Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech. (1 Timothy 4:12)

My brother pastor, you don’t have to wait until your latter years to have the gravitas of a saint. Your personal moral authority can exceed your years. Right now, in the church where you are serving, you can cut a wide swathe of deserved, unforced influence — not by your position, or your charisma, or your cool, but by your exemplary conduct.

The power of personal example is what gives any pastor true stature in the people’s eyes. And you can be that inspiration even at your present age. No one can keep you from it. Indeed, the more some people might disparage you, the greater your opportunity for Christlike magnificence. Paul’s charge in 1 Timothy 4:12 opens that door to every young pastor.

The power of setting a mature example in your church has long-term inevitability built into it. People who ignore what you say might well be won by who you are. Your calm courage, your gentle restraint, your steady faithfulness, your cheerful resilience, your selfless love, and so forth — it becomes harder and harder to resist pastoral beauty, especially over time. In the movie The Intern, Jules, the boss, says to Ben, the intern, “How is it you always manage to say the right thing, do the right thing, be the right thing? It’s uncanny.” And when the younger man is that grownup in the room, it’s especially uncanny — and convincing. Yes, your preaching matters. And when the people listening to your sermon admire your life beyond the pulpit, your preaching will matter even more. Far more.

Set an Example in Speech

Let’s think through together the first mark of exemplary pastoral conduct in 1 Timothy 4:12. What does it look like to “set the believers an example in speech”?

For that matter, what does any seasoned, profound Christian man look and sound like? The Bible paints the picture: “Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled” (Titus 2:2). So let’s connect Titus 2:2 with 1 Timothy 4:12 and see what happens. An exemplary pastor’s speech will sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled.

Sober-Minded Speech

Sober-minded describes a mentality, a mindset — literally, sober as opposed to drunk. There is a real difference. In our times of crazy extremism, with even pastors building their “platforms” by making outlandish claims or enlarging their following through grandiose denunciations, the exemplary pastor soberly refuses. He has no stomach for the intoxicating euphoria of being oh-so-right on all the issues.

“When this pastor speaks, it can feel like Jesus is in the room.”

The mature pastor, however young, is distinguished by moderation. He is calmly restrained in his speech. He builds unity because he isn’t drawing people’s attention to his “brand”; he is honestly serving the Lord, gathering people to the only Savior (Luke 11:23). He is not self-referential. He does not vent. He avoids words with sharp edges, words that cut and injure. He has the self-awareness to pray before he opens his mouth, “Lord, may my every word, without a single exception, be of you.” And it shows. When this pastor speaks, it can feel like Jesus is in the room.

The mature pastor’s sober-minded speech isn’t about this or that particular issue. His whole mentality sets him apart as Christlike. Sadly, in some churches, that will be the pastor’s crime. Some churches do not want Jesus, his ways, his humility. Until our Lord returns, there will be church people who dig in against the presence of Christlikeness. Despite, or even because of, the exemplary conduct of the pastor, a church might reject him, casting him out. But they will know — eventually, they will surely know — that a man of God was in their midst.

God will vindicate his true-hearted servant, who speaks with the mind of Christ. And the younger that pastor is, the more years he will have to enjoy the smile of God upon his ministry. Our Lord is faithful to his pastors who, setting their whole souls on following him, keep their speech exemplary.

Dignified Speech

I love this word dignified. It describes the kind of man I want to be. The word is talking about gravitas. It suggests nobility and honor, like a chivalrous knight of old.

Dignified speech is the opposite of glib, shallow, and silly. Are there humorous moments in a healthy church? Yes. The Lord himself makes sure that our ridiculousness shows through now and then. Truly hilarious things can happen, and the saints throw their heads back and roar with the most wonderful laughter. Such grace!

“Dignified speech is the opposite of glib, shallow, and silly.”

And of course, an exemplary pastor will never be pompous or tedious, dragging people down with fakey seriousness. He is too human and too real for that. But he understands what Neil Postman explained in Amusing Ourselves to Death: “Americans no longer talk to each other; they entertain each other” (92). And a pastor truly called by God knows he is not in the entertainment business. So his words carry weight. His dignified words stand out with especially sacred gravitas at Holy Communion, at weddings and funerals, at prayer meetings, and when he counsels brokenhearted people.

