http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15761070/expect-great-things-attempt-great-things
Expect great things, attempt great things.
These six words fueled the transformation of global missions — and on a smaller and more personal scale, the vision and direction of my life.
I don’t remember exactly when I first met William Carey (1761–1834), but he has haunted my life since my junior year of college. Like many college students, I had taken a long and winding path before committing myself to membership in a local church. But when I found a church home, God opened a river of grace to me — and launched perhaps the most transformative period of spiritual growth in my life. One tributary was a providential encounter during my senior year with a set of excerpts from Carey’s pamphlet An Enquiry Concerning the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen (1792).
I read excerpts from An Enquiry for a national course on Christian missions my church hosted on Wednesday nights. As with many eighteenth-century writings, the title was intimidating. But what I found inside was captivating.
From Suggestion to Commission
In addition to a review of global missions from the apostles to the present day, Carey (an almost entirely self-educated bi-vocational pastor) had compiled statistics on the state of global evangelization on every continent.
Most powerfully, Carey concisely captured the beauty of the gospel before addressing nearly every excuse that could be given for not taking up Jesus’s commission of making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18–20). Carey was puzzled that “multitudes sit at ease and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow-sinners, who to this day are lost in ignorance and idolatry.”1 Love for the global glory of Jesus and for the good of our fellow man, he argued, obligates us to proclaim the gospel in all places. “Surely it is worthwhile” Carey concluded, “to lay ourselves out with all our might in promoting the cause and kingdom of Christ.”2
Carey’s words struck me to the heart. I had given so little thought beyond my own self-centered, provincial concerns. Shockingly, the task of gospel proclamation to the least-reached and unreached was something I had hardly even thought about. Carey showed me that my vision was not as big as Scripture’s vision of the global glory of Jesus. Is Jesus worthy of the praise of all peoples? Yes, he is. The great commission, as has been said, was not the great suggestion. The task of gospel-proclamation was the Christian’s duty, and therefore my life’s mission had to be altered. To live for Christ meant to put his global glory as my great aim, no matter my vocation.
“To live for Christ meant to put his global glory as my great aim, no matter my vocation.”
But there was a missing piece. How could the nearly impossible political, technological, cultural, and religious barriers be overcome? What could sustain the difficult work of “laying ourselves out with all our might in promoting the cause and kingdom of Christ”? How could such labors not end in total exhaustion?
Possibility and Duty
These questions also concerned Carey, though for a slightly different reason. In the late eighteenth century, Baptist pastors in north-central England were grappling with an understanding that had paralyzed the churches in their association — the notion that some additional, Pentecost-like (Acts 2) outpouring of the Holy Spirit would be necessary before the nations could come to Christ. Until God moved in a clearly supernatural way, some argued, churches had neither the duty to act nor any hope of success. At a gathering of Northamptonshire pastors in June of 1791, fellow pastors Andrew Fuller and John Sutcliff preached powerful messages addressing the “procrastinating spirit” of the day and the fervent evangelistic zeal that ought to attend the good news of the gospel.3
At the conclusion of the meeting, Carey was asked to address in print the question for which they already knew the Scriptures’ answer: “whether or not it was possible for, as well as the duty of, the Christian to preach the gospel among the unreached nations.”4 His pamphlet, An Enquiry, was published later that year.
But my excerpted copy of An Enquiry focused only on the duty. It left out the most important part of the argument — how such a duty was possible.
Unlikely and Timely Text
Several months after the publication of An Enquiry, the pastors of the Northamptonshire association met to discuss Carey’s answer. On May 31, 1791, Carey began the gathering by preaching on Isaiah 54:2–3:
Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back; lengthen your cords
and strengthen your stakes.
For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left,
and your offspring will possess the nations
and will people the desolate cities.
His text, at first, seems a curious choice. In light of the many crystal-clear New Testament texts on evangelism and disciple-making, why choose a text from the Prophets to argue for the great commission’s possibility?
Carey knew the Scriptures well and recognized the brilliance and importance of Isaiah’s redemptive-historical vision. The victory of the suffering servant (Isaiah 53:10–12) would result in not only rejoicing (Isaiah 54:1a) but blessing (Isaiah 54:1b). Isaiah foresaw that the Messiah’s victory would forever incapacitate the enemies of God. No longer could the bewitching of foreign gods prevent the nations from receiving God as king. God’s people would “spread abroad to the right and the left . . . possess the nations . . . and people the desolate cities” (Isaiah 54:2–3).
