http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15186645/how-fleeting-pleasures-sidetrack-our-love
Audio Transcript
We are far too easily pleased. That’s the problem in America. We are not too hedonistic, too pleasure-centered. No. We are not pleasure-centered enough. We settle for the world’s paltry joy at the expense of giving our lives to pursue our deepest and most lasting joy. And in settling for the trivial pleasures of the world, we undermine both of our chief callings in life, the two great love commandments that we have: to love God with everything we have, and to love others as ourselves. In fact, it is only as we pursue our highest joy that we are driven to enact these loves — an essential but counterintuitive point we make in Christian Hedonism.
And it was a point Pastor John was making back in 1983, as he was first putting that Christian Hedonism into a sermon series for his church. From that essential series would come the book Desiring God, and this entire ministry. Today, I want to share a clip from his sermon “The Labor of Christian Hedonism,” preached on October 2, 1983. Have a listen.
If you and I don’t pursue our ministry because we expect to find great joy in it, then we don’t pursue the command of God.
There’s another verse. This one is so familiar you don’t need to look it up. It’s Acts 20:35. And strikingly, it’s Paul’s address to another group of elders. Listen to how he motivates those elders to care for the weak: “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
“If you don’t pursue ministry because you expect great joy in it, then you don’t pursue the command of God.”
Now, when Paul says, “remember this; keep it in your mind,” he must mean that when it’s in your mind, it functions rightly as a conscious motive for ministry. He must mean that the moral value of our generosity in ministry isn’t ruined when we pursue it hedonistically, like so many people think it is. It is not wrong to desire and to pursue the blessedness that Jesus promised when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” He didn’t say, “Now this is the truth, and get it out of your head as soon as you can, lest you do it.” Pursue the blessedness that comes from giving.
Content with Broken Cisterns
Which brings us back to where we were last week — what’s the hindrance to love in the church? It’s the same hindrance to worship. The thing that keeps us from obeying the first vertical commandment is the same thing that keeps us from obeying the second horizontal commandment. And it is not that we are all trying to please ourselves, but that we are far too easily pleased.
We don’t really believe Jesus when he says, “There’s more joy, more blessedness, more full and lasting pleasure, in giving, in a life devoted to helping others, than there is in a life devoted to our material comfort.” We don’t believe it. And therefore, the very longing for contentment that, according to Jesus, ought to drive us to simplicity of life and labors of love, contents itself instead with the broken cisterns of American prosperity and comfort.
The message that needs to be shouted from the top of the IDS Tower and the city center to pleasure-seeking Americans is this: “Hey, Americans! You’re not nearly hedonistic enough. Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal. Go for broke. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where no moth and rust corrupt, where no thieves can break in and steal. Quit being satisfied with little 5.25 percent yields of pleasure that get eaten up with the moths of inflation and the rust of death (Matthew 6:19–21). Invest in the blue-chip, high-yield, divinely insured securities of heaven.”
A life devoted to material comforts and thrills is like throwing money down a rat hole. But a life simplified for the sake of love yields dividends unsurpassed and unending. Hear the word of the Lord, O Americans: Sell your possessions. Give alms. Provide for yourselves purses that do not grow old, and treasures in the heavens that do not fail. Come on. Become real hedonists. Wake up.
“It is more blessed to love than to live in luxury.”
That’s the message. We’ve got gospel. We’ve got good news to share with the world. Leave the broken cisterns of temporary, unsatisfying pleasures. Come to Christ, in whose presence there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). Join us in the labor of Christian hedonism. For the Lord has spoken, “It is more blessed to love than to live in luxury.” Oh, that we believed it — that the Lord’s word were believable to us.
Love Better Than Life
Turn to Hebrews 10. I am just amazed at what I’ve seen in Hebrews 10, 11, and 12. He is so amazingly consistent in his Christian Hedonism — it’s phenomenal. Hebrews 10:32–34:
Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.
You see the situation? Some Christians had been arrested and put in jail. The other believers were facing a moral dilemma: “Do we go underground and pray for them, or do we express our solidarity with them and risk losing our homes?” And the text says that their joy in God’s reward overflowed in love.
