of stuff that we’re feeling in our hearts towards each other is demonic. It really is demonic. And therefore, I hate the devil and I want the devil to be defeated. I want you men to be good warriors against the devil. I want to read a verse to you and then tell you a story. This is 1 John 2:14. It says:

I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

“There’s a connection between the word of God abiding in you and you overcoming the evil one.”

There’s a connection between the word of God abiding in you and you overcoming the evil one. Jesus was perfect, and when he was tempted by the devil, what did he do? He quoted the Bible, of all things. He’s the one who wrote the Bible; he didn’t need to quote the Bible. All he needed to do was say what he said later — “Get out of here. Go to the pigs. Go to hell. You’re done. I’m God, and you don’t own anything. You don’t rule anything. I’m Jesus, the Son of God.” Instead of that, he quoted Scripture and dispensed the devil in that way. You can do that too, and that’s what they were doing in 1 John 2:14.

The Sword of the Spirit

My first year here in Minneapolis was 1980, and I was living over at 1604 Elliot with Tom Stellar. He was my associate for 33 years. Tom just switched from being a pastor at Bethlehem to be a missionary. That’s a glorious way to live. I love it. Tom and I were living together, and he was the associate here for students and I was a brand new pastor in 1980. We got a call from some college students at Bethel at about 10:00 p.m. at night, saying, “There’s a woman in this apartment that’s demon-possessed, and we want you to come and cast a demon out.” That’s in the Bible; it’s just not in my experience.

What would you guys do if somebody called you up and said, “There’s a demon-possessed woman in the apartment here. We’re not letting her out. You come. We’ll keep her here”? I called Tom, because you’re supposed to go out two by two. We got in the car and headed for that apartment and were praying, “God we’ve never ever been asked to do anything like this in our life. This is a frontline missionary story. This is not normal for pastors in Minneapolis.” We got there and went in, and then there was this girl named Midge, which I came to find out later, and she looked like a maniac. She had a pen knife, one of these little things that have a short blade, and she was going around pointing it at people, but she didn’t stick anybody. I kept my winter coat on thinking, “Okay, it won’t go all the way in if I keep my coat on.”

Now, what would you do in that situation? You quote the Bible. You start telling Bible stories. You recite Romans eight. You call up anything God gives you. You need Christ and you need the Holy Spirit at that moment, and you say, “God, help me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I know what I’m saying right now that the word of God gave Jesus power over the devil. So may you grant us your word now to speak in a prophetic way that would deliver her, because they say she’s even possessed. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the way she always is. She just looks horrible. She sounds horrible.” So that’s what we did.

She collapsed on the floor and the students, there were about six of them, men and women, began to sing over her choruses of hallelujah, and then — I would call this prophetic — they put words besides hallelujah too, like, “Jesus is powerful.” I forget what words they used, but just words that came to mind about Jesus, they sang over her. We sang over her. She went absolutely berserk, screamed at the top of her lungs for Satan not to leave her, and then, bang, just went as unconscious as she could be as far as I could tell. And I thought, “Oh my goodness, she’s dead or something.” I didn’t know what was going on. We stopped and waited, and she came around and, brothers, her face was totally different. When she opened her mouth, it was a different voice. And I said, “Midge…” and I handed her my Bible, which she had knocked out of my hand two or three times before, and I said, “I want you to read Romans 8 to us.” And she did.

She was in church the next Sunday on the second row, which scared me to death. I thought she was going to stand up and do something horrible in church. I remember visiting her in the hospital because she broke her leg playing soccer, and she told me horrible stories while I was visiting in the hospital about Satanic worship she was involved in when she lived in Arizona. Brothers, I don’t know what your challenge might be. Sometimes the devil is subtle and sometimes the devil is blatant. Right now you’re all dealing with the subtleties of Satan. That’s what he specializes in within the Western world. He thinks all of us scientific people don’t believe he exists, so he’ll keep that cover and not show his hand too much with exorcism or demonic possession like he does in so many other places.