This future vision, Carey knew, was realized in the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus.
Expect and Attempt
The crescendo of his message was captured by those who heard it in six unforgettable words: “Expect great things, attempt great things.”5
Jesus’s singular fitness as the suitable substitute for mankind had been vindicated in the resurrection. And the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was the signal of the Messiah’s ultimate victory over all thrones and dominions, whether seen or unseen. Jesus hadn’t simply launched the mission of the gospel to the nations; his ascension to glory had removed every obstacle that stood in the way of the gospel’s absolute triumph (Mark 3:24–27; Revelation 20:1–2).
Therefore, Carey argued, Christians must expect great things — and not only must we expect them; we must attempt them. No matter how small the beginning, no matter how complicated the task, in the power of the Spirit, under the authority of the risen Christ, we can have absolute confidence in the success of our mission. In commissioning his church, Jesus had said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19). And Pentecost decisively proved that his command was possible, because it fulfilled his promise of the commission: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
We Can Risk Everything
In the excerpt missing from my copy of An Enquiry, Carey had made this crucial connection:
If the command of Christ to teach all nations extend only to the apostles, then, doubtless, the promise of the divine presence in this work must be so limited; but this is worded in such a manner as expressly precludes such an idea. Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the world. . . . Where a command exists nothing can be necessary to render it binding but a removal of those obstacles which render obedience impossible, and these are removed already.6
Carey saw that the triumph of the resurrection meant the good news of the gospel could not possibly be stopped. All things were now in subjection to Jesus — and by his Spirit and through his church, he was plundering the strong man’s household (Mark 3:24–27). Nothing could turn back the tide of the victory of Christ.
This revelation cracked open the world for me. In the early years of my walk with Jesus, I was afraid that I might meet some insuperable intellectual obstacle to the gospel. Likewise, I feared failing to adequately explain the gospel in personal evangelism. Those fears were only enhanced when meeting the challenges of cross-cultural evangelism. But grasping the implications of Jesus’s glory and resurrection authority decisively defeated those fears.
Not only must I reorient the priorities of my life to put the concerns of Christ at the very center, but I can risk everything in following him wherever he leads. Because Jesus, in fact, lives, I can expect great things and attempt great things.
Six World-Changing Words
The vision captured by those six words also forever changed the history of Christian missions. At the conclusion of Carey’s sermon, the pastors of the Northamptonshire association resolved to develop a plan for a “society to preach the gospel” among the unreached. Four months later, on October 2, 1792, they adopted that plan, forming the Baptist Missionary Society.
A year later, the Society sent William Carey, his family, and several others to India as the first of what now constitutes many thousands of missionaries of the BMS. “Expect great things, attempt great things” became the motto of the Baptist Missionary Society and captured the biblical vision for gospel proclamation among the unreached.7
And the retrieval of Scripture’s cross-cultural vision reverberated across the rising evangelical movement. Carey’s friend and fellow pastor John Ryland Jr. went on to help London Congregationalists launch the London Missionary Society (1795) and assisted the Anglican church in launching the Church Missionary Society (1799).
“What might God be pleased to do in our day if we expect great things and attempt great things?”
In 1806, five college sophomores at Williams College in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, read Carey’s An Enquiry and dedicated themselves to praying for the launch of a missionary society in the United States. Four years later, they helped form the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1810) to send two of their own, Adoniram Judson and his wife Anne Hasseltine, to gospel ministry in Burma.
Luther Rice, another of the Williams College five, would unite Baptists in America to support the work of foreign missions and four years later launch the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination — the precursor to the International Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, now the largest missionary-sending organization in the world.
What might God be pleased to do in our day if, confident in the victory of our reigning Christ, we expect great things and attempt great things?
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How to Pray Like Jabez
Jabez was more honorable than his brothers; and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!” And God granted what he asked. (1 Chronicles 4:9–10)
Perhaps you’ve heard of Jabez. If not, maybe it’s time for his story.
Just over twenty years ago, few other than careful readers of Old Testament genealogies would have known his name. Then that changed almost overnight. Still today, the mere mention of Jabez among older Christians may elicit quite a range of responses.