Here’s what they did, if I can reconstruct the situation. They looked at their own lives and quoted to themselves Psalm 63:3: “Your steadfast love is better than life.” Then they looked at their houses with all of their furniture passed down from their grandmother — precious vases. And they said to themselves, “We have a possession in heaven that is better and longer lasting than any of this. ‘Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.’” And they went with Jesus to the jail, and they lost their possessions.
And what does it say they felt as they went? Joy! Christian Hedonists, through and through. They knew where their treasure was, and they didn’t have to act according to any sterile sense of duty. They just glutted themselves on the joy of love.
You Might also like
-
How Can a Holy God Have Pleasure in Sinners?
I want to begin with a story that I hope encourages the younger people among us, putting within you a passion to do something significant with your life for the glory of God — and to do it soon, while you are young. Because you may never be old.
The theme of this first Godward Life Conference — the pleasures of God — has its roots first in the Bible, because of how many times God tells us what pleases him. But its roots are also in the life of a pastor and professor in Scotland who died in 1678. His name was Henry Scougal, and he died when he was 27 years old. I draw attention to his age because he was so young when he died, and yet the impact of his life has been amazing.
He wrote one lasting work, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, but he didn’t write it as a book. He wrote it as a long letter to friend — a 100-page letter that begins, “My dear friend.” That friend began to circulate the letter, and it proved so powerful in the lives of others that Gilbert Burnet published it the year that Scougal died. It has been serving the church for over three hundred years now.
Scougal wasn’t the only person who lived a short but hugely significant life:
David Brainerd, the missionary to American Indians, died in 1747 at the age of 29, and his journals shaped the early modern missionary movement.
Henry Martyn, a missionary to India and Persia, died in 1812 when he was 31, his memoirs inspiring generations to this day.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne, a Scottish pastor whose Bible reading program we are still using today, died in 1843 at the age of 29.
Jim Elliot, missionary to the Huaorani people of Ecuador, was matyred alondside four other men in 1956 at the age of 28. In fact, all five of the martyrs that day were under 33.And to broaden out the lens: Alexander the Great died at 33. Martin Luther King Jr. at 39. Mozart at 35. Emily Brontë at 30. John Keats at 26. Anne Frank at 15.
May God give you a passion, young people, to make your lives count for the glory of God — and to do it soon, while you are young. Because you may never be old.
“Make your lives count for the glory of God — and do it soon, while you are young. Because you may never be old.”
And if you are old like me, or somewhere in between, pray like I do: “God, make every remaining day count.” If you have seventy years in front of you, don’t waste it, even now in your teen years. And if you have seventy years behind you, don’t waste what’s left. One of the reasons for creating this new fall conference as an intergenerational conference is to share some of the passions of this school with those who might come to the school and with those who, like me, wish we could sit in on every class.
What Makes a Soul Excellent?
But back to Henry Scougal and the theme of this first Godward Life Conference, the pleasures of God. One sentence in his long letter has shaped this theme. He wrote, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.”
You can see into the excellence of a soul by what that soul loves. And by “loves,” he doesn’t mean merciful love for what is unlovely; he means the love we have for what delights us and gives us pleasure. He says, “The most ravishing pleasures, the most solid and substantial delights that human nature is capable of, are those which arise from the endearments of a well-placed and successful affection.” That’s what he’s talking about when he says, “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love,” by its well-placed affection.
Now Scougal said that about the human soul — how to see the excellence of a human soul. But what struck me in 1987 was that this is also true of God. We can see into the worth and excellency of God himself if he reveals to us the object of his well-placed affections — his solid and substantial delights and pleasures.
In other words, this first conference theme is rooted in one of the passions of Bethlehem College and Seminary. Namely, we want to know God. We want to know what is great and beautiful and excellent and worthy about God, because you can’t enjoy God or love God or trust God or honor God if you don’t know him. If you don’t really know what he is like.
So Henry Scougal gave us a fresh pathway into the knowledge of God. We might say, The worth and excellency of God is to be measured by the object of his love — his delight, his pleasures.
God’s Pleasure in His People
My assignment under this theme is to think with you about God’s pleasures in human responses — that is, our responses to God in what he is and says and does. Or to say it another way: Does God take pleasure in his people, in who we are and what we do?
The biblical answer is plainly yes:
Isaiah 62:4–5: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken . . . you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you . . . as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”
Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God . . . will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
Colossians 1:9–10: “We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you might . . . walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:9: “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.”