But it’s here, and witchcraft is here, and all kinds of demonic involvement are here in the Twin Cities, and you guys are going to hit it. It will be there either in subtle ways or in manifest ways. I just tell you, the word of God is powerful. It is powerful. You do not have to be an expert at this, but you do need to be in the word. You do not want to walk out without your sword any morning.

Reading and Witness

On November 5th, Noël had a car wreck. I loved our yellow Toyota; everybody loves our yellow Toyota. People would say, “There comes the pastor in his yellow Toyota,” and she totaled it. Now, it wasn’t her fault at all. The other guy ran the red light, and she’s fine. State Farm gave us $6,000 for that Toyota. We had to have another car because we only have one car. We’ve always only had one car because we live so close. I even walked over this morning.

David Livingston said to me, “Go to Oleg down in Farmington. He rebuilds wrecked cars. Jason Meyer is driving one of his cars, Chuck Steddom is driving one of his cars, and I’m driving one of his cars. So go get a car from Oleg.” So I called Oleg and said, “Hey, Pastor John here.” He thought I was joking and said, “Yeah right, blah, blah, blah.” Then he said, “You mean the Pastor John?” And I said, “Yes, yes, Oleg. Come on. I need a car. I really drive cars. I don’t fly.”

So we drove down there, and what does Oleg do? He was a half an hour late. I said, “We’ll meet you at 12:30 p.m.,” and he was a half an hour late. When he showed up, he said, “I had to go get Andy because Andy called me this morning right after you called and said he wanted to talk about Jesus. He doesn’t know Jesus, and I’ve tried to witness to him. I told him there’s a Jesus guy coming to buy a car, so I’m going to come get you and you’re going to talk to him.” So I was there to buy a car, and he introduced me to Andy Standal — I’m saying the name so you can pray for him — and he took us up to the lunchroom nook in his shop and sat us down and walked away and said, “Tell him about Jesus, Pastor John.” Would you be ready for that? Would you be ready?

You will be if you read your Bible every morning and come away from your Bible with one sentence that you love. Now, that’s getting at my point about the fact that I don’t remember much. There is no way I can remember the four chapters that I read in the morning. I read them and sometimes a half an hour later, I can’t remember even where I was reading. I have to work to make sure something lodges in my mind, so I take a sentence and I chew on it, savor it, love it, and I trust it. Sometimes I write it on a piece of paper and stick it in my pocket if I think I’m not going to be able to remember it, and I eat it all day long. I eat that one sentence all day long, because I can remember a sentence. I can’t remember a chapter, let alone four.

So what did I do with Andy? I just took the lozenge out of my mouth, and the lozenge that morning was John 6:35, as I recall, and it says:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

I talked to Andy for 20 minutes about what it means to be hungry for Jesus and to drink the water of Jesus. God brought words to my mind. He just brought words. Andy was spellbound. I mean, he just sat there. He’s just a mechanic and he helps Oleg, so he probably doesn’t have a college education and is just a real ordinary, normal guy. Here I am with a PhD, and that doesn’t mean anything there. Only one thing does me any good there: Will the Holy Spirit show up, reach in my brain and pull out a verse or two, and help me to say, “This is beautiful, Andy. This is my life, Andy. This is free and you can have this living water.”

He didn’t make any decision there. In fact, I didn’t push for any decision. I hardly ever do that because I want them to know it comes down to them and God in reality, not me putting artificial words in their mouths. And I said, “Now, do you have a Bible?” And he said, “Oh, I’ve got an old King James.” I said, “Okay, you need a newer Bible. I’ll send you one.” So I sent him one. I paid 34 bucks on Amazon and mailed him an ESV Study Bible. He’s probably never seen one of those in his life. It’s huge, and he probably just felt totally intimidated by it. I also sent him a copy of Don’t Waste Your Life and a copy of my Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ. Those are my two go-to books for unbelievers that I would give to people. So pray for Andy Standal.

