Psalm 85

Lord, show us your goodness and grant us your salvation!

Hello everyone,

As we have read, today we are going to listen to the Word of God in Psalm 85.

I invite us to keep our Bibles wide open to follow together.

I like to giving titles to messages. The title I came up with for this message is: “Show us your goodness, and grant us your salvation.” This is verse 8 of the psalm.

Psalm 85 is a prayer, and verse 8 is right in the middle of the prayer that we will meditate on together.

The prayers of the Bible and the psalms in particular are inspired by the Holy Spirit. They are models of prayer in a way.

By reading these prayers, we learn things about who God is, and how to address Him. I think this is the way to approach the prayers of the Bible.

My prayer and wish is that by watching this prayer, each of us will learn something about God, who He Is, and how we should and/or can approach Him. My prayer is that it helps everyone's prayer life (or at least some, everyone is ambitious)

This prayer is therefore a solicitation of God's blessing on all the people of Israel, and the formulation of the psalmist is: “Show us your goodness, and grant us your salvation.”

We will look at the meaning of this request and at the prayer as a whole.

For this, I suggest we divide the text into four parts:

In the first part, in verses 2 to 4 , the psalmist recognizes the blessings that God has given them in the past.

In the second part, in verses 5 to 8, the psalmist prays for God's blessing and restoration to Israel.

In the third part, consisting only of verse 9, the psalmist makes a resolution or makes a vow.

And finally in the fourth part, the psalmist expresses his assurance of blessing from God.

But before that, what are the truths about God that shine through in this psalm?

This prayer, like all prayers, is anchored in the psalmist's knowledge of God.

It's like with human beings, we speak with a person based on the knowledge we have of the person, based on their humor, based on their mood, based on whether they are an adult or a child etc. And the more we know the person in depth, or over time, the more conversations and deep conversations we can have.

It's the same with God. When we speak to Him, we speak to Him based on who He is, at least what we know about Him.

If you talk to God without knowing that He is an Almighty God, you may miss having the fear you should have;

If you talk to God without having in mind that He is a Holy God, you risk not realizing the extent of your sin and therefore not knowing to what extent you are separated from God by your own nature;

If you talk to God without knowing that he is a good and merciful God you risk being filled with guilt. You will feel unworthy...and you are unworthy, we are all unworthy, but because of His goodness and His mercy, He found a way for us to get closer to Him.

This is why we study the Word of God. This is because we want to have as real and complete a view of who God is as possible. This vision allows us to pray to Him appropriately and truthfully.

God of kindness

One of the attributes of God on which this prayer seems to me to be based, that is to say something which characterizes God and which allows the psalmist to address this prayer to Him it is His goodness.

The goodness of God is His propensity to generously give His goods and to do good to His creatures.

It is because He knows that God is good and generous that the psalmist can come to ask Him for His blessing.

God who makes alliance

A second characteristic of God that makes this prayer possible is that God is a covenant God.

We see this from the first sentence of the prayer: “You were favorable to your country”. How is this His country? God has no nationality, God does not belong to a country. But the psalmist can say this, because he knows that God has united himself by covenant with Israel, so that in a special way He is their God, they are his people, and their land is His. country.

Throughout the Bible, God interacts with men in general through covenants. The main alliances are with Adam, Noah, Abraham, then the people of Israel through Abraham, David etc.

An alliance, as we saw not long ago in Exodus, is in a way a contract between 2 parties, which means that the 2 parties are linked.

Even apart from the alliance with God, in the times of the Old Testament men made alliances with each other. For example, we see David making an alliance with Jonathan. In most alliances we clearly see 3 elements stand out:

-          Promises that one party makes to the other

-          The obligations of the 2th part so that the promise of the first keeps

-          Threats in the event of non-compliance with commitments

For example in the case of the alliance between God and Adam the first man:

-          God's promise or gift to Adam was to enjoy all the fruits of the Garden of Eden and to exercise his government over the earth.

