Maturity in despair
Psalm 74
Today is the 14th of July, the French national holiday (as I’m sure you know). This is the day on which we think about our country, we celebrate our country, and we’re supposed to be inspired to be thankful for and proud of our country.
But what if, attached to all the pomp and circumstance of this holiday, there were also prophecies that promised that our country would be prosperous and influential over all other countries in the world? Imagine how that would change our perception of this holiday—when it wouldn’t just be a celebration of what we have, but a certainty of what we will have? And imagine that this certainty had been in our minds for centuries, since the beginning of the Republic.
And now, imagine if we were invaded by a foreign nation much more powerful than we were, like during World War II. Imagine how disorienting it would be—we’d always heard one thing about this great nation of ours, and we’d always believed it. And now, here is this invasion that seems to just blow away everything we’ve ever believed about who we are as a people.
That’s exactly the situation we see in Psalm 74.
We spent the first several months out of this year following the story of the people of Israel as God rescued them from slavery in Egypt, into the wilderness where he gave them his law, and promised to give them the land of Canaan as their home.
Spoiler alert: God made good on his promise. He gave them the land of Canaan, and there, they established their kingdom—the kingdom of Israel. For a while, under the reigns of kings like David and Solomon, the kingdom of Israel was thriving.
But things went bad pretty quickly: while some kings were good, others were not. The kingdom was split in two, the people were under the influence of idolatry, and for a long period they completely forgot God’s law. The prophets warned them what would happen as a consequence, and around the sixth century B.C., what the prophets warned about came to pass: Babylon invaded Jerusalem, destroyed almost all of the city, put their false gods in the temple, and took the people away into exile.
Psalm 74 describes a situation that is difficult to ascribe to any other event. If the author (as is written) is the Asaph we know, he was writing prophetically—that is, God showed him what would happen later, and he wrote in reaction to what he saw. (Another option is that this was another Asaph who lived at the time of the exile.)
That is the context of this psalm: it seems like everything in the world is fighting against God’s plan, and we don’t see how what is happening around us could possibly be a part of it.
This is a wildly strange prayer, because it is so far from the way most of us would often pray. But it is the right way to pray in these kinds of situations.
Asaph’s Complaint (v. 1-11)
So let’s go to the beginning and take it little by little—in this first part, Asaph is basically venting, and it’s good for him to vent: this is just what’s happening. v. 1:
1 O God, why do you cast us off forever?
Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?
Two things to see really quickly before we keep going. First: can you see the first question is slightly exaggerated? Why do you cast us off FOREVER?
I had a discussion with a young couple recently who discovered one of the singular joys of marriage: the irritation that can grow because one person says, “You always do this,” or “You never do this.” We’re all guilty of this; we all say it at some time or another. And it’s always annoying.
Now, obviously when we say that, we know we’re not speaking literally. It’s a figure of speech—a way of saying you do this often enough that it seems like you always do it.
That’s what’s happening here. Asaph, like any good Israelite, knows perfectly well that God has not cast off his people forever—but it sure feels that way.
C.H. Spurgeon writes: “God is never weary of his people so as to abhor them, and even when his anger is turned against them, it is but for a small moment, and with a view to their eternal good. Grief in its distraction asks strange questions and surmises impossible terrors. It is a wonder of grace that the Lord has not long ago put us away as people lay aside cast-off garments, but he hates putting away, and will still be patient with his chosen.” (1)
Secondly, he asks, Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? The answer to that question is obvious as well—it’s the people’s sin and idolatry that led to their exile and the destruction of Jerusalem. At least it’s obvious to anyone who has all the facts. It’s quite possible that Asaph received a prophetic word from God about what would happen to Jerusalem, but he wasn’t told why it would happen. That’s one possibility.
Or maybe he feels that even the people’s sin shouldn’t be able to send God’s plan onto what seems like such a massive detour. Which is why he says (v. 2):
2 Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old,
which you have redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage!
Remember Mount Zion, where you have dwelt.
We’ll come back to this in a bit, but he sets the stage by calling on God to remember—to remember his people, how he rescued and redeemed them for himself, and to remember the home God has made for himself among them (that’s what he means when he refers to “Mount Zion”: the place where God dwells).
That’s where he’ll go in a little while. But first, he describes the situation as it stands. V. 3:
3 Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins;
the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary!
4 Your foes have roared in the midst of your meeting place;
they set up their own signs for signs.
5 They were like those who swing axes
in a forest of trees.
6 And all its carved wood
they broke down with hatchets and hammers.
7 They set your sanctuary on fire;
they profaned the dwelling place of your name,
bringing it down to the ground.
8 They said to themselves, “We will utterly subdue them”;
they burned all the meeting places of God in the land.
9 We do not see our signs;
there is no longer any prophet,
and there is none among us who knows how long.
10 How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?
Is the enemy to revile your name forever?
11 Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?
Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them!
So this is pretty bleak.
The enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary (v. 3). Idolatrous emblems used in war have been set up in the temple (v. 4): as Spurgeon described it: ”an insulting token of victory, and of contempt for the vanquished and their God.” The sanctuary in the temple, and all the synagogues throughout the land, have been set on fire. The people no longer see any “signs” (v. 9): no more Urim and Thummim on the high priest’s chest, the means by which God often communicated his will; no more smoke of sacrifice or incense rising from the temple; no more feasts; no more circumcision (the covenant sign of the people of Israel, and forbidden by the king of Babylon); no more prophets.
Perhaps worst of all, at the end of v. 9, we see that there is none among us who knows how long. When there is no end of suffering in sight, that suffering is amplified exponentially.
All of this amounts to the same thing: God is seemingly absent from his people, and the people don’t understand his absence.
Asaph’s Reminder (v. 12-17)
Many of us would do one of two things here: we would either complain like Asaph, and just stop, wallowing in our misery. Or would we would go directly to what we call the “intercession”—that is, we’d ask God to do something to change our situation.
But Asaph doesn’t go straight there. He does something first that is crucially important: he speaks of who God is. V. 17:
12 Yet God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.
So he insists on three different aspects of who God is.
First of all, he speaks to the fact that God is a saving God. God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. God, the King of all things, takes pleasure in saving those who need saving.
Secondly, he says that God is powerful over human powers. V. 13 will be familiar to anyone who’s been in Exodus with us these last months: You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. The “sea monsters,” this “Leviathan” of v. 14, is a mythical, dragon-like monster, and stands in here for Egypt, the superpower who had been holding God’s people in slavery for centuries. God came in and with works of incredible power, rescued the people from their oppressors.
Third, he says that God isn’t just powerful over humanity, but over all creation—the entire universe. The day, the night, the stars and the sun, the earth and its seasons. He is sovereign over everything.
Now, I said earlier that instead of just moving directly on to intercession, Asaph takes time to remember who God is, and I said that’s a vitally important step. Why is it so important?
For three main reasons:
First: What he says here is a reminder that God is totally in control of what’s happening. Babylon did not “beat” God or thwart his plan. If he’s sovereign over the greatest movements and the greatest powers of the earth, he is also sovereign over this situation.
Secondly, it seems like Asaph is reminding God of who he is, but obviously God hasn’t forgotten. As is almost always the case when we pray and speak of who God is, the goal isn’t just to tell God that we know who he is; the goal is to remind ourselves of who God is. And the reason why this is so important to do is because in this particular situation, at this particular moment, God seems to be hiding from his people. He seems to be standing off at a distance, just watching while his people are sent into exile, his city plundered, and his plan sabotaged. It’s not true, but that’s how it feels.
So it is crucially important to help ourselves remember that no matter how it feels, it’s not true. God is the God of salvation. He is the God who has proven himself faithful to his people in the past. And he is sovereign over absolutely each aspect of creation. None of this is a surprise to him, and none of it means he will turn his back on his people now.
You see, when we remind ourselves of what is true, it levels us. Most of us know that feeling of being on a boat that’s being rocked on the sea; and most of us know what it’s like to finally step back on to dry land after so much movement. Reminding ourselves of the truth gets our feet back on solid ground.
The third reason why this is so important is because once we’re “re-stabilized,” this regained stability gives us the confidence we need to make our intercession, and to not just base it on emotion. It makes it possible for us to pray, not only based on how we feel, but based on truth.
Asaph’s Intercession (v. 18-23)
And that is what we see Asaph do next. After laying out his complaint before God, and after recentering himself by proclaiming who God is, he makes his prayer—and it’s a very interesting prayer. V. 18:
18 Remember this, O Lord, how the enemy scoffs,
and a foolish people reviles your name.
19 Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beasts;
do not forget the life of your poor forever.
20 Have regard for the covenant,
for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.
21 Let not the downtrodden turn back in shame;
let the poor and needy praise your name.
22 Arise, O God, defend your cause;
remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day!
23 Do not forget the clamor of your foes,
the uproar of those who rise against you, which goes up continually!
So just look at the contents of this prayer for a moment. Remember your people, he says in v. 18-19. Remember your covenant, v. 20. Fight for the praise of your name—defend your cause, v. 21-22. Be offended by the sin of our enemies, v. 22-23.
There are two things that bugged me about this prayer for a long time.
The first is that, especially after everything he said before about who God is, it all seems so incredibly obvious—he’s just asking God to do what God is supposed to do, what he has already promised to do.
The second is that—let’s be frank—it seems almost manipulative, doesn’t it? “Look at how the enemy scoffs! A foolish people is reviling your name! Let the poor and needy praise your name! Defend your cause! They’re laughing at you!”
This always seemed weird to me, because it’s not like God’s not going to see through that. It’s not like God’s not going to see what Asaph’s trying to do, that he’s trying to focus the attention on God, and how his name is being slandered, as a way to convince him to act. It always seemed a little too calculated to me.
Why would he argue like this? Isn’t he preaching to the choir?
The answer is, of course, yes. But he’s not doing it in a manipulative way; he’s doing it because he is firmly aware of the relationship God has established with his people.
Our kids do the same thing to us all the time: they’ll bring up things that we said before, as a way to convince us to give them what they want now.
“But you said we could have ice cream!”
“I didn’t say you could have it right now, right before bed; that would be bad for you.”
“But you said—”
They have one fixed goal in mind—the ice cream—and don’t realize that we, as parents, have bigger goals. We’re still good to our word (hopefully), and the kids will get ice cream—we’ll keep our promise. But it may not be exactly when or how the kids want it.
We see a similar dynamic going on here, which is pretty shocking, because it’s so familial. The psalmist Asaph is addressing God in a way that presumes to understand what is important to God and what God is like; he’s praying in a way that implies an intimate relationship. For any other culture at this time or place, such behavior towards their gods would have been unthinkable.