My point here is that today, before this day is over right now, God’s going to give you something like that. He’s going to put right in your path, something wonderful. My first reaction to Oleg was, “I came to buy a car. What are you doing? You can talk to this guy about Jesus. Why are you treating me like some kind of priest?” And that after that self-defensive, fearful attitude got crucified, I was thrilled to be able to do that. It was a gift. I came to the end of the day saying, “Jesus, what a gift you gave me to be able to talk to that guy.”

Reading and Crisis

I just have one quick story for this. Does anybody here remember the name Roland Erickson? You’re all too young. Roland was the main man at Bethlehem when I came in 1980. He was just a statesman of a Christian, and loved Jesus with all of his heart.

In my first year here I was as green as you could be. I had never done a funeral. I had never visited the hospital. I was so unbelievably green at age 34. I had just done academia for all those years, and I got a phone call that Roland’s wife had a heart attack. She was at North Memorial Hospital, and I was thinking, “Oh boy, I’m going to get there before the ambulance does. I’m going to be a good pastor.” So I jumped in my car and headed to North Memorial. And when I got out there, she was in surgery and the family, probably a dozen of them, was in the waiting room. I walked in and Roland gave me a big hug, and do you know what he said? He said, “Give us a word, pastor. Give us a word.”

I couldn’t think of anything. This was before I had formed some of my crisp habits of getting a sentence every morning from the four chapters I read. I used to think just reading it was good enough to let it have its general impact. I think I said something to him like, “Let me pray for you,” and I prayed something and he was very gracious. I went home as a humiliated, defeated young pastor, not knowing what I needed to do. So I got down on my knees and said to the Lord, “That will never happen again. I’m sorry.” And then I memorized Psalm 46, which says:

God is our refuge and strength,      a very present help in trouble.Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,     though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,though its waters roar and foam,     though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,     the holy habitation of the Most High.God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;     God will help her when morning dawns.The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;     he utters his voice, the earth melts.The Lord of hosts is with us;     the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Come, behold the works of the Lord,     how he has brought desolations on the earth.He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;     he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;     he burns the chariots with fire.“Be still, and know that I am God.     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth!”The Lord of hosts is with us;     the God of Jacob is our fortress.

I just memorized it cold. That was in 1982, and I’ve never stopped using it. It’s always there. I will never be caught flat footed again like that in your cause, Lord Jesus, if somebody looks at me and says, “Give us a word,” in the midst of crisis. Psalm 46 is coming out if nothing’s there from the front burner in the morning. But let me tell you what this morning was, because you might want to know, “Do you still do that?” Absolutely I do. This morning was a little crowded just because I’m fitting in a three-mile run before this, I’m eating breakfast, I’m having devotions, and I’m trying to get ready to talk to you guys. So I read Daniel 1–2. That’s all I had time for this morning. Do you know what I’m taking away, sucking on as a lozenge all day long?

And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs . . . (Daniel 1:9)

Do you have any meetings today? Are you going to meet one of your kids today? Are you going to talk to your wife today? Are you going to talk to a friend today, a colleague, and you wonder if you will find favor? Will they look upon this conversation with some sympathy? God gives favor. God gives compassion to his people when they need it. They might kill you or they might look upon you with favor. Who controls that? It’s God. The king’s heart is like a river in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he wills (Proverbs 21:1). So I’m taking this away from Daniel 1:9 this morning: God gives favor and God gives compassion. He controls the heart of the people I talk to. That’s gold right there in Daniel 1:9. So that’s what I’ve got in my head all day long today, and we’ll see what the Lord brings me later this afternoon.

Reading and Family

This is the last one and we’ll be done. This is Deuteronomy 6:6, which I’m sure is really familiar:

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

“Fathers, immerse your families in the word. Just immerse them in the word.”