The full story is longer than I know well or wish to tell, but author Bruce Wilkinson — who cofounded, with his mentor Howard Hendricks, the ministry Walk Thru the Bible in 1976 — published the 90-page The Prayer of Jabez in 2000. In it, he tells of hearing a moving message in the early 1970s, while a seminary student, from pastor Richard Seume (1915–1986). (Interestingly enough, John Piper sat under Seume’s preaching at Wheaton Bible Church in the late 1960s when Piper was a college student. He says, “I recall how Pastor Seume would take the most obscure texts and find in them diamonds to preach on.”)
That one sermon on Jabez, from 1 Chronicles 4:9–10 — the only two verses in the Bible that mention Jabez — left such an impression on Wilkinson that he began to pray Jabez’s own words for himself on a daily basis. When he published the book in 2000, he had been doing so every day for thirty years. Rehearsing the Jabez prayer daily seemed to Wilkinson to release (a word repeated in the book) the floodgates of God’s blessings on his life and ministry. The book quickly became a runaway bestseller, and is one of only a few Christian books of all time to have sold more than ten million copies.
I read Wilkinson’s short book as a college student when it came out in 2000 (about the same time I was first exposed to Piper and Desiring God). I don’t remember in detail how reading Jabez landed on me then. I do recall some enthusiasm, and remember echoing the prayer at times as my own. For whatever reasons, though, I didn’t form the habit of praying it daily. The flash soon faded. So, I have not prayed Jabez’s prayer every day for the last twenty years, though I expect the book (and that brief season) did have some lasting positive impact.
Gospel of Jabez?
Looking back now (and admitting that hindsight is far clearer), I would summarize the Jabez phenomenon like this: imbalances in the book led to greater imbalances in many readers, especially those less anchored in Scripture. Many readers assumed they had found some long-overlooked prayer to unlock God’s blessings. As I reread the book recently, I found that the book did leave this door open, and even subtly tipped in this direction, at times. (As an editor myself, I wonder what role the coauthor played in making Wilkinson’s message punchy, jettisoning nuance, and stretching it for a broad-as-possible audience. The coauthor’s name did not appear on the original cover, or in the book at all, but now appears in tiny letters on the new cover.)
From the first lines of the preface, seeds are sown with words like “always” and “the key” — words we would be wise to use sparingly in a generation of language inflation like ours:
I want to teach you how to pray a daring prayer that God always answers. It is brief — only one sentence with four parts — and tucked away in the Bible, but I believe it contains the key to a life of extraordinary favor with God. This petition has radically changed what I expect from God and what I experience every day by His power. (7, emphases added)
I could pick at similar overstatements and imbalances throughout the short book. I also could point to some gold (which would have been easier to celebrate in 2000 before seeing the widespread effects on readers). For one, Wilkinson qualifies the word bless as “goodness that only God has the power to know about or give us” (23). In Wilkinson’s own words, he is not teaching name-it-and-claim-it theology, and he clearly disclaims what we now call “the prosperity gospel” (24). He also admirably mentions living by God’s will and for God’s glory (32, 48, 57) and raises this question about “the American Dream”:
Do we really understand how far the American Dream is from God’s dream for us? We’re steeped in a culture that worships freedom, independence, personal rights, and the pursuit of pleasure. (70)
Such a challenge emerges on occasion, yet it’s clearly not the emphasis. And many readers seemed to capture the drift and skip the disclaimers. They followed the “always” and “the key” and the many examples of temporal blessings, and did not find in Jabez a call to new desires, a new heart, and new birth — to become a new person and so offer new prayers in new ways that turn many natural expectations upside down.
Pray on Repeat?
While I could say more about both the good and the bad, let me boil it down to what may have been the chief imbalance in the book: the final chapter and charge.
Perhaps the biggest problem practically is taking a potentially good sermon on Jabez that might otherwise inform a dynamic, authentic, engaging life of prayer and ending with the charge “to make the Jabez prayer for blessing part of the daily fabric of your life” (87). This may be all too predictable in the genre of self-help, but it’s hard not to see an obvious imbalance when it comes to Scripture. Should we raise any passage to the level of “pray this daily,” not to mention two verses “tucked away” in a genealogy? Wilkinson continues, “I encourage you to follow unwaveringly the plan outlined here for the next thirty days. By the end of that time, you’ll be noticing significant changes in your life, and the prayer will be on its way to becoming a treasured, lifelong habit” (87).