The amazing thing here is that this is in the Bible: God wants us to know that it’s okay to pray like this. It’s okay to not understand his plan, and it’s okay to bring up things that God has said when we pray, like kids do. “You said you would do this—please do it!”
“Remember your people!” Asaph prays—to which God responds, I will. He already said he would.
Remember your covenant! I will. He already said he would.
Defend your cause. I will. He already said he would.
Be offended by their sin! I am. He already said he is.
Such familiarity with the God of the universe is incredible. The fact that God lets us try to convince him to do what he said he would do is a miracle of grace.
Risks and Encouragements
There are two big risks involved when you want to start praying like this.
The first is assuming that whatever you want is God’s plan, when it may well not be. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had this conversation. Someone comes and tells me, “I believe that this is God’s plan for my life,” and then they tell me what that plan is. I’m supposed to be married to this person. I’m supposed to have X number of children. I’m supposed to live in this city. I’m supposed to work in this job.
Now, maybe they’re right, and maybe they’re wrong—only time will tell. But these people cannot count on these things being God’s plan when they pray—at least not with the kind of confidence Asaph shows in Psalm 74. They can’t do that, because God did not promise in his Word that you would marry this or that person; God did not promise in his Word that you would definitely have kids; God did not promise that you would live in any particular city, or do any particular job. These are just not things God has promised us.
And so we cannot say, “God, defend your cause! Have regard for your covenant!” and then attach our prayer request onto that. You can ask him to do it, but you can’t use his character or his covenant as a defense for that prayer.
Even if it’s something you desire incredibly deeply—a felt need that causes you a lot of pain—don’t assume that what you want is definitely God’s plan, because it might not be. That’s the first risk.
The second risk is sort of the flip-side of that: it’s assuming that whatever is happening in your life can’t possibly be a part of God’s plan. Remember what Peter’s reaction was when Jesus told him that he was about to go to Jerusalem to be killed? He said (Matthew 16.22): “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus’s response was brutal: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16.23).
Peter couldn’t even conceive of the possibility that such a horrible thing—the death of his Master, the Messiah, at the hands of the religious leaders—could ever be a part of God’s plan. But it absolutely was. It was through Christ’s horrible death and miraculous resurrection that we are now freed from our sin, united to Christ, and declared righteous before God. You never would have guessed it ahead of time, but this was definitely God’s plan.
Several of you have gone through situations in the recent past—are still going through situations—about which we could easily say, “This couldn’t possibly figure into God’s will for me, or for the church.” We can’t see how any good could come from some things that have happened.
But what does Asaph say? “Yet God our King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.” He is the eternal Savior, whose perfect plan of salvation was establish before he ever created the world. He knows what he is doing, and he is faithful.
Those are the risks. Now let me give you some encouragements.
First of all: don’t ever be afraid to tell God what you’re feeling. We all know what it’s like when someone says hi and asks how you’re doing, and you put on a brave face and say, “I’m good, thanks,” when in fact you’re just barely holding it together. Some of us do that with God. Sometimes when we pray, we pray what we feel like we should pray, and never express to God what we’re actually feeling or thinking. Like we’re worried he’s going to be offended if we don’t use the right formula, or if we pray a prayer that sounds immature.
Asaph doesn’t hesitate to pray exactly what he’s thinking. Why are you doing this, God? Why have you cast us off? Why aren’t you speaking to us? How long is this going to last?
This is not an immature prayer, because he doesn’t stop there—he moves on to more solid truths as he progresses. But it is an honest prayer. It is a prayer that holds nothing back.
Don’t ever be afraid to tell God how you’re actually feeling. You might as well, because he already knows it anyway, and he is not in the least put out by prayers that might seem stupid, but that are honest. Talk to him. Even if it’s just to say, “I don’t get it!” Keep those lines of communication open.
Secondly: don’t ever be afraid to tell God who he is. Of course this might seem pointless, because God already knows who he is far better than we do. But it’s really not. A few years ago we were visiting my family in the U.S., and I was driving somewhere with my dad. He was discouraged about something going on in his job, and I just started telling him what I saw. My dad was pretty young when I was born, so I was twenty years old when he was the age I am now; I remember what he was like as a younger man. So I’ve actually been able to observe his progress in his faith over the years—to see what he’s gotten wrong, yet, but also to see what he’s done well, as a father, as a husband and as a man of God.
So I just told him what I saw. There was no forethought to it, there was no plan, I just started talking. And as I was talking, two things happened. He was encouraged, of course, but I think I may have gotten more out of that conversation, because as I talked about what kind of a man my dad is, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for him—for the fact that I got to have him as my dad, that I got to be a part of his life. Telling my dad who he is made me appreciate him even more than I already did.
Don’t ever be afraid to tell God who he is. He doesn’t need encouragement, but it pleases him to hear us praise him like this, and it helps us to appreciate in deeper and deeper ways just how amazing God is, how powerful he is. It gives us deeper confidence in him, and allows us to pray confidently, secure in the knowledge of who he is.
Thirdly: don’t ever be afraid to pray God’s promises back to him. Lord, remember your covenant. Lord, deliver your people. Lord, defend your cause. These are things God has already promised to go, and Asaph just sends God back to his own promises.
Now of course, this suggests that we need to learn what God has actually promised us in his Word, and we need to be aware of whom those promises were given to. I grew up hearing Christians in America misappropriate promises God gave to the people of Israel in the Old Testament, and apply them to America, when God never gave those promises to America. So we need to always be learning in this area.
But when we learn what God has promised his people, we must never be afraid to lean on those promises in prayer. For example, the type of prayer we see in v. 18-23, we can pray in just the same way when we look at our own lives and see a gap between what God has promised and what seems to be happening.
“Lord make me like you! Help me to walk in your paths! Let me find my joy in you! Help me see that I am united to your people! Be here with me in my sin and my suffering!” We can pray these things with total and absolute confidence, because God has promised to do every one of them.
Which brings us to the last encouragement: always remember that God’s plans never fail, and he is faithful even when you don’t see him. God has promised to do all kinds of things for his people—but sometimes it seems as if he has forgotten those promises. Sometimes it seems like we as individuals, or the church as a body, have strayed very far from the ideal God has set out for us. Sometimes we may despair of ever getting back to where we should be; or we may despair of other Christians ever being what God says he plans for his people to be.
But even in the most dire circumstances, God’s plans never fail, and he is always faithful. Sometimes his ways seem circuitous to us; but he knows what he’s doing. We can rest in him. We can trust him. We can always know that our pain, our mistakes—even the mistakes of God’s people—will never be wasted. God is working for our good and for his glory.
So speak to him. Tell him how you feel. But don’t stop there. Tell him who he is. Pray his promises back to him. And know that no matter what, you are in good hands.
(1) (Spurgeon, C. H. (1993). Psalms (p. 313). Crossway Books.)
The Hard Work of Resting
Matthew 11.25-30
Today we’re finishing up a three-week series on work. The first week, we looked at a biblical view of work—that work is a good gift from God; but that because of sin, work is hard. Last week, Joe talked about how the gospel should influence our approach to our work, which should be seen and lived out for Jesus Christ: that we can serve Christ in our jobs no matter what job we have, and that the gospel’s call should impact every aspect of our lives—including our professional lives, and sometimes in a radical way.
There’s obviously a lot more that we could say on this subject or the interaction between the gospel and work, but we decided that this final message in the series should address the topic of rest, which of course an integral part of the whole thing.
I want to explain my dilemma before I start, because otherwise it might be a bit confusing.
There’s a problem inherent in this subject, and that is that for most of us, when we think “rest”, we think “vacation.” We think rest is time when I’m not working. And that kind of rest is important, for sure. It’s important for our bodies and it’s important for our minds.
But we’ve all experienced how it often works in practice. You make big plans for vacation, you leave, and you come back even more exhausted than you were before. Vacation can be rest-ful, but it’s not really true rest. It’s not rest that will carry over into our lives once vacation’s over.
Now, it could be—but only if we understand what true rest is. And by the same token, if we understand what true rest is, we won’t need vacation to get it. We’ll have access to that true rest it every day of every week.
So I’m sorry, I’m not going to give you five tips to recharge your batteries at the end of a stressful period at work—we’re going to need to talk about true rest. But in order to get to that rest, we need to understand its context—in what conditions this rest is found. And that’s the dilemma: explaining the context before getting to the meat of the subject.
So we’re going to dig into this context which, at first glance, seems to have nothing at all to do with our jobs, in order to get an idea of what true rest looks like. And then we’ll try to bring it back to the ground and see what it means in the context of our day-to-day work.
For this, I’ll invite you to go to the gospel of Mathew, chapter 11. We’ll be reading v. 25-30.
Keep last week’s sermon in mind as we read, because it’s exactly what we see Jesus do here. All of our work, all of our lives, should be seen through the lens of the gospel; the goal of our work is to advance the proclamation of the gospel. (And there are a million ways to do it, that I won’t touch on today; go back and listen to last week’s sermon if you want to know more on that, because Joe nailed it—it was really excellent.)
In this passage, Jesus talks about the nature of the gospel, and how the gospel is revealed to those whom he saves.
A Selective Revelation (v. 25-26)
We see three things here that characterize this revelation of the gospel. So we’ll take them one by one. First, it is a selective revelation.
Jesus is talking to the crowds, as usual. And we read starting in Matthew 11.25:
25 At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things [“these things” = his identity as the Messiah, his call to the people of Israel to repent] from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
I don’t think it’s a secret for you that not everyone who listens to the gospel will really hear the gospel.
The stereotypical Parisian, as you know, is well-educated, independent, and fairly cultured. It’s not an easy sell to convince someone who is intelligent and cultured and capable that they actually don’t have everything they need, or that they can’t get it on their own.
Jesus said it wouldn’t be easy: he rejoices that the Father has hidden these things from the wise and understanding—the religious elite of the time, those people who are educated and respectable—and revealed them to little children. Now he’s not saying that God has hidden the gospel from educated people, and revealed them to uneducated people. God is not anti-education or anti-wisdom.
The problem is that very often a diploma brings pride along with it. Those who think they are wise and understanding often believe they can basically take care of themselves.
Little children, on the other hand, know they need help. They’ll pretend they don’t until they fall down and hurt themselves—and then they’ll tell the truth: they’ll start crying and ask for Mom or Dad to come pick them up.
