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.

Audio Transcript

Well, if you’ve read and studied the Gospels, you notice that in the life of Christ there’s not a lot of detail about temple practices — in particular, animal sacrifices. We know that Jesus, as a small child, was presented at the temple with an offering of turtledoves or pigeons (that’s told to us in Luke 2:24). This was the offering of a poor mother, in lieu of a lamb sacrifice (as permitted in Leviticus 12:8). But this is a pretty rare connection between Christ’s life and temple sacrifices. In fact, later in his ministry, Jesus will forgive sin all by himself, bypassing the whole Jewish sacrificial system altogether. And that leads to a question from Karen, a listener to the podcast who wants to know why.

Here’s her email: “Hello, Pastor John, my name is Karen, and I live in Germany. Thank you for this podcast. My question concerns the act of forgiveness mentioned in the Bible. I have learned that without blood there is no forgiveness. Hence the sacrifices in the Old Testament and the dying of Jesus in the New Testament. I understand that. But what I don’t understand is the period between the two. When Jesus walked on earth, he often addressed people by simply telling them that their sins were forgiven. He didn’t prescribe an offering in the temple. And he had not shed his own blood yet. So how was that possible, under the assumption that blood is still needed for forgiveness?”

This may sound like a question with limited application or a question of interest to only a tiny number of Christians. But I want to show that it touches on the issue that is at the heart of Christianity. Every Christian needs to be aware of it for our own stability and courage and joy. So, hang on.

Forgiveness Requires Blood

The question starts with a biblical assumption from Hebrews 9:22, which says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That’s what it says. So God instituted in the Old Testament the way, the plan, that there would be animal sacrifices, and that sinners who looked to God and, by faith, identified with this killed animal would be forgiven for their sins. The death of the animal would be counted, so to speak, as the punishment for their sin.

For example, in Leviticus 4:15, if the people as a whole have sinned, it says, “The elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the Lord, and the bull shall be killed before the Lord.” Then verse 20 says, “The priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven.” So that’s where Karen’s question starts. God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death, a blood-shedding, in order for sins not to be counted — that is, to be forgiven.

“God regards sin as so evil and so destructive that in order to set things right there must be a death.”

Then the second premise of Karen’s question is that Christ has in fact shed his own blood for sinners so that, if we are united to Christ by faith, our sins are forgiven for his sake. His blood-shedding counts for us.

He became “a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). He bore our condemnation in his flesh (Romans 8:3). This is the center and the glory of the gospel. So Paul says in Romans 5:9, “We have now been justified by his blood,” or in Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood,” or in Ephesians 2:13, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

So Karen’s question is, When Jesus walked the earth, he often addressed people by telling them that their sins are forgiven, but (she says) there was no offering in the temple, and Jesus had not yet died — how’s that possible under the assumption that blood is needed in order to have the forgiveness of God from all the sins that we do or that take place?

Animal Blood Was Not Enough

Now let’s clarify the question, first of all. Whether or not there were sacrifices being offered in the temple, Jesus pronounced forgiveness on his own authority, without any reference to those sacrifices. For example, in Mark 2:5–7, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” And the scribes say, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

So Karen wonders about this relationship of forgiveness that Jesus pronounced to the God-appointed shedding of blood, when Jesus hasn’t yet shed his blood and he isn’t pointing people to the blood-shedding of the animals. And here’s one of the keys that unlocks this puzzle for Karen. In Hebrews 10:4 and 11, the writer says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. . . . Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”

So now we get the startling revelation that all those animal sacrifices actually in themselves accomplished nothing. Oh, we’re not between two really effective seasons here — Old Testament, New Testament. The forgiveness that God pronounced on faithful worshipers in the Old Testament was not ultimately owing to animal sacrifices.

The true saints in the Old Testament, they grasped this — they did, at some level. For example, David said in Psalm 51:16–17, “You will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrary heart, O God, you will not despise.” And God said in Hosea 6:6, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” And Jesus quoted that verse, Hosea 6:6, twice to show how badly some of the Jewish leaders were misreading the Old Testament (in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7).

Every Sacrifice a Pointer

So now we can see that Karen’s question about forgiveness during Jesus’s lifetime really does apply to the entire history of Israel. The animal sacrifices were not achieving the forgiveness of sins — not ever. So what were they doing?

The answer is, they were pointing to Jesus — God’s final, once-for-all, decisive sacrifice for sins. They were foreshadowing the blood-shedding of Christ. So it says in Hebrews 9:12, “[Christ] entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” So the reason all blood-shedding has ceased — animal blood-shedding has ceased; Christ’s blood-shedding has ceased once for all — is that Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.

“Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption.”

If you have Christ, you have eternal forgiveness for all sins. Now I think Karen knows this, but what she may have overlooked (I don’t know) is that not only does the sacrifice of Christ extend forward as an eternal redemption but also backward in history as a redemption for all those saints who put their faith in God for his forgiveness — through the foreshadowing of the cross in the animal sacrifices. The cross worked effectively backward and forward.

And that’s what Paul makes clear in Romans 3:25. He says, “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” In other words, the reason God was righteous to pass over — that is, forgive — the sins of all Old Testament saints, and the sins that Jesus forgave during his lifetime, was that God was looking to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. So just as our sins two thousand years after Christ are covered by the blood of Christ, so Abraham’s sins were covered by the cross of Christ two thousand years before Christ existed. And so it was with all the saints in between.

Glorious Divine Achievement

So, Karen’s question is not of limited significance. It takes us to the very center of the gospel — indeed, the center of reality. It shows us that all forgiveness, and all the benefits that flow from forgiveness through all time — as far back as you can go, as far forward as you can go, all of it — all of that forgiveness is based on those few hours when the Son of God suffered and bled and died for sinners.

If we grasp how central, how profound, how glorious was that divine moment, that divine achievement, our lives will be more stable, more courageous and more joyful.

In this breakout session, I’m excited to speak to you about what I think is one of the most important practical life and ministry topics we could discuss.

For one, the “secret liturgies” of spiritual leaders is a timeless topic: these truths remain the same across generations. For another, this topic is crucial. You cannot minister well to others for long without yourself being relatively spiritually healthy. So Paul says to Timothy, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching” (1 Timothy 4:16); and to the Ephesian elders, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28).

Also, this topic of “secret liturgies” is perhaps especially important in our age — “the age of accelerations,” according Thomas Friedman, when many of us need “permission to just slow down.” Today, he says, “the pace of technology and scientific change outstrips the speed with which human beings and societies can usually adapt” (Thank You for Being Late, 39).

According to Friedman, “We are living through one of the greatest inflection points in history, perhaps unequaled since . . . Gutenberg, a German blacksmith and printer, launched the printing revolution in Europe, paving the way for the Reformation” (3). And the late Dallas Willard, who died in 2013, said near the end of his life that “hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.”

So for those reasons, and more, I’m eager to address the topic of the leader’s “secret liturgies” and focus, very practically, on what we might call “the private worship behind a public Christian leader.”

Needy for Repeat

I’m especially eager to address this topic with those of you who are music people because of one little word you know well from hymnbooks and the sheets of worship music: repeat. Of all people, you know the power of repetition in corporate singing, however much you might be able to explain it or not.

Now, to be sure, many modern church-goers are miffed by repetition in corporate worship. The Information Age is conditioning us for new content, fresh ideas, new data. Why re-read what we’ve already read, why rehearse what we’ve already heard, why re-sing lines we’ve already sung, when new information is available like never before?

But do we know what our unprecedented access to novelty is doing to us? Indications so far seem to be that it’s making us shallower, not wiser and more mature. Running our eyes across the page and mouthing words to a song are not the same as experiencing the reality in our hearts. Our hearts simply don’t move as quickly as our eyes and our mouths.

Which makes worship of the living God — both in public and “in secret” — such an important remedy for what is increasingly ailing us today. God made us to worship him. And we are shriveling without it.

Consider the Psalms

Take Psalm 136 as just one example of the power of repetition. The psalm is twenty-six verses, and each verse ends with “for his steadfast love endures forever.” It rehearses God’s goodness and supremacy, his wonder-working and world-creating, his delivery of his people from slavery and provision for them in a rich land.

Twenty-six times the psalm repeats this refrain — and not one of them is wasted. With each new verse, another attribute or rescue of God is celebrated, and then our souls are ushered deeper into his steadfast, ever-enduring love with each glorious repetition.

The goal of the song is not to make God’s steadfast love old and boring, but exactly the opposite: to help us feel it afresh and at new depth. The dance of each new verse, with each return to the refrain, is designed to bore the central truth about God’s resilient love deeper and deeper into our inner person.

The psalm is not a treatise on the unwavering, persistent love of God, but what we call a meditation — less linear and more circular, or spiral — crafted to help auger the reality of his love from information on our mental surface down to an experience and taste in our hearts.

Heart of Leadership

Our task in this session is to focus very practically on the private worship behind the public leader. So let me take you to Deuteronomy 17 as we consider the “secret liturgies” of those who would lead the public liturgies of corporate worship.