Here, at least, is a serious problem of proportion — first to this prayer (and what of Scripture’s far more prominent prayers?) and then to doing so daily, and then following this plan unwaveringly. And with it, the promise that “you’ll be noticing significant changes in your life” in just thirty days.
In the end, we might say a serious flaw in this Christian book is how easily it accommodates unregenerate palates, appealing to mainly natural desires, even among the born again. Also sorely and startingly lacking is a scriptural vision of life’s pains and suffering in this age. (For those interested, Tim Challies tells the story of Wilkinson’s Jabez-fueled “Dream for Africa” and its “abject failure” a few years after the book’s “success.”)
Can We Pray with Jabez?
What are we to do today, some twenty years later? The antidote to vain repetition of Scripture would not be to throw out Scripture! Rather, we want to have all the Bible, and all its prayers — not just one or two — inform and shape our lives of prayer for a lifetime. With regards to Jabez’s prayer, we might ask what we, as Christians, indeed can glean from an inspired genealogy not by way of a mantra to repeat but through timeless principles to guide and energize a dynamic life of prayer.
Jabez’s story does jump out at us from its surroundings. It’s easy for me to imagine taking these two verses as a sermon text, as Seume did, to celebrate biblical principles found here and elsewhere in Scripture and seek to inform the whole of a Christian’s prayer life. One important reality that Wilkinson does not draw attention to — but makes Jabez’s story, and his prayer, perhaps even more inspiring — is its context in Judah’s line. This is the line of the kings. Jabez is surrounded by regal ancestry and contemporaries, and yet he was born in pain, as the name Jabez (similar to the Hebrew for pain) commemorates. Noting this context might go a long way in helping us see the effect on the original readers; read the story in light of redemptive history, culminating in the Lion of Judah; and receive today and learn from the prayer in balance.
Consider, then, what lessons we might take from Jabez, alongside the full testimony of Scripture, for our own prayer lives.
1. God Rescues from Pain (in His Timing)
His mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”
We are not told what the particular pain was. There’s beauty in that. Such unspecified pain invites us to identify with Jabez, and imitate him, whatever our pain might be. We all, after all, are born in pain (Genesis 3:16), born into a sin-sick, pain-wracked world, being sinners ourselves and “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3).
Whatever the source, Jabez’s life started hard. But apparently he didn’t wallow in it, or resign himself to victim status. Nor did he seek to make up for it with his own muscle and determination. Rather, he turned to God. “Jabez called upon the God of Israel,” and in doing so, he directed his focus, and faith, in the right direction.
“Many of the most admirable saints have endured great pains the whole of their earthly lives.”
Our God is indeed a rescuer. He does not promise to keep his people pain-free, but he does delight to rescue us from pain once we’re in it. And that, importantly, not according to our timetable, but his. Some divine rescues come quickly; many do not. Many of the most admirable saints have endured great pains the whole of their earthly lives.
2. God (Often) Grows Faithful Influence
Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border . . .
It is good to seek God’s blessing, and, in particular, to do so on God’s terms. And seeking to enlarge one’s border, or expand space and influence, is deeply human by God’s design from the beginning: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28). Christ himself commissioned his disciples to enlarge the borders of his kingdom, making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19).
Even one so exemplary, and humble, as the apostle Paul would testify to his holy ambition, under Christ, to enlarge the borders of his influence, going through Rome to Spain (Romans 15:23–24). Paul also writes candidly to the Corinthians about his team’s “area of influence among you” being “greatly enlarged, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you” (2 Corinthians 10:15–16). God does mean for his people to pray for the enlarging of their influence, not for personal comforts, but for gospel advance, for the strengthening of churches, for the serving of Christ’s great mission and purposes in the world.
And these are prayers God often answers — but not always. Oh, what difference lies in such little words! And once we have prayed for the figurative enlarging of our borders, for Christ’s sake, we are wise to be ready for God to do very different reckoning and measuring than we might expect.
3. God (Often) Provides Strength When Asked
. . . and that your hand might be with me . . .
