Joy in the Journey (29) - "Though he does not know how..."

In Mark 4:26-29, our Lord Jesus continues his teaching with another 'nature parable'. The man who scatters seed into the ground - experienced, well-versed in farming and crop-growing no doubt - has limitations to grasp and a humility to embrace.

The seed is the Word (Mark 4:14). The gospel of the Kingdom. The living and abiding Word of God. We are blessed with opportunities to take that Word into our hearts. That blessing comes with a responsibility, to hear God's Word with "noble and good hearts" (Luke 8:15). That is, with integrity, with humility, with a willingness to hear all that it says to us. To come with open hearts and minds. Which means we need to become careful readers and listeners - engaged, thoughtful, responsive. Not passive, as though our minds were simply a sluice-gate into the soul.

But there is a difference between the kind of active listening we're called to and an over-mechanised view of how the Word works in our or other people's lives. The Word needs to, and will, do its work, even though we (like the man in the parable) do not know how. And that work is always more extensive and more unexpected than we are likely prepared for.

We're to come with a readiness, a willingness, to be humbled, to be challenged, to be encouraged, exhorted, equipped. But those outcomes, in all the reality of their fruitful detail, are the work of the Spirit himself. They are not determined by our own expectations ("I'm going to read this passage so that I can be convicted about that sin ...".) Conviction and comfort are the work of the Counsellor given to us by our Lord Jesus. They are not self-generated.

We simply do not know enough about how he does his work. The motions of a soul are mysteries to us and the intricacies of the mind and the impact upon it of history and life's experiences are far beyond our ability to know or to program. "The Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom" - not only for those liberated into adoption as the children of God but the freedom of the Spirit himself in the loving work of recreation. The wind blows where and as it wills. We know so little of the detail.

As much as that is true for ourselves in our listening to God's Word, it is also true in the scattering of the seed of the Word into other lives that are as yet fruitless, void of the saving grace of Jesus. We cannot contrive the outcome; we cannot properly conceive of what the Lord in his sovereign goodness is already working at. The life is in the seed, not the mind of the sower.

That demands humility of us. The seed is out of our sight but not out of the mind of God. The work is not ours but his. We may have the privilege of being co-workers, but it is only and ever the Lord who gives the increase, who makes the seed bring forth new life.

The humility this calls for can then merge into restfulness. "Whether he sleeps or gets up" the work continues, under the ground, buried deep in the human heart. No amount of staying awake, prodding the ground, watching with anxious hearts for the first signs of life, will hasten the harvest.

That restfulness is not sinful, it isn't laziness. It honours the Lord of the Harvest, the Living Word, the life-giving Spirit.

************

I know not why God’s wondrous grace
To me hath been made known;
Nor why, unworthy as I am,
He claimed me for His own.

I know not how this saving faith
To me He did impart;
Or how believing in His word
Wrought peace within my heart.

I know not how the Spirit moves,
Convincing men of sin;
Revealing Jesus through the Word,
Creating faith in Him.

I know not what of good or ill
May be reserved for me,
Of weary ways or golden days
Before His face I see.

I know not when my Lord may come;
I know not how, nor where;
If I shall pass the vale of death,
Or meet Him in the air.

But I know Whom I have believed,
And am persuaded that He is able
To keep that which I've committed
Unto Him, against that day.


(Daniel Webster Whittle, 1840-1901)

Joy in the Journey (28) - The Perfect Law of Freedom

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the ugliest of all? Well, obviously, it's me; it's you. At least that's probably how it feels on the days we're being most honest. Looking into scripture, seeing the real me, the one with unclean lips and a contaminated heart. And being told not to forget what I look like, taking that sight into the day - the crushing awareness of a shattered vision. Thanks, James.