Long before Israel had a king, the nation’s first and greatest prophet left specific instructions for him, including where and how he would find his bearings each day as the leader of God’s people. In Deuteronomy 17:14–20, Moses describes a concession God would make one day, setting a human king over his people. As he does, he warns such kings about the dangers of “excessive silver and gold,” “many wives,” and “many horses” — that is, money, sex, and power (Deuteronomy 17:16–17).

Moses gives a specific reason for these cautions: “lest his heart turn away.” This is where the point of departure will be, humanly speaking, for regimes and generations to come: the heart of the leader. Look at verses 14–17:

“When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.”

“As goes the leader’s heart, so goes the leader, and so goes the people.”

So, we might say, as goes the leader’s heart, so goes the leader, and so goes the people. Will he heed the siren calls around him, the subtle temptations to the compromises of acclaim and special privilege? Will he take advantage of his willing and submissive followers who are eager to give him benefit of the doubt? Will he slowly construct his own reality around him that serves his own private comforts rather than the holy interests of the people?

Keys to the Leader’s Heart

The battle lines will first be drawn in the leader’s own heart — which explains why Moses’s next instructions turn where they do, unexpected and perhaps peripheral as they may seem to some. And what Moses writes next is all the more striking because it’s issued generations before the nation would have its first king.

When a new king ascends to the throne in Israel — with all the pomp and circumstance that will doubtless accompany such a coronation — as his first act, he is to take out a quill and write word for word, with in his own hand, his own copy of God’s law, and “read in it all the days of his life.”

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18–20)

Note again the emphasis on his heart. God’s plan for his leaders so that their hearts not turn away, is that their hearts be formed and fed daily by God’s word. Consider, then, three aspects of this simple yet profound plan, which is just as relevant for Christian leaders and churches today.

1. The Book Shapes the Leader

This book, copied longhand by the king himself, is not a journal. The new king is not recording his own feelings or preferences or decrees — not in this book. Rather, he is copying the book of God’s law — an objective, fixed text, not open to edits and adjustments. This hand-copied book, then, is to be reviewed and approved by the priests, to confirm that no changes have been introduced or anything omitted.

In other words, the leader doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the leader. However great he may be in the sight of his people, the king fundamentally does not shape the world (or even his own kingdom) through his words, but he is being shaped by God through God’s words.

2. The Book Keeps the Leader

God also designs that this book will keep the king, as he is bombarded by the world of privileges and temptations leadership can bring. As the king keeps the words of God in the book, the book will keep the king — that is, keep him from turning aside to the right or left, turning from the fear of God to fear of man, from faithfulness to God to the pursuit of his own private, sinful pleasures.

In shaping the king’s heart, the book keeps him from subtle daily migrations away from God, which is why Moses twice mentions the inner man, “the heart.” The unseen heart of the king will come, in time, into expression in his life and the nation’s. Self-humbling before God and his word will give rise to a whole trajectory of thoughts, feelings, words, and actions; pride, to another. And the greater the leader, the greater the effects, for good or ill.

3. The Book Calls Each Morning

Finally, the king’s hand-copied, priest-approved book, Moses says, “shall be with him . . . all the days of his life” (Deuteronomy 17:19). With him — that is, nearby, constantly within reach. Having completed this great hand-copying project, he is not to store the book away for future reference, but make it functional, accessible, active in his reign — increasingly in him through countless hours lingering over it.

This book is designed to be read daily. And not the sort of reading to which the pace and pixels of our modern lives have accustomed us: fast-break, hurried, distracted reading, with words coming out of the head almost as quickly as they went in.

Different Kind of Reading

Rather, the kind of reading God intends for his servant is meditative — slow, unhurried, enjoyable feeding on the text, at the pace of the text, rather than the pace of the world. Pondering God’s words. Rolling them around in the mind long enough to get a sense of them on the heart. Such daily meditation on the words of God is what God so memorably expects of Joshua as he becomes Israel’s new leader in Moses’s place:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. (Joshua 1:8)

So too, generations later, when Israel finally had its king, the first psalm celebrated where the godly king would find his sense and wisdom to rule: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). And not only the king, but every man of God: “Blessed is the man . . .” (Psalm 1:1).

So too, when the ultimate man, David’s great heir, came among us, his shaping and keeping and wisdom to live and lead grew out of regular feeding on the words of his Father: “Man shall not live by bread alone,” he said, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

In the words of Sinclair Ferguson, “Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture did not come [magically from heaven] during the period of his public ministry; it was grounded no doubt on his early education, but nourished by long years of personal meditation” (The Holy Spirit, 44).