Yes and amen to asking God for his hand to be with us — his hand, meaning his power and strength and help. It is significant that Jabez didn’t just want a big, upfront donation from God to then turn and cultivate in his own strength. Rather, Jabez acknowledges that his own strength will not be sufficient. He needs God’s help every step along the way.
Perhaps his humbling and painful beginnings taught him this lesson earlier in life than most. Jabez was “honored” (more so than his brothers) not because of his noble birth, great wealth, and manifest ability, but because he owned his own weaknesses and limitations and asked for God to be his strength. That Jabez surpassed his brothers displays God’s strength. Jabez pleads that God’s hand be with him, and in doing so, Jabez admits (as every human should) that his own power and skill are not adequate.
4. God Keeps Us from (Some) Harm
. . . and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!
Finally, Jabez asked for God’s protection. It is good to pray to our God that he keep us from harm and pain — even as we know that he at times leads us, as he did his own Son, into the wilderness, and into the valley of the shadow of death.
“Who can fathom what temptations and harm countless saints have been spared because they humbly asked their Father?”
Jesus too taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:4), and in the garden, the night before he died, he instructed his men twice, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:40, 46). God really does keep us from some temptations in response to our prayers. Prayer matters. The sovereign God chooses to rule the universe in such a way that, under his hand, some events transpire (or not) because his people prayed. Who can fathom what temptations, and what harm, countless saints have been spared because they humbly asked their Father?
And our God does not promise to keep us from all harm, or from all temptations. In fact, we are promised that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). So, we do not presume such protection, nor is it wasted breath to ask.
God Gave What He Asked
That God granted what Jabez asked doesn’t mean God did it in the way Jabez envisioned or in the timing Jabez hoped. So too for us. God does delight to answer the prayers of his children, but we do not presume that he does so when and how we prefer. He is “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). And he answers and exalts his faithful “at the proper time” (1 Peter 5:6) — and on his terms, not ours.
When his children ask for bread or fish or an egg, our God does not give them a stone or a serpent or scorpion (Matthew 7:9–11; Luke 11:11–13). He does not give them, in the end, worse than what they asked. But better. He knows how to give good gifts to his children, and far more than we typically ask — and climactically, he gives us himself. But not on our cue. And not in response to parroting biblical words.
Jabez’s prayer is no promise that God will do what we ask and when. However, 1 Chronicles 4:9–10 is a rousing call to the prayerless, and to the pained, to draw near to Judah’s greatest descendant. Our God does redeem his people. He brings joy to the bitter. He brings honor to the pained. He exalts the humble. He gives the crown of glory to the shamed. He raises his crucified Son. In Christ, God turns us and our world upside down, including our prayers.
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What Is Slavery Like Without Threatening? Ephesians 6:5–9, Part 6
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
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The Light and Momentary Success of the Wicked
The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. (Psalm 16:4)
So far in Psalm 16, David has sought refuge in God, asking for God to preserve and keep him. He has confessed that Yahweh is not only the Lord, but that he is David’s Lord — the all-sufficient and all-satisfying Good, from whom every good gift comes. And under that greatest Good, one of the chief earthly goods that David has received is the saints in the land, God’s people. They are holy and majestic, delighting David with their grandeur. Because he loves to be near God, David likewise loves to be near his people.
As he continues to pray, David next considers another group of people, those who run after other gods. Perhaps he has in mind the nations around Israel, who seek refuge not in Yahweh, but in Baal, Dagon, and Ashtoreth. Israel is married to Yahweh, covenantally bound to him as her Lord and Husband. The nations, on the other hand, have married false gods, demonic powers. They have run after them and acquired them in marriage.
And what has happened as a result? When David considers the saints and their marriage to Yahweh, he thinks of the majesty of mountains with great delight and pleasure. When he considers idolaters around them, he sees a very different picture — sorrows, pains, injuries, hardships, and wounds. And not just static sorrows, but multiplying, growing, and abounding sorrows.
“Having run after other gods and acquired them, the ungodly have brought down on themselves pain, strife, and hurt.”
Having run after other gods and acquired them, the ungodly have brought down on themselves pain, strife, and hurt.
Prosperity of the Wicked?