Those who know they don’t have it all together are naturally more inclined to listen to someone tell them they need help.
So the revelation of the gospel is selective: it goes out to those “little children” who recognize they need help, who recognize they need a rescuer, and it is “hidden” from those “wise and understanding” who think they can do it all on their own.
An Exclusive Revelation (v. 27)
The thing is that we all need a rescuer—we all need a Savior—no matter how wise and understanding we might actually be. So what allows someone to realize they need help?
V. 27:
27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
This is a troubling text for some of us, because here Jesus says two things people don’t like to hear: firstly, he says that we can only know God if we know him through Jesus. Any other attempt to get to God will fail, because Jesus is our only way in.
The second thing he says is almost more troubling still: he says that we can only know God if Jesus chooses to reveal him to us. Without his help, we can hear the gospel, and it’s like we’re looking at one of those optical illusions where you have to squint your eyes in just the right way in order to see the real picture. If we want to see God, and believe in him, and know him, Jesus must give us eyes to see.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this, because debating the fine points of the subject is not the main message of this text. What we need to see is that Jesus is showing us our own inability to save ourselves.
The gospel message is revealed to “little children”—to those who know they need help. We know we need help once we see the Father, because seeing the Father shows you how little you can do on your own: when you see everything he is, you realize all that you are not.
In order to be saved, we need help. That’s the point.
And that’s the hard truth we need to know before we can appreciate what he says next. There’s something in all of us, no matter how good our theology is, that makes us want to try and work as hard as we can to do what we need to do, to get in Jesus’s good graces.
We work hard to try to be humble enough for God to consider us “little children.” We do our best to be “good Christians,” to get Jesus’s attention, so that he might just reveal the Father to us.
This is our natural mode of thought: when we discover that God has hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children, when we discover that we can’t know the Father unless Jesus chooses to reveal him to us, we think, What do I have to convince Jesus to reveal the Father to ME? What do I have to do to be one of these “little children,” so I can know the Father?
A Restful Revelation (v. 28-30)
Jesus’s answer is absolutely earth-shattering, if we take the time to hear it. He says, Stop working. You have nothing to prove, you have nothing to earn. Stop trying to earn it—just come to me, and REST. V. 28:
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Before we talk about the rest Jesus is speaking of, let’s address the elephant in the room, which is everything that came just before.
We saw that the revelation Christ gives is both selective and exclusive—he clearly that “these things” (the reality of judgment and the salvation he offers) are not revealed to everyone.
But then in v. 28, he gives an invitation which seems like the exact opposite. It is a very open invitation. He says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden.”
Do you see what he’s doing? He’s throwing out this invitation indiscriminately—there are people in the crowds who will accept him, and there are people in the crowds who won’t. But when he says “all who labor and are heavy laden,” he’s giving every person in that crowd something to grab on to, because there is not a person in the world who, at some point or another, doesn’t feel tired. Doesn’t feel beaten down by the circumstances of life. Unless we’re completely selfish and irresponsible, we all labor; we are all heavy laden.
Imagine for a minute that you’ve never read this passage, that you’re just listening to Jesus talk, you get through v. 27, and you don’t know what’s coming next.
First Jesus gives us this unsettling news: “You can do nothing on your own. You can’t know the Father, or come near the Father, or humble yourself before the Father, unless I choose to reveal him to you. This is out of your hands. You can work as hard as you’d like, you will never be able to work hard enough to get in good with God.”
And then he says something that—if we didn’t know it was coming—would be just about the most shocking thing he could say. “You can’t do any of this without me…and you don’t have to. I’m not calling you to come and do anything—I’m calling you to come and rest: to know that you can’t do anything, and to stop trying.”
Several years ago I was visiting one of our supporting churches in the U.S. I was sharing with them that that year had been a difficult year for me personally; there had been some pastoral cases that had weighed on me, plus the usual fatigue that comes with having a new baby at home. (Zadie was about two months old at the time.)
One of those elders modeled this restful gospel perfectly in that conversation we had.
At one point as I was sharing this, he thanked me for being honest, and he said, “I just want you to know that you don’t ever have to try and give us the impression that you’ve got it all together. You don’t have to be doing well. We are here, and we’ll support you even if you’re totally falling apart. We’re not going anywhere.”
Brothers and sisters, that is the gospel.
The gospel is rest.
The gospel is not for those who work; it is for those who are tired of working.
It is not for the strong; it is for those who have no more strength.
It is not for the moral or the righteous; it is those who need righteousness but can’t be righteous on their own.
Few things could be more difficult for modern, educated, cultured, self-sufficient Parisians to accept—they don’t know what to do when someone tells them that they have nothing to do, because Jesus did it all for them.
And part of it is the very real fact that it shouldn’t work this way: if God really is holy, and we really are accountable to him, then we shouldn’t be able to just come rest.
That’s why, when people finally hear the gospel for the first time, even if they have a hard time believing it, they actually do see why we’d call it good news.
The gospel tells us Jesus already did everything for us. He lived our life, and he died our death, and he gives us life through his resurrection.
So when we come to Christ, there truly is nothing left we can do to get in good with him. He reveals the Father to us because we already are in good with him. There’s nothing we could add to what he has already done.
The question is, once we have done this—once we come to him—what happens then?
Jesus’s answer is surprising: he says, “Come rest, and keep resting. But be aware that your rest with me will be really different from the rest you’re used to.”
Our rest in Christ will not be the absence of work, but a different kind of work. V. 29:
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
A “yoke” is that big, heavy, wooden frame they put over oxen’s necks to attach them to a plow: it’s hardly an image that suggests rest. In fact, it suggests quite the opposite: not just work, but hard work.
And if we read the Bible, we see that that’s true: there are a lot of commandments in the Bible, commandments that don’t seem easy.
The apostle Paul said at one point, “I worked harder than any of you!” If you’re a Christian you know that we don’t stop working when we become Christians—we work even harder than before!
But here’s where a lot of people get stuck: we work hard as Christians…but it’s a really different kind of work, and that’s what Jesus is getting at.
The work Jesus calls us to is different because, firstly, he is gentle and lowly in heart.
The fact that Jesus is gentle and lowly of heart means he won’t beat us when we fail. He sympathizes with our weaknesses, because he knows what we’re made of, and he knows it’s hard to live for him. He will correct us, but he will correct us with a soft hand.
When Jack was little he liked to climb on stuff, and he was pretty agile. (That’s actually still true.) One of his favorite things—for a while—was to put one hand on the radiator in our hallway, another hand on the doorjamb across from the radiator, and his feet on the wall behind him—kind of a Spider-Man thing.
And I’d tell him, “Don’t do that; you’re going to fall.”
But he was six—of course, he’d ignore me, and keep doing it.
Then one day, his hand slipped and he did a bellyflop right on the hard tile in our hallway. Knocked the wind out of him.
When that happened, I did not yell at him and tell him how stupid he was for ignoring me. The kid couldn’t breathe; he was freaked out. So I ran to him, and pulled him into my arms, and once he’d gotten his breath back I held his face in my hands and said, “I’m so sorry you fell, I know that hurt. What can we do different next time?”
Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart, so when we work for him, we don’t have to be afraid of failing. Gentle correction is not frightening; it’s love. We will fail…and he will correct us with a soft hand.
Secondly, the work Jesus calls us to is different because his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.
His burden is light because, when Christ saves us, he calls us to learn from him (v. 29). Learn what, exactly?
He calls us to learn what God has always taught his people, and that is how to live. He says if we come and learn from him, this gentle and lowly Master, he tells us the result: and you will find rest for your souls.
When he says that, he’s quoting Jeremiah 6.16, in which God laments over the invitation he’s given to his people, which they have refused to accept:
16 Thus says the Lord:
“Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.
But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
What are the “ancient paths”? What is “the good way” God invites his people to walk in? It’s his law; it’s his commandments; it’s his will for the people he has created and chosen for himself.
When Jesus invites us to learn from him, he’s inviting us to learn what he is like; what he loves; what he hates; what he desires. That’s what his commandments are. The Bible is filled with commandments, and they’re hard. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 contains the most difficult commandments in all of Scripture. But at the same time, we love that sermon—even unbelievers tend to be drawn to that sermon—because we all recognize that this is the kind of person we want to be.
And that’s why his burden is light: quite simply, it’s not hard to do what you want to do.
You see, true rest is not the opposite of work. True rest is the right kind of work.
When we understand the grace of Christ, and we begin to love what he loves—because what he loves is actually worth loving—the work of obedience isn’t just light; it’s refreshing. Nothing is more restful than wanting the right thing, and then doing exactly what you want.
With Christ in the School of Rest
Here’s the paradox of this passage: the invitation to rest is an invitation to work. Not the work of a laborer trying to earn his wages, but rather the work of a student learning from a master. Christ’s invitation to rest is an invitation into his school—to work hard learning from him.
What do we learn in Christ’s school?
In Christ’s school, we learn who he is. He is gentle and lowly in heart. He is a gentle Savior, a humble Master.
In Christ’s school, we learn what is important to him. We learn from his commandments what kind of Master he is, and we find ourselves wanting to become that kind of person ourselves. So we work at it, and we learn from our successes and from our failures. Under the care of our gentle and lowly Master, we learn to desire what we should desire.
In Christ’s school, we learn who we are in him. In regards to what is truly important, we are not grownups; we are not wise and understanding. We are little children, saved by a gracious Father, learning to become adults.
And that’s sort of the key to this whole passage: the becoming. In our community group this week someone was questioning the relationship between the true rest Christ provides here, and the ordinary rest we need from our jobs and our other occupations. Finding true rest in Christ is good, but it doesn’t really change the fact that we still need ordinary rest, right?
That’s true—we do still need ordinary rest. We do need breaks, we need to not work the weekend (which is why God instituted the Sabbath), we need vacation. But that doesn’t mean that there is no relationship between these two types of rest.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
One of the biggest surprises I found when I first moved to France was the relationship that the French have with vacation. If I wanted to caricature, I’d say that the French work 10 months (with the occasional small break), breaking their backs to get to summertime, so that they can finally rest.
I found it odd because I grew up in the U.S., and at least in my family, in my entire life before getting married, we took three real vacations as a family. Three. And each of them lasted less than a week.
The thing is, none of us—even my parents, I asked them about this—felt a particular lack of rest. Why is that?
I don’t have a definitive answer, but at least one reason is that multiple times during the week, in the evenings (since we ate very early), we left our house, and we did things together. We went to the movies or we played mini-golf or we went to the park and played baseball, or we ate out for dinner. We did this sort of thing at least three or four times a week.