Oh, but that's not it. However much it might sometimes feel that way, it really isn't. Twice James speaks about the law, the perfect law, that gives freedom. He also writes of "the royal law found in scripture", the law of King Jesus, the law of love. He's dealing here with the same thing that Paul wrote about in Romans 10:4 - that the law, the Torah, reached its fulfilment in Jesus. He was its goal, its endpoint, its completion. His life and his death and his resurrection accomplish what the law wanted to see but could never achieve, being weakened by the flesh (Rom. 8:3). The perfect law that gives freedom is the law of Christ (Gal 6:2), the law of love, the law of redemption and adoption and new birth, the law of the Spirit of life that sets us free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:2).

So when, in 1:25, James writes of looking intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continuing in it - remembering it, walking in its light and reality - he is calling us to look into the face of Jesus, his perfect life, his redeeming love, and to see there, and hold onto, our union with him. His is the story of our lives. His is the obedience and the sacrifice that has won our freedom. It is his Spirit who empowers us to walk in it. See that in the scriptures; look intently, day by day. As you see the blemishes, the fault-lines of sinful habits and betrayals, also see the forgiveness and the cleansing and the glow of new birth into a living hope. See yourself for the child of God that you now are - in the perfect law that gives liberty.

In 2:12, James urges his readers to "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom" and reminds them to be merciful because "mercy triumphs over judgement". We will be judged - all our actions and ambitions, all our words and motives. Every aspect of our lives will be scrutinised and judged - but judged in and through Jesus. Every sin atoned for by his death. A scrutiny not of condemnation but of confirmation - of the life and love of Christ in you and through you. That prospect is what ought to so change our hearts that we act in mercy not in judgement. Even when called to be judicious in our assessments, we will want to be merciful in our ambitions for others. Endeavouring to keep the royal law, "Love your neighbour as yourself."

We are called to freedom, not condemnation; to the realism of redemption and the liberty of saving love. Those glorious truths are the foundation for lives not of sinful indulgence but of mutual love and service.

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Now I have found the ground wherein

Sure my soul’s anchor may remain -

The wounds of Jesus, for my sin

Before the world’s foundation slain;

Whose mercy shall unshaken stay,

When heaven and earth are fled away.

Father, Thine everlasting grace

Our scanty thought surpasses far,

Thy heart still melts with tenderness,

Thy arms of love still open are,

Returning sinners to receive,

That mercy they may taste and live.

O Love, Thou bottomless abyss,

My sins are swallowed up in thee!

Covered is my unrighteousness,

Nor spot of guilt remains on me,

While Jesus’ blood, through earth and skies,

Mercy, free, boundless mercy! cries.

With faith I plunge me in this sea,

Here is my hope, my joy, my rest;

Hither, when hell assails, I flee,

I look into my Saviour’s breast.

Away, sad doubt and anxious fear!

Mercy is all that’s written there.

Though waves and storms go o’er my head,

Though strength, and health, and friends be gone,

Though joys be withered all and dead,

Though every comfort be withdrawn,

On this my steadfast soul relies -

Father, Thy mercy never dies!

Fixed on this ground will I remain,

Though my heart fail and flesh decay;

This anchor shall my soul sustain,

When earth’s foundations melt away:

Mercy’s full power I then shall prove,

Loved with an everlasting love.

(Johann Andreas Rothe, 1688-1758;

tr. John Wesley, 1703-91)

Joy in the Journey (27) - In a foreign country

Having been called by God to go from his country, his people and his father’s household, to the land promised to him by the Lord (Gen. 12:1), how did Abraham live when he arrived there? Hebrews 11:9 tell us that “by faith, he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country.”

He was in the place to which the Lord had sent him, the land gifted to him by the God of the covenant, yet his life there was marked not by privilege and permanence but by a careful humility that recognised it as provisional and penultimate.

The same was true for others listed alongside Abraham. “They didn’t receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.” (Heb. 11:13) Lives that displayed contentment in God now and confidence in his ultimate purposes.