Philippians 4:18: “I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.”
Hebrews 13:16: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”So, the answer is yes. God can and does take pleasure in his people — in who they are and what they do. As C. S. Lewis puts it in the Weight of Glory: “To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
Deserving of Displeasure
Now the question becomes, How can this be? “You are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13). But all human beings are sinners. Paul writes:
Both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; . . . Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. (Romans 3:9–10, 19–20)
That means, Paul says, that by virtue of our sinful nature, human beings are not children of God. They are children of wrath. He adds in Ephesians 2:1–3: “You were . . . following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
All mankind are children of wrath. The wrath of God — not the pleasure of God, but the displeasure of God — is coming to us like the inheritance of a parent comes naturally to a child: “Children of wrath.” Or as Jesus put it, “Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). Remains. It was ours by nature. And without rescue it remains — forever (Revelation 14:10–11).
So how can it be that there would ever be a people in whom God could delight, a people in whom he would feel pleasure, rather than the displeasure of wrath? How can that be? And if there were a way that it could be, that God could actually be pleased with sinners, how could he then be holy and righteous? It’s one thing to be merciful to the unlovely; it’s another thing to delight in the ungodly.
Called to Life by Christ
Christianity exists, the church exists, Bethlehem College & Seminary exists, because God answered this greatest of all problems with Christ.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (Romans 5:6–9)
That is the greatest event and the most glorious news in all the world: “Having been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from wrath.” God’s love in Christ saved us from God’s wrath. God saved us from God. “He did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). Who then is not under the wrath of God? Answer: All who are justified. “Having been justified by his blood, much more shall be saved by him from wrath.”
And who are the justified? Romans 8:30: “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” All those who are predestined to be God’s sons are called. All the called are justified, which means that all the called are brought to faith, because only by faith is anyone justified. Romans 5:1: “[Having] been justified by faith, we have peace with God.” Therefore, all the called believe.
That is what the call of God does — it creates life and faith. Therefore, we may fill out Romans 8:30 like this: “Those whom he predestined he called, and those whom he called believed, and those who believed he justified, and those whom he justified he glorified.” It is so sure that it is as though the whole process is finished.
Double Imputation
So the foundational key to how sinners can please God and become an actual ingredient in the divine happiness is justification in Christ by faith. How can that be? Justification includes two things. In union with Jesus Christ, it includes the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of God’s righteousness.
And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (Romans 4:5–8)
In Christ, first, the sins of all who believe are nailed to the cross (Colossians 2:14). They are punished, condemned (Romans 8:3). By trusting Jesus, by embracing him as our treasured Savior, we receive forgiveness because of that once-for-all transaction on the cross. That’s one aspect of justification: our sins are not reckoned against us. They were laid on Jesus. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).
The other aspect of justification is that God reckoned his own righteousness in Christ to be ours. He counted us righteous in union with Christ. As Paul says, “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:8–9).
Or as he says in Romans 5:19, comparing Adam’s disobedience and Christ’s obedience: “As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Or once more in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
By Grace Through Faith
In sum, then, God’s love rescues us from God’s wrath by giving his only Son as a substitute for us. By Christ’s perfect obedience unto death, he bore our sins, and he provided perfect righteousness, which is then imputed to us — counted as ours — in justification.
Christ alone is the sole ground, foundation, basis of our justification. We do not add anything to his justifying suffering and death. We do not add anything to his justifying righteousness. None of our deeds, none of our thoughts, none of our feelings add anything to the righteousness that God takes into account as the basis of our justification. It is all Christ’s. God is one hundred percent for us forever because of justification.
Our forgiveness and our imputed righteousness, to use the words of Paul in Romans 3:24–25, are “by his grace as a gift . . . to be received by faith.” Faith is not part of justifying righteousness. Faith receives forgiveness, and faith receives righteousness — because faith receives Christ. Faith welcomes Christ, embraces Christ, as a supremely treasured Savior and Lord.
So! Does God now look upon us with delight, pleasure? Are justified sinners in this life pleasing to God, even before the final sin-obliterating glorification? Yes. God said when he looked upon Christ at his baptism and at his transfiguration, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17; Matthew 17:5). To put it another way: “I have much pleasure in beholding my Son.” Therefore, since we are united with Christ, and counted as righteousness with his righteousness, we are God’s treasured, loved, delighted-in children.
