Cover to Cover (Joy in the Journey)

When Adam and Eve sinned, the weight of their shame was intolerable. It had been noted at the end of the previous chapter that they “were both naked and they felt no shame” (Gen. 2:25) - an intriguing note to conclude the creation account, the first suggestion of a cloud on the horizon of their sinless world. A glance backwards to a paradise now lost from what had become shame-filled in the very next chapter. From not knowing any shame to being overwhelmed by it, our first parents had fallen so grievously.

The response of the LORD God to their experiential need is one of deepest grace: he “made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Gen. 3:21). Their agony needed more than the objective removal of their guilt in the forgiveness of God, a mercy he is always quick to offer. They needed the nakedness of their shame to be covered. They needed their eyes to be shielded from all that would remind them of their defection and betrayal. They needed their shame to be removed from the sight of all, both creature and Creator.

And the LORD, in all his sensitivity and kindness, provided them with that shelter. A covering that brought relief, that spoke not simply of sins forgiven but of the burial from sight of the ugliness of their shame. This is the same garment that the Lord Jesus wrapped around those he spoke forgiveness to - through his words that spoke acceptance and welcome and through his acts of compassion that sat he and they at the same table.

The gospel doesn’t only proclaim our forgiveness, it offers release from the shame that chokes our souls with the acrid smoke that rises from the pit of sin. Not only are we acquitted through the death of Jesus but we are accepted in the Beloved - clothed with God’s own Son, in the holiest ‘garment of skin’ there could ever be.

It falls to those who have been so clothed that they, in turn, become instrumental in relieving the shame of others: “My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring them back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the way of error will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.” (James 5:19,20).

It is, of course, vital to see that this is not a cover-up of sins, as though simply hiding them from sight could assuage the guilt and shame they bring. It cannot. This is the covering over of sin, through repentance and forgiveness. A forgiveness that isn’t simply objective but one that aims at full restoration and the unburdening of a conscience that has been tortured by self-inflicted shame.

That work of recovery must ever be done gently and in full recognition of our own brittle state (Gal. 6:1). Only those whose own shame has been comprehensively covered can lay that same garment upon others’ sin-blistered shoulders.

The Bible's story reads from cover to cover.

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I bring my sins to Thee,

The sins I cannot count,

That all may cleansed be

In Thy once-opened fount:

I bring them, Saviour, all to Thee;

The burden is too great for me.

My heart to Thee I bring,

The heart I cannot read,

A faithless, wandering thing,

An evil heart indeed:

I bring it, Saviour, now to Thee,

That fixed and faithful it may be.

My life I bring to Thee,

I would not be my own;

O Saviour, let me be

Thine ever, Thine alone!

My heart, my life, my all I bring

To Thee, my Saviour and my King.

(Frances Ridley Havergal, 1836-79)

Unmuted (Joy in the Journey)

"Richard, you’re on mute!" Whoops. It’s happened lots of times, to many of us. Recently I had the experience of not being able to unmute and quickly wrote a message and held it up to the screen, “I can’t unmute!” It was soon rectified and wasn’t a problem.

But we have a muteness that is a problem, one that only the gospel can cure. We were born to know and love the Lord, to praise our Maker while he gives us breath. And to discover in doing so that we are becoming more like him (it is a settled law, revealed in scripture, that we become like the objects of our worship). But sin mutes us, robs us of speech worthy of God, makes the soul stammer its way into silence. A silent soul shrivels, calcifies in ignorance of the One whose love makes alive.

In Mark 7:31-37, our Lord Jesus encountered a man who was deaf and mute. Unable to hear others praising God, detached from all teaching of God’s Word. And without any means to make himself known and understood. This is not how it was meant to be. The gravity of the man’s condition was such that Jesus looks to heaven and sighs deeply before he speaks words of release.

There is something so moving about how the Lord meets the man in all his need. A man who cannot hear will not be able to understand the commotion and will likely be distressed and confused by the crowds. So Jesus takes him aside - he isn’t going to make a show of him. And he then enacts wordlessly what he is going to do for him - he puts his fingers in the man’s ears, he spits (saliva was believed to have healing properties), he touches the man’s tongue. Each movement communicating something of what this is about.

And then he looks up to heaven, sighs and speaks to open the man’s ears and loose his tongue. This is not the work of a showman or a magician; this is the Lord himself, coming to set free and restore the helpless, those separated and silenced by the scourge of sin.