How precious, in this world of giggly cuteness saturating the media 24/7, are profound pastoral words gently offered to sinners and sufferers! When a young man shows that he is sensitive to the dignity the moment calls for, his people will revere him as exemplary.

Self-Controlled Speech

With the word self-control, we’re thinking of the qualities of reason, judgment, taste — just plain old solid thinking and good sense. Not impulsive or erratic, but careful and judicious. Not barfing out whatever comes to mind at the moment, but pausing and thinking and showing discernment.

For example, in a difficult congregational meeting, an exemplary pastor guards himself from speaking out of his own frustration and calls silently upon the Lord for the grace to speak out of the fullness of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God is not raw energy. He is “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel . . . the Spirit of knowledge” (Isaiah 11:2). An inspiring pastor knows to slow down, inhale, and think — until he has something to say that can make the moment better for everyone. That pastor, even if young, will be taken seriously by church members of all ages.

God-Given Words

Here is a wonderful promise from God for every pastor who longs to grow as an example to his people of speech that is sober-minded, dignified, and self-controlled:

If you call out for insight,     and raise your voice for understanding,if you seek for it like silver     and search for it as for hidden treasures . . .wisdom will come into your heart,     and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. (Proverbs 2:3–4, 10)

The wisdom all of us pastors need is not a script we can follow. It is deeper. It is a God-given intuition, a new instinct that comes into our hearts by his grace. And it sure comes in handy when we’re deciding on the fly what to say and how to say it. Why not ask God for it? He loves to give us his best.

Finally, if you want to follow up with a next step, here are two resources of rich historical depth. One is The Westminster Larger Catechism on the ninth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16). Questions 143–145 of the Catechism explain that commandment with amazing insight, helping us use our words not to injure but to bless one another. The other resource is “A Sermon against Contention and Brawling” in The First Book of Homilies, the old treasure chest of sermons from Reformation England.

In our age of words doing great harm, both on social media and face to face, this old Presbyterian wisdom in the Catechism, with this old Anglican wisdom in the Homily, can equip and strengthen all of us today. Maybe your church’s leadership team would benefit from reading and discussing these wonderful resources. I promise you will enjoy them.

The Creator of the universe, who holds everything in being, from all the galaxies to every grain of sand, and who governs everything that happens, from the fall of nations to the fall of every bird that dies — this God has decreed that he will accomplish his enemy-reconciling, worshiper-creating purposes among all the peoples of the world through your mouth.

Listen to the words of the apostle Paul: “We are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Think of it: there’s God, with his appeal to the peoples of the world; there’s Christ, who provided the basis of the appeal by his death for sin and his triumph over death — and there’s you, with your mouth.

You take your Christ, your great Treasure, and his magnificent salvation, and you open your mouth, and wonder of wonders, God makes his appeal through you: “Be reconciled to God.” This is how we make disciples of all nations. This is how the Great Commission is completed. God makes his appeal through us: “On behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” When you say that, it is the voice of God.

Christians, the Voice of His Excellencies

Don’t shrink back from this, as if it were meant only for apostles. Do you remember what Peter said about who you are? You are Christians: “You [you!] are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). You are the voice of his excellencies. That’s not a missionary calling. That’s your Christian identity. It’s who you are — the mouthpiece of the excellencies of God.

So, my prayer for this message — indeed, for this day and this conference — has two layers.

Layer #1: I am praying that God would redirect the lives of hundreds of you from where you were heading when you came to this conference, or from the muddle your life was in, into a life totally devoted, vocationally, to opening your mouths among the least-reached peoples of the world — God making his appeal through you for the reconciling of his enemies and the creation of his worshipers.

Layer #2: I am praying that the rest of you would see this divine enterprise as so glorious that you would celebrate it and support it in every way possible.