-          Adam's obligation is to obey God (by not eating the forbidden fruit)

-          The threat that weighs on Adam in the event of non-compliance with the covenant is death.

Why do I think it is important to remember this aspect of God? This is because God never breaks His covenant. It is impossible that He would not be faithful to His covenant. And we see that the psalmist appeals to the faithfulness of God in his prayer.

God who gets angry

A third characteristic of God found in this prayer is that God becomes angry.

We see this particularly in verse 4: “You have withdrawn all your fury, you have renounced your fierce anger. »

God is not an angry God who loses his temper, if that were the case no one here would be alive. On the contrary, God is slow to anger.

But God is righteous, God abhors evil, and because of this righteousness He is angry with sin and to judge sinners.

In Psalm 7 from verses 13 to 18 we read...

Psaume 7 v 13-18 : «13If the wicked do not come to his senses, he sharpens his sword, draws his bow, and takes aim; 14he directs murderous darts at him, he makes his arrows burn. […] 18I will praise the LORD for his righteousness; I will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High. » 

In this and other passages the psalmist describes in graphic terms how God's judgments are exercised upon those who walk in evil ways and do not return to Him.

This brings us to our text. The prayer is written in a context where the psalmist and all the people have suffered or are suffering the righteous wrath of God.

We cannot clearly locate the precise moment of writing of the Psalm,

But there are 2 possibilities:

1.  ​The first is that they are experiencing the wrath of God, and the psalmist is pleading for God's restoration because of His covenant and past deliverances. He says “restore us, put an end to your indignation”

2.  ​The second possibility – and I am more convinced of this view – is that they are returning from a difficult time where they suffered the wrath of God because they had turned away from Him. It is for example a context of reconstruction as during the return from exile in Babylon.

In this case, all aspects of the prayer would be consistent. Both verse 2: “ God was favorable and restored them to their land”; and at the same time the prayers of verse 5 and following would make sense: “Restore us, God of our salvation…”

The psalmist recognizes that God has restored them in the sense that they are returning to their country from which they had been deported and which had been destroyed, but they need to be restored in the sense that their country is a field of ruin, and they need God to help them rebuild everything.

I suggest we look at prayer itself. Then we will see what applications we can draw for ourselves, for our own prayer and our relationship with God.

I - Recognition of deliverances wrought by God in the past (2-4)

As a preamble to his request in his prayer, the psalmist recognizes the graces that God has granted to Him and your people.

V1 : « 1You have been good to your land, O LORD, you have restored Jacob. »

He recognizes that He and His people have found favor in the eyes of God.

God said to Moses in the book of Exodus: “I am gracious to whom I am gracious.”

The favor of God is the most precious thing, but men cannot earn it. God grants it if He wants to whomever He wants.

God’s favor is like a beautiful summer day. Today there is a beautiful day, but maybe tomorrow there won't be one. We have no control.

The psalmist recognizes that he and his people have received undeserved favor, and he then details how this favor manifested itself:

V2-3: « 2You have forgiven the guilt of your people, you have covered all their sins. - Break. 3You have withdrawn all your fury, you have renounced your burning anger. »

How this favor manifested itself: God is no longer angry with them.

He expresses it in several ways:

-              Their fault is forgiven : therefore they are at peace with God

-              Sins are covered : According to this symbolism God no longer sees their sins, and therefore does not treat them as if they were sinners, but treats them as righteous people.

-              God has withdrawn all his fury : as Eduardo told us last week. There is a cup of the wrath of God which is fermenting and which will be poured out on the wicked. But they are not concerned, God has withdrawn all his fury.

We have no reason for God's appeasement in the text. But the psalmist specifies “you have forgiven ton people” (he could have said my people for example), but perhaps he wants to mark here the alliance between them and God.

This is the first part of the prayer: the psalmist recognizes all the good that God has done to them, and the evil that he has not done to them and that they would have deserved.

He acknowledges His mercy and grace.