Do you see the common thread? Strangers; foreigners. In a land that God has freely gifted yet recognising its prophetic witness to a greater reality: the city God had prepared for them, a city with foundations - a better country, a heavenly one. They lived faithfully in the light of the day whose dawn had begun but was as yet incomplete.

The physical land was not the true reality, however promised it was. Abraham knew that. The others knew it, too. And our lives now, for all their truth and substance, still have a shadowy aspect to them. Our adoption as God’s children by faith in Christ, while true and irreversible, awaits its completion in the redemption of our bodies, in the life and experience of the new creation.

Knowing that we have been called into God’s kingdom and into his family; knowing that the meek shall inherit the earth and that the Lord’s people will even judge angels, how ought we to live in this present world?

As Abraham did. As the unnamed others also did. And as Peter exhorts his readers: “Live out your time here as foreigners in reverent fear…As foreigners and exiles…abstain from sinful desires…” (1 Peter 1:17; 2:11)

But what did that mean then and what might it mean now? Many things, clearly, but some things are strikingly consistent. Abraham lived wisely, compassionately and peaceably among those who were also in the land. He was honoured as one whose God made him a blessing to others.

And Peter’s consistent instructions to scattered and harassed believers is to show respect to all, to honour those to whom honour is due, to live such good lives that others may glorify God for them and their lives, and answering questions with a gentleness that authenticates the hope they profess.

Having the promises of God in all their certainty, being assured of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, isn’t licence to live carelessly and dismissively. It is, rather, a call into the deepest humility and service in our present society. And to a consistent, godly yearning for the Day of the Lord, for the final unveiling of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time, for "the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God"..

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Forth in Thy name, O Lord, I go, 
My daily labour to pursue, 
Thee, only Thee, resolved to know 
In all I think or speak or do. 

The task Thy wisdom hath assigned 
O let me cheerfully fulfil' 
In all my works Thy presence find, 
And prove Thy good and perfect will. 

Thee may I set at my right hand, 
Whose eyes my inmost substance see, 
And labour on at Thy command,
And offer all my works to Thee. 

Give me to bear Thy easy yoke, 
And every moment watch and pray, 
And still to things eternal look ,
And hasten to Thy glorious day;

For Thee delightfully employ
Whate'er Thy bounteous grace hath given
And run my course with even joy,
And closely walk with Thee to heaven.

(Charles Wesley, 1707-88)

Joy in the Journey (26) - Up the hill of the Lord

Are there days when you feel like you’ve lost before you’ve even begun? Many of us would say we’ve often felt like that. And it might be that certain passages of scripture make you feel that way, too - facing a task that is not simply unfinished but that you feel barely able to begin or even to contemplate.

The opening words of Psalm 15 might leave you in quiet despair. The questions of verse 1 - "Who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain?" - and then the catalogue of virtues from verse 2 onwards make you feel like there’s no point in even starting. This is a hill too steep to climb, too sheer to be possible. It’s time to move on, to accept a lesser life in the lowlands.

But, wait. Try reading this psalm from a different starting point. Try reading it with the Saviour in view, as a description of the complete worthiness of Jesus. A blameless life, marked by righteousness and truth all the way through. No slander, not even when placed under the most extreme pressure. Who would not betray the innocent or play the power games of oppressing the poor. Who kept his oath (to save the lost), even when it cost his very life.

He is worthy, beautifully so. He dwells in the sacred tent; he ascended the hill of the Lord, having first climbed Calvary’s steeps. He is unshaken and governs over and bestows on his people a kingdom that cannot be shaken (Heb. 12:28). Stand back and admire such glory in the face of our Lord.

His sacrifice has taken away, torn forever, the dividing curtain and ushered us into the sacred space of God’s presence. “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:21).

So turn again to the hill before you. Because there is a beauty in holiness that is winsome for those whom Christ has saved and renewed in grace. However much we know we’ll struggle with the climb, to keep up the necessary pace, needing many stops and restarts, there will be the longing to do so, to experience the invigorating clean air, the golden light of purity and integrity. A desire that he births and that he sustains and that he will complete.

