Audio Transcript

Good Friday, everyone. On this podcast we regularly take questions about how the early church did things. And then we ask what practices that we read about in our Bibles are directly transferable to our local churches today. Within that category would fit today’s email from a listener named Robbie in Kentucky. “Pastor John, hello to you! In 1 Timothy 2:8, we read that Paul exhorted men to pray in church while ‘lifting holy hands.’ What’s the connection between lifted hands and holiness? And what about lifted hands and prayer? Is this practice culturally dated, or is it a relevant one we should adopt today in our corporate church gatherings?”

The text — namely, 1 Timothy 2:8 — says, “I desire then that in every place the men” — and the word is men, not just persons; it’s males — “should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” Then Paul continues, interestingly, in 1 Timothy 2:9, without a break, and shifts from men to women and says, “likewise also, that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control.” I think it’s relevant for understanding the word to men to realize that it’s paired with a word to women. It’s relevant because it relates to the question of whether Paul is addressing a merely peculiar problem at Ephesus or whether he’s speaking more generally, in a way that all of us should sit up and take notice, even in the twenty-first century, because it relates to our situation as well, male and female.

Our Typical Temptations

Now, we might be tempted to think that Paul is focused here mainly on the situation at Ephesus, because when he says that “anger and quarreling” should be put away, that triggers in our minds another text, in 1 Timothy 6:4, where he says that there’s a group of people in the church who have “an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce . . . dissension.” So we might think, “Well, that’s why, here in 1 Timothy 2:8, men are told to pray without anger and quarreling. It’s a peculiar problem at Ephesus. And that may be why Paul put the emphasis here on anger and quarreling.

But I don’t think he means for us to hear his words as limited to the application for Ephesus. I say that mainly because he says, “I desire that in every place men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” The words “in every place” show that he’s giving general instructions to men. That carries over to the instructions to women as well. In every place, “women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty.”

It seems to me that Paul is putting his finger here on a typical male temptation and a typical female temptation. In general, men are more given to the temptation of angry verbal jousting and outbursts of combative quarreling. And in general, women are more inclined than men to give attention to their appearance when they go out in public. Now, of course, those are generalizations, and there are exceptions for both of them. But Paul seems to be putting his finger on a problem that is more peculiar to men and a problem that is more peculiar to women. He’s addressing them both in general, not just because of a peculiar problem at Ephesus.

Our question here is about what he says to men as they gather to pray. What he says is that he wants men in every place to pray, “lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” The question is this: Is Paul saying that in all our praying, we should be lifting our hands? I think that’s the basic question that I’m being asked.

Holy Hands

I think the first thing to say, because we’ve seen it already, is that the emphasis does not fall on the lifting of hands, but on holiness and the renunciation of anger and quarreling. It’s significant that when he says he wants men to lift holy hands, he goes on to underline the holiness, not the hands. Namely, get rid of anger. Get rid of quarreling as you come to pray. That’s where the emphasis falls. It’s as if the lifting of hands is a given. That’s just a given. That’s what you do in worship. And so, what he’s telling them is not so much to do what they always do, and lift your hands; he’s saying, “Lift holy hands. Lift pure hands. Do it with peace and without quarreling.”

“The command is not to always lift your hands. It’s to lift them with holiness.”

Now, all of us, from time to time, speak this way. A teacher in grammar school might say to her students, “Now, young people, I want you to always come to class asking questions respectfully.” Or a coach might say, “I want us to get out on the field and throw completed passes.” Now, those are not statements about how often the student should ask questions, or how often the quarterback should throw passes. Those are statements about doing it respectfully and completing passes. That’s the way I think Paul is speaking here. The command is not to always lift your hands. “Be sure to always lift your hands.” It’s to lift them with holiness. “Be free from anger and quarreling.”

Body and Soul in Worship

But let me add two other questions. First, why did Paul take for granted that it was so common in worship that men should lift their hands? He was just assuming it. Surely, part of the answer is that the Old Testament refers to this practice often. Nehemiah 8:6: “Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, amen,’ lifting up their hands.” Psalm 28:2: “Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands.” Psalm 63:4: “I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.” Psalm 141:2: “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!”

“If the heart is exulting before God over some great reality of grace, it seems natural that the body would join.”

Probably, Paul simply assumed it because that’s the way the churches worshiped, following the tradition of the Psalms. It seems natural. I think that’s why it happens in the Psalms, and that’s why it happens today. It seems natural. If the heart is exulting before God over some great reality of grace, it seems natural that the body would join the spirit in the exultation. I mean, why wouldn’t it? We are body and we are soul, and we exult in this glorious reality.

