Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: After Sin

Because we had a limited amount of time in the book of Joshua over the summer, I needed to skip some content. Ideally, we would have work through every passage on Sunday mornings, but we did not have the time for that, as I have described in past devotionals. But, as I have also mentioned before, what I could not cover on Sunday mornings, I tried to cover at least briefly in the Friday devotional emails that I sent to my congregation over the summer. Those emails I have turned into these devotional posts, and that is what we are going to do with Joshua 8 in this post.

Two Sundays ago, I posted the sermon from Joshua 7, where we saw the destructive power of sin in the camp, both individual and corporate sin. Sin is far more deadly than we often think it is, and it must be dealt with. This next part of that episode--ch. 8--tells us the story of how God restored the people after the sin of Achan was dealt with and how, even though Achan had sinned and they had sinned, His plans could not be derailed by anything. The sin of God's people cannot overcome the glorious plan and work of God.

Again, I did not have time to look at ch. 8 specifically in a sermon, so let's look at a few highlights from ch. 8 in this post:

First, note how God encourages Joshua right from the start: "And the Lord said to Joshua, 'Do not fear and do not be dismayed.... I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land.'" With such a devastating loss because of sin fresh in his memory, Joshua may have thought that they had blown it and God was done with them, but, again, the sin of God's people cannot mess up the plan of God. Two quick points from that:

• Think about our battles against sin in the Christian life. When we give into sin and temptation, satan is often right there with us as the accuser of God's people, whispering, "You've done it now. God's done with you now. You might as well go on and keep on sinning." He may also say to us, "God's name will be dragged through the mud because of you. You're such a scumbag!" Those are lies from the pit of hell, and they smell like smoke. Conviction of sin is never intended by God to drive us down into the dust simply to stay there bemoaning our sinfulness. The conviction of the Holy Spirit is meant to bring to Him in repentance, hear His words "Do not fear and do not be dismayed," and then move on in gratitude to serve Him again. Sin should never spiritually paralyze us. As the old hymn goes, "Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that is greater than all my sin." Or, as the modern hymn says, "Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here. Sin would reduce me to utter despair, but through Thy free goodness my spirit's revived, and He that first made me still keeps me alive." Learn from this episode and do not listen to the lies of satan: once you have repented of your sin, move on to serve God again in gratitude for His great mercy.
• Think also about our battles to share the gospel with friends, neighbors, and family members. Again, here satan attacks us and says, "Your sin is going to drag God's name through the mud. No one will listen to you because you're such a sinner, so get it together before you go out and try to share the gospel." That too is a lie from the pit of hell and smells like smoke. Just as God dealt with their sin and then brought them to victory over Ai, so God deals with our sin in Christ and sends us out as His messengers for the gospel. And, listen: your sinfulness is part of your witness. You are a great sinner going to other sinners and saying, "Look, I have nothing for you personally. I am big sinner whose only hope is Jesus Christ, and He's your only hope too." If we give into the lie of satan and think, "I really do need to clean up my act before I witness to my friend," what subtle message does that send to them (i.e. our friends)? It sends them the message that they have to clean up their act before they come to Jesus, and that is not the true gospel. Jesus doesn't say to anyone, "Clean yourself up some and then we'll talk." No, He says like God says here, "Do not fear and be not dismayed: there is more grace in me than there is sin in you."

Second, note the sad ending to Achan's story. It is subtle, but it is in v. 2: "...its spoil and its livestock you shall take as plunder for yourselves." When they "fought" against Jericho, all the plunder was to go to God, and Achan stole from God for himself. The sad ending of Achan's story is this: if he had just waited for a little while, he would have had all the plunder he wanted. But, Achan let his desire override his devotion to the LORD. Church family, often times our desires are not the problem. Often those desires in and of themselves are good desires. The problem comes in when we let those desires get out of order and we go after them before seeking God. For example, the desire for money to meet our physical needs is not the problem because God knows we need that for our physical needs. It becomes an idol when we go after it more than God, thinking that it will fulfill our needs. Or, the desire for sexual gratification is not in and of itself a bad desire because God created man and woman to be one flesh in marriage. That becomes a sin and an idol when we go after it more than God, seeking to fulfill it before God's timing and outside of God's plan for us, which is fulfillment in the context of marriage between a man and a woman. The sad conclusion to Achan's sin is that if he had just waited on God; if he had just sought God first, he would have had the plunder in God's timing. Is this not the OT equivalent of Jesus' teaching in Mt. 6:25-33 (cf.v. 33)?

Third, note that God's plan for His people is very different for this battle than it was for Jericho. Here, the whole army has to fight and they use an ambush strategy. Remember, while parts of God's plan for us in the battles of this life are constant, like using the means of grace (the Bible, prayer, and worship), we cannot put God in a box and think He will work the same way every time. We cannot think that because one strategy for evangelism worked for one person, it will work for all of them. We cannot think that because God met our needs in a particular way in one situation, that is always the way He will meet our needs. Our Lord is not a tame lion who shows up whenever we want and in the ways we want. So, we need to seek the counsel of God first, and then act after seeking godly counsel, knowing God may not work the same ways He has before (we will talk more about this in Sunday's sermon).