My dad only had two weeks off work a year—he couldn’t take a long vacation. But we didn’t feel the need for one, because we had several “mini-vacations” every week.
Now we can debate this way of doing things later (I’ve been in France for twenty years now, and I admit I’ve gotten used to the French way of doing vacation). But the principle is a good one. Small moments of rest on a regular basis, throughout the week and throughout the year, provide better rest than big moments of rest a couple times a year.
We do need to rest—we need to rest our bodies and our minds. But we can’t content ourselves with ordinary rest, because there’s a difference between resting when we need to, and being at rest.
Ordinary rest is necessary, and we need to rest. But more than that, God gives us what we need to be at rest. All the time.
Look at how Jesus says it:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
You see, he’s not commanding us to rest. He’s inviting us to receive a gift. He’s inviting us to find rest in him. True rest—the rest Christ gives—is not an action we perform; it’s a state we’re invited into.
There’s a big difference between resting, and being at rest. There’s a big difference between resting, and being restful people. You can rest without being at rest. If you do, then yes, you’ll rest your body and your mind, but that will be all.
But if you are already at rest in Christ when you clock out of work on Friday and start your weekend, imagine what that would change about your ordinary rest.
When we do ordinary rest, what do we do? We do things we enjoy; we have fun. If we know Christ, then we do things that feed our souls; we come to church and we encourage our brothers and sisters and we worship God together. All of that is good—that what ordinary rest looks like.
But if we’re already at rest when we start this time, then the ordinary, fun things we do won’t only be fun. Playing with our kids will become a moment of thankfulness to God for giving them to us. Eating a good meal will be a moment of joy and gratitude to our good God for providing us with good things. Looking at works of art will be a moment of wonder as we see our Creator God reflected in the work.
So how do we do it? How do we find rest rather than just deciding to rest?
Christ tells us: Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.
In other words, learn to obey my commandments. It’s the basics of Christian discipleship. It’s what he told the disciples to teach others later on, when he said (Matthew 28.19-20)
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
True rest, the kind of rest that bleeds into every area of our lives, no matter what the circumstances of our work or our lives actually are, is found in simple obedience to Jesus Christ. We learn to rest—we take Christ’s yoke on ourselves—when we are tempted to disobey him, and we resist that temptation. We learn to rest when we discipline ourselves to read his Word and pray, to learn to know him more. We learn to rest when we get together with our brothers and sisters to encourage one another in the gospel. We learn to rest when we share the gospel with someone else.
If we have found our rest in him, every other rest we might find benefits us double—because we can have the ordinary rest these moments provide, but we don’t have to depend on them. Our vacations can go badly—and we’ll be okay. Our days off can be stressful—and we’ll be okay. Our good weekends are made even better, because we’re able to see the ordinary rest we find for what it is: a good gift from a gracious God.
So the call of this text is very, very simple. If you’re tired, come to him. Learn from him. Learn to obey him, learn to be like him.
And if you do, Jesus promises, you’ll find rest for your souls. True rest—rest that isn’t something we do, but something we are.
That is what Christ is offering to us. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Work According to the Bible
Genesis 2-3
We’re beginning a three-week series today on work according to the gospel. One of the questions I get asked the most frequently is, How do I know that I’m doing what God wants me to do, professionally? How can I know God’s will for my career? That question doesn’t bother me, because the answer’s easy: I have no idea. The Bible doesn’t really talk about that. The Bible focuses much more on our holiness than on what particular career we should go into. It says to obey God’s commands, to pray for wisdom, and to make the best decisions you can, that are in line with God’s character.
So the Bible’s not going to tell you whether or not you should be an auditor. Or a teacher. Or an architect. It just doesn’t talk about that.
But it does talk about work in general, and how we should go about thinking about work. And we need to think about it.
We never say it like this out loud, but we often live our lives as if we have our professional lives on one side, and our Christian lives on the other. And I don’t think it’s because we never ask ourselves how our faith should interact with our careers, but rather that we don’t know how to answer that question. We’d like to work heartily at whatever we do, as for the Lord and not for men (as Paul says in Colossians 3.23-24), but we just have a hard time understanding what that looks like.
That’s what we’ll be taking the next three weeks talking about.
Today, we’re going to remain fairly broad, to cover the basics. Next week Joe is going to talk more specifically about how the gospel should change our interaction with our work. But before we can begin to consider that question, we need to have a certain framework in mind; before we can build up a biblical vision of work, we need to tear down the unbiblical vision of work we already have.
The foundation for a biblical vision of work is found in Genesis 2-3, and in these passages we see two very simple truths.
Work Is Good (Genesis 2.15-20)
The first thing we see in the Bible on the subject of work comes in right at the beginning—and that is that work is good.
If we read Genesis 1, we see that God creates the world. I won’t go into detail, but almost every day of the seven days he spends creating the world, at some point God looks at what he’s created and we read, And God saw that it was good. In v. 10, v. 12, v. 18, v. 21, v. 25—And God saw that it was good.
Then he creates the man and the woman—the last thing he creates—and he takes a step back and in v. 31 we read, And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
So what we should take from all of this is pretty simple: God created everything, and everything he created is good. That’s how the earth starts out: everything is good. There is nothing bad here.
And it’s in the context of all this good creation that we pick up the thread in chapter 2. Now, chapter 2 isn’t the chronological follow-up of chapter 1; it’s more of a step back. In chapter 2, the author (Moses) takes a look at the creation of the man, called Adam (which literally just means “man”) and goes into more detail about how that happened and what it looked like.
We’re going to read starting at v. 15, and at this point God hasn’t created the woman yet.
Genesis 2:15–20 (ESV)
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
Now there are a couple of different things we see in these verses, but for today let’s look at one aspect in particular: the fact that before sin came into the world and messed everything up—while everything that God created was still fundamentally good—God gave Adam a job.
V. 15: The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
I’ll be honest: my instinct is to think that this might have spoiled things a bit for me. Adam’s in this perfect paradise, where everything is just as it should be…and God says, “You see that shovel? Get to it, we need to put a trench right here.”
If I were Adam, I’d respond, “Can’t you just create a trench, like you just created everything else out of thin air?”
To which God would respond, “Trust me—work is good.”
And then God gives him another job, which is to name all the animals. Can you imagine how hard that job would have been? Zadie asks me to make up bedtime stories for her sometimes—my brain hurts after five minutes of that. How exhausted must Adam have been at the end of that day?
Again, if I were Adam, I’d point at the hedgehog and say, “God—come on, surely you know what this thing is called.”
To which God would respond, “You give it a go—trust me, work is good.”
The reason work is good is because God is a God who works. God is never inactive; he is always working. God is constantly active, and that is just as much a part of who he is as love, or holiness, or wrath. He upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1.3). The only time he didn’t work was on the seventh day, during which he rested. (But we’ll get to that in a couple weeks.)
Work is fundamentally a good thing: it is a part of God’s intention for humanity that we work. And anyone who has ever done a good job at something knows that work is good. We live in an apartment now, but one of the great pleasures I had when we lived in a house was to mow the grass. I loved mowing the grass—there was something about the fact of working with my hands to make the lawn look nice that made me feel like I was doing the right thing.
It’s weird to say it like this, but that’s exactly the job God gave Adam to do: to work and keep the garden. It was manual labor, and that work is good.
A lot of us need to realize this—need to realize that work is a gift that God has given to humanity—because a lot of us run away from even the suggestion of work. That’s me: every time I have a day off, Loanne has a job for me to do. Or rather, she wants me to find a job to do. Wash the windows, or organize the bookshelves (which I still haven’t done), or go to the dump to drop off things. And I can’t complain about it, because she’s right—it needs to be done, and at least according to Genesis 2, work is a good thing.
So I get to washing the windows, and I’m never happy about it. But when I’m done, every single time, I’m happy I did it, because God gave me work to make me more like him. When I wash the windows because they need washing, I’m acting like our God who always works; I’m fulfilling his command to work and keep what he has given me.
In Genesis 2, God’s command that Adam work and keep the garden wasn’t a chore. He wasn’t saying, “This is going to be terrible, but you’ve got to do it anyway.” No—he was saying, “Look Adam, there’s a lot to do here. And you get to do it.” That’s the resounding theme of these verses: we get to work! Work is good.
Work Is Hard (Genesis 3.16-19)
But of course this doesn’t last long. The first thing we learn about work in the Bible is that work is good; the second thing we learn is that work is grim. Not in itself—it wasn’t grim before, but it’s grim now.
In chapter 3, we see that God gives Adam and his wife Eve one commandment, in the passage we read earlier. And they disobeyed anyway. They didn’t trust God who’d given them all these amazing things, and wanted the one thing he said not to go near.
That was the first appearance of sin in the Bible. Sin is rebellion against God, and rebellion against God poisons everything—all of creation.
But especially the man and the woman. God came down, he called Adam to come out, and he told them what the consequence of their rebellion would be: because they rebelled against God, everything would rebel against them—their bodies, and their work.
Genesis 3:16–19 (ESV)
To the woman [God] said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
Because of sin, work is now really, really difficult. For the woman first, God says that she has one particular job that the man can’t do—and that is to bear children. Obviously, that’s not the only work a woman can do—don’t go on Facebook and say that I said a woman’s only job is to have babies. That’s not true.
But I think we can all agree that having babies is one job you women can do that we men cannot.
So God says, this is one particular job you have, and it’s going to be very painful. Having babies is going to hurt. And everyone in here who has kids knows that God was correct.
In addition, working at your marriage is going to be difficult. Of course, that goes for both the man and the woman, but I think he says it to the woman here because he knows it will often be harder for her. Before, the man was a sinless leader—the exact kind of leader you’d want to follow. Now, he’s selfish and childish—Adam already showed that, when God came down and asked what happened, and he said, “It was her fault. She made me do it.” Husbands will now tend to be selfish; and if they decide to be violent, it will be hard for you to protect yourself because most of the time, he’ll be bigger than you.
To the man, God’s statement is more global. He says that everything you try to do is going to fight you. The man’s one job was to work and keep the garden; now, the ground is cursed. In order to eat, you’re going to have to work for it, and that work is going to be miserable. You’ll plant tomatoes, and thorns will grow instead. You’ll have the pressure of providing food for your family, and you won’t be able to produce enough to feed them. They’ll sometimes go hungry because of you. They’ll sometimes suffer because of you. You will let down the people who depend on you, because your work will be hard.