Perfected, Loved, and Disciplined
But you say, I still sin. Is he not displeased with my sin? Yes, he is. But this does not cancel out his delight in you, as you are in Christ. Consider these words, which the writer to the Hebrews quotes in Hebrews 12:5–6 from Proverbs 3:11–12:
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.
In the very act of disciplining his son for displeasing behavior, he has never lost his delight in his son. So when you experience suffering as the child of God, remember two things about God’s treatment of you.
My Father disapproves of the remaining corruption in me and is loving me enough to refine my faith and my holiness through discipline.
My Father is doing this discipline on the unshakeable, unchangeable basis that I am totally forgiven for all my sins, all my displeasing behavior, and totally righteous in Christ, and totally pleasing before my Father, as he sees me in union with his perfect Son Jesus.Now that may appear to you as a paradox, that God would discipline those whom he regards in Christ as perfect. But listen to Hebrews 10:14: “By a single offering [Christ] has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Our perfection, in one sense, is finished. “By a single offering he has perfected [us] for all time . . .” God sees us as perfected in our union with Christ, forgiven, justified.
But in another sense, we are not yet sinlessly perfect. He has perfected those who are being now, little by little, sanctified — gradually made holy. We know this all too well. In our daily, earthly lives we are embattled and imperfect.
“We seek to please God in daily life because we are already perfectly pleasing to God in Christ.”
And the absolutely crucial essence of Christian ethics, which sets Christianity apart from all other religions, is that we pursue our daily, earthly holiness precisely on the basis that we are already holy. We pursue daily, earthly righteousness on the basis that we are already righteous. That’s why Paul says things like, “Cleanse out the old leaven . . . as you really are unleavened” (1 Corinthians 5:7). And we seek to please God in daily life because we are already perfectly pleasing to God in Christ.
God’s Pleasure in Our Daily Lives
Can we succeed? That’s our one last question, and we ask it to the Lord.
Father, with profound thankfulness in my heart for what Christ did in dying for me, and for bringing me to faith in him, and for the forgiveness of all my sins, and the imputation of his perfect righteousness to me, so that in him I am pleasing in your sight — with profound thankfulness for all that glorious gospel reality, I now ask you, Can I in my daily life on this earth please you by the way I think and feel and act? Can my thinking and feeling and acting become an ingredient in your pleasure?
Father, I am not asking that you replace Christ’s obedience with my obedience as the basis of my justification. God forbid! I’m not asking that my imperfect growth in holiness replace Christ’s perfect holiness as the basis of your being one hundred percent for me. I’m taking my stand there and asking: Can you find pleasure in my imperfect efforts to think and feel and act in holiness, in love, in justice?
God’s answer to this question in the Bible is yes.
Paul prays for the Colossian Christians, “[May] you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work” (Colossians 1:10).
He says to the Philippians, “The gifts you sent, [are] a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God” (Philippians 4:18).
He says to the Corinthians, “Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him” (2 Corinthians 5:9).
He urges the Ephesians, “Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).It is possible for imperfect, justified sinners to please God — to be an ingredient in the divine pleasure — not only by union with Christ in justification, but also by depending on Christ in sanctification — in transformation. Not only because we stand perfected in his righteousness, but also because he empowers us for our righteousness.
Six Pieces in Paul
Why is that the case? How can the all-holy, perfect God be pleased with my imperfect thoughts and feelings and actions as a Christian? The answer is found in two amazing verses in 2 Thessalonians. There are six pieces to the answer. I’ll point them out as I read it:
To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling [which would be pleasing in his sight] and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12)
Let’s put the pieces together.
First, at the bottom, at the root, of our action, our work, our behavior, is the grace of God and of Christ. Grace — absolutely unearned, undeserved favor.
That grace is manifest in God’s power in us for good works.
We experience that power in us by faith. We look away from ourselves. We admit we can do nothing without him. We look to grace. And we embrace grace. And we trust grace as our treasured hope for holiness.
In that faith we do good works. We do righteousness. We do mercy. We do love. We do justice. Paul calls these “works of faith,” and in other places he calls them “obedience of faith.”