Such sorrows are not always immediately evident to us. In Psalm 73, Asaph expresses his dismay at the prosperity of the wicked, and his confusion at their success. The wicked have no pangs until death; they are well-fed and insulated from trouble. They don’t have the struggles and hardships that most men do (verses 4–5). Despite their pride, violence, folly, malice, and oppression, they prosper and succeed in all that they do (verses 6–9). They are always at ease as they increase in their riches, brazenly mocking God for not seeing and not knowing of their evil (verses 10–12).
Such a picture stands in stark contrast to David’s observation in Psalm 16. So how can these two pictures be reconciled? Do the sorrows of idolaters multiply, or are the wicked always at ease? Does their idolatry injure them and cause harm, or does it redound to their prosperity and success?
Asaph shows us the way. His vexation gives way to clarity, but only after he worships Yahweh in the sanctuary. Only after he seeks refuge in God as his highest good is he able to discern the end of the wicked (Psalm 73:17). And when he does, he draws the same conclusion as David.
Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin.How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms. (Psalm 73:18–20)
In other words, while the wicked may prosper for a moment, in the end their sorrows will multiply. Their foot slides in due time. Having run after vanity, they dissolve into phantoms. Having worshiped creatures, they fall under a curse. In the end, the bill comes due.
“While the wicked may prosper for a moment, in the end their sorrows will multiply.”
In this life, the sorrows of the wicked are unevenly distributed. At times, we see their destruction early, when God gives them a taste of the harvest they have sown. We see it in the consequences of their actions — the brokenness, pain, and loss wrought by sin. This is a severe mercy, a kindness from God that is meant to lead the wicked (and us) to repentance.
But others avoid such earthly sorrows. They temporarily evade being swept away. But even these are storing up wrath for “the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5). And when that day comes, the sorrows will multiply forever.
False Worship and False Confession
Having observed and discerned the end of idolatry, David must act on what he knows. And so, he commits to avoiding their idolatrous sacrifices and their false confessions. In particular here, he mentions avoiding their “drink offerings.”
Israel offered drink offerings to Yahweh as part of the sacrificial system (Leviticus 23). In Israel’s drink offering, the priest poured out wine on behalf of the worshiper, in conjunction with one of the other primary offerings, whether an ascension offering, peace offering, or purification offering (Numbers 15; 28–29). Such offerings were to be offered only once Israel had entered and taken possession of the land. In the Bible, wine signifies triumph, celebration, and rest. As one commentator puts it, bread is morning food, eaten to give strength for the day’s labor; wine is evening food, imbibed at the end of the day in gratitude for a job finished and done well. Thus, drink offerings of wine were meant to celebrate God’s triumph over his enemies and his faithfulness to his promises.
In Psalm 16, then, David refuses to participate in idolatrous drink offerings. More specifically, he rejects “drink offerings of blood.” While blood was certainly used in Israel’s sacrifices — sprinkled on the horns of the altar or poured out at the base of the altar — Israel was strictly forbidden to drink blood. The nations around Israel, however, seemed to have drunk blood, and they also offered some to their gods in drink offerings. Because “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11), it’s possible that they did so in order to receive life from the animal that was slain. Israel, in contrast, received life directly from Yahweh himself.
More than simply rejecting their sacrifices, David also rejects their confession. Refusing to take their name on his lips is more than simply avoiding saying the wrong word. David is refusing to invoke the names of the false gods, refusing to call upon them as his lord. This is the counterpart to his seeking refuge in Yahweh and confessing him as Lord.
Model of Faithful Resistance
For us today, David’s clear-eyed fidelity to God is a model. We too often see the wicked prospering in the world. Their sin, far from harming them, seems to enable their success, and in doing so, it becomes a temptation to us. The pressure to go along — to placate the false gods of our evil age, to invoke the world’s objects of trust and worship, to run after other gods in order to fit in and find earthly success — is real.
But we must discern their end. Their sorrows will multiply. The ease, if it exists, will last only a moment. The light and momentary success of the wicked is working for them an eternal weight of affliction that will far outweigh earthly prosperity.
And when we discern this end, we are strengthened to resist the pressure of our age. Rather than conforming ourselves to the pattern of this world, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. Rather than seeking to placate false gods or false men, we offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God alone (Romans 12:1–2). Rather than echoing the lies and falsehoods in our society, we say with our lips and from our hearts, “Jesus is our Lord; we have no good apart from him.”