When we walk with the Lord, in the light of his Word, step by step up the hill before us, in his company and filled by his Spirit, his radiance lights the way before us and sheds its rays around. Living with these words before us and within us, seeing their realisation in the Lord Jesus, can begin to transform our online conversations, our personal interactions and the quality of all our relationships.

Don’t give up.; in due time there will the harvest that he has planted (Gal. 5:9). Fix your eyes on Jesus; plant your feet in his footsteps.

************

Fight the good fight with all thy might;
Christ is thy strength, and Christ the right;
Lay hold on life, and it shall be
Thy joy and crown eternally.

Run the straight race through God's good grace,
Lift up thine eyes and seek His face;
Life with its path before thee lies,
Christ is the way, and Christ the prize.

Cast care aside, lean on thy Guide;
His boundless mercy will provide;
Trust, and thy trusting soul shall prove
Christ is its life and Christ its love.

Faint not nor fear, His arms are near;
He changeth not, and thou art dear;
Only believe, and thou shalt see
That Christ is all in all to thee.

(John Samuel Bewley Monsell, 1811-75)

Joy in the Journey (25) - Except a grain of wheat...

​"​Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.​..If anyone serves me, he must follow me.​" John 12:24-26

​This statement of our Lord Jesus is both an explanation of his destiny and an invitation to his disciples to view their own lives through the same lens. His words are laden with the reality of the gospel - a truth embedded within creation that is worked-out in the ‘one for the many’ of his own perfect sacrifice.

That sacrifice is unrepeatable and​​, so​,​ the way laid down for his disciples is not identical to his own​.​ ​Its meaning is different, but the outcome has a ​recognisable​ affinity: their lives, laid down in his service, will become genuinely fruitful.

For some of his disciples, the planting of their lives in the ground meant, as for him, their deaths. For others, the meaning was broader but no less consequential: the laying aside of ambitions and comforts, the stripping bare of legitimate joys, the complete paradigm-shift in established ways of thinking - these would lead to deeper and greater life.

The embedding of that truth within God’s good creation is a powerful and ongoing reminder to us. We are taught it every year; the curriculum of the cross is witnessed fall by fall. And yet it is such a hard one to learn, to embrace, because it always comes at a price and has a cost we might not be willing to pay.

The death of dreams, the laying aside of plans and ambitions - holy ones - is very costly. In this present season, they may seem to have been wrenched from our hands and buried in the dirt, even as they live on in our hearts. The death of opportunities and freedoms, of a way of simply being that provided us with much-needed stability - few of us will have been prepared for that and fewer still seeking it.

Yet in the hands of a crucified and risen Saviour such futility and waste have a different aspect: “if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

But that reality has to be framed within two important caveats:

Firstly​,​ nothing about this whole process is quick. We imagine it might be but it seldom is. Seeds fall into the ground in autumn, they are entombed through the long hard winter, only to finally emerge in newness when spring comes on the rays of the renewing sun.

The Canadian pastor and blogger, Daryl Dash, made this point very powerfully in a recent article​. Recognising the almost pathological pressure to “continually spin every event as an opportunity​,​” he wisely notes that “Ministry comes in seasons, and winter is as essential…as spring. What if God is pruning his church right now? Could we miss what he’s trying to teach us by spinning everything as a plus? Perhaps we need to make room for lament.”

His advice to those who are being driven to find the current ‘plus’?​ ​“Sometimes it’s best to let the land lay fallow and to pay attention to the season we’re in even as we look to the future.”

His words are true, in a thoroughgoing way, for the whole Christian life. We don’t lament planting seeds but we do lament our losses. And perhaps it’s also right to recognise that this holds true not just for individuals but also for churches and for mission agencies.