That’s why I take a sentence and try to press it in on my heart, asking, “What does this mean, Lord? Why is this sweet? Why would this be precious today? How could I commend this to anyone today?” If I talk to my neighbor, Steve, about my life today, while I’m raking leaves in the backyard and Steve says, “How are you doing?” and I say, “Steve, I read this morning an amazing thing in the prophet Daniel,” wouldn’t that be cool? And then I could talk to him about the goodness of God and giving people favor when they need it and see where it goes. Canned evangelism has never worked for me. I think you ought to always have a simple gospel message in your head — something like God, sin, Christ, and faith. That’s a great outline for all gospel messages — God, sin, Christ, faith — but way better is for you to just tell people what’s precious to you today. What’s precious to you today about Jesus. Deuteronomy 6:6–9 continues on to say:

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Now the point of that would be this: Fathers, immerse your families in the word. Just immerse them in the word. While you’re driving the car, be connected to the word; while you’re doing playtime in the evening, be connected to the word; while you’re dealing with a crisis in the kids’ lives, be connected to the word; at supper time, be connected to the word; while you watch a movie, be connected to the word. Just immerse your life in the word, and that’s only possible if you are reading the word.

Does theology serve doxology? It ought to. God means to be worshiped, but not in ignorance. He wants to be known and enjoyed and praised for who he is. Which is why he doesn’t just demand the worship of his creatures, but first reveals himself to us so that we might know him, and therefore delight in him. Theology, our study of God, serves doxology, our worship of God.

Jonathan Edwards, known for both his Reformed orthodoxy and his creative expression of it, helps us with a fresh way to approach God’s attributes, in service of our worship. From a few basic truths — God is simple, God is incomprehensible, God is happy, and God creates — we see more of what God is and, by his grace, are freed to marvel at him even more.

God Is Simple

Begin with the statement, “God is simple.” Understanding divine simplicity is not simple; it’s complicated. Think of it this way: created things are made up of parts; we can break them down into things more fundamental than they are. A person is composed of body and soul. We can distinguish what you are (your essence) from the fact that you are (your existence). We can distinguish things that are essential to what you are (like being a rational creature) from things that are non-essential or accidental (like having red hair). We can do the same sort of composition with all sorts of attributes and qualities.

Divine simplicity essentially says, “God is not like that.” That is, he is not composed of parts. You can’t break him down into things that are more fundamental than he is. There is nothing behind God that makes God what God is. He simply and absolutely is. Even his old-covenant name, revealed to Moses at the burning bush, testifies to this: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14).

A popular theological way to express divine simplicity, both in Edwards’s day and our own, is “everything that is in God is God.” In other words, God doesn’t have attributes in the way that you and I have attributes. He’s not composed of attributes or qualities or excellencies or perfections. Whatever God has, God is.

God Is Incomprehensible

Now, this is difficult for us to comprehend. That’s why theologians also say that God is incomprehensible. Simplicity and incomprehensibility go hand in hand. Because God is simple (and we are not), we can’t comprehend him. That is, we can’t wrap our minds around him. Our knowledge of him is always creaturely — finite, limited, and partial.

“We can know God truly, though not fully.”

Of course, we can know him, because he reveals himself to us. And he reveals himself to us in ways appropriate to our creaturely limitations. To put it simply, God speaks human to humans, and humans always speak about God according to our way of conceiving. We can know God truly, though not fully.

God Is Happy

Not only is God simple and incomprehensible; God is also happy. In fact, he is infinitely, eternally, unchangeably, and independently glorious and happy. He is free from all need, want, and lack.

This happiness is an infinite happiness in himself. From all eternity, God has perfectly beheld and infinitely rejoiced in his own essence and perfections. He has known himself with perfect clarity and loved himself with perfect delight.

“From all eternity, God has known himself with perfect clarity and loved himself with perfect delight.”

Thus, God has always beheld a perfect, full image of his perfections. This image is so perfect and full that a second person stands forth in the Godhead. In other words, God’s knowledge of himself is so rich that by eternally thinking of himself, a second person is eternally begotten. This is the Son of God, the image of the invisible God and exact imprint of his nature (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3), the eternal Word who is with God and is God (John 1:1), the eternal Son who is always at the Father’s side (John 1:18).