And it will be like that until you die—as long as you are on this earth, if you want to eat, you’ll have to sweat. If you want to provide for your family, you’ll have to work until you bleed.
If the message of Genesis 2 was, “You get to work!”, the message of Genesis 3 is, “You have to work.”
Now I don’t believe that the difficulty of work negates the goodness of work we saw before. We see it elsewhere: the world God created is still good and beautiful, still shows signs of God’s creative power. We are still created in God’s image; that didn’t go away because of sin. And work didn’t become fundamentally bad because of sin.
Sin didn’t change everything about creation, but it did add a lot of pain to the mix.
Work is still good, but it’s really hard now.
That’s the situation. And if you’re thinking it sounds a bit paradoxical, you’re absolutely right. In some ways, it would have been easier if sin had totally ruined work, to the point where God tells us not to do it anymore. But that’s not what happened.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon laments over the futility of work—at the end of chapter 2, he says:
Ecclesiastes 2:18–19 (ESV)
I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.
Work is hard.
But just a few verses later, he recognizes that work is also good. And the good in work isn’t necessarily what you get out of it, but rather, the good in work is found in work itself.
Ecclesiastes 3:9–13 (ESV)
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
It’s not one or the other; it’s both. And as long as your job isn’t openly sinful, this applies to whatever job we end up doing. Whether you’re a pastor, or a teacher, or an auditor, or a risk analyst, or a wedding planner, or a graphic designer, or a stay-at-home mom—whatever your work is, it will be really, really difficult; but it’s also really, really good.
And we need to keep both of those ideas in our minds at all times, because we’ll almost always tend to drift toward one of two extremes—or even both, depending on what stage of life we’re in.
On the one hand, because work is hard, we’ll tend to abandon it.
I started working when I was sixteen; I’ve had a lot of different jobs in my life. Some of those jobs were awesome—being a projectionist at a cinema, especially in the late 90s or early 2000s, was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a job, ever. But some of them were way less fun. I was a janitor for a few years. Cleaning toilets isn’t fun.
And even when it’s a job you love, you don’t always love it. I’ve never loved a job more than the job I have right now. I can’t imagine doing anything else. But I’ll be honest with you: there have been some days over the past couple years where I’d honestly rather be doing something else. Anything else. Some days, going back to being a janitor sounds pretty good.
Because of sin, work is now very hard.
Our spontaneous reaction, when work is hard, is going to be to abandon it.
And by that I don’t just mean that we’ll quit. We’ll abandon it in our hearts first.
We’ll become like every other French person complaining about their jobs around the water cooler. We’ll grit our teeth while we work, constantly weighed down by stress. We’ll find ourselves cutting corners in order to make it feel better; we’ll do a sub-par job because really, what does it matter? We’ll become defeatist in our thinking, and we’ll start to look for something else—because it just feels too hard.
Of course there are good reasons to leave a job. But statistically at least, people born over the last three decades don’t leave their jobs because they have to; they leave because they just want something better. They leave because they’re bored. They leave because they’re stressed. They leave because it just feels like too much work.
But work is hard. Difficulty is baked into the DNA of work in this fallen world. And the fact that your job is hard does not in itself mean that it’s not good for you to be doing it. The fact that you don’t like the work doesn’t in itself mean that the work isn’t good for you, or that God isn’t glorified when you do it well.
The apostle Paul says:
Colossians 3:23–24 (ESV)
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Do you know what the context of that verse is? He’s talking to families—wives and how they interact with their husbands, husbands and how they interact with their wives, children and how they obey their parents—and he’s talking to slaves and their masters. If you are a slave, that’s not a good place to be in, but if you are in that situation, how are you going to work? Masters, how are you going to treat the slaves who work for you?
Whatever you do, he says, do it as if you’re doing it for God, because in reality, you are. You’re serving the Lord Christ. Don’t abandon the work because it’s hard—don’t abandon it in your hearts or in your actions. Whatever you do, do it well, because you’re doing it for him.
That’s the first problem the Bible corrects for us: because work is grim, we’ll tend to abandon it.
The second problem—the second extreme we can fall into—is this: because work is good, we’ll tend to worship it.
Worship is not fundamentally what we do on Sunday morning when we sing songs. Worship is what we do when we give our lives to something. It’s what happens when we decide what is most important to us.
If we worship our work, that doesn’t mean we’ll sing songs of praises about our jobs. Rather, worshiping our work means that we’ll place our hope in it: our hope for fulfillment, our hope for meaning, our hope for satisfaction.
Now that may sound perfectly reasonable: who doesn’t want to find meaning in their work? Who doesn’t want to be satisfied in their career?
Here’s why it’s dangerous, though: no matter how much you love your job, no matter how meaningful and important it is, it will not satisfy you.
Like I said, I love my job. I kind of can’t believe that I get to do what I do for a living. But my job does not satisfy me, in the ultimate sense of the word. It does not fulfill me. I love it, but it’s not enough. Just like I love my wife, but she’s not enough. I love my kids, but they’re not enough.
Solomon talked about this in Ecclesiastes as well. He was wealthiest king Israel ever knew, with absolutely everything at his disposal. He boasted of everything he had done, and all the wealth he accumulated. And then he said:
Ecclesiastes 2:9–11 (ESV)
So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
It’s not as if we’ve never heard this: stories of people getting everything they always wanted, and still being unsatisfied with it.
There’s a reason why that’s the case. As C. S. Lewis famously said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
Your work will not satisfy you; it can’t satisfy you. Nothing on earth can, because we weren’t made to be satisfied by anything created; we were made to be satisfied by the Creator.
God alone will satisfy us. He alone can bear the weight of our desires. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t desire anything else. But it does mean that those other desires we have are not ends in themselves—they are means by which we come to know God better and see God more clearly. God should be the goal of every other desire.
To paraphrase A.W. Tozer, if there is anything in your life more demanding than your longing after God, then you need to rethink your priorities.
So one last question: given these are the two extremes we can fall into, how are we to approach work instead of those two extremes?
We’re going to spend the next two weeks answering that question, but we can sum it up for now in one sentence:
Work hard to know the God who is good. In whatever work you undertake, even if you don’t like it, work with one goal in mind: to know God better through the way that you work.
Let me give you an example of what I mean—and I’m going to use a non-professional example, because not all our work has to do with our jobs. Most of you know that the first six years of my marriage to Loanne was an absolute nightmare. Turning the corner on that was incredibly difficult. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t fulfilling, and we didn’t understand why God had put us in this position where we had to work this hard at something that was supposed to be a joy.
But we learned far more in the hard years of our marriage than in the good years. Without that experience, my understanding of grace would be lacking; my understanding of what it means to sacrifice for another would be lacking; and we wouldn’t be able to do a lot of what we do today. We speak to so many couples who are going through hard times, and we are able to do it because we’ve been there. Those awful years over a decade ago were God’s way of preparing us for today. And as hard as it was, I wouldn’t change it.
So we thank God for the hard work he gave us during that time. It was hard work, but it was good work, because God was building something in us, through it.
Now I know that may seem like a lot for God to ask: it may feel like that’s a lot to throw on us.
But we need to remember that he’s not asking us to do anything he hasn’t done himself.
Go back and look at Genesis 3 this week, when God tells Adam what the consequences of his sin would be. He said the ground would be cursed because of him, that when man worked, his work would sometimes produce thorns and thistles; he said that the man would see the fruit of his labor by the sweat of his brow, and that this would go on until he died.
I’m speculating here, but it’s not a crazy speculation, I don’t think. I wonder how often Jesus thought about Genesis 3. My guess is, quite often—it is, after all, the story of why he was doing what he was doing. In his ministry, although he brought forth incredible “fruit”, there were quite a lot of thorns and thistles that came up too. He suffered persecution, and ridicule, and ultimately a false condemnation by his own people.
When he was carrying the cross to Golgotha on his wounded shoulders, dehydrated under the sun, the sweat and blood dripping down into his eyes, I can’t help but wonder if he thought of Genesis 3.19: By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
I think it’s pretty likely; it was to rectify that consequence of sin that he was carrying the cross on his back.
When God asks us to persevere and to work diligently, as if we’re working for him, despite how unpleasant or painful or hard our work might be, he is not asking us to do anything he didn’t do first. He knows how hard it is. And he’ll give us what we need to keep going.
Covenant, Christ and Assurance
Exodus 24
Today we’re arriving at our final message in our series in Exodus, at least for now—we’re going to take an extended break before continuing on from chapter 25. If you remember, God brought the people of Israel to Mount Sinai to make a covenant with them. He told them the terms of the covenant—that if they would obey his commands, they would be his precious possession among the nations, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Then they came to the foot of the mountain, and the glory of God came down on the mountaintop, with thunder and lightning and fire and smoke.
Moses receives the first set of laws that God gives him (which Eduardo and Joe preached on the last two weeks—I have to say, I don’t envy the task they had). Then Moses comes back down from the mountaintop, and that’s where we pick them up today.
In Exodus 24, what we essentially see is the ratification of the covenant God is making with his people. It’s the final step in the process, like the official stamp on a birth certificate.
And the steps of this ratification are unbelievably dense with meaning.
The Blood (v. 1-8)
When I was a kid I remember being struck by something I’d heard a thousand times before but never thought of. We often sang a song that we still sing today:
What can wash away my sin? / Nothing but the blood of Jesus
What can make me whole again? / Nothing but the blood of Jesus
Oh, precious is the flow / That makes me white as snow
No other fount I know / Nothing but the blood of Jesus
I was about eight years old when it really hit me for the first time. I remember singing that song and church and thinking, Hold on—that’s disgusting!
There’s a lot of blood in the Bible, and the first thing we see in this chapter, that we haven’t seen before in the context of this particular covenant, is the shedding of blood.
Moses comes down from the mountain and writes down everything God told him while he was there (the Book of the Covenant, which is the Ten Commandments and the various other laws we saw last week). Remember, Joe spoke about how these laws were a prototype for heaven on earth—a place in which God is central, where the vulnerable are protected, and where human life is valued.
At this point, the terms of the covenant are clear: God tells the people, if you do these things, then you will be my people, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Now it’s time to make it official.
But the way they do that is a bit surprising.
Exodus 24:3–8 (ESV)
Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do.” And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
Think of what this must have been like. First Moses builds an altar, with twelve pillars, one for each tribe of Israel. That would have taken a good while. Then they offer a bunch of sacrifices—they slaughter a lot of oxen. Moses drains the animals of their blood—and it would have been a lot of blood—and throws half of the blood against the altar.