We do well to remember that between the planting into the ground of Good Friday and the new life of Easter Sunday, there was the hard, frozen ground of Holy Saturday to traverse.

Secondly, the falling into the ground that our Lord speaks of was voluntary. He chose to lay down his life, no one took it from him​;​ he was encouraging his disciples to follow him, whatever the details might be in their lives, in a similar willingness.

That’s why his words stand as a call an​d​ invitation, not a callous imposition.

The Lord Jesus does not lay upon us a weight too heavy to bear ​and​ then refuse to ​help us carry it. Knowing our many weaknesses​,​ but convinced of the righteousness of the paths he leads us in, we can confidently ask for​ grace and mercy.

Our application of these words must never be flippant or casual or blasé​, to ourselves or others. ​Ike Miller​ is ​right to say that “Only a Joseph can declare with authority, ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good’”. But it is possible for our​ own response to become​ the open hand of humility and faith that, over time, grows into a glad and willing submission to the ways and the wisdom of God. ​O​ver time: fall-winter-spring.

The late American poet, Mary Oliver, traced this dying and rising in her poem, Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, where​, observing that "the sweets of the year be doomed," she asks a question we might find ​truly ​pertinent​:​

“who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?”

​************​

​Saviour, Thy dying love

Thou gavest me;

Nor should I aught withhold,

My Lord, from Thee;

In love my soul would bow,

My heart fulfil its vow,

Some offering bring Thee now,

Something for Thee.

At the blest mercy-seat

Pleading for me,

My feeble faith looks up,

Jesus, to Thee;

Help me the cross to bear,

Thy wondrous love declare,

Some song to raise, or prayer -

Something for Thee​.

Give me a faithful heart,

Likeness to Thee,

That each departing day

Henceforth may see

Some work of love begun,

Some deed of kindness done,

Some wanderer sought and won -

Something for Thee.

All that I am and have,

Thy gifts so free,

In joy, in grief, through life,

O Lord, for Thee!

And when Thy face I see,

My ransomed soul shall be,

Through all eternity,

Something for Thee.

(Sylvanus Dryden Phelps, 1816-95)

Joy in the Journey (24) - Not fade away

There are times when forgetting the past is the exact right thing to try to do. You've got to move on; maturity demands it, is tied to it, and sanity even. The band Relient K recognised that in a song about the painful aftermath of relational betrayal:

I'd rather forget and not slow down
than gather regrets for the things
that can't change now.

And with piercing clarity and spiritual power the Apostle Paul laid bare his heart:

"forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 3:13f)

Those words deserve to be writ large on all our hearts, through all our days.

But at the same time Scripture counsels us to remember and to remember well. Deuteronomy was, effectively, the last sermon Moses preached to the people of Israel; in chapter 4, verse 9 he urges them,

"Be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live."

(His words find an echo in the solemn charge of Prov 4:23, "Guard your heart with all diligence".)

And the Apostle Peter, also conscious he is writing a final letter to Christians he loves deeply, lays bare his heart and their need when he says,

"I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things." (2 Peter 1:15)

The Bible repeatedly takes seriously our tendency, personally and collectively, to forgetfulness - not of the facts of gospel truth, but of their force, through a loss of sustained focus and consideration and delight in their wonderful, transforming reality, of the Lord himself.

Moses is urging the people to do all they can to keep in mind what the Lord had done, to keep the truth fresh and unfading in their hearts. We have to acknowledge our frequent sad and slow drift towards the ossifying of our faith and our walk with the Lord. And yet, "because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail" - never dull, never fade. In fact, "they are new every morning."

The challenge to "not...let them fade from your heart" is so graciously provided for in the mercies of God that are anchored in history yet are fresh and vibrant every day, meeting us in our tragic slide into dullness.

Psalm 143:8 gives us words to pray, from within that struggle, for vital, spiritual engagement with the living Lord: "Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you." Every new day affirms God's intent to hear and answer that prayer, for the sun rises "like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber" (Ps. 19:5) on his wedding day, in testimony to the undying, covenant love of the Lord, so great is his faithfulness!