But he also recognizes that he and the people are very weak, and without God's continued help and blessing, they will not be able to go further in their reconstruction and restoration.

So he prays for God's blessing and their complete restoration.

II- Prayer for God’s blessing and restoration (5-8)

V5: « 5Restore us, God of our salvation, put an end to your indignation against us! »

In verse 1, in our version, it is written at the end of the verse: “you have restored Jacob” (in other words Israel).

And here again in verse 5: “Restore us”

I looked in the Hebrew to see if there was a difference and to see in what other contexts the words are used.

The form of the word that is translated “you have restored Jacob” in verse 1 is still used in other contexts that refer to the release of prisoners.

It is for example this word which is used in the psalm 126 v 1: “When the Lord brought back the exiles of Zion, we were like those who make a rein”

More “Restore us” in verse 5 is close to the word that is used in Genesis when Reuben swears to his father Jacob to bring Joseph back to him.

Which makes me think that here the psalmist is not only praying to be delivered from captivity but to a restoration of relationship with God.

“Restore us God of our salvation » because he knows that the salvation of him and his people is with God.

V6-7 : « 6Are you angry with us forever? Will your anger last from generation to generation? 7Will you not restore us to life, so that your people may rejoice in you? »

Here the psalmist prays in accordance with God's covenant, knowing that God is faithful and that he made a covenant with their ancestors to bless them.

« 8Lord, show us your goodness and grant us your salvation! »

The psalmist prays in accordance with God's goodness, through which God can show generosity toward them.

He prays to “see” the goodness of God, that is, probably to feel the effects of God’s generous gifts to him and His people.

He prays for God's salvation, in this context probably His protection. We see in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah that when the people of Israel were rebuilding their country, they were attacked from all sides.

III - Resolution (9)

To plead his cause and seek fulfillment from God, the psalmist supports his prayer with a wish. This happened often in the Old Testament: Anne, the mother of Samuel, for example, who prayed for a son, and who made a vow to consecrate him to God if she was granted.

In the new testament also, we see Paul making a vow in acts 18 (but we do not know which one)

« 9I will listen to what God the Lord says, for he speaks peace to his people and to his faithful, provided that they do not return to folly. »

I don't know how to apply it today. I know that when I was taking my driving test, I had a lot of trouble passing it. I had the impression that only God could grant it. So I have a wish: always watch my blind spots, and respect the speed limits.

Generally, men who have been moved to make a vow have done so in such a way that God's blessing has led them to use that blessing for His glory... One can get lost in God's blessing (work, money which can become an idol, a license which can become an opportunity to explode in anger while driving and to say things that one would not say to one's face, etc.)

The wish that the psalmist makes: “I will listen to what God says”, may seem like a banal wish… it is normal to listen to God.

But we don’t necessarily listen to God properly. I can think of 2 situations where all of us, including me, will have difficulty listening to what God says:

-          When it is contrary to a desire that we have already formed.

-          When it is unpopular / to please men or not to annoy (Pierre who deprives himself of eating with non-Jews for fear of the Jews)

“…He speaks peace to his people and to his faithful, provided that they do not fall back into madness”

Here, the psalmist, in recalling his vows, just recalls the terms of the covenant. The peace and protection that God had promised to His people were conditioned on the obligation to obey Him.

I was asking myself the question in general: is the peace of God conditioned on obedience.

We see in the Bible that this is the case. Rebellion against God causes His curse: In Colossians 3 after listing the vices that are on the earth; the apostle Paul says: “It is because of these things that the wrath of God comes on the sons of rebellion.”

Disobedience to God brings His curse and wrath. But on the contrary obedience to God attracts his blessing and peace.

In Philippians 4, the apostle Paul exhorted Christians to be constantly infused with what honors God and what He loves, and the implication he gives in this passage: “And the God of peace will be with you.”

Obedience attracts God’s blessing and peace. Of course, obedience within the framework of the covenant with God through Jesus Christ.