Jesus gets the glory for our works of faith because his grace and his power were decisive in bringing about the works of faith.
In this way you walk worthily of your calling, so that your walk, your behavior, is pleasing to God.I’ll read it again:
To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling [which would be pleasing in his sight] and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
“God is pleased with our works of faith because they are his works of power — of grace.”
In short, God is pleased with our works of faith because they are his works of power — of grace. Or to say it another way, God is pleased with our works done in dependence on his grace, because then his grace gets the glory. The giver gets the glory. And that’s the reason he created the world — for “the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:6).
Repeated in Hebrews
Here’s the way the writer to the Hebrews makes the same point with the same six pieces:
Now may the God of peace . . . equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20–21)
At the bottom is Jesus Christ, with his sovereign grace: “Through Jesus Christ.”
He works in us. That is, his grace is manifest as power in our lives for good works.
We do his will by that power.
Jesus gets the glory.
So, our obedience is pleasing in God’s sight.And the piece that was not mentioned from 2 Thessalonians is the link between God’s power and our obedience, namely, faith. But the writer had already made crystal clear in Hebrews 11:6 how essential faith is for obeying and pleasing God: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
Pardoned and Empowered to Please
In summary, then, the same faith that unites us to the pardon of Christ for justification, unites us to the power of Christ for sanctification. The same faith that makes us perfectly pleasing to God by the imputation of his righteousness, makes us progressively pleasing to God by our righteousness.
You will not be perfect in this life. But you can be pleasing to God in this life — perfectly pleasing because of justification, and progressively pleasing because of transformation. You can become, beyond all expectation, an ingredient in the divine pleasure.
The glory of God in Jesus Christ overflowing in grace is God’s supreme delight. When we embrace the grace of God in Christ as our only hope for imputation and transformation, he is pleased. Or as we like to say here at Bethlehem College & Seminary, we are his pleasure when he is our treasure.
-
Attack at Dawn: The Spiritual War Against Ordinary Devotions
Every morning summons us to a feast. With each new day, the inviting voice of Isaiah 55 beckons, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. . . . Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food” (Isaiah 55:1–2).
So, with the Book in hand, we turn Godward with the parched and famished soul of Psalm 63, acknowledging our need and anticipating his banquet: “My soul thirsts for you. . . . My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food” (Psalm 63:1, 5). In Christ, we come to God, through his word, as those who thirst come to water, to receive wine and milk without cost (Isaiah 55:1), as those who hunger to be satisfied with true bread.
Each new morning dawns with divine mercies to quench our thirst and satiate our souls.
Ideally, this is the main feel of morning meditation in God’s word: feeding, eating, drinking, being satisfied. Not the feel of battle and combat, but of feasting. But mark this: as sinners, in a cursed world, with a real enemy — to keep feeding, we also must fight.
Ordinary devotions are nothing less than war.
Devil Rise Early
“Did God actually say . . . ?”
From that very first temptation, the enemy has set his sights on the words of God. If we’ve already heard them, he’ll question them. But even better, he knows, would be to keep us from hearing God in the first place.
The devil and his team know how powerful are the words of God, and how vital they are for our life and health. They know the devastating power of ordinary Bible intake. They know the power of fire to warm coals, and the power of God’s word to feed saving faith and keep believing hearts soft. They know, and tremble at, the explosive, world-altering force of faithful Christians sitting down morning by morning — without fireworks or theatrics or applause — to the quiet glory of ordinary devotions.
So, the devils will do whatever they can to disrupt the morning feast. They launch their campaign under the cloak of darkness, and attack at dawn. But we are not left to be outwitted by their schemes, ignorant of satanic designs (2 Corinthians 2:11). The devil may prowl like a roaring lion, seeking to devour (1 Peter 5:8). Yet with sober-mindedness and watchfulness, we can observe, and reinforce, his likely points of attack.
Three Assaults on Bible Intake
Consider, then, how our enemy often leverages the patterns of our world, with the sins and weaknesses of our own flesh, to plot against the ordinary, quiet, unhurried, early-morning feeding of our souls in the word of God.