What can I do in the rest of this message that God might use to make you an answer to one of those prayers? What I’m going to do is to try and show you from the Gospel of John how God will use your mouth to create worshipers of the true God among the nations. I think if you could see how God actually does it, you might feel called to join him in doing it.

Whom the Father Seeks, He Will Have

Let’s start with John 4:23. Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob. She has just pointed out that Samaritans worship on Mount Gerizim while Jews, like Jesus, worship in Jerusalem (John 4:20). To this Jesus responds,

The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for [or because] the Father is seeking such people to worship him. (John 4:23)

The reason there will be true worship on any mountain or in any valley or on any plain is because the Father is seeking worshipers. That’s why worship among the nations happens.

This is not a seeking as in an Easter egg hunt, as if God doesn’t know who they are or where they are. This is a seeking because they are his, and he means to have them and their wholehearted, happy worship for himself forever.

“Yahweh calls the Messiah a priest ‘forever.’ Forever? Now we are at a new level of lordship.”

As Jesus prayed to his Father in John 17:6, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” The Father is seeking worshipers from all the nations because they are already his. “Yours they were!” Jesus declares. “And you gave them to me.” God chose them before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4–6). They are his. He is seeking them. He will have them.

How does he do that? How do we move from “yours they were” from all eternity to countless worshipers from every people, language, tribe, and nation at the consummation of history with you, and your mouth, in the middle?

To answer that question from the Gospel of John, we need to know, What’s the relationship between worshiping and believing in this Gospel? Because Jesus just said in John 4:23 that the Father is seeking worshipers. Yet this whole Gospel is written, according to John 20:31, to create believers: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

What’s the relationship between believing and worshiping? Which should we seek? Is there a first and second? Are they the same? Do they overlap?

Belief as Soul-Satisfaction

Here’s my very condensed answer, which starts with a stunning fact: In this so-called “Gospel of Belief,” John never uses the noun belief or faith (Greek pistis) — never! — in all 21 chapters. But he uses the verb believe (pisteuō) 98 times. That can’t be an accident. What’s the point?

I think the point is this: John wants to emphasize that believing is an action, and one of the soul, not the body. The movements of the body are the effects of believing. What the soul does is believing. And what are the actions of believing in the soul? John answers at the very beginning of his Gospel in John 1:11–12: “[Jesus] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Believing is the soul’s receiving of Christ.

Receiving as what? A ticket out of hell that you put in your back pocket and never think of? A wonder-worker to keep my wife alive and my children safe (and a failure if he doesn’t)? No. John and Jesus have a different kind of receiving in mind. It’s the receiving of Christ as soul-satisfying bread from heaven and as thirst-quenching living water: “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’” (John 6:35).

Believing John Dewey, the American educational reformer who died in 1952, said, “We never think until we have been confronted with a problem.” That may be an overstatement, but not by much. Thinking, especially thinking with a view to attaining more truth for the sake of more worship and more obedience, is hard work. Thinking demands effort.

But the Bible encourages us to think. Paul said to the younger Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Timothy 2:7). And to the Corinthians he said, “Do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20).

A lot of people have given me T-shirts over the years. My favorite was in 1980, when I finished six years of teaching biblical studies at Bethel College and became a pastor at this church. My students gave me a T-shirt with the initials of Jonathan Edwards on the front, and on the back it said, “Asking questions is the key to understanding.” That made me feel like I had at least partially succeeded in my six years at Bethel.

The reason John Dewey’s statement and that T-shirt go together is because asking questions is a way of being confronted with a problem. We don’t think until we have a problem, Dewey said. And we don’t understand until we think. And asking questions is a way of posing problems. Therefore, asking questions triggers thinking, and thinking is a path to understanding. One of my goals as a teacher is to build into students the habit of asking good questions — not because I want them to be skeptics, but because I want them to be thinkers. “Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”

Man of Questions

One of the reasons this is relevant to our text is that, in the four Gospels, Jesus asks over three hundred questions. I checked this out, just to make sure, by reviewing the list online. Now, in my ESV Bible, the Gospels fill 101 pages, which means that on average Jesus asks three questions on every page. I don’t doubt that there are far more reasons for why he did that than we will ever know in this world, but one of those reasons was, surely, to make people think — to think their way into truth, or to think their way into self-incrimination and silence.