Then he reads the people the Book of the Covenant—chapters 20 through 23. He reads it out loud, so that everyone can hear. And all the people verbally commit to obeying these laws, like the bride and groom making their vows at a wedding ceremony before the mayor declares them husband and wife.
And then—here’s the fun part—Moses takes the other half of the blood (and again, it’s a lot of blood), and he throws it on the people. (Can you imagine me doing that on a Sunday morning?)
And after throwing the blood on the people, he makes a formal declaration: “Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
Why all the blood? It can seem like we’re obsessed with blood in church; we’re always talking about blood, we sing about it, we see it in the Bible all over the place. Why did the covenant have to be ratified by blood?
There are a couple of reasons, and the first is purely visual, I think: Moses throws the blood on the altar, and then throws the blood on the people.
Romuald, Liz and I recently went to a conference in Latvia with Acts 29, the church-planting network we’re members of. When we arrived we saw a big banner with the Acts 29 logo printed in huge letters; at the same time, they gave us wristbands with the same logo printed on it. They were the most annoying things, because once you tightened them around your wrist, you couldn’t loosen them; you had to cut them off. Those wristbands were there to identify us: we belong to this network; we were attending this conference—and we know it because we see the same logo on our wrists as we see on the conference banners.
That’s what’s happening here. The altar, representing God, and the people, are both sprinkled with the same blood. It’s a way to see that these two are united to one another.
But that’s not the only thing, or even the main thing. The main reason for all this blood was that the people were a sinful people, and God is a holy God. In order for God to be united with them, blood had to be shed.
Look quickly at Genesis 2.15-17:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
So that’s the basic info we need to remember: the consequence of disobeying God is death.
At the time, death that wasn’t natural—especially death that was punitive—almost always included the shedding of blood. Blood has always been the most potent picture of death we have.
To say this another way, because the people are sinners, and God is holy, it shouldn’t be possible for them to be united to God. The only way for that to be possible would be for them to suffer the consequence of their sin—to die—because that’s the only way God can consider the sin eradicated.
So God provides another way: he lets animals take the place of the people. The animals’ blood is shed in the place of the people—and in that way, God considers their sin covered and cleansed, and he can enter into covenant with them.
We’ve seen something like this once before in the Bible, but it was a little different. In Genesis 15, we see God tell Abraham to get several different animals, cut them in half and lay them down with the two halves facing each other, making a kind of bloody path. And God is the one who comes down this path; God is the one who passes through the blood, in order to make a covenant with Abraham.
The covenant that God makes with Israel here isn’t totally different from the covenant he made with Abraham, but it’s not exactly the same either. Rather, we can say that the second is the continuation of the first. It’s what we call progressive revelation: the fact that God doesn’t reveal everything about himself all at once. He does it in stages.
In the covenant with Abraham, God takes the initiative to pass through the blood; in the covenant with Israel, the people are brought in to that passage—the blood is thrown on the altar and on the people. Through this sprinkling of blood, the people participate in what God is doing; they’re showing that this sacrifice was given for them, and they are now united to God.
The fact that God has human beings participate in the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sin is important. When we see this is what he’s doing, it starts to make sense that when God made good on his promise to Abraham, on his promise to Israel, he did it by coming to earth himself, as a human man. A man who was both fully human and divine. A man who bridges the gap between the altar and the people, because he’s both.
Jesus, the God who passed through the bloody path, becomes the sacrifice who takes the punishment for his people, in their place; he sheds his blood on the cross in our place.
This is why what Jesus said at the Last Supper is so shocking and extraordinary.
Look back at v. 8. When Moses sprinkles the blood of these animals on the people (and every time afterwards that the practice is repeated), he says, “This is the blood of the covenant that God has made with you.”
When Jesus holds up the cup at the Last Supper, he personalizes it: he says in Matthew 26.28, “This is MY blood of the covenant, which is poured out for the forgiveness of sins.” Every disciple sharing this meal with Jesus would have recognized his use of that quote, and the way he changed the “the” to “my”.
Jesus is saying he is the fulfillment of the sacrifices made in Exodus 24; he is both the God who took the burden of blood on himself, and the sacrifice who provides the blood to purify his people.
The Vision and the Meal (v. 9-11)
After the covenant is ratified by the sacrifice of the animals, and Moses’s sprinkling the blood on the altars and the people, there is one final step in the process. The last step in the ratification of ancient covenants was almost always a meal. We see this elsewhere in the Bible, and there are still modern forms of it today: what do we do after a wedding celebration? We eat with the bride and the groom.
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.
Can you imagine being at that meal on the mountain? Only Moses, Aaron, Aaron’s sons, and the seventy elders of the people were allowed to attend, and they got to see something they shouldn’t have been able to see: they were allowed to contemplate a vision of God himself. Not all of God, but only his feet. In the vision, God’s feet are resting on some sort of precious stone, indicating his royalty. We see in v. 11 an important precision: that God did not lay his hand on them. It’s important because they shouldn’t have been able to come that far up the mountain; they shouldn’t have been able to see God.
But this was the covenant ratification meal; the leaders of the people needed to be present.
There are several interpretations about what exactly is happening here; whether this was just a mass vision they all had (since God at this point is a spirit and doesn’t literally have feet), or if it’s what’s called a “Christophany” (an Old Testament appearance of God the Son). Or maybe it’s something totally different, for which “feet” would be the closest possible way to describe it.
There’s one interpretation I like, though, and it has to do with the Last Supper we mentioned earlier. (This was put on my radar by a pastor named J.T. English; it’s not totally conclusive, but it is very interesting.)
God finishes ratifying his covenant with the people of Israel through a meal. And Jesus does the same thing with his disciples, but it’s reversed: in Exodus, God is present at a meal with his people after the shedding of blood; in the gospels, Jesus is present with his people before the shedding of blood (his own). It’s a covenant ratification meal in anticipation of a coming sacrifice.
This meal is described in all three synoptic gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. In those gospels, we see Christ give them the bread and saying, “This is my body”, and the cup, saying, “This is my blood.”
This is not, however, described in the gospel of John. In John 13, we see something else—we see Jesus, getting on his hands and knees, and washing his disciples’ feet. Later on in the evening, Jesus would say, “This is my blood of the covenant,” and an astute disciple would have remembered Exodus 24.
The parallels are easy to notice. In Exodus 24, we have the meal; we have the blood of the covenant; and we have the feet of God.
That’s what we see at the Last Supper too—except it’s reversed. We have the meal, but the blood of the covenant is Christ’s blood, which would be shed just a few hours later. And we have feet—except it’s not God’s feet the disciples are beholding, but the disciples’ feet that God is washing.
We no longer have to go up the mountain to see God; now God has come down to us.
The Ascent (v. 12-18)
Now that the covenant is ratified, the real work begins. Moses receives instructions to come up on the mountain to receive the stone tablets with the Book of the Covenant that God himself has written down for the people’s instruction, so they wouldn’t forget. So he puts Aaron and Hur in charge, and brings his assistant Joshua with him.
Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
We see here a reminder of the incredible sight we see in chapter 19—it hasn’t changed. God’s glory rests on the mountain like a cloud of fire, and Moses goes into the cloud to be in the presence of God and receive further instructions (which we see in the following chapters), instructions Moses will communicate to the people of Israel, so that they can know how to live as God’s people. He’s there for forty days and forty nights.
Once again, let’s go back to the Last Supper, and what came after.
The new covenant is ratified by a meal with his disciples. It is sealed with the blood of the covenant—Christ’s blood, poured out on the cross for the sins of his people. And after his resurrection, what does Christ do? He ascends into heaven, where he now sits at the right hand of the Father.
What is Christ doing in heaven right now?
He is interceding with the Father for us, and he is communicating God’s Word to his people through the Holy Spirit, so that we might know how to live as God’s people.
Step by step, God is showing us in Exodus 24, in a partial way, what he will fully accomplish through Christ later on.
The Assurance of the Covenant
Now all of this might seem interesting, but sort of theoretical, and pretty removed from our day-to-day experience.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The central message of this text is very simple: God is infinitely great, and he is faithful to the covenant he made with his people. That’s easy to see from this passage.
What’s not so easy to see is what difference it makes.
In a word, the difference is assurance. And nothing could be more current, or more necessary, than that.
For a huge number of people in this church, in the rest of our country, and across the Western world in particular, one of the biggest struggles we face in our Christian lives is the struggle with doubt. And while people struggle with doubt in lots of different areas, there is one particular thing that characterizes a Christian’s doubt, almost every time.
Most Christians don’t necessarily doubt that God exists—at least not to the point where they stop wanting to follow Christ. No, the more common thing is for a Christian to doubt that God is truthful.
We doubt that God is telling the truth when he tells us that certain things are right, other things are wrong, that sin is sinful and that holiness is desirable.
We doubt that he is telling the truth when he says that everything he did in Christ actually applies to me. I don’t doubt it for the person sitting next to me—but I read a text like Psalm 103, which says that the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and I think there should be a footnote at the bottom of the page that says, “Except for you.”
That is why this text is so important. In my opinion, Exodus 24 is one of several passages in the Old Testament that are absolutely key for the assurance we have in him.
The first thing we see here is that God’s covenant with his people is a concrete, legal matter. It has steps; it has things the people must do, and things that God commits to doing. It is a binding arrangement between both of them.
Under our legal system today, if the courts judge someone innocent of a crime, that person can not be tried again for the same crime. The judgment of innocence, at least in regards to that offense, is binding. It is absolute. And that’s how it is in human courts, which are far from perfect.
God’s judgments, God’s commitments, are infinitely more trustworthy than our own. If God makes a covenant with his people, he will keep it. He has kept it. He kept the first covenant with his people in Christ, who fulfilled the law for them; and when he established the new covenant with his people, he ratified it with his own blood. This is what we remind ourselves of every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together: we remind ourselves that if Christ has established a covenant with us, ratified in his own blood, he will never back out of it.
Think back to all the parallels we saw between Exodus 24 and the gospels. The reason why we spent so much time looking at them is because those parallels show us that God told the truth. He told the truth in his words, and he told the truth in history—he laid out his entire plan of salvation right here. The people didn’t understand it at the time, but after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples. And (we see in Luke 24.27):
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
This would have been the point at which the disciples looked at Exodus 24 (and several other passages) in one hand, and the Last Supper and Christ’s crucifixion in the other hand. And they would have seen that everything that had happened during Christ’s ministry, trial, death and resurrection was exactly what God had planned from the very beginning.