This beautiful moment is recognised by the crowd. They praise God, rejoicing that Jesus has done all things well. Perhaps they knew - or maybe they didn’t - that this scene is a clear and compelling fulfilment of Isaiah 35:6, where the coming of the Messiah will mean that “the mute tongue [will] shout for joy”. The equivalent term in Greek for the one used there only occurs once in all the New Testament, here in Mark 7.

This is what the Messiah has come to do - to set people free so that we might be able to listen as the Lord speaks to us and respond with glad shouts of praise. And then to use our mouths as a blessing to others, speaking words of hope and healing, words of gospel grace and kingly kindness.

We've been unmuted.

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O for a thousand tongues to sing
    My great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King,
    The triumphs of His grace.

My gracious Master and my God,
    Assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad
    The honours of Thy name.

Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
    That bids our sorrows cease;
’Tis music in the sinner’s ears,
    ’Tis life, and health, and peace.

He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
    He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean;
    His blood availed for me.

He speaks, and listening to His voice,
    New life the dead receive,
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice,
    The humble poor believe.

Hear Him, ye deaf, His praise, ye dumb,
    Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come,
    And leap, ye lame, for joy.

Look unto Him, ye nations, own
    Your God, ye fallen race;
Look, and be saved through faith alone,
    Be justified by grace.

(Charles Wesley, 1707-88)

Meditating and Obeying (Joy in the Journey)

I have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your statutes.
I have more understanding than the elders,
for I obey your precepts. (Psalm 119:99f)

To grow in insight and understanding is a regular and proper concern for every Christian. Not to impress others, still less to curry favour with the Lord, but so that in knowing him more we might serve him and others with wisdom and in all humility.

These verses in the longest Psalm highlight 2 key factors in attaining greater insight and understanding - in growing to maturity in worshipping the living God, in following Jesus, in life in the Spirit - and they are these: meditating on what God has revealed and obeying what he has said.

Meditating - taking what the Bible discloses to us and giving it our sustained and determined, worshipful attention. Giving it time to percolate through our spiritual senses, enlarging our inner relish for God and his truth. Not simply consuming large quantities of the Bible but slowing down enough in order to taste it, to feel its power, to catch glimmers of the glory of God within its pages.

There are no shortcuts to insight - wisdom for living well and in fellowship with the Lord. It requires space and time. But the rewards more than repay the effort.

Obeying - simply doing all that God has said. Which, as we know, is far from simple - not because what he has said is inherently unclear but because our minds remain clouded by sin and its remnants. But the psalmist expresses what we can at least emulate: the desire and the determination to follow through on the call into a life lived in the presence of God, before his face, longing to please the One who has so loved us.

Begin there, with that desire, and often the next step comes into sharper focus as the Spirit works willingness in our hearts. Obedience leads to deeper understanding as we experience the authentication of truth in our everyday lives and in the enlarging of our hearts.

Mediating on God and his Word and then obeying what he says are the route to growing in insight and understanding. This is a compelling invitation to live in fulness.

But there is a slightly jarring note in these verses. The writer, perhaps someone still relatively young, contrasts his approach - of meditation and obedience - with their apparent lack in those who are his teachers, those who are older than him. It’s a salutary lesson being played-out before our eyes: it is possible to be a teacher of others, whether formally or informally, and not be growing in insight because we fail to meditate on God’s truth. We assume we know it, that a factual familiarity is sufficient.

And it is all too possible to be an older Christian - even someone recognised as an elder - and not be putting cherished truth into practice, walking in humble obedience. We don’t automatically have wisdom to share simply because we’ve ridden these streets for a long time. It grows in soil that is cultivated by meditation and watered by obedience.

That is a significant and humbling challenge. And in that way it offers an opportunity for meditation and prayer. To consider afresh what the Lord has done for us in his Son, to defend ourselves from becoming “blind and near-sighted, forgetting that we have been cleansed from [our] past sins” (2 Peter 1:9). And to resolve, in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be renewed in our walk with him.

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Christ, whose glory fills the skies,

Christ, the true and only light,

Sun of Righteousness, arise,

Triumph o'er the shades of night;

Day-spring from on high, be near;

Day-star, in my heart appear.