Which is what happens in our text. So, let’s read Matthew 22:41–46. There are four questions in this text, all directed at the Pharisees:

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, [Question #1] “What do you think about the Christ? [Question #2] Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, [Question #3] “How [therefore does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai],“Sit at my right hand,     until I put your enemies under your feet”’?

If then David calls him Lord, [Question #4] how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Jesus had silenced the Sadducees in verses 29–33 when they asked about the resurrection. Then the Pharisees tested him in verse 35 by asking what the Great Commandment is. He answered them, and now come his own four questions, after which — you can see in verse 45 — no one asked him any more questions: “nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

Let’s take Jesus’s questions one at a time to see if we can grasp what he is trying to communicate with these four questions.

Question #1: ‘What do you think about the Christ?’

“The Christ” means “the Messiah” — that is, the long-expected king of Israel who would fulfill the promises and bring Israel into her destiny as God’s chosen and ruling people in the world. Remember that the woman at the well in John 4 said,

“I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” (John 4:25–26)

And here in Matthew, Jesus asked the disciples,

“Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:15–17)

In other words, “Yes, I am the Messiah.”

So this — “What do you think about the Christ [the Messiah]?” — is an explosive question because it has more than one level of meaning. At one level, it’s a biblical, theological question about the meaning of “Christ” or “Messiah.” Jesus and the Pharisees will have a lot of common ground on this question.

But at another level, the question touches on Jesus himself. Is he the one? The answer to the first level is not explosive at first. But the answer to the second level will get Jesus crucified. At his trial the high priest will say, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew 26:63). To which Jesus responds, signing his own death warrant, “I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). In other words, he will be seen as David’s Lord, sitting at God’s right hand, according to Psalm 110.

But now in our text, after asking his first question, Jesus does not wait for an answer to this general question of “What do you think about the Christ?” Because he knows where he is going with these questions, and he is not interested in a general answer about the Christ. He aims to be more specific. So, he moves to the second question.

Question #2: ‘Whose son is he?’

Now, every Jew knew at least one right answer to that question because of 2 Samuel 7:12–13, where God says to King David through the prophet Nathan,

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

The Messiah would be the son of David. This is what the ordinary folks called Jesus. When he entered Jerusalem, they cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9). The Jewish leaders knew what this meant, and so they asked him, when the children called him the son of David, “Do you hear what these are saying?” To which Jesus responded, “Out of the mouth of infants . . . [God has] prepared praise” (Matthew 21:16).

So, when Jesus asks in our text, “Whose son is he?” we have these two levels of meaning again. At one level there is theological agreement: the Messiah is the son of David — no controversy. At the other level, just below the surface, is the question, Is Jesus this son of David?

The Pharisees answer Jesus’s second question: “The son of David” (Matthew 22:42). There’s the theological agreement: the Christ is the son of David.

But now comes the third question, which the Pharisees will not answer, because Jesus is leading them with Scripture to a place they do not want to go, and they can see it coming. This is often how questions work.

Question #3: ‘How does David call him Lord?’

Let’s reread what surrounds this question.

He said to them, “How [therefore, in view of your correct answer, does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord, saying,

“‘The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai],“Sit at my right hand,     until I put your enemies under your feet”’?” (Matthew 22:43–44)

This question has often puzzled me. But before I explain why, let’s nail down five details.

Five Clarifications

First, verse 44 is a quotation of Psalm 110:1: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

Second, the phrase “in the Spirit” (from “David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord”) means that Jesus regards these words as written by David and inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is not human opinion; it is God’s word.

Third, the first reference to “Lord” in the quote from Psalm 110:1 in Hebrew is the proper name of God, Yahweh. And the second word for “Lord” in the Psalm (“the Lord said to my Lord”) is the generic word for a master or a lord, adonai, which is used over three hundred times in the Old Testament for human masters. And the word “my” refers to David, the writer of the psalm: “The Lord [Yahweh] said to my Lord [adonai].”