His Father appointed means for his stability in his truly human life. And it was not some extraordinary means or special trick. It was the same great and modest, amazing and ordinary daily means heralded by Moses, tested by Joshua, embraced by David, and imitable by the godly today: daily meditation on the very words of God.

Let’s say more about meditation, which is increasingly a lost art in our age.

What Makes Meditation Christian?

Non-Christian forms of meditation seek to empty the mind and transcend concrete specifics into the ethereal, and experience some form of meaningless enlightenment. But Christian meditation fills the mind with biblical truth and chews on it, seeking to savor it appropriately.

Unlike mere reading, even slow reading, where our minds and eyes keep moving at some pace, meditation slows us down, way down. We pause and ponder. Reading keeps us marching in linear fashion, while meditation moves us into a more spiral pattern by limiting the information set and seeking to press and apply the truth to our hearts, to actually experience the truth and not just let it run on through our minds on our way to the next thing.

Meditating Together

One remarkable aspect of corporate worship is that it gives us the opportunity to meditate together. The pinnacle of a good sermon is typically a form of corporate meditation, led by the preacher, as he circles around his main point and verbally kneads its goodness into our hearts.

And the summits of our best praises together in song are essentially meditative. It’s not the discovery and delivery of an obscure stanza that binds our hearts and draws us highest together toward heaven, but returning to the refrain, which has been enriched with each additional verse.

The verses provide fresh content, but the refrain bores the truth even deeper into our souls. The verses and refrain together help us to know the reality even better, as we collectively digest the truth from our heads into our hearts. They help us actually experience and be affected by the truth in our inner person, not just rehearse the data on the surface.

Secret Meditation

But we need to say more about “secret meditation,” or private meditation. Meditation involves a process. It’s not a switch to flip on. You don’t just meditate. Meditation is the goal and apex of Bible intake, and as a middle (often forgotten) habit, it involves lead-up and follow-up. You move into it, and move out of it.

Biblically, we find two kinds of meditation. One is spontaneous. It’s the kind of meditation that happens as we live and go about the day. Psalm 19:14 prays, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight” (also Psalm 49:3). That could be during the day (“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day,” Psalm 119:97), or Psalm 63:6 speaks of remembering God and “meditat[ing] on [him] in the watches of the night” (also Psalm 77:3; 119:148).

Another kind of meditation, we might say, is more focused, or intentional, or guided by God’s words. Genesis 24:63 tells of Isaac going “out to meditate in the field toward evening.” Joshua 1:8, as we’ve already seen, says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night . . .”

So too say many psalms. Psalm 1:2: the wise man’s “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” Psalm 119:48: “I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.” Psalm 119:15: “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.” This is word-guided meditation.

And while the New Testament may not use the same precise language of meditation, it does speak of setting the mind or fixing the mind (Matthew 16:23; Mark 8:33; Romans 8:5–7; Philippians 3:19). Perhaps most significant is Colossians 3:2: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

“What we choose to meditate on, we will gravitate toward meditating on in our spare moments.”

And these two kinds of meditation are related. Focused or intentional meditation — that is, meditation that we choose — leads to spontaneous meditation, the meditation that seems to happen to us as we go about our lives. What we choose to meditate on, we will gravitate toward meditating on in our spare moments.

Learning a Lost Art

Our focus here is on intentional, focused meditation. Having made time for such meditation, and found an undistracting place for such meditation, how might we go about pursuing it?

First is pace. By that, I mean read at the pace of the text and of understanding, and enjoyment. For most of us, this is a slower pace (perhaps a far slower pace) than we default to when reading other texts in our lives. In our age of accelerations, technology and society condition us to read faster and faster. But the Bible, as an ancient book, was written slowly and carefully to be read slowly and carefully. So we begin with an unhurried reading (and re-reading) of God’s word.

Second, then, is pause — or meditation proper. Having read the biblical text, we now pause over it to meditate on it. Without moving on, we want to go deep in this phrase or verse or idea, letting the words themselves lead us. That we not only have words in us, but we are in the words. Now what? Consider three encouragements about meditation.

1. God made us to meditate.

Meditation is a distinctively human trait; you know how to do this more than you think, like walking. And our souls were made for new mercies daily — to turn toward God. In meditation, we are fulfilling a vital aspect of how God made us: not just to do, but to think, ponder, reflect, to glorify him.