Why Not Lift Hands?

Here’s my last question. Why wouldn’t we lift our hands today? Now, I’m arguing that it’s not a command here, but that we lift our hands in holiness when we lift our hands. But I’m asking this question: Why wouldn’t we lift our hands in worship? Of course, the answers are many: “It’s not the way I was raised.” “It’s not my personality.” “It’s not my culture or my ethnicity.” “It’s not the way our church worships.” “It would be misunderstood as identifying with a group whose theology is defective.”

I remember talking with a leader in another country. I said, “I spoke at one group in this city, and everybody was raising their hands. I spoke in your group, with five thousand people, and not a hand was raised. What’s that about?” He just said flat out, “Because if we did it, we’d be aligned with the people with the defective theology.” Or “It would be phony; I don’t want to just be carried along by my emotions.” There are a lot of reasons why people don’t do what the psalmist says is natural to do.

I would just end with the question, Given Paul’s assumption that it was so common in the early church, and given the Old Testament exhortation and examples, and given the natural union between body and spirit in true exultation, is the reason that you don’t lift your hands a good reason?

Remember how it felt as a kid at the end of the school year, when the long summer holidays stretched out before you? You knew it wouldn’t last forever, but fall seemed a world away.

That’s kind of what it felt like for me and my wife, Pam, during our early childrearing years (though it wasn’t a holiday). We knew this golden “summer” season of life would someday end. But for quite a wonderful while, it seemed like the “fall” of our kids’ departures into adulthood was a world away.

However, just as we learned as kids, summers aren’t as long as they first appear. Our parenting “fall” has arrived, and with it all the necessary changes. This is God’s design: “For everything there is a season” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And as God pronounced, this design is good (Genesis 1:14, 18). I don’t begrudge it.

But I do grieve it, which I also believe is good. Because when God made “a time for every matter under heaven,” he included “a time to mourn” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4). The time to mourn is when someone or something precious to us passes away. And the precious season Pam and I were given to live together with all our children is passing away. It’s not easy to say goodbye.

“When God made ‘a time for every matter under heaven,’ he included ‘a time to mourn.’”

But something happened this year that provided our whole family a chance to say goodbye to that season together: we sold the family home.

Leaving More Than a Home

In June 2001, Pam and I bought a modest house on a small inner-city plot in South Minneapolis and moved in with our two young children (ages 5 and 2). Three more children came along over the next few years. So, for the better part of two decades, this house was the busy hub of our family of seven. It was a gracious provision from God and served us well.

As our kids began to reach adulthood, however, and as some began to leave the nest, Pam and I discerned the Lord readying us for another move. We weren’t sure when this would happen, so we kept it in prayer, kept it on our kids’ radars, and kept our eyes open.

Then, last January, the moment surprisingly (and suddenly) arrived. The right home for the next season of life at the right price became available. Both of us discerned the Lord was in it, so we pulled the trigger. This immediately threw us into high gear in order to get our house ready to sell and ourselves ready to move.

But getting our house ready to sell proved more difficult than I anticipated. I don’t mean the repairs, upgrades, and cleaning. I mean getting ready to leave the place. Because leaving this place really brought home the realization that we were leaving more than a home; we were leaving a wonderful era.

The Rooms Where It Happened

In the hustle and bustle of those busy years, I didn’t fully realize just how much that house was being woven into the fabric of our shared lives, but for 21 years it was where most of our most profound family moments occurred.

It’s where children were conceived and where they first came awake to the world. It’s where some first crawled, then walked, then ran; where some first spoke, then read, then wrote. It was where we spoke most about God and spoke most to God together. It’s where we spent the most time reading God’s word and singing to and about God together. It’s where we expressed our deepest longings for God — and our doubts about him — together. It’s where we shared our greatest joys and sorrows together, where we had the most fun and most fights together. It’s where we shared thousands of meals and washed hundreds of thousands of dishes together. It’s where our children grew up together, and where Pam and I grew noticeably older together.

This house framed our family life for most of our family’s life. These were the rooms where it all happened. So, I guess it’s fitting that as we packed up these rooms, the reality of all we were leaving behind really hit home.

Goodbye to Golden Days

For me, the emptier each room became, the more it seemed to fill with memories. I’d enter our bedroom and think how everyone used to crowd on our bed for evening book time. Walking through the living room might recall a bunch of Blooms enjoying Sunday sundaes. A glance at a basement wall could prompt, “You wrote her lullaby here, remember?” Sometimes I could almost hear my kids bounding down the stairs, giggling over something silly, arguing with their mother, tattling on a sibling, happily singing, letting the storm door slam while running out of the house, or calling for me from their bedrooms to come give them their nighttime blessing.