More than this, the eternal and mutual love between Father and Son is so rich and full that this love stands forth as a third person in the Godhead. In other words, God’s love for himself is so rich that by loving and delighting in himself, a third person eternally flows forth from the Father and the Son. This is the Holy Spirit, the breath of the living God (Psalm 33:6), the supreme joy and delight of God in God (Luke 10:21), the infinite river of his eternal delights (Psalm 36:8).

And each of these persons is truly and fully God. The whole divine essence truly and distinctly subsists in each, and yet there is only a single, simple divine essence. This too is incomprehensible: one glorious and happy God eternally subsisting in three distinct persons.

God Creates

Thus far, we have spoken of the simple, incomprehensible, and triune God as he is in himself. The triune God lives in himself, knows himself, and loves himself, and thus possesses unchangeable happiness in himself. But the living and triune God did not remain by himself. In his perfect freedom, he chose to communicate himself outside of himself by creating the world from nothing.

With creation in view, we can now speak of God in himself and his triune being (as we’ve done above), as well as God in relation to his creatures. This relation to his creatures generates a myriad of attributes, perfections, and excellencies, according to our human way of conceiving. Thus, God’s “absolute (or real) attributes,” as Edwards calls them, flower into God’s “relative attributes.”

In this way, we may now speak of God’s power, which is simply the fullness of divine being in relation to the things God does and can do. God’s wisdom is simply God’s own knowledge directed to finding appropriate means to accomplish God’s purposes. God’s love for his creatures is simply God’s love for himself as it is brought in relation to the creatures who reflect and image him.

Flowering of Divine Excellencies

This flowering of relative excellencies continues as God creates, sustains, and governs the world. God’s faithfulness is his love as it bears upon the promises that he makes. God’s righteousness is his knowledge and love as they rightly order and structure reality in fitting proportion, according to the proper value of every created thing. God’s mercy is his supreme love for himself as it encounters weak, pitiable, and broken sinners. God’s wrath is this same supreme and holy love as it collides with stubborn, stiff-necked, and idolatrous rebels.

Again and again, God’s absolute excellencies — his being, his knowledge, and his love — are brought into relation to all aspects of the world, its creatures, and its history, and thereby generate God’s relative excellencies, according to our way of conceiving.

Many of these relative excellencies identify the perfection of qualities that we know in and from creation. Thus, as creatures, we come to know goodness in the world and then follow this created goodness back to the God who is the Supreme Good. So with wisdom, majesty, mercy, grace, faithfulness, justice, power, and other positive relative excellencies. We see the creaturely echoes of these divine properties all around us, and we follow them back to their ultimate source, where they dwell in their fullness and eminence.

Negative Attributes

On the other hand, some of God’s relative excellencies are “negative attributes.” If “positive attributes” take creaturely goods and trace them back to their infinite divine origin, negative attributes take creaturely limitations and deny that God is limited in this way. Consider the negative terms that we ascribe to God: infinite, immutable, eternal, and the like.

Each of these speaks of God by denying to him some creaturely property. Divine infinity denies that God is limited and finite as creation is. Divine immutability denies that God changes the way that creation does. Divine eternality denies that God is bound by time. Divine ubiquity (or omnipresence) denies that God is limited by space. Even the two attributes that began this essay — simplicity and incomprehensibility — are negative attributes, the first denying that God is composed of parts, and the second denying that the infinite God can be contained by the finite mind of man.

God and No Other

God’s attributes aren’t merely qualities that he happens to have. They are essential to him. They are our descriptions of his being, his essence, his very nature, his God-ness. Because he simply is who he is. Everything in God is God.

God is light — pure, simple, white light. God is. God knows. God loves. More specifically, God is himself, God knows himself, and God loves himself. He is the triune God, absolutely full and happy in himself.

