http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15588443/how-to-become-a-coworker-of-god

Audio Transcript

This podcast often addresses gospel boldness, risk-taking, and personal suffering. On occasion, those three themes — boldness, risk, and suffering — merge together, like they do in today’s sermon clip from the ministry of John Piper. Today, we look specifically at how the assurance of the hope of heaven releases us for radical, risk-taking love that makes people look at our lives and ask for “the reason for the hope that is in you,” as Peter says it (1 Peter 3:15). So, how do we escape the natural love of safety? Here’s Pastor John’s answer, from thirty years ago, in a sermon on Revelation 21.

Richard Baxter was a very effective pastor in the seventeenth century in England. He’s well known for his book The Reformed Pastor. Not many people know, however, that Richard Baxter labored for all the years of his life under tremendous pain. He had frequent nose bleeds, constant cough, headaches, digestive ailments, kidney stones, gallstones.

He believed in supernatural healing, and he testified several times that God had delivered him out of a deadly disease to keep on ministering via direct intervention. In fact, he told the story one time of entering the pulpit, and he could see in the looking glass a big cancerous tumor on the back of his throat that vanished while he was preaching and testifying to the grace of God.

Preciousness of Heaven

And yet, all his life, from the age of 21 on, he testified that he was “seldom an hour free from pain.” One of the effects on Richard Baxter’s life is that it made him keenly aware of how short life is, how certain death is, and how precious heaven is. When he was 35 years old, he became what he thought was mortally ill. And he was on his bed, and he thought he was dying.

And he formed a habit, which as it turned out, lasted for forty years, because he didn’t die. The habit was meditating a half an hour a day on the glories of heaven. The reason he formed this habit and maintained this habit is because of the profound effect that it had on his life, keeping him awake to the things of God and to the brevity of this life. He wrote down those reflections in those days, and they became a book called The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, which is still in print three hundred years later to testify to the power of this man’s vision of what he had seen of God’s glorious hope for the believer. He commended it to us, that we would take time each day to set our minds on heaven.

This is the way he said it:

If you would have light and heat, why are you not more in the sunshine? For want of this recourse to heaven your soul is as a lamp not lighted, and your duty as a sacrifice without fire. Fetch one coal daily from this altar, and see if your offering will not burn. . . . Keep close to this reviving fire, and see if your affections will not be warm.

Set Your Mind on Things Above

Now, that’s good advice. I think it’s the same advice that Paul gave in Colossians 3. He said, following up on last Sunday’s message, as it were,

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4)

“How frequently do you set your mind on things that are above and dwell there?”

Now, I want to ask you, do you do that? Do you obey that? How frequently do you set your mind on things that are above and dwell there? How frequently do you seek the future? Do you seek the age to come? Do you look to where your life is hid with Christ in God and anticipate the glory that will be you when you come with him, and you in your true life are revealed?

We are so addicted to the world. So, I just want to invite you, with Richard Baxter, to do what he did, and every day to set your mind on things that are above. And I want you to repudiate with me a lie that goes like this: “Well, if you spend time thinking about heaven, if you dwell on the age to come, and the glories of your hope, you are going to become of no earthly good whatsoever.” Now, that’s a lie. It’s a common one.

Risk-Taking Hope

I think exactly the opposite is the case. It’s the people who know their hope, who know that their destiny is rock-solid and sure, who know that their destiny is glorious, who are free to take risks of love, free to “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still.” I’ve got a destiny. I’ve got a future. I cannot die. Mark it. It is not the people who have that hope, who have that security, who live in that confidence, who live their lives gathering treasures on earth and ignore the needs of people.

It’s people who are free, who don’t need money, who don’t need comforts, who don’t need worldly acclaim because they’ve got it all in Jesus, who are free to take risks for others. First Peter 3:15 says, “. . . always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Now, have you ever had anybody ask you a reason for the hope that is in you? Have you had anybody look at your behavior and say, “My, what hope must be behind that behavior?” I ask you, what kind of behavior would that be?