1. Keep Them Up Late
The campaign begins the night before, at dusk: keep them up too late. It could be a sleepless child. It could be some tangible, late-breaking need, requiring an act of love. It could be analog human conversation or a late-night event. All the old stuff. But these days, machines are now doing a good bit of the work. Our many screens — from big ones on the walls to the little ones in our pockets — are very efficient at burning the midnight oil.
The spiritual war for ordinary devotions begins long before the sun comes up. The sober-minded and watchful observe it, and act with wisdom — ready to sacrifice the good of sleep in the call of Christian love, and eager not to squander God’s gift for the follies of late-night bingeing and scrolling. One bad habit can knock other good ones out of sync. The enemy would have us be blinded to the cascading effects of empty late nights.
2. Distract Them
If we do retire at an actual human hour, not all is lost for the enemy: distract them in the morning. Which can be quick work.
In one sense, it’s always been easy. Even in the mid-seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) lamented our universal proneness to distraction: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” We don’t need endless news and the Internet to sidetrack our attention — yet now we have them and, oh, how susceptible we can be. The smartphone, its notifications, and infinite scrolls are particularly ensnaring.
3. Make Them Rush
A third enemy scheme is hurry. The devil would have the motor of our souls run at the same RPMs first thing in the morning as it does the rest of the day. He would have us move at the world’s pace, rather than the Word’s. He would even happily have us try to do too much in morning devotions, so that we do it all too quickly.
As columnist Thomas Friedman has written, we find ourselves living in an “age of accelerations.” Our world pressures us and conditions us to adopt its pace, and we are prone to internalize its speed as our own — and bring the rat race with us when we come to God’s word.
But the morning feast of Bible meditation is not fast food, and not to be treated as such.
Three Attacks on Temptation
How, then, might we combat the devil’s schemes? It’s one thing to anticipate how the demons will attack; it’s another to act on that knowledge. What will you do to thwart the evil forces set against daily Bible reading and meditation?
1. Handle Screens with Care
Among other practical strategies, we might learn to handle our screens with special care. Think how much less prone to morning distraction you might be if you kept the phone silenced, upside down, and further away than arm’s length. Or even better, in another room.
For our souls to start the day feasting on God, we need not only to make time, and be realistic about what we have, but also to guard it by getting to bed, getting up, and avoiding morning diversions. Both the night before and morning of, screens and their content, with their glittering pixels, are great distractors of souls.
For many of us in modern life, we can hardly avoid them. We work at them and use them for our jobs. We spend a shocking amount of our days and weeks on them, much of it for good. But exercising particular caution with our screens after dark, and before meeting with God in his word, is becoming the greater part of modern Christian wisdom.
You might also consider going old school with a paper Bible. Those do not ring, vibrate, or notify. And paper actually helps a reader slow down and experience “the precious milliseconds of deep reading processes.”
2. Gather a Day’s Portion
A glorious simplicity accompanies “ordinary devotions,” the kind that feed and sustain souls for a lifetime. Admirable as it may be to try to read this book and that commentary, and study these topics, and memorize those verses, and even pray long lists — and all that in addition to reading and meditating on God’s word — trying to do too much in the morning will undermine the rest and feast of being in God’s presence and enjoying him, and his Son, through his word.
One way to put it: seek simply to gather a day’s portion each morning. Like God’s people, collecting manna each day in the wilderness, aim to feed your heart’s hunger and quench your soul’s thirst for just that day. No need to catch up from yesterday’s missed readings, or try to get ahead to store up for tomorrow or next week. God will take care of tomorrow. Rather, come to eat and drink and be satisfied today. In other words, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t try to do too much, but cultivate a faithful realism for the long haul.
3. Chew Your Food Slowly
Finally, save your hustle for the rest of the day. Slow down, if you’re still able. It may take some time to learn how. Seek to chew your food slowly and enjoy it. Such savoring in the moment also helps us to carry it with us into the ups and downs, and pressures and accelerations, of the day.
The biblical image of meditation dovetails with the feasting pictures of Isaiah 55 and Psalm 63. Hebrew meditation is like an animal chewing the cud. I’m no farmer, but the few cows I’ve observed doing this did not seem to be in any sort of hurry. If you’re going to be like a cow, be it first thing in the morning as you chew slowly, unhurriedly, even leisurely, on the words of God in Scripture.