There is simply no better foundation I know of for the assurance we have. God did what he planned to do. He did what he promised he would do. He stayed faithful to his word; he stayed faithful to his covenant.
I will fail, but he will never fail. I will be unfaithful, but he will never be unfaithful.
Our assurance is iron-clad.
The second thing we see here is much simpler, but it’s really easy for us to forget: God is a lot bigger than us.
Think about how doubt works. You never doubt the things you can see, objectively. You never doubt that you’re sitting in a chair, or that I’m actually talking to you now. Or even things less concrete: you don’t doubt that you’re thinking about what I’m saying. If you don’t know whether or not you agree with me, you don’t doubt that you don’t know. If you’re feeling hot or cold or anxious or happy, you don’t doubt that you’re feeling those things, because they’re within your range of experience. They’re things you can see.
This might sound a little simplistic, but this chapter is pushing us in that direction. God is so much bigger than us. Infinitely bigger. When he comes down, he covers the entire mountain in a cloud like a devouring fire. When the elders of Israel look up to see God, all they can see is his feet.
And these things—the fire, the cloud, the feet—are just little glimpses. God is infinite—he is omnipresent, he is omniscient. He sees everything, and he knows everything. We see the tiny things around us and in us, and even that, we don’t even see very clearly; he sees everything, and he sees it perfectly.
Isn’t it normal, then, that God might sometimes say things we don’t understand? Isn’t it normal that he might command things we don’t like, because we don’t understand why they would be good things? Isn’t it normal that God can grasp things we can’t?
Let’s be hyper-practical for just a minute. This is what we often have a hard time seeing: doubt has more to do with accepting than with understanding.
Unless you’re a doctor, when you go in for a complicated medical procedure, you won’t understand everything aspect of what the doctor’s going to do to you. You don’t understand all the complexities of the procedure, and you don’t need to, because the doctor knows. So you accept it, not because you understand it, but because the doctor knows more than you do.
And this is how it always works—even for very unscientific things like relationships.
I don’t understand why my wife married me. I look back at who I was back then—even the part of me I was projecting, the part I was letting her see—and I don’t get it. What was she thinking? I sincerely don’t understand why she chose to do that. And I definitely don’t understand why she still loves me today, twenty-one years later.
Now if I don’t understand why she loves me, there are two directions I can take. (And every couple, at one time or another, will have to make this choice.)
On the one hand, I can doubt her love. Since I don’t understand what’s going on in her mind, I can choose not to take her word for it when she tells me she loves me—or even when she shows me she loves me. I can decide not to accept that, because I don’t get it. And I can constantly worry that she’s going to leave me, because no way she would want to stay with me, given how unlovable I am.
But there’s another option: I can make the decision to accept what she says, and trust her. I still don’t understand why she loves me, but I recognize that she’s able to see things that I’m not, that she thinks differently than I do. So I accept that somewhere in that part of her I cannot see is something that explains her love for me. I accept to trust her—that she loves me, and that she’ll be with me until one of us dies.
I understand why people have doubts; I’ve got them too. But at a certain point we’ve got to make a decision. It’s a hard decision, but every one of us, at some point, will have to make the decision even when we don’t feel it.
We have to decide to accept what God says about himself, and what he says about us, even if we don’t understand it. We have to decide to trust him, to take him at his word—even if we don’t understand how or why that word is good.
He has given us every reason to trust him. He is infinitely greater than us; he sees infinitely further. And he is always, perpetually, faithful to the commitments he makes. That is what we see here, and that is the basis for all of our assurance.
So next time you doubt, I’d encourage you to come back to Exodus 24. Contemplate this massive God who appeared on the mountain. Contemplate the cloud; contemplate the fire; contemplate the vision. See how God ratifies the covenant with his people, and remember the words of Christ, much later on: This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for you.
See your God, and accept what he says. You won’t fully understand him, but you can trust him.
Heaven on Earth
A few years ago I came across the book "The year I lived by the Bible".
Author A J Jacobs is a New Yorker, not very religious.
Listen to his presentation of the book:
"The year I lived by the Bible" is my quest to live the ultimate biblical life. To follow every rule of the Bible as literally as possible. I obey the best-known rules:
The Ten Commandments
Loving your neighbor
Be fruitful and multiply
But also the hundreds of rules that are often ignored.
Do not wear clothing made of mixed fibers.
Don't shave your beard
Stone sinners ... concretely, he threw small pebbles at someone who confessed to him that he had cheated on his wife.
This book is written with great humor.
But it does raise a serious question.
For what kind of life ... does God ... save us?
Connexion Church was delighted to celebrate dozens of baptisms. Baptism is when someone publicly testifies that they have begun to believe in Jesus.
Imagine this scenario. After a baptism, one of the baptized comes to you and asks: what happens now? What will my life be like? I believed in Jesus. I know what I've been saved from. From my sin.
Tell me, what was I saved for? ... What kind of life?
Am I living the way I want? Do I follow my desires, knowing that whatever happens, I'll go to heaven?
Or do I have to spend all my time in church?
Should I try to follow all the rules of the Bible, even if it means never shaving my beard again and walking down the street with a sheep on a leash?
What kind of life did God save me for?
The question arises at the beginning of the Christian life. It also arises throughout the Christian life, as individuals and as a church.
When we set up the project to buy premises for Connexion, we had to ask ourselves: what are we here for?
What is God calling us to? What should our church life look like?
We know what he saved us all from.
But what did he save us for? For what kind of life?
We've reached the point in Exodus where God was in the process of answering this question for the Israelites.
He had rescued them from Egypt, led them to Mount Sinai and invited them to enter into a relationship with him.
Last Sunday, we began to see what it meant to have this relationship - to obey the 10 Commandments.
The challenge this morning is to know what God wants to tell us, through his rules on how to cook a kid, what to do if your ox kills the neighbor's, and, let's not be afraid to quote the elephant in the room, how to treat his slaves!
The answer may come as a surprise.
We'll see that what God saves us for is to lead a life that anticipates heaven.
That's the message behind these commandments.
To invite us to lead a life that anticipates heaven.
In all areas, including the most mundane, anticipate by the way we live the life of heaven - of the kingdom of God.
Three points
The prototype of heaven on earth
The problem of heaven on earth
The promise of heaven on earth
The prototype of heaven on earth
It's election time. Leaflets are arriving in our mailboxes for the European elections.
These are the elections the French are least interested in. I encourage you to vote anyway.
But even in these elections, in which many take little interest, political parties try to present their vision of what needs to be done to move towards a model society.
We need to change the law in this area. You have to add laws in this area. You have to regulate this, liberalize that and so on. If we do that, we'll have the society we want.
Exodus 20 verse 22 to Exodus 23 verse 19 contains what is known as the book of the covenant, which presents nothing less than a prototype of society as God desires it.
A prototype of heaven on earth.
If you've read this passage in your community group, some of the rules may have struck you as odd. So did I.
But taken together, they present a society in which God reigns over all areas of life.
There is no separation between the religious sphere on the one hand and the rest on the other. There is no 1905 law in Israel. God reigns over everything.
Let's take a look at the structure. It's a sandwich structure.
The text begins and ends - the slices of bread - talking about the worship of God - how to build an altar and the great religious feasts.
Just inside, the salad leaves, it talks about protecting vulnerable people - slaves, foreigners and the poor.
In the middle - the meat - are penalties for personal injury (homicide, assault) and property damage (theft).
So here are the essential ingredients of the heaven on earth that Israel was to be:
The Lord is at the center
Vulnerable people are protected
Life is valued X 2
The Lord is at the center
Look at Exodus 20.22
"The Lord announced to Moses, "This is what you shall say to the Israelites: 'You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver and gold to associate with me; you shall not make them for yourselves."
God is unique!
He's not like the false gods of other peoples, he's a God who deserves exclusive love. The one and only central place in life.
It gives concrete instructions to guarantee it.
Verse 25
"If you build me an altar of stone, you shall not make it of hewn stone, for by passing your chisel over the stone you would make it profane. You shall not ascend to my altar by steps so as not to reveal your nakedness.'
The reason for not cutting the stones was no doubt so that we wouldn't focus on the craftsman's talent, but on God alone.
The absence of steps to prevent the priest's robe from being seen from underneath was probably a way of distinguishing himself from pagan religions, where sex and religion were mixed.
Your God is different! He's holy and he doesn't accept rivals!
Is that intolerant, someone might ask? Only as intolerant as a man who doesn't tolerate his wife sleeping with other men!
God saved Israel for a relationship with him. It's only natural that he should demand exclusivity.
Let's skip to the end of the passage
Exodus 23 and verse 14
"Three times a year, you will celebrate feasts in my honor."
The Israelite calendar revolved around three major feasts: unleavened bread to remember liberation from slavery, and the harvest and reaping feasts to thank God for putting food on their plates.
They were a reminder of God's goodness. He is not an indifferent or capricious master, but a generous one to whom we owe everything.
So Israel's whole life was to be one gigantic cult of praise.
Their whole lives revolved around the worship of God.
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And all their lives had to revolve around loving their fellow man.
Starting with the most vulnerable
Look at chapter 22 verse 20
"You shall not mistreat the stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in Egypt. You shall not harm the widow or the orphan. If you harm them and they come to me, I will hear their cries."
The compassion they themselves had received by being saved was to be imitated towards the vulnerable.
It was written into the equivalent of their labor code
Chapter 23 verse 10
"For six years you shall sow the land and reap its harvest. But in the seventh year, you will give it respite and let it rest. The poor of your people will enjoy it, and the beasts of the field will eat what remains. You will do the same for your vineyards and olive groves.
Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, so that your slave's son and the stranger may catch their breath."
Protecting vulnerable people.
There were to be no beggars in Israel.
No abuse.
No second-class citizens.
No unsanitary migrant camps.
No need for social services or shelters for battered women.
No employees pushed to the point of exhaustion.
In this prototype of heaven on earth, the vulnerable had to be protected.
And finally, in this prototype of heaven on earth, life is valued.
Exodus 21 verse 12
"Whoever strikes a man dead will be punished by death. If he has not set a trap for him, and God has caused him to fall into his hands, I will designate a place where he can take refuge. But if anyone acts wickedly against his neighbor, using cunning to kill him, you will go so far as to tear him from my altar to put him to death."
The practice of the death penalty can shock us. In France, it has been abolished for forty years.
But let's remember the situation. The Egyptians had killed Israelites with impunity, drowning their babies in the Nile.
It wasn't sanctioned by the authorities; it was encouraged!
Behold, God declares that from now on, if you kill intentionally, you will receive the most severe punishment.