After imploring God's blessing, the psalmist affirms in his prayer, his assurance that God will bless them

IV - Assurance of God's blessing (10 - 14)

V10 – 14 : « 10Yes, his salvation is near to those who fear him, and so glory will dwell in our land. »

Once again, based on God's covenant with His people, he knows that God will show them His salvation (His protection and His goodness).

Glory will inhabit our land, probably the Glory of God.

In Ezekiel 10, the prophet Ezekiel describes how during a time of apostasy among the people of Israel, the glory of God had left the temple, which became a place where the children of Israel engaged in idolatry.

Here the psalmist expresses confidence that the glory of God will return to Israel, and probably the glory of their land at the same time.

« 11Goodness and fidelity meet, justice and peace embrace; 12Faithfulness grows from the earth, and righteousness bends down from heaven.13The Lord himself will grant happiness, and our land will yield its produce.14Righteousness will go before him and mark the way before his steps. »

I think that beyond the physical restoration of the nation of Israel, the psalmist foresees – led by the Holy Spirit – a time when God Himself will be present with His people. They will be able to measure and feel all of His goodness and faithfulness; they will lack nothing; they will also be faithful to the alliance and God will fill them with happiness.

APPLICATIONS

I suggest 3 applications that we can draw from this text concerning: the favor of God; being established in God; the hope of eternal life.

-         God's favor

O   For those who received it

A first application that we can draw from this prayer is to contemplate the favor of God for us who have received it.

We have received an immeasurable, priceless favor.

Really imagine in your minds: what would be the best thing anyone could say to you right now? If there were a prophet among us who were to announce certain news to us: the end of a difficult situation we are experiencing, or the beginning of something we are waiting for and which will come true... What would it be? that it would be ?

Since we live in bodies, I think that the things we would like to hear are perhaps physical/material, even very good things. Some would perhaps be: “you will recover from your illness”, or “you will find a job”, or “you will have a child”, or “you will have your family”, “you will have your license” etc. All these things that God has created and which are good to make life pleasant for us... According to the greatness of His generosity...

But I suggest to you that the best thing God can say to someone is, “Your sins are forgiven.”

God has all the riches of the Universe, He can give you everything if He wants, but the best thing He can say to you is “your sins are forgiven”.

I think of the episode of the paralytic in the gospels. There are men who break the roof and come with a paralytic, and Jesus says “your sins are forgiven you”.

If it were necessary to quantify it in money, it is as if this man had trusted God to submit to him a need of 100€, and Jesus said to him: “I am not just going to give you according to your felt need of 100€, I will give you in accordance with my wealth, hold 1 million euros. " (it's an image). He gives him infinitely beyond what he came for and “incidentally” He heals him.

We must contemplate this great salvation and this great Savior.

Our prayer as a church and as individuals is not limited to requests, but even in the secret of our hearts, it is good to say with the psalmist: « You have been kind to me, O LORD, you have restored me; you have forgiven [all my] faults, you have covered all [my] sins. You have withdrawn all your fury, you have renounced your burning anger [towards me]”

O   For those who haven't received it yet.

But perhaps not all of those listening here have yet received this favor.

If the best thing God can say to a man is: “your sins are forgiven you”, the worst thing God can say to a man is: “you will die in your sins”.

In the gospels, Jesus sometimes said this to people.

There were religious leaders who opposed Jesus all the time. And one day He told them: “you will die in your sins”.

There is no capacity in our human nature to obey God.

No man could keep a covenant in which he would obtain God's favor on the condition of perfectly obeying Him.

So God in His goodness gave us a “new covenant” in Jesus Christ. A covenant by faith.

And the terms of this alliance are simple: he who trusts in Jesus for the forgiveness of his sins obtains the favor of God.

Jesus is the Son of God, of the same nature and essence as God the Father. He came from Heaven, He lived in a human condition. He obeyed perfectly. And he who puts his faith in Him, and who recognizes Him as his Lord and Master, he becomes united with Jesus by His Spirit, and the perfect obedience of Jesus is considered his obedience.