Fourth, the second word for “Lord” (verse 44, or “master,” adonai), refers to the promised Messiah. And we know that because it says he will sit at God’s right hand, ruling over all his enemies. There was no disagreement about this reading of Psalm 110 so far with the Pharisees.

So fifth is that, since David is writing this, when he says, “[Yahweh] said to my Lord [my adonai],” David is calling the Messiah his Lord.

What’s So Controversial?

Now, what has puzzled me about Jesus’s third question — “How does David call him Lord?” — is why it would be considered controversial. Why would it stump the Pharisees, when in fact the Pharisees agree that David called the Messiah his Lord? Jewish people, from then till now, don’t deny that when or if the Messiah comes, he will be greater than David. He will be David’s superior and leader and Lord. That’s not news. That’s what the text says, and that’s what Jews have believed.

The way I used to read it simply does not seem to create the crisis Jesus seems to be creating. I think I’ve been reading it with the wrong twist. So, I’m going to suggest that we put the emphasis in this question on a different word, which I think solves my problem — my misunderstanding. I’m going to put the emphasis on the word “how” in verse 43 and treat it as a real “how” question.

Verse 43: “How [in what way, therefore, does] David, in the Spirit, [call] him Lord?” I think it’s misleading to translate it this way: “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord?” Because if you translate it, “How is it that . . .” it means, idiomatically, in English virtually the same as “Why does he call him Lord?” And that’s what throws me off, because the answer to that question would be easy for the Pharisees to answer. Why? Because he is.

But I don’t think Jesus is asking why David calls the Messiah his Lord, but how — in what way is he Lord? In what sense is he Lord? How is the Messiah the Lord of David, according to Psalm 110? Jesus is beckoning us into the whole of Psalm 110 to see how David writes about the Messiah to bring out what his lordship involves. This would require another sermon — to work our way, verse by verse, through Psalm 110, so let me just summarize what I see.

How David Calls the Messiah His Lord

In verse 1, “[Yahweh] says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” The Messiah sits at the exalted place in heaven at Yahweh’s right hand. Then in verse 4, Yahweh speaks again about the Messiah: “[Yahweh] has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’” Yahweh calls the Messiah a priest “forever.” Forever? Now we are at a new level of lordship. The Messiah is a priest-king at God’s right hand forever.

“When David called the Messiah his Lord, he was pointing to the divinity of the Messiah.”

Then he says in verse 5, “The Lord [adonai] is at your right hand.” And the most natural meaning of the word “your” is the “you” of the preceding verse — verse 4: “You are a priest forever.” Then comes verse 5: “The Lord is at your right hand.” Which means that David, as he composes Psalm 110, is now saying that God is at this priest-king’s right hand. In other words, they have, in essence, switched places from verses 1 to 5: in verse 1, the Messiah sits at God’s right hand, and in verse 5, God is at the Messiah’s right hand.

I’m suggesting that what Jesus saw in this psalm is that when David called the Messiah his Lord, he was pointing to the divinity of the Messiah. The Messiah and Yahweh are one God. This is how the book of Hebrews understands this psalm in Hebrews 1:13. This is how Matthew understood Jesus’s messiahship: he is “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). This is what I mean by focusing on the word “how” in verse 43. How does David call the Messiah his Lord? The way he does it is by showing that the Messiah is David’s God.

That’s a lot to pack into a question that gets no answer. But the fact that there is no answer from the Pharisees suggests that they can smell that Jesus is leading them somewhere they don’t want to go. So, with that understanding of what was in Jesus’s mind, we turn to the fourth question.

Question #4: ‘If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?’

This question now means, “If David calls the Messiah his God, we have a real problem. How is the Messiah David’s son?” That’s a problem because, to be David’s son, one has to be human and be in the human line of David. But if the Messiah is God, how can that be? No answer. In fact, public debating with Jesus is over. And the final question ringing in our ears is, If the Messiah is God, how is he a man, specifically a man in David’s human lineage?

Matthew has left us no doubt as to his answer: Jesus was divine and human because he was conceived in a human virgin by the divine Holy Spirit. Matthew 1:18: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.”