Dark and cheerless is the morn

Unaccompanied by Thee;

Joyless is the day's return,

Till Thy mercy's beams I see,

Till they inward light impart,

Glad my eyes, and warm my heart.

Visit, then, this soul of mine;

Pierce the gloom of sin and grief;

Fill me, radiancy divine;

Scatter all my unbelief;

More and more Thyself display,

Shining to the perfect day!

(Charles Wesley, 1707-88)

We shall be like him (Joy in the Journey)

All sorts of thoughts and questions swirly around the ultimate destiny of Christians - the nature of heavenly life, what life on a renewed earth will be like, how we will experience the relationships we have enjoyed in this world, the nature of life in a resurrection body, and so many more. One thing, though is certain: the Bible says that “we shall be like him”, like our Lord Jesus Christ (1 John 3:2).

Of course, it remains beyond our ability, now, to understand all that will mean. But there are some things we can begin to piece together - and it is right to do so, since John says that the prospect of being like him ought to make an impact upon us.

Becoming like the One who has the Spirit without measure must mean that the fruit of that same Spirit will finally be fully realised in us and will be seen and experienced in its mature ripeness. Like him in love and joy and peace; like him in patience, kindness and goodness; like him in faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It hardly seems possible and yet it will be so.

The One who is love to the very core of his being, love that delights to give itself to and for others, will be reflected in us, will be realised in us. We will no longer be capable of hurting others, of harming what God has made. Instead we will become channels of blessing, showered in mercy by the Lord upon others. We will ever live to bless the Lord in worship and to bless others in Christ-reflecting love and service.

How will this be so? What will cause the final leap from our present stutters and stumbles to such perfection? “We shall be made like him for we shall see him as he is.” No longer a veil between; no partial glimpses of our majestic Saviour. No longer will our eyes need to be shielded from the brilliance that is brighter than the sun. His light will not consume us but conform us to his own likeness.

No wonder there are times when heaven itself is stunned into silence. The dust of earth - this dust - mangled by sin, will one day reflect without any distortion the beauty of the Lord Jesus.

Not only does that lead us to bow our heads in a kind of wordless wonder, it also ought to give increased vigour to our desire now to be what we shall be then: Everyone who has this hope in Jesus purifies himself, even as Jesus is pure. The prospect of bearing uncreated light in our own souls to such a degree comes with a purifying heft, lodging a prayerful longing in our hearts to never again grieve the Spirit of holiness by whom we were sealed for the day of redemption.

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With harps and with viols

There stand a great throng
In the presence of Jesus,

And sing this new song:

    Unto Him who hath loved us
    And washed us from sin,
    Unto Him be the glory forever! Amen.

All these once were sinners,
Defiled in his sight,
Now arrayed in pure garments
In praise they unite:

He maketh the rebel
A priest and a king,
He hath bought us and taught us
This new song to sing:

How helpless and hopeless
We sinners had been,
If He never had loved us
Till cleansed from our sin:

Aloud in His praises
Our voices shall ring,
So that others believing,
This new song shall sing:

(Arthur Tappan Pierson, 1837-1911)

Lead me, LORD (Joy in the Journey)

David’s prayer in Psalm 5:8 gets right to the heart of so much of our need and longing: “lead me, LORD, in your righteousness.” The reason for the prayer is expressed as “because of my enemies” - because his life is far from easy, his days difficult and strained. The odds are against him and he feels it. So much is volatile and unpredictable. He’s walking on thin ice, paying a heavy price for his stab at living a godly life while all around him fill their hearts with malice.

To ask to be led is to recognise several possibilities: that we do not know the way; or, knowing the way, we cannot see it; or, knowing and seeing the way, we recognise its dangers and how much we need a capable guide to get us through. In all those ways, this prayer makes perfect sense and offers profound hope. Because the LORD knows the way that he takes and the way that he has set before us. Nothing is hidden from him, nothing comes as a surprise. He sees what we cannot and he can tame the terrors that cause us unceasing alarm. He is willing to take our arm and be our faithful guide.

To be led is to taken somewhere, towards something, to becoming someone. Places we cannot reach on our own. The maturity that always seems out of reach. We need to be led into all these - led into the light, with life as the destiny. Recognising the difficulties involved in the life of faith, David asks the LORD to “make your way straight before me.” Make the path clear. Lighten the darkness. Clear the rubble from the road, make the rough places smooth and untangle the chaos. Please, LORD.