And Jesus obeyed perfectly during His life, then He died on the cross for all who would believe in Him, so that God can no longer condemn anyone who puts their faith in Jesus, because He has already punished Jesus at Its place.

If you are here, and you have not yet put your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. I implore you to seek God's favor. And this favor is found only in Jesus.

He who has the Son of God (Jesus Christ) has life, but he who does not have the Son does not have life, and the wrath of God rests on Him.

-         To be established in God

Another application I find to this prayer of the psalmist is his prayer for God to perfect His relationship with His people. V5: “Restore us, God of our salvation…”. And as we have seen, similar language is used in other passages of the Old Testament to speak of 2 previously separated people who find each other again.

It is not enough for the psalmist that all his sins are covered.

God has buried his sins and forgotten them, now he also wants God to act to perfect their relationship.

Even though in verse 9 he acknowledges his part in perfecting this relationship “I will listen to what God says,” He recognizes above all through His prayer, that God has the power to restore His relationship with them.

It sort of goes back to what Paul said to the Christians in Philippians 2 verses 12 and 13: “work out your salvation with fear and trembling […] for it is God who works in you to will and to do of his good pleasure”

Much like the psalmist we should pray individually and as a church: “[turn our hearts to you], God of our salvation. Lord, show us your goodness and grant us your salvation! »

Not only is it a prayer that with all our hearts we may be brought back to God, it is also a prayer that “ see » all the goodness of God.

It reminds me of Paul's prayer in Ephesians 1 verse 18: I pray that God will enlighten the eyes of your heart.

Now that our sins are forgiven, we need: 1. that our hearts are continually brought back to God and 2. that our spiritual eyes are continually illuminated.

I wasn't planning to say this at first, but eventually I'm going to say it.

Even if it is God who perfects our relationship with Him, it is also really us who do it, “work out your salvation, for it is God who works in you to will…”, is that God who works or is it us?

It’s both. It’s really Him and it’s really us.

One of the things that hinders the perfection of this relationship is our love for what the Bible calls the world (the societal and cultural environment that was built by men excluding God)

In 1 John 2 v 15 it is written: “Do not love the world or what is in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. »

John is speaking to Christians. That doesn't mean when Christians love the world God loves them any less, but I think that the perfecting of our love for Him is stunted and stifled as we become attached to loving a world that has rejected God.

I don't know if you watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. A grandiose spectacle (Céline Dion etc.), but there was a moment when the scene of the institution of the Lord's Supper was mocked.

It made me think of a sketch I saw recently: A man who wanted to poison someone else by pouring a substance into their glass of water, but he wasn't very skillful and he poured without intentionally using too much of the substance, to the point where it changed the color of the water. And so the person who was supposed to drink the glass of water looked and said “hmm that’s weird!” » and he didn't drink.

There I said to myself: "if you want to poison someone [I don't condone poisoning, it's hypothetical...], if you want to poison someone you have to add a small dose of poison so as not to alert" .

The devil is clever!! or cunning tells us the Bible, if he wanted to poison the spiritual life of Christians, he would go in small doses.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul was speaking against people who wanted to distort the gospel by adding a few small conditions for salvation in addition to the work of Jesus Christ. And he told them: “a little yeast makes the whole dough rise.” It only takes a little heresy to pollute our entire faith.

We live in a world where we are on the lookout for spectacle, for contemplation, even we Christians.

And it seems to me that the devil will make sure to infuse the different activities of this world with little subtleties so that as many people as possible make fun of the name of God and to attract as many people as possible to join Him in his rebellion against God (and therefore in his condemnation).

In Psalm 1 it says: “Happy is he who does not sit in the company of scoffers” .

The devil tries to associate us with those who mock God, and to hinder the perfection of our love for Him.

Sometimes we Christians – and I include myself – listen to songs, for example, that singers would not sing if they were Christians! How can we associate ourselves with their perdition?