And Joseph, in the royal line of David, legally adopts Jesus, and Jesus becomes the legitimate son of David. Matthew 1:20: “An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.’” And in taking Mary as his wife, he takes Jesus as his son. And Matthew clarifies the miracle of a divine-human Messiah with these words: “‘They shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23).

Back to question #4: “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matthew 22:45). That is, “If, then, David calls him God, how is he a man in David’s line?” Not: “Is he?” But: “How is he?” Answer: by human birth in the womb of a virgin, and by legal adoption by a son of David.

Will We Have Him for Who He Is?

We are left not mainly with a question about who Jesus is.

Jesus (and Matthew) makes plain, “I am God, and I am the human son of David, the Messiah. Follow me. Devote yourself to me for the rest of your life. Treasure me above all things. Your sins will be forgiven. Your life will have its fullest meaning. And you will live forever in the joy of God’s presence.”

The question we are left with is not “Who is he?” but “Will we have him as our greatest treasure?” I pray your answer is yes.

Twenty-five years. Three hundred months. One thousand three hundred weeks. Nine thousand one hundred twenty-five days. That’s how long Abraham waited between hearing God’s promise and holding his son (Genesis 12:4; 21:5).

We can read Genesis 12–21 in one sitting. Abraham and Sarah lived it day by day, nine thousand mornings and more. Three times we’re told God appeared to Abraham to reaffirm his word (Genesis 15:5; 17:16; 18:10). Otherwise, he and Sarah carried the past promise in a land of present silence, waiting with open hands and an empty womb.

Abraham, “the father of us all” (Romans 4:16), was a waiting man; his faith, a waiting faith. As his seventies turned to eighties turned to nineties, he waited. As he moved through Haran to Canaan to Egypt and back, he waited. As his body weakened and his wife grew gray, he waited.

God could have brought Isaac sooner, or he could have given the promise later. Instead, he sent Abraham into the wilderness of waiting for twenty-five years. Waiting was part of God’s good plan for Abraham. And so it is with us.

Wait for the Lord

Like father, like sons: the children of Abraham have always been, and are still, a waiting people. We often walk with empty hands, the womb of our hopes still aching for life.

“Like father, like sons: the children of Abraham have always been, and are still, a waiting people.”

Perhaps, with David, we sit in some spiritual or relational pit, waiting for God to draw us out (Psalm 40:1–2). Or maybe, with Jeremiah, we lie in a ruin of our own making, waiting for God to rescue and redeem (Lamentations 3:25–26). Or possibly, with Isaiah, we walk before the hidden face of God, waiting to see him again (Isaiah 8:17). Either way, we have asked but not yet received, sought but not yet found, knocked but not yet been answered (Matthew 7:7–8). God has promised; we have prayed; still we wait.

Meanwhile, the questions can multiply, captured in the words of waiting Asaph:

Will the Lord spurn forever,     and never again be favorable?Has his steadfast love forever ceased?     Are his promises at an end for all time?Has God forgotten to be gracious?     Has he in anger shut up his compassion? (Psalm 77:7–9)

When the hours roll by and the sun refuses to rise, the waiting heart can nearly break. And yet, break it does not — at least not when held by God’s own hand. For as so many saints have discovered, God knows how to make rivers run through the wilderness of waiting, daily refreshing our driest hopes. We read that Abraham “grew strong in his faith” as the childless years unfolded (Romans 4:20). And so may we, if we know where to look in our waiting: not only at our own barren life, but up to God, back to his faithfulness, forward to his promise, and down to his path.

Look Up to God

For many, the deepest pain of waiting lies in the sense that God, who once seemed so near, now feels so far away. We may find ourselves saying with David, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). The heavens were once a window; now they seem more like a wall.

Remarkably, however, Israel’s psalmists and prophets did not take God’s felt absence as reason to turn away from him. In their waiting, they kept a fundamentally Godward posture, their eyes lifted and prayers ascending to the God they could not see. The prophet Micah speaks for many:

As for me, I will look to the Lord;     I will wait for the God of my salvation;     my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7)

Though the skies look black as lead, and the heavens seem silent as the grave, yet I will pray to God, my only hope. I will lift my hands to him. I will pour out my heart before him (Psalm 62:8). And though I cannot see his face, yet still I will show him mine.