If somebody jumps out of an airplane, you don’t jump out behind them with no parachute. Two dead people aren’t better than one. So, if somebody falls out of an airplane with no parachute on, you might jump out after them, if you have a parachute on, and you try one of those bullet dives to catch them. So they’re falling kind of loose and stopping a lot of air, 110 miles an hour, maybe, and you go bullet-like, 150 miles an hour, maybe. You might do that, because the security and the hope of this parachute free you for that kind of love — free you for that kind of risk-taking. So, if somebody’s in the airplane, and they see you about to jump, and they ask you, “What’s the reason for the hope that you have, to jump out of this airplane to try to catch somebody? What’s the reason for your hope?” You say, “The parachute. It’s called the hope of glory. The parachute, that’s my hope.” And then you jump.

Free to Change the World

Now I want to ask you, what kind of lifestyle will move people to ask you questions like that about your hope? Gathering money? No, because they’ll assume money is your hope. Gathering comforts? Comforts are your hope. Spending all your time watching television? No, television is your hope. Hope frees for a radical new lifestyle.

“People in love with heaven are the ones that are free to change this world.”

So, I want to call you with Richard Baxter, and I want to call you with the apostle Paul, if you have been raised with Christ, if your life is hid with Christ in God — out there secure. It’s done. Absolutely. You cannot die. You cannot lose. If it’s that sure, I want to invite you to set your mind on things that are above. Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated. Let your mind dwell on the glories of the age to come.

And you know what’ll happen? You will become a free person. And free people are dangerous people to the kingdom of Satan, because they don’t ask cautionary questions about what it will cost in this life. They throw that to the wind, and they love, and they sacrifice, and they go, and they serve, and they change the world — this world, of all things. Of all things, can you imagine that? People in love with heaven are the ones that are free to change this world.

Sometimes, as you watch the hand of God’s providence draw some picture in your life, the pencil suddenly turns, and what you thought would be a flower turns into a thorn. The unanswered prayer seemed finally heard, the hope deferred seemed at last fulfilled — but no. You reach for the daisy and get pricked, instead, by a thistle.

C.S. Lewis’s marriage to Joy Davidman strikes me in this regard. The couple married later in life, when Joy appeared to be dying of cancer. After a prayer for healing, however, Joy recovered unexpectedly and perhaps miraculously. The love they thought they were losing came back to them, a precious gift, it seemed, from the hand of a healing God.

But soon, the cancer returned with a fury, ending their brief marriage. In the rawness of his grief, Lewis wrote, “A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food, and almost instantly the food was snatched away” (A Grief Observed, 17–18). Experiences like these can shake the soul. More than a few have lost faith over them. For many others, such moments become a doorway to a darker world, where God seems less good than we once thought. Perhaps, in our more desperate moments, we can even think him cruel.

Many who enter that world never find their way back. They walk under deepening shadows of disillusionment, far from the broad fields and bright sun of their former childlike faith. Some, however, do find their way back. We meet such a soul in Psalm 73.

Darkened Days

Much of Psalm 73 takes place in the dark world. Asaph, the psalmist, finds himself disillusioned with the spiritual life. He sees God-haters prancing over the earth — wealthy, comfortable, fat. No matter that they strut through Jerusalem like gods and defy the very heavens (Psalm 73:3–11). “Always at ease, they increase in riches” (Psalm 73:12).

Meanwhile, the godly Asaph suffers unseen and unrewarded. For his obedience, he gets affliction; for his devotion, rebuke (Psalm 73:14). Eventually, he looks round at his prayers, his songs, his years of faithfulness, and with a sweeping hand says, “All in vain” (Psalm 73:13). His hopes dead, he enters the shadow world.

When our own hopes are deferred (again), we can easily justify our bitterness and spiritual apathy. Without much effort, we can cast ourselves as innocent sufferers under the heavy hand of God’s providence, our frustration toward heaven understandable. Asaph, however, looking back at himself from the other side of the doorway, sees something different: “I was like a beast toward you” (Psalm 73:22).

For those who have returned from the dark world, Asaph’s words will not seem too blunt. I, for one, can still remember the soul gnawings and heart snarlings of my once-jaded soul. Our grief in painful providences can quickly turn jagged, and our laments become a growl, whether silent or spoken. Bitterness can make the soul turn beastly — and beastly it will remain until (to use some imagery from Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader) God undragons us.

Undragoned

By psalm’s end, Asaph has walked back to the bright world, where he once again sings like a hope-filled child:

Whom have I in heaven but you?     And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.My flesh and my heart may fail,     But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25–26)

Asaph reemerges in a world where God is good once again, where heaven and earth have nothing greater to give than him. Let affliction slay him, let rebukes strike him, let every hope remain deferred — God will be the strength of his heart and his abundant portion. The beast has become a man.