We are called to watch over each of our steps.

We must pray for the perfecting of our love for God, and for spiritual insight to remember the covenant of our God and to see His goodness.

It’s a parenthesis, it’s not directly linked to the passage of the day.

This parody of the Lord's Supper also made me think of the sermon we listened to on Romans 1 (by Joe).

When we see sin exacerbated and assumed in a society, it can not only mean that the judgment of God is coming on this society, but it also means that the judgment of God is already acting in this society.

When men turn away from God, God abandons them to themselves. And not having the law of God, they establish their own laws.

I think this is a signal that we must intercede for our country France, and for its leaders and we must be salt and light as a Church.

-         The Hope of Eternal Life

As a final application, this prayer from Psalm 85 calls us to meditate on our hope. The hope we have of eternal life.

Often in the epistles, the apostles speak to Christians of having the hope of eternal life.

I read some time ago in Ephesians 1 in verse 18 after presenting the mystery of the gospel, the apostle Paul said to the Ephesians: “I pray that He will enlighten the eyes of your heart so that you will know the hope that attaches to His call”

I was like, why is this so important?

I experienced a circumstance some time ago that allowed me to understand a little. Because of administrative procedures, I had to go a few months without pay, so I was living on my reserve and it was a little more difficult than usual. Normally, I'm not an anxious person, but I admit that it stressed me out a little (I had to add up the prices of my items when I was shopping so as not to be surprised at the checkout, etc.) . Then one day, I received an email: “Mr. Weulassagou, you will be paid on [date]”. Even though I wasn't paid yet, I felt like my stress was gone. I had no control over this state of stress. It's just knowing that even if it was still difficult financially, in a few days it would be better.

I think it's the same with the hope of eternal life.

It would change our journey as Christians if we completely realized that what separates us from the fullness of the presence of God and His Son Jesus Christ is only a few years, a few months, a few days...

Eternal life as Jesus defined it in John 17 is knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ His Son.

We already live eternal life, we who have believed in Jesus and who have received his Holy Spirit.

Firstly because eternal life is the definition of a life connected to God. This is the type of full life the Holy Spirit gives us

Then because we are not going to experience death.

We will certainly leave our bodies, but we will not experience death as it is defined by the Bible. The Bible shows 2 possible destinations for those who leave their bodies. Some go down to hell and others go up to be with Christ (there is no tunnel with light at the end).

We see this in the Parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. When Lazarus died, he was said to have been carried by the angels to be in Abraham's bosom.

We see it again with the apostle Paul in Philippians 1 who said that he desires to go away to be with Christ. He talked about it as if he were talking about moving to a neighboring town or another room in his house.

For us who have believed in Jesus, we have the hope of eternal life. What separates us from the full reality of eternal life is very small.

The psalmist was not only praying to be fully restored to God, but he was looking forward to the day when this weak love we have for God would be transformed into a perfect love.

This will be the end of our imperfect efforts to be righteous and upright, and we will have perfect righteousness and perfect integrity before God.

 This sometimes blurry vision that we have of God will be transformed into a perfect vision, we will see God as He is. We will see the face of Jesus.

In a few years, months, days, we will be in the presence of God, and as it is said in verse 13: “The Lord himself will grant happiness.”

Some of us will arrive before others...but in a few years, months, days we will all be reunited in the presence of the Lord.

The complete presence of God is synonymous with true complete happiness. There will be no more wars; more political leaders who are not trusted; there will be no more financial difficulties; There will be no more physical, emotional or relational pain... God will wipe away all our tears.

At the heart of the psalmist's prayer he said: “Lord, show us your goodness and grant us your salvation! » , and he knows that it will be accomplished, imperfectly on this earth, but one day completely in the presence of God Himself.

13 – 14 : « 13The Lord himself will grant happiness, and our land will yield its produce. 14Righteousness will go before him and mark the way before his steps. »

AMEN

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.

Exodus 24:9–11:

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.

Exodus 24:15–18:

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.