Look Back to His Faithfulness

After looking up to the God they cannot see, the waiting then routinely look back to God’s former faithfulness. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord,” Asaph tells himself (Psalm 77:11). Similarly, Jeremiah answers his own anguish by saying, “But this I call to mind” (Lamentations 3:21). When the present seemed a desolate land, they plundered the past for hope.

Psalm 89 may offer the most remarkable example of letting the past be heard. Ethan, the psalmist, finds himself in a desperate present, reflected in the outpoured grief of verses 38–51. Yet even as that sorrow churns within, he spends the first 37 verses of the psalm patiently walking the paths of past redemption. Before he laments, he remembers:

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;     with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. (Psalm 89:1)

“When the present seemed a desolate land, they plundered the past for hope.”

Back then he goes: to the exodus, to the promised land, to the covenant with David (Psalm 89:9–10, 15–16, 19–37), each an immovable monument to God’s unchanging faithfulness. Given Ethan’s knife-edge agony, Derek Kidner rightly calls these first 37 verses “a miracle of self-discipline” (Psalms 73–150, 356).

God still gives that miracle today. He still takes people like us, bowed down and barely able to lift our heads, and bids us look back. With Ethan, then, trace the ancient paths. Remember again God’s wonders of old. Sit beside miraculous pregnancies and split seas, a Christ born and a cross carried. And in it all, refuse to allow present pain to set the boundaries of your future hopes.

Look Forward to His Promise

With God’s past faithfulness fresh in our minds, we can dare to the look toward the future with hope. We can take our stand like a watchman on the walls, and say with defiant faith, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope” (Psalm 130:5). God’s promise now no longer seems like an empty word, a fragile wish: it will come as surely as the dawn (Psalm 130:6).

Abraham shows us the same orientation toward God’s promise in his own long wait:

No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:20–21)

A vague sense of God’s faithfulness was not enough to sustain Abraham’s faith: he clung to a particular promise. He remembered how God had lifted his eyes toward the starry sky and said, “So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5). Abraham treasured every letter of that pledge as the years marched on. He carried the promise in his coat pocket like a soldier far from home, stealing glances through the day, sure that his children would one day rival the skies.

Do the promises of God find such a welcome home in your waiting heart? Whatever your need, God has spoken. He may not have promised a particular gift you long for — a son like Abraham’s, perhaps — but he has not left you promise-less. Comfort for the comfortless (Isaiah 40:1), help for the helpless (Isaiah 41:10), provision for the needy (Philippians 4:19), an answer to our knocking (Matthew 7:7–8) — all these and more he pledges to his waiting people. With Abraham, then, turn away from your own frailty, and fix your eyes on God’s promise.

Look Down to His Path

We have looked up, we have looked back, and we have looked forward. Still, however, we find ourselves in the wilderness of waiting. Maybe quiet years still stretch before us, or maybe our wait is nearly over. Either way, we have today to live. And today, we wait.

We might be tempted on a day like today to see life as somewhere in the future, waiting for us at the end of this wait. But then we hear a prayer like waiting David’s:

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;     teach me your paths.Lead me in your truth and teach me,     for you are the God of my salvation;     for you I wait all the day long. (Psalm 25:4–5)

David looked not only up, back, and forward, but down to the path God had set before him today. “Lord, teach me today, lead me today, help me today. Let today be marked by present obedience, joyful submission, even as I wait for you.”

Today may feel like a wasteland and a blank, a parenthesis between a lost past and a longed-for future. But today, even today, the God of waiting has good works for you to walk in. So rehearse his promises and say your prayers. Do your work and serve your family. Love your neighbors and share the gospel. And trust that one day soon, you will join Abraham and Sarah, Moses and David, Ethan and Jeremiah to sing, “None who wait for you shall be put to shame” (Psalm 25:3).