The last few days at the house, when it was mostly empty, it was as if ghosts of the past were released from some grey-matter basement in my memory to finally run free. Ghosts of past Christmases, Easters, birthdays, evening dinners, family devotions, chore times, movie nights, and Saturday special breakfasts would show up unbidden (and suddenly I’d be searching for Kleenex).

Well, perhaps not entirely unbidden. Consciously or not, I was looking and listening for them. And so was everyone else. Every family member was recalling them. We reminisced a lot together and did a lot of laughing and crying — often simultaneously. It was a sweet way (with the right amount of bitter) to say goodbye to our beloved house. But we all knew it was more than that. It was a cathartic way to say goodbye to a golden time of shared life, a wonderful “summer” season that was ending.

On the last night, we all gathered at the house, joined by our dear next-door friends, who had been so much a part of our lives for more than a decade, and together we went room by room, sharing recollections. Then, when only our family remained, standing in the entry, we thanked God for that house, for those beloved rooms where it had all happened, and for all the happenings that had made that season of life so precious to us.

Three Parting Thank-Yous

I loved being a father. I’m not done being one, of course. I just mean that I loved raising my children. I loved providing for them, protecting them, playing with them, comforting them, and teaching them. Those formative years were wonderful. I will miss them.

“Some things are so profound, we can only say them simply.”

But the next season is upon us. Three of our children have departed the home, and the two who remain (our twins) are high school seniors. Pam and I are already experiencing some of the new season’s wonderful gifts (like grandchildren — we now have three!). So, as a kind of benediction to mark the passing of a season I’ve loved, I want to offer a few simple words of thanks. For some things are so profound, we can only say them simply.

Thank you, heavenly Father, for the priceless gifts of our children’s lives, and for the inexpressible gift of allowing Pam and me to share with them their growing-up years. This remarkable quarter-century season came from you, and it was indeed good.

Thank you, Pam, for being, in my estimation, the primary human reason this season was so wonderful. From the moment you became aware of each child’s existence, you haven’t ceased to lovingly, faithfully, and sacrificially care for them. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in parenting. Your steady faith in God, your patience and grace toward the rest of us, and your gentle, quiet spirit daily seasoned our home and made it a place of peace.

And to Levi, Eliana, Peter, Moriah, and Micah: thank you for the privilege of being your father. I realize you weren’t given a choice, but somehow it still feels to me like a gift from you because of how profoundly your lives have enriched mine. The years I was able to spend with you and your wonderful mother have been the best of my life. It was a golden time. I would do it all over again. But “for everything there is a season,” and God has faithfully brought us to the dusk of this one and the dawn of the next. And so, it only seems right to speak over you once more the blessing you each received from me nearly every night of your childhood:

The Lord bless you and keep you;the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26)

The memories, on most days, seem better left forgotten. Never has remembering sweet Bible studies tasted so bitter. Flashbacks of late-night conversations and time spent in prayer press inconsiderately upon the wound. In that large group, I can still hear his profession of faith echo. I thought I heard angels sing at his surrender. So long we had prayed for his salvation. Now, he no longer walks with Jesus.

The grief of false conversions.

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19). They. We knew them by another name: friend, spouse, mother, son. Each sang with us in church, confessed to be the Savior’s, renounced the world and Satan at baptism — but only for a time.

Our prayers, we thought, were finally answered. Their souls, we thought, were finally saved. Our joy, we thought, was finally complete. The prodigal son returned home — and left again. The difference between a comedy and a tragedy, some say, is where you place the period. Their faith, at best, led only to a semicolon; what a horrible independent clause came next: “They went out from us.”

How the Gospel Dies in a Soul

Jesus tells the tragedies of our daughters, our best friends, our parents, in his parable of the sower.

The parable is familiar. The sower scatters seed on four soils. Some falls on the path — where the hateful bird, Satan, steals it before it can be understood. Such are those who dismiss the gospel as foolishness and never pretend to believe. The fourth soil is the good soil, the true soil, the one who receives the Christ by faith and holds to him, the genuine Christian. But the second and third soils receive the seed, it germinates, and life sprouts from dead earth. Hallelujah! Professions are made; baptismal waters stir; they break bread with us. Our prayers, we believe, have been answered. But the gospel seed, over time, dies. Their faith returns to the dirt before our eyes.

Jesus depicts two ways the gospel dies in the soul.