Then, this God, the living God, freely creates the world. And when he does, the pure, simple, white light of his being, knowledge, and love shines through the prism of his creation. The white light is refracted into all the colors of the rainbow, as God himself is brought into relation to every aspect of the world he has made. This refracting is what enables us to know him. The flowering of God’s relative excellencies in creation is so that clay pots can have some idea of what the Potter is like. Like Moses, we see the glory of God “from the back.” We grope and we strain and we labor to find words to describe our Lord, who is God and there is no other.

Infinity Clothed in Flesh

And then, wonder of wonders, this God — infinite, eternal, and unchangeable; simple, incomprehensible, and happy — does the unimaginable. The God who lacks every creaturely limitation freely chooses to clothe himself with such limitations, uniting his infinite and eternal being to finite and temporal human nature.

If the excellencies of the simple, incomprehensible, and happy God blow our minds, how much more when this God takes on flesh and dwells among us? And not only dwells among us, but loves among us, suffers among us, dies among us?

The heights of God’s absolute and relative attributes, and his positive and negative attributes, lead us to the depths of his love as the Son comes down from heaven for us and for our salvation. The glorious excellencies of his deity are united to the diverse excellencies of his humanity so that, in Christ, the full range of perfections, both human and divine, are united in one person, Jesus of Nazareth, who is worthy of all worship.

And so, our theology — careful, rigorous, and detailed — leads to doxology — full, overflowing, and abounding with joy.

Audio Transcript

Why does the Bible tell us not to be overly righteous? That is today’s question. It’s a sharp one from a perplexed Bible reader and pastor named Aaron. “Hello, Pastor John! Can you explain two texts to me? The first is this: ‘Be not overly righteous,’ which we read in Ecclesiastes 7:16. And square that with Peter’s lofty command: ‘As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy”’ (1 Peter 1:15–16). What would it mean to be ‘overly righteous’? Is the ESV translation accurate here? Here’s a little background story: I was laughing at a crude joke. I caught myself, and I turned and said to my Christian friend that I felt guilty for laughing at it. He said to me, ‘Well, doesn’t the Bible say not to be overly righteous? I think a little guilty laughing is fine.’ He was right about the text. But this statement didn’t sit well with me. How do these two texts hold together in your own mind, Pastor John?”

I’m glad it didn’t sit well with him. It doesn’t sit well with me either. My first thought when I heard this question was, “I should not try to answer this question, because I’m not sure what Ecclesiastes 7:15–18 means.” I remember over the years returning to these puzzling verses several times and coming away each time, after all my efforts to read the commentaries and do the work in Hebrew, saying, “Well, maybe I’ve got it, but frankly, I’m still not sure.” So, my second thought was, “Well, at least I should admit that publicly.” And I should make the difficult effort, I think, because there are a lot of verses in Ecclesiastes that I’m not sure about. The whole book is a little bit of a puzzle to me. But I think, in all fairness, I should give it a try so that we all have at least one plausible interpretation, even if we may not be sure it’s the only right one.

So here is Ecclesiastes 7:15–18:

In my vain life, I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.

Slightly Unrighteous?

Now, without any context and without any sense of what this author says elsewhere about righteousness and wickedness, I suppose you could say that these verses mean, “Well, be a little bit unrighteous: tell a few dirty jokes; laugh a little bit at the sinfulness that you see on the screen; be a little bit wicked; be a little bit unwise.” I suppose you could say, “Well, it’s what they say, and it must mean that.”

But that would fly right in the face not only of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, who told us that our righteousness better exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees or we’re not going to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20), and “be holy because your Father in heaven is holy” (see 1 Peter 1:16–17); it also flies in the face of what the writer of Ecclesiastes himself says, because he ends his book like this: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). And he adds this: “For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). In other words, he does not encourage just a little bit of disobedience — maybe just one or two commandments, or just a little white lie. That’s not what he says. In fact, he says every deed will be brought into judgment; every secret thing will be found out.