The leading David seeks will be “in your righteousness”. Every step that we’re called to take will be in his complete integrity, in the commitment of his heart to make good on every promise he had made, in his unfailing goodness. He will not lead us astray and abandon us when the going gets tough. Our Lord Jesus came to fulfil all righteousness, from identifying with us in his baptism in the Jordan to carrying our sins in his body upon the tree. His ways never fail and his guidance never disappoints because they are anchored in the perfection of divine love.

The beautiful gospel song, Precious Lord, was written by Thomas A Dorsey from within the agony of the death of his wife in childbirth and the baby son she bore. In the song he prays, in the howling gale of sorrow, that the Lord would both lead him on and lead him home. There is our need in its entirety: to be led onward, in our life in Christ, in growing in grace and knowledge, in deepening trust in the Saviour; and to be led homeward, to the “fair city so bright where the Lamb is the light”, safe in the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

    Precious Lord, take my hand
    Lead me on, let me stand
    I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
    Through the storm, through the night
    Lead me on to the light
    Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When my way grows drear, precious Lord linger near
When my light is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When the darkness appears and the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

    Precious Lord, take my hand
    Lead me on, let me stand
    I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
    Through the storm, through the night
    Lead me on to the light
    Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.

(Thomas A. Dorsey, 1899-1993, © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc)

From a distant land (Joy in the Journey)

“Like cold water to a weary soul
Is good news from a distant land…” (Proverbs 25:25)

A weary soul. I guess we know what that’s like - inside out and front to back. Drained and needing something to raise us once more. Another day to get through, another hill to climb, another valley to exit. Tired to the bone at the core of our being.

This proverb paints the scene of the impact of good news arriving from a distant country - perhaps a report from the front-line, that says a loved one is safe. Or news that help and relief is on its way - that food will arrive, that vaccines will be delivered. That kind of news is so welcome and lifts the spirits.

The pages of the New Testament and its record of the life of Jesus certainly qualify as being ‘a distant land’ - far from us in time and geography and culture. But the events of those days - the life and work, the death and resurrection of our Saviour - are the ultimate good news that can refresh the weary and restore the depleted.

We are wearied by life in a world that is under sin, that is shrouded in death, whose every line seems to speak chaos and despair. The good news that is Christ crucified and risen has the capacity to refresh our hearts in hope and to breathe fresh impetus into our lives as we taste and see the goodness of God and are enveloped in his love.

This good news can give clarity to our faded vision, bringing into focus the grounds for our comfort, uncovering the solid ground on which all our hopes are founded. The cold, clear streams of the gospel are the truest refreshment for weary souls. The battle has been fought and won. The darkness will pass. The day is at hand.

But it’s also true that heaven itself, “where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God,” is also a distant country. It’s hard for us to picture it, to hold its reality in our minds. Even if LP Hartley is correct in saying that “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”, it is nevertheless a place we have been. We cannot say the same for our heavenly home, “a place that has to be believed to be seen”.

Yet from its distant shores we again hear ‘good news’ - that we have ultimate security in the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can separate us from it, from him. With him we shall one day rise and, seeing him as he is, the lamb in all his glory, we shall be made like him. Our welcome into his presence will be permanent and final. No more parting, no more sorrow. Only fullness of joy.

These days may take their toll on us - in fact, there can be no doubt that they have done. The defences in our souls have been constantly breached. Previously hard-won gains have perhaps begun to crumble away in the heat of trial. But good news reaches us still from a distant land - from the settled past and from the secure future. Good news that can quieten our hearts and renew our souls.

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As water to the thirsty,
as beauty to the eyes,
as strength that follows weakness,
as truth instead of lies,
as songtime and springtime
and summertime to be,
    so is my Lord,
    my living Lord,
so is my Lord to me.

Like calm in place of clamour,
like peace that follows pain,
like meeting after parting,
like sunshine after rain,
like moonlight and starlight
and sunlight on the sea,
    so is my Lord,
    my living Lord,
so is my Lord to me.

As sleep that follows fever,
as gold instead of grey,
as freedom after bondage,
as sunrise to the day,
as home to the traveller
and all we long to see,
    so is my Lord,
    my living Lord,
so is my Lord to me.

(© Timothy Dudley-Smith, 1926-)