Ancient books in general, and the Bible in particular, were not meant to be read with speed, like we today have been conditioned to read (that is, skim). Learn a whole new gear for Bible reading. Read slowly, and reread. Seek to enjoy God and his world and his glory and his Son. Don’t swallow too quickly and move on, but chew slowly and savor his grace.
War is not the main mindset for early mornings. Come to God’s word to feast and be satisfied. But know this is nothing less than battle. Consider the devil’s common schemes, and fight to guard the feast.
-
Let There Be Rest: Recovering Healthy Weekly Rhythms
In the beginning, God created rhythms. He spoke on day four,
Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. (Genesis 1:14)
When Adam entered Eden two days later, he stepped into a dance of day and night, month and year, winter and spring and summer and fall. And then, between the rhythms of the day and the month, God added one more, a pattern taught not by the heavens but by his own example: the seven-day rhythm of the week (Genesis 2:1–3).
God could have made a rhythm-less world if he wanted — a world without days and weeks and months and years. But in his wisdom, days four and seven of creation serve day six; rhythms make the world a good habitation for finite humans, in need of rest and refreshment. As creatures of dust, we are creatures of rhythm.
“Which is why it’s so concerning,” Kevin DeYoung writes, “that our lives are getting more and more rhythm-less.” He represents many when he says,
We don’t have healthy routines. We can’t keep our feasting and fasting apart. Evening and morning have lost their feel. Sunday has lost its significance. Everything is blurred together. The faucet is a constant drip. (Crazy Busy, 94)
In other words, life today looks less like Eden, and more like Egypt.
Days in Egypt
By the time we reach Exodus 1, Genesis 1–2 is a lost world. We find no reference to weeks or months, seasons or years in Egypt — only to an endless sequence of workdays. Perhaps some Egyptians lived by routines of work and rest. But for Pharaoh’s slaves, Egypt was a world without rhythms.
Unlike the restful God of creation (Genesis 2:2–3), Pharaoh exhibits a single-minded madness for labor and production. When Israel grows mighty, he sets them to work (Exodus 1:11). When Moses tells him to let the people go, he makes their work harder (Exodus 5:4). And when Israel finally leaves Egypt, he pursues, wondering how he could have allowed them to leave their work (Exodus 14:5). To Pharaoh, a slave’s 80-year life was merely a sequence of 29,200 workdays, inconveniently disrupted by the need for sleep.
“As creatures of dust, we are creatures of rhythm.”
Though the modern West has no singular equivalent of Egypt’s restless king, the cultural air we breathe carries a pharaonic scent. Not only do average work hours in America exceed that of many other countries, but as DeYoung notes, the boundaries between work and rest have stretched and blurred. We no longer need to go to the office to make our bricks; we just need Wi-Fi. And even our “off time” regularly falls prey to what Andrew Lincoln calls “the hectic round of activities [showing] that leisure itself is caught on the treadmill of working and consuming” (From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, 404).
Such is the rhythm-less life, a life with no square on the calendar labeled “Rest.” And many need a fresh exodus.
‘You Shall Not Work’
As soon as God rescues Israel, rhythms return. The first mentions of month and year appear as God commands Israel to celebrate the exodus annually (Exodus 12:2–3). Soon after, we find the first reference to the Sabbath (Exodus 16:23), Israel’s weekly commemoration of creation and redemption (Exodus 20:11; Deuteronomy 5:15). The drumbeat of endless days gives way to the rhythm of the seasons.
Pharaoh knew only how to say, “You shall work,” but God knows how to say, “You shall not work.” Over a dozen times, he tells his redeemed people, “You shall not do any work” (or “any ordinary work”) — a command that applied not only to the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10), but also to Israel’s festivals (Leviticus 23:7–8, 21, 25, 31, 35–36). In this blessed shall not, God snatched something of Egypt out of the lives of his people, and put something of Eden in its place.
Today, of course, we no longer live under the old covenant and its cultic rhythms. Christians are not bound to observe Israel’s festivals — nor even to keep a literal Sabbath, which, along with the festivals, has found its fulfillment in Christ (Colossians 2:16–17). But the imperative to rest still reaches us today, indirectly if not directly.
The heavens above still sing their rhythmic song. We still walk as creatures of the dust. God’s 6-and-1 pattern still invites our imitation. And Jesus’s own routines of work and rest still model the fully human life (Mark 1:35; 6:30–32). “You shall not work,” though not a covenantal command, is still the wisdom of the saints.