These are not the words of a man who thinks it is prudent to lighten up on our vigilance over the fullness of our obedience to God. The entire Bible, plus the context of Ecclesiastes itself, warns us not to think he is teaching us to be a little bit wicked, a little bit unrighteous, a little bit unwise. So we stand back and we say, “Well, what on earth does it mean, then?” Ecclesiastes 7:16 says, “Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?”

Righteousness of the Pharisees

Now, what if I paraphrased it like this? “Do not be greatly righteous, and do not be righteous with the aim of great righteousness, and do not become bloated with wisdom.” What would you hear in that paraphrase? Well, what you can hear in that paraphrase is my sense that what he’s getting at here is not a warning against true righteousness, or not a warning against avoiding wickedness, true wickedness, but a warning against a kind of righteousness that is excessive or great in the sense of being fastidious or lopsided or showy.

And as soon as I say that, I can’t help but hear in my own words the words of Jesus — and maybe that’s why I’m thinking it up, because those words are tucked away at the back of my mind — regarding the kind of distorted righteousness (perhaps he would say excessive righteousness), of the scribes and the Pharisees.

For example, Matthew 23:23–24:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

“We should not become so preoccupied with the minor aspects of righteousness that we neglect the major aspects.”

It’s not a stretch, is it, to call this over-much righteousness or excessive righteousness in an ironic way — righteousness that is super-vigilant over tithing every spice in the spice drawer, but neglectful of justice and mercy and faithfulness.

We all get this. We use language this way. Jesus could have easily said, with Ecclesiastes, “Be not overly righteous.” That is, don’t make yourself too wise because there is a kind of fastidious, lopsided, showy righteousness and wisdom that God abominates. So I don’t think the point of Ecclesiastes is that we should be a little bit unrighteous or a little bit unwise, but rather that we should not become so preoccupied with the minor aspects of righteousness that we neglect the major aspects, nor should we become so caught up in clever casuistry to justify our blind spots, like the Pharisees who had all kinds of ways worked out to do the kind of little bit of unrighteousness that they wanted to do.

And then in verse 17, to parallel verse 16, Ecclesiastes says, “Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?” I can’t help but think that he provided this audacious parallel to being overly righteous in order to draw out how wrong it would be to interpret the previous verse any other way than ironic. It’s just over the top, I think, to suggest he would be saying something like, “Just be a full, solid, wicked person — not excessive, just full, solid, normal wicked. Just be that.” It’s crazy. I mean, you cannot believe that this writer is saying that. I think he expects us to say, “Don’t you see this as irony in the way I’m saying this?”

Don’t Be a Fool

So instead, I think he’s saying something like, “Look, if you get the idea that the pendulum should swing from over-much righteousness to over-much wickedness, don’t even begin to think that you can lengthen your life by being a standout villain, a villain who isn’t just your average run-of-the-mill villain. Don’t even begin to think that I’m suggesting that you should be an over-much wicked person. It won’t work. You can’t save your life by being that way.”

“Let the things that are clear in Scripture control your thinking rather than the things that are unclear.”

And then at the end of that clause, he simply says, “Don’t be a fool.” And the reason that stands out is because he does not say, “Don’t be an over-much fool,” or “Don’t be an excessive fool.” He said that about righteousness; he said that about wickedness. He doesn’t say it about being a fool. And I think it’s his way of saying, “Hey, do you get what I’ve been saying? Only a fool would miss what I’m saying by thinking I’m commending a little bit of unrighteousness, a little bit of wickedness.”

But just a couple of cautions here at the end about difficult passages of Scripture (because this is one). First, let the things that are clear in Scripture control your thinking rather than the things that are unclear. You have a lifetime to get more clarity on the hard passages, but obedience is called for this afternoon — today. And the second thing I would say is to beware of those people that our friend referred to: beware of people who latch onto unclear texts to justify worldly behavior. This is not the evidence of biblical wisdom or biblical righteousness.