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Come, Thou fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious measure,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
O the vast, the boundless treasure
Of my Lord's unchanging love!

Here I raise me Ebenezer,
Hither by Thy help I'm come,
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace, Lord, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Take my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it from Thy courts above.

(Robert Robinson, 1735-90)

Joy in the Journey (23) - Sovereign Protection

So many voices have been silenced during lockdown, but maybe not the ones you long would fade and fall away. The snide remarks, the belittling and withering tones. The insistent, incessant drone of condemnation and cynical barbs.

Perhaps that describes your world - on social media, at work, in relationships that ought to yield joy. Or maybe it's the world inside your head; try as you might, you're never too sure what is the genuine voice of conscience and what is the serpent's malign speech. Whichever it is, you often feel the accusations are unanswerable, so what does it matter who's making them? Because this is you, guilty as charged.

In Psalm 3, David speaks of having many foes who have risen against him. Their gleeful claim is that "God will not deliver him". David, in their eyes, is without hope and utterly at their mercy, waiting to be devoured.

The opening words of verse 3 oppose that conclusion in the most forthright manner: "But you, O LORD..." The living God is present and active in David's life and his presence brings hope to birth. That hope is two-fold:

Protection: "You, LORD, are a shield around me..." - the living God has committed, in covenant love, to guard and keep David, to keep him from all harm, all evil. No weapon forged against him will stand. No schemes will succeed. He is safe because he is shielded by the LORD.

Vindication: "You are...my glory, the One who lifts my head high" - The taunts and the accusations will be silenced and the disgrace that has gathered around David's head will be dissipated. Because the LORD will raise him, will lift the shame, will declare him vindicated. The LORD himself will be David's glory, his reputation, his unfading star, radiant in splendour.

David prays and knows that he will be answered from the LORD's holy mountain (verse 4). From the place where the temple would be built, where Abraham was prepared to offer his son, his only son, Isaac whom he loved. And in the fulness of time, the answering of prayer - your prayers - comes from the holy hill of Calvary, where God did not spare his own Son but offered him up for us all.

The death of our Lord Jesus is the source of all the protection and vindication we could ever need:

- The shield that bore the brunt of the onslaught against us, that took the blows in order to shelter others from harm, from accusation, from judgement, by submitting himself to the condemnation of sin in our place. "He to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood."

- The disgrace heaped upon the holy Son of God was for our vindication. On that cross, unfathomable shame was heaped upon him so that we might be declared righteous through our union with him. He was raised to life for our justification and we are incorporated by faith into that vindication. His spotless reputation is declared to be yours.

The cross of the Lord Jesus Christ both protects and vindicates. It silences all our enemies, within and without; it drains accusations of their power. The love it breathes "lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to Thee." The peace it bequeaths passes understanding and is able to keep our hearts and minds secure, through all the blizzards of condemnation.

In all things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

************

A Sovereign Protector I have,
Unseen, yet for ever at hand,
Unchangeably faithful to save,
Almighty to rule and command.
He smiles, and my comforts abound;
His grace as the dew shall descend;
And walls of salvation surround
The soul He delights to defend.

Inspirer and Hearer of prayer,
Thou Shepherd and Guardian of Thine,
My all to Thy covenant care
I sleeping and waking resign.
If Thou art my Shield and my Sun,
The night is no darkness to me;
And fast as my moments roll on,
They bring me but nearer to Thee.

Kind Author and Ground of my hope,
Thee, Thee, for my God I avow;
My glad Ebenezer set up,
And own Thou hast helped me till now.
I muse on the years that are past,
Wherein my defence Thou hast proved;
Nor wilt Thou relinquish at last
A sinner so signally loved!

(Augustus Montague Toplady, 1740-78)