Reclaiming Rhythm
So, how might we begin unlearning the rhythm-less ways of Pharaoh? How might we gather up our days into some sustainable pattern of work and rest? Though we would be wise to consider, at some point, seasonal or annual rhythms of rest (in the form of weekend retreats or weeklong vacations, for example), weekly rest is likely our best starting point.
“If nightly sleep places a period at the end of each day’s sentence, weekly rest adds a paragraph break.”
If nightly sleep places a period at the end of each day’s sentence, weekly rest adds a paragraph break: once a week, we slow down, catch our breath, and live in the white space of life’s page. We pause after the pattern of the world’s first week and remember that we were made for rhythms; we were made for work and rest.
Consider, then, a few modest first steps.
Set boundaries.
Rhythms of rest require boundaries. The best resters build a gate in time, the entrance of which reads, “No work allowed.” The boundary need not protect a strict 24-hour period (since, again, we are not under the fourth commandment). But unless we put a boundary around some period of time — Friday morning, Thursday afternoon and evening, sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday — rest will likely prove elusive.
Setting a boundary, of course, is far easier than keeping a boundary. As soon as we build a gate, something will start banging on it. Keeping the door closed calls for bold faith that God will provide for us once we set down the pen, close the computer, finish for the day. God told Israel to rest not only when work allowed for it, but even “in plowing time and in harvest” (Exodus 34:21). In other words, “Even in your busiest seasons, when your livelihood seems to depend on restless work, trust me and rest.”
To be sure, we would be wrong to set our boundaries so firmly that we close our ears to urgent needs. That kind of coldhearted boundary-keeping made Jesus angry (Mark 3:1–5). But exceptions to our boundaries should be just that: exceptions. If they become the rule, we may need to reevaluate our sense of what needs truly are urgent.
Refresh yourself.
As many quickly discover, however, a day off does not equal a day of rest. Just as some people return from a trip saying, “I need a vacation to recover from my vacation,” so we sometimes end a day off feeling like we need another. Maybe we packed the day with good but exhausting activities (sports practices, home projects, taxing social events), or maybe we entertained ourselves into oblivion. Either way, our “rest” has left us more restless than rested.
Again, God’s own pattern gives us our goal: “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17). Following God into this kind of rest requires not only setting boundaries, but also filling those boundaries with genuinely refreshing activities — activities that send us back into our work replenished in mind, soul, and body, ready to spend and be spent for the good of others.
The kinds of refreshing activities available to us will vary according to life stage, of course. Rest for a husband and father will look different from rest for a single man — less reading and napping, perhaps, and more time with the kids outside. Even still, all of us would do well to consider (and discuss with family or roommates) what some refreshing rest might look like, taking all factors into account.
Perhaps some time alone refreshes us — or perhaps people time does. Maybe we benefit from reading poetry or taking a walk. Some will want to be more physically active; others less. Probably everyone could benefit from curbing digital technologies and finding what Albert Borgmann calls a “focal practice”: an activity that “has a commanding presence, engages your body and mind, and engages you with others” — playing music, fishing, handwriting a letter, cooking a meal.
And of course, one activity rests at the heart of the Christian’s refreshment: worship.
Worship your Redeemer.
Before God gave Israel the fourth commandment, he gave them the first: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2–3). The Sabbath rested on (1) the reminder of redemption and (2) the call to revere God above all. Which implies that, if Israel were really to rest — if they were really to find refreshment in the Sabbath, and not just a day off — they needed to worship their Redeemer.
“Ultimately, rest flows not from a weekly pause, but from a Person.”
Millennia later, Jesus would issue an invitation that follows a similar pattern: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Ultimately, rest flows not from a weekly pause, but from a Person. Unlike Pharaoh, he has no need for store cities and slave labor, for he owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). He looks not first for workers but for worshipers, and he calls us not to Egypt but to the Eden of Himself.
For good reason, then, many Christians seek to join their weekly day of rest with their weekly day of corporate worship. If we can do the same, wonderful. If not, we can at least find some special way to say with both our hearts and our lips, “Jesus, not Pharaoh, is Lord” — and then live it out by laying down our bricks.