Scorched by Trials

The first false soil is rocky.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. (Matthew 13:5–6)

The most confusing part about this soil is how wonderful the beginning seems. Upon hearing the gospel word, they do not argue with it or poke at it. Rather, these receive it “with joy” (Matthew 13:20). They smile at the news of Jesus, shed tears that he would die in their place. They raise their hands and sing of eternal life with what Jesus tells us is real joy.

But the plant shoots up quickly because the soil beneath is thin. Inhospitable rock prevents the roots from growing deep. When the sun eventually rises, tribulation or persecution beat down upon them on account of their new faith in Christ (verse 21). Through much of church history (and still in many places today), this entailed lives threatened, property plundered, friends arrested. In the modern Western context, girlfriends threaten to break up with them. They lose their job. They become the ridicule of family and friends.

A time of testing arrives, and they fall away. They received the word with joy, but when the weather changed, they headed back home, as did Bunyan’s Pliable. Happily, Pliable walked from the City of Destruction as Christian assured him of all the glories that awaited them at the Celestial City. But they soon fell into the Slough of Despond.

At that Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, “Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey’s end?”

He struggled out of the pit and returned home.

So with some loved ones. They explode like a firework only to fizzle in the night sky. Their initial joy, though real, proved shallow. The gospel gripped passing emotions but did not reach the heart. Their god was worth serving, but only in fair weather. Their faith was worth confessing, but only while it cost them little. Their Shepherd was good to follow, but only when he led to green pastures. The sun rises and scorches the gospel word buried in the shallows of their soul.

Choked by Pleasures

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. (Matthew 13:7)

Here, we find that more than just the gospel grew in the heart. Alongside faith grew rival loves — thorns.

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. (Matthew 13:22)

They grew too busy. They began a new relationship. They found a way to make some extra money. Jesus and his service could wait a little longer after all. The love of this world and its shiny things, its comforts, its urgent business became preferred to the unseen world. These sharp loves wrapped themselves around the word of the cross, of forgiveness of sins, and of eternal life with God, and squeezed. Maybe we saw them put up some fight as faith lost its breath, but busyness, this career, that boyfriend proved too gripping.

We see these thorns grow even in the hearts of those who seemed most dedicated to Christ and his work in this world. Such was the tragedy of Demas. Paul writes to the Colossian church, “Luke the beloved physician greets you, as does Demas” (Colossians 4:14). Paul calls him his “fellow worker” in his letter to Philemon (verse 24). Yet thorny soil he proved to be in the end. “For Demas,” Paul writes to Timothy at the end of his life, “in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Timothy 4:10).

In love with this present world, they desert us, desert Christ — thorny soil.

Heart of the Matter

The soils represent different types of hearts. In some rocky hearts, the gospel seed dies due to a shallowness of reception. In thorny hearts, it dies in the grip of love for this world and its concerns. Yet read the description of the good soil in Luke’s account:

As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience. (Luke 8:15)

“Good soil fends off encroaching loves for a pure and beautiful devotion to Jesus.”

Good soil holds fast the gospel seed, refusing to relinquish it when persecution comes. Good soil fends off encroaching loves for a pure and beautiful devotion to Jesus. Good soil bears fruit with patience. Good soil is analogous to a good and beautiful heart, a heart promised long ago:

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)

The new-covenant heart, one removed of its stone and cleansed of its competing loves — this heart endures trials and tribulation, and resists temptation and the world’s best, aided and empowered by God’s own indwelling Spirit. Good soil bears good fruit, yielding thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold (Matthew 13:23).

A Prayer

Father, tears well in our eyes as we consider those whose desertion our hearts cannot bear. What hope is left?

For some, you alone know it is too late to restore them to repentance. For them it is impossible to be restored, for they have been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, shared in the Holy Spirit, and tasted the goodness of your word (Hebrews 6:4–6). We love your Son, and would not have him “crucified again” or held up for contempt. And yet, you can permit restoration (Hebrews 6:3). Let us be hopeful of better things — namely, that you are not done with our loved ones just yet.

“Let us be hopeful of better things — namely, that you are not done with our loved ones just yet.”

Let us see those who have wandered from the truth be brought back. Use us to return them from their wandering. Use us to save their souls from death and cover a multitude of sins (James 5:19–20). Teach our lips the promise, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7). Your grace is unlike our grace. You offer abundant pardon still, and in that, we hope.

And grant us each to keep eyes and prayers on one another, lest we too fall. Let us take heed, lest there be in any of us an evil, unbelieving heart, leading us to fall away from the living God. May we be diligent to exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of us may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:12–13). Keep us in your love. Be pleased to place the period — over them and us — after the words, “Enter into the joy of your Master.”