As Creator, he is glorified by his creatures doing what they do (tigers, cheetahs, eagles, whales). But he’s more glorified when his creatures acknowledge him. And he’s most glorified when they appreciate and adore him. As John Piper says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” So meditate in pursuit of satisfaction in God.

2. Meditation forms and shapes us.

Meditation changes us. We will meditate (that is, spontaneous meditation). Our minds will run somewhere. The question is not if, but on what. Sports? Image and physique? Job and money? Your children? Politics? Anxiety about society? News?

“We will meditate. Our minds will run somewhere. The question is not if, but on what.”

Ask yourself, What continually captures my attention? That will shape you. In fact, it is already shaping you. And especially so with what we choose to give our attention to: what we click. What you meditate on, in time, reformulates your desires. Christian meditation requires setting and resetting our minds, and in particular our hearts, on the greatest focuses possible.

3. Biblical meditation seeks joy in God today.

“Today” means right now (not just long-term formation). It aims to warm the heart, stir the affections, satisfy our souls right now in the one they were made for — as in these four statements about meditation from four seventeenth-century voices, back before meditation was a lost art:

*Thomas Watson (1620–1686): “Study is the finding out of a truth, meditation is the spiritual improvement of a truth.”
*Samuel Ward (1577–1640): “Stir up thy soul in [meditation] to converse with Christ. Look what promises and privileges thou dost habitually believe, now actually think of them, roll them under thy tongue, chew on them till thou feel some sweetness in the palate of thy soul.”
*Edmund Calamy (1600–1666): In meditation, be like “the Bee that dwells and abides upon the flower, to suck out all the sweetness.”
*William Bates (1625–1699): Since meditation often requires persistence, especially when you’re first learning the lost art, meditate “till thou dost find some sensible benefit conveyed to thy soul.” Many of us give up far too quickly and easily. Don’t let him go till he blesses you! Keep at it “till the flame doth so ascend.”

Practically, what kind of time might you set aside? I would say perhaps half an hour for beginners. And as you become familiar with reading the biblical text more slowly, and pausing to meditate on phrases and concepts that arrest your attention — and learn to find some sweetness, some sensible benefit to your soul — you’ll soon find yourself wanting more time and space, and perhaps grow it toward an hour.

We Pray to a Person

Moving toward meditation involves a certain pace — an unhurried reading of the text. Then meditation means pausing and going deep in, asking questions of, taking time to make connections and find insights. And finally, meditating leads to a third P: prayer. Prayer to God is “the proper issue,” the fitting completion of the process of meditating on him through his word. We hear from him in Scripture. We take it deep into ourselves in meditation. We speak back to him in prayer.

The way I like to say it is: begin with Bible, move to meditation, and polish with prayer. My encouragement is that once you have meditated on a verse or phrase or biblical concept for several minutes, turn it to prayer. Rather than pivoting to lists, pray through the text you’ve meditated on. Turn its concepts and promises and warnings into prayers for yourself, your spouse, your family, your church, your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors. Take God’s leading in meditation as his word to you that day, and invitation to prayer.

So: pace, pause, prayer — and if I could give you one more P, it would be Person. That is, Jesus. Bible reading is not just reading. It is God’s appointed medium, for now, by his Spirit, for our knowing and enjoying him through his Son. Remember in meditation: seek to enjoy the risen, living Christ, by his Spirit, through his word. Seek soul satisfaction in him.

Many of us expect too little when we come to the Bible and prayer. Christ is alive, seated on heaven’s throne. We have his word and his Spirit to make it alive to us. We are not just reading a book, but meeting with a living, divine Person. Jesus is real, and there, as we meet with him in meditation on his word.

Eat Like a King — and Sing!

Let me close by encouraging you to wake up each morning and eat like a king. That is, take the prescription of Deuteronomy 17 to heart, and take your cues from the commission to Joshua, and the celebration of Psalm 1, and the life of king David and king Jesus and linger in the words of God.

Steep in some specific text of Scripture. Feed your soul on the word of your Father. Come to the Bible not only to read and study, but to pause and ponder. Come to meditate on God’s word, in an unhurried, even leisurely, lingering and enjoying of God’s grace and truth in Christ.

And one last word for you as music leaders and choir members and soloists and accompanists, is this: sing. Sing! You know this better than most of us. This is what music and song are for — for slowing us down, for auguring soul-feeding and soul-sustaining truth down deep into the heart. For engaging our hearts, and shaping us, changing us, inspiring us, guiding us. Take your love of music, and your gifting in music, and put it to use in private, in secret, for the life and health of your soul.