The undragoning happened, in part, as Asaph “went into the sanctuary of God” and “discerned [the] end” of “those who are far from you” (Psalm 73:17, 27). But he also discerned something better: “Nevertheless, I am continually with you” (Psalm 73:23). Here is the answer to his animal-like agitation, an answer so simple we may miss its power to tame. Consider, then, how Asaph unfolds the answer in three images, and how they might meet us in our own beastliness.

‘You hold my right hand.’

The real danger of a world gone dark is not the pain we feel there, nor even the perplexing dissonance those feelings bring, but the sense of God’s absence. The first half of Psalm 73 is a world without God — at least without a God who is near and good. But by verse 15, Asaph’s more or less godless ruminations give way to “you,” the God who “[holds] my right hand” (Psalm 73:23). In walking back through the doorway of disillusionment, he has entered his Father’s house.

Can you remember the sense of desolation when, as a child, you lost sight of your father in a sea of people? And can you recall the warm relief — almost worth crying over — when his familiar hand found yours? Something similar happens when, in the quiet of your own bedroom, or car, or backyard, your swirling thoughts calm, your embittered soul breathes, and you find grace to slowly say to God, “Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.”

Nothing has changed in your circumstances; your troubles may still pain and perplex you. But somehow, your stumbling feet find their footing. Your afflictions fall into a broader perspective. Your bitterness shakes off like so many scales. And under the hand of God, your heart becomes undragoned.

‘You guide me with your counsel.’

We are not left alone in this world, however perplexed we feel. Nor are we left directionless. We have not only a God, but a guide; not only a Presence, but a path. He grips our hand to assure us of his nearness, and also to lead us home through this bewildering wilderness. “You guide me with your counsel” (Psalm 73:24).

The “counsel” of God, his written Scriptures, do not tell us all we would like to know — not by far. We don’t know why a seemingly miraculous recovery should dissolve into death. We don’t know why a relationship on the brink of restoration should crumble. We don’t know why the heart of a loved one, so close to repentance, should suddenly harden. But reaching home does not depend on knowing the mysteries God has hidden but on receiving the counsel he has revealed.

And he does not guide us as one who has never walked the path himself. Gethsemane pressed and perplexed our Lord Jesus to the point of sweating blood and praying for an exit. No one was faced with a more bitter providence; no one had more reason to grow bitter and forsake God’s counsel. Yet no one’s life showed more brilliantly that following God’s counsel will never put us to shame. For the dark tomb is now empty.

We are children here, and the why of our Father’s will often eludes us. But his counsel does not. So while the beastly follow their own instincts, God’s children say, “I will follow your counsel as long as night lasts — and even if the dawn never breaks in this life.”

‘Afterward you will receive me to glory.’

The day is coming when the holding hand will become a beholding face, and the winding path a stable home. There is an afterward to the unanswered questions and open loops of this life. And in that afterward, “you will receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:24).

Knowing the afterward changed everything for Asaph. He no longer envied the prosperous wicked when he “discerned their end” (Psalm 73:17) — and he no longer pitied himself when he discerned his. Affliction may tarry for the night, but glory comes in the morning. So too with us. If we know that we are headed to the bright world, where no more questions gnaw and no more tears run down our cheeks (Revelation 21:4), then the sharpest edge of our suffering is blunted.

In the present, we often have need to say with Paul, “We are . . . perplexed” (2 Corinthians 4:8). But in the coming afterward, the spiritual dissonance of this age will resolve into a harmony beyond imagination, as the hand that held us and led us all life long receives us into the door of his home, beyond all doubt and danger.

End of Darkened Roads

At one point in Lewis’s grief, he asks whether he has been treating God as his goal or as his road. Has he walked along every good gift like a path leading to God, or has he tried to walk along God as a path leading to some other place? Lewis goes on to say, “He can’t be used as a road. If you are approaching him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you’re not really approaching him at all” (A Grief Observed, 68).

Often, our own undragoning happens when we, like Asaph, freshly embrace God as goal, not road — or perhaps better, as both goal and road. Our great need is not to unravel the apparent knots in God’s providence, as if mere answers could tame the beast within. What we need, now and forever, is a hand upon the mane, a whispered presence to calm us. For God himself is both way and end, path and home, presence here and portion forever.