Why is this so? Because God places great value on human life.
She's precious to him. Blood is not shed with impunity.
It's striking to compare these laws with those of other peoples of the time, who practiced the death penalty for offences against property, such as theft. Less so for crimes against the person, such as homicide.
Not in Israel. In the prototype of God's heaven, life was valued.
So maybe you hear all this and you think: I'm not convinced this fits my image of heaven on earth.
And it's true that these laws are specific to a particular time and place. We'll see that they no longer apply to us as they are.
But once again, let's remember the context. The Israelites were emerging from generations of slavery. Their God had been ignored, their people had been oppressed and their lives had been worthless to the Egyptians.
These laws were a huge leap forward.
It's a bit like a child growing up on the street surrounded by crime.
His parents neglect him. He sees the worst crimes as normal. The only law he knows is the law of the strongest.
Then one day he's adopted by a family with rules.
We don't tolerate violence here.
We don't insult each other.
We respect each other.
The setting may seem harsh at first
But if he has eyes to see, he'll understand that all his rules are good, that they show that his adoptive parents love him and want to give him a better life.
This was the Israel experience. Out of oppression, to live a prototype of heaven on earth.
What about us? The first thing to understand is that when God saves us, he has life in that kind of world in mind for us. That's what he saves us for.
A world where the Lord is at the center, the vulnerable are protected and life is valued
I don't know about you; I dream of a world like that.
I'd like my daughters to have nothing to fear walking down the street at night because their lives are valued.
I wish the ladies sitting on the floor begging in front of my bakery didn't have to, because society no longer lets anyone fall through the cracks.
Above all, I'd like everyone I come into contact with - my neighbors, my friends, my family - to know, thank and adore the living God, to whom they owe everything.
I dream about it. Maybe you do too.
When God saves us, he does so with life in that kind of world in mind.
He doesn't just save us from our past and then go wherever we want. He saves us for a future. A future that looks like what we described.
But how? Clearly we don't live in that kind of society! Does this mean we have to campaign for these laws to be passed in France? Should we try to follow them on an individual level like A J Jacobs? What should we do?
I said it's a prototype, and the purpose of a prototype is not to be used. The purpose of a prototype is to give a glimpse of what is intended, and to identify flaws that need to be addressed.
These laws are the prototype of heaven on earth.
But they also reveal the problem of human attempts to build a heaven on earth.
The problem of heaven on earth
The problem is sin, which these rules highlight.
Look at Exodus 21:2
"If you buy a Hebrew slave, he will serve six years, but on the seventh he will go out free, without paying anything."
Let's face it, these verses, which seem to authorize slavery, have been exploited by Christians to justify the most atrocious practices over the centuries.
Let's face it, this verse is also problematic because the Old Testament seems to contradict itself.
The book of Leviticus forbids Israelites to own Hebrew slaves.
How come Exodus seems to allow it?
The answer that convinces me is that God is not naive.
God knew the hearts of the Israelites. He knew they would have slaves. These rules are there to limit the damage.
Free release after 6 years
Prohibition on selling a female slave to foreigners.
If a female slave marries the master's son, she receives the same rights as his daughters.
If you kill your slave, you're punished.
If you hurt your slave, you must set him free.
Safeguards to limit evil.
Still, these laws in Exodus are based on the premise that we fish.
They recognize and reveal the hardness of the human heart.
It's the same everywhere.
22.15
"Whoever strikes his father or mother will be punished by death.""Whoever abducts a man, whether he has sold him or he has been found in his hands, shall be punished by death."
"Whoever curses his father or mother will be punished by death."
Sin is everywhere in these chapters. It is not eradicated. It is exposed. All these laws could do against sin was try to frame it.
That's why, for me, these texts have a bitter-sweet taste.
On the one hand, we see how good Moses' law was, and how good life in Israel must have been - at least better than in Egypt.
But at the same time, as we read, we think of another country, at the beginning of the Bible, that we haven't yet found - Eden.
The sinless heaven God had intended in the first place.
These laws try to turn us in this direction while knowing that sin stands in the way.
It's very good to have laws against murder. It's even better not to have murder.
It's all very well to frame slavery. It's even better not to have slavery.
As long as sin is present, heaven will always be out of reach.
This is why any human attempt, whether religious or secular, to build a heaven on earth is doomed to failure.
The communists discovered it. The capitalists discovered it. Christians who have tried to build a Christian society have discovered it.
When people try to build a utopia, it usually ends up as a dystopia. Because we're still sinners.
This is also why any attempt to live for God by rules is doomed to frustration.
A J Jacobs, the author of "The Year I Lived by the Bible", who is not a Christian, says in an interview that the more he tried to follow the rules of the Bible, the more he realized it was impossible.
It just showed him how sinful he was. He recognized that he couldn't try to live up to them all or he'd go crazy.
This is why the answer to the question "what kind of life did God save me for?" cannot be, a life under Old Testament law.
Because this law can't change us.
Some Christians are gravely mistaken on this point, believing that we live for God by following the Law of Moses, just by adding Jesus.
This can't work.
The law aims for the right things, but is incapable of giving us those right things.
It offers a prototype of heaven on earth. It also shows the problem with this heaven on earth.
God gave it, not for us to practice today - A J Jacobs beg to differ - but to lead us to his true solution.
This is our 3rd point
The prospect of heaven on earth
What kind of life does God save us for?
What is the Christian life supposed to look like?
The answer is a life that awaits and anticipates ... the arrival of the true heaven on earth ... that Jesus makes possible.
There will be a place where the Lord is at the center, the vulnerable are protected, and life is valued.
There will be a place where a woman will have nothing to fear when she returns home.
Where no longer will anyone panhandle in front of a bakery, and where God will be worshipped unceasingly.
Please go to the end of your Bible - Revelation chapter 21
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride made beautiful for her husband. I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God among men! He will dwell with them, they will be his people and God himself will be with them, [he will be their God]. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death will be no more and there will be no more mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for what existed before has passed away.""
Israel was the prototype. The finished product is the new creation.
God will be at the center of everything.
The cry of the oppressed will no longer be heard.
Life will definitely replace death.
There will be a day when heaven arrives on earth
We're not going to establish it through legislation.
Look at verse 5
He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."
Jesus will create it.
Jesus, through his perfect life on earth, fully fulfilled the law. A God-centered life, compassionate for the vulnerable and valuing life, he lived it perfectly!
Jesus, by his death on the cross, paid for the problem of our sin. The obstacle to heaven has been removed. So everyone who believes in him receives the promise of being able to live there.
When Jesus returns, he will judge the evil that plagues our world. Revelation says that nothing unclean will enter.
Jesus offers the prospect of heaven on earth.
So back to our conversation with the newly baptized. What happens now? Okay, I'm no longer a slave. I've crossed the water. I have a relationship with God. What happens now? What is he calling me to?
It can be summed up in three words: faith, hope, love.
(It would be a good name for a church - already taken)
Faith.
A J Jacobs was right to find the law impossible for a sinful man to follow.
We don't need to do it anymore.
We look to Jesus, who fulfilled the law for us, who obeyed even unto death, we rejoice ... and we trust ... him.
Quite simply. We trust him to give us the right to enter his heaven.
Maybe there are people here who haven't figured that out yet. Who believe that what matters is our own efforts to be right.
Let me disabuse you of that notion.
Faith, simple faith in Jesus, who has accomplished everything for us.
Have you discovered this Jesus?
Hope - living in joyful expectation of the heaven to come.
Speaking of heaven, it's possible we're imagining all kinds of nonsense.
Maybe we've been looking at too many medieval paintings and imagine ourselves dressed in white togas, sitting in the clouds playing the harp - that's not it!
Our passage from Exodus helps us much more.
It's life on earth as God wants it, without all the things that spoil it.
Every morning I try to meditate and pray around some aspect of the new creation.
The end of wars. We won't have to read the death toll in Ukraine or Gaza every day. Human life will be protected forever.
The end of poverty - no more stories of people drowning while crossing the sea. No more people in precarious situations. No more begging on public transport.
The end of crime - I won't have to worry about my daughters being out alone.
The centrality of God - the God to whom everything is owed - will no longer be ignored or rejected. All will worship him.
Another idea - take a leaflet for the European elections, look at the themes mentioned - security, economy, ecology etc. - and then meditate on what it's like to have the hope of the new creation. - then meditate on what it means to have the hope of the new creation.
Friends, we live in a world full of beautiful things, but also full of trials and disappointments.
I'm sure that for many people here, there's something that's weighing you down or weighing on your morale right now.
Think about this and ask yourself: how will the new creation be different?
What will make it better?
Maybe it's bad choices from the past that are chasing you.
A painful situation.
What does this hope change? It should change something.
Faith, hope ... and love.
Whenever the New Testament summarizes the Law of Moses, the word that always comes up is love.
A little disagreement among Christians about the place of the Law of Moses for us. No orthodox Christian believes that we are obliged to keep all the commandments of the OT. My personal conviction from reading the Bible is that not being under the Law of Moses means that none of its rules bind us... unless they are repeated in the New Testament. You want to eat a kid cooked in its mother's milk for lunch, knock yourself out!
The commandment that binds us today and sums up all the others is love.
Love was to be at the heart of life in Israel. Love for God, love for the vulnerable, love for human life.
He will be at the heart of life in the new creation.
But that means that the life God saves us for is a life we can already anticipate here and now!
Not in the sense that you can have health or prosperity from heaven
No, we simply anticipate it by loving.
The new creation will breathe love.
So the person who seeks here and now through concrete acts to do good to his neighbor offers a foretaste of the new creation! :-)
It happens first and foremost in the local church - the outpost in this world of the new creation.
That's why a community like Connexion should be a context where vulnerable or precarious people, for example, are safe.
I won't list all the implications.
But it's worth asking ourselves who are the people around us who are going through a difficult time and could use a gesture of love.
Maybe a phone call to ask for news.
An invitation to eat.
Babysitting to take their mind off things.
I was in an assembly where we had several paid church weekends a year. If someone wanted to come but couldn't afford it, his or her Bible study group would first be generous enough to help.
We had another example with the men's conference yesterday. Erwan generously offered to help those who were hesitating because of money.
Faith, hope, love - this is the life for which God saves us.
It's possible that some people this morning are struggling with this question: what's the point of my life? I don't know where I'm going. I feel like I have no perspective.
If that's you, go back to Exodus. God doesn't just save us from our past; he saves us for a future.
He invites us to a life that awaits and anticipates his promised heaven.