Finally, notice out Joshua renews the covenant at the end of this episode. This seems abrupt and even out of place in the narrative, but it is a very appropriate way to end the episode of chs. 7-8. One commentator notes: "After Israel had just experienced the curse of Yahweh’s anger (ch. 7) and the boon of Yahweh’s aid (ch. 8), what could be more appropriate than Joshua’s reading ‘the blessing and the curse’ (v. 34) of the Torah?" They have felt God's anger and seen God's blessing, and so what has happened to them in the space and time of life needs to be interpreted for them by the Word of God. But, even though it is appropriate, it is still and abrupt change: from war to worship. Yet, that abrupt changes brings back up one of the lessons we learned from ch. 1: Success for the Israelites was not primarily about defeating the Canaanites and taking the land. The land was simply a place where they could have rest from their enemies so that they could be prosperous in their relationship with God. Here, by bringing them to worship right after restoration and victory, God reminds them to keep first things first: their relationship with Him as His people. And, Church family, the same is true for us. In the battles of this Christian life, God gives us victory so that we can "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to [us]." In all the whirlwind of life, jobs, professors, family, friends, politics, struggles with sin, and everything else this life throws us, we need to keep first things first: our relationship with our Savior as His people and His Church.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Book Review: Telling Secrets

"I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human."

Recently I finished a book called Telling Secrets by Fredrick Buechner. It is a kind of spiritual memoir similar to Augustine's Confessions (though not nearly as good as Augustine's work). Below is my review of the book:

In 1992 a crime drama with Robert Redford called Sneakers hit the box office. It is one of my favorite movies. There is one scene in the movie where Redford’s character, Martin Bishop, a man with many secrets, is playing a game of Scrabble with friends when it hits him that a mysterious phrase whose meaning he has been trying to ascertain is really just an anagram. He dumps all the Scrabble pieces off the board and pulls out the letters of the phrase: “setec astronomy.” He begins to arrange and rearrange, and he goes through a number of iterations. Then, in one of the watershed moments of the film, he discovers the anagram decodes to “too many secrets.” This movie is about secrets and a mathematician’s computer program that allows him to decrypt any encryption protocol so that he can read anyone’s secrets, any of the “too many secrets.”

Buechner’s book is about the many, many secrets that we all carry. He tells us about our own secrets by telling us about his. In one of the most salient statements of the whole book he says, “I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets. Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human.”  In the book, Buechner candidly talks about many secrets, but there are two main secrets that weave throughout this memoir—the secret of his father’s suicide when he was 10 years old and the secret of his daughter’s battle with anorexia. He turns to these secrets, particularly the secret of his father’s suicide, again and again to gain insight into who he is as an old man and what God is doing in his life.

The secret of his father’s suicide weighed especially heavy on his psyche because it was not just his secret; it was a family secret. It was not just a secret his family kept from outsiders but a secret they kept from each other. They never talked about his suicide and even avoided speaking of him. Soon, Buechner’s father was almost completely forgotten along with the secret. Buechner writes, “Our secrets are not hid from God… but they are hid from each other, and some of them we so successfully hide even from ourselves that after a while we all but forget they exist.”  The lies we tell to ourselves and others in order to cover up the secrets eventually begin to look more and more like the truth. Yet, the secrets are still there, buried far beneath the surface, and they define who we are (“I am my secrets”) in ways we cannot understand because we do not tell them. Not only do we not understand ourselves when we do not tell our secrets, but we also do not understand truly how God is shaping our lives. “[I]t is precisely through telling these stories in all their particularity… that God makes Himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally…. to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but spiritually.”  In this book we learn of many of Buechner’s secrets, but it is especially in the telling of the secret of his father that we see Buechner begin to understand himself and God’s work in his life.

There is one section of this book that often returns to my mind. We learn early on that Buechner is an ordained minister. As he talks about this aspect of his life, he probes deep into the affect that secrets have on the ministry of a preacher. Pastors are supposed to be a witness to the presence of God in their lives as well as in the lives of their people, he holds—“a major part of their ministry is to remind us that there is nothing more important than to pay attention to what is happening to us….”  Yet, as ministers become more involved in the lives of the people they shepherd, they begin to neglect their own. They harbor secrets, for many reasons, which prevents them from seeing God’s work in their lives. Sadly “they tend to become professionals… who speak on religious matters with what often seems a maximum of authority and a minimum of vital personal involvement. Their sermons often sound as bland as they sound bloodless.”  I found this challenging as one who is an intern at a church, teaches regularly, and preaches on occasion. Preachers must not only convey the facts about the truth but show that it is active in their lives. Not to pretend that they have everything figured out but to show that they can feel it working in them, changing them, doing what they say it will do. In another work I read recently, The Pastor as a Minor Poet, the author Craig Barnes says, “As odd as it may sound, it's the scars on the pastor's soul that make it attractive.... What we pastors present with our lives is an incarnated version of the healing and redemptive work of the Gospel.... We simply speak to our congregants as a people who have existential knowledge of truth.”  Buechner and Barnes remind young seminarians like me that pastors need to tell their secrets. Of course they must be wise about when and what they reveal and to whom, but the truth they preach must be truth through their personality, which means telling personal things—telling secrets.

This book is a memoir similar to Christian classics like Augustine’s Confessions in that it is not just one man’s story. Certainly it is Buechner’s secrets that are being revealed but, as he says himself, “My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.”  As we read Buechner keeping track of his story, we cannot help be drawn to the events that have shaped our lives. Some of the events we read in his book may be similar to experiences we have had, others may be completely foreign. All of them, however, will cause of to think of our story and I believe that is the goal of this book. By reading Buechner’s secrets we start to think of our own and we are encouraged to tell them. When we start to do that we begin to understand ourselves better and the great work of God in our lives.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Book Review: "The Practice of the Presence of God" by Brother Lawrence

"[T]hey want to make it understood that they are not at all without God, since they certainly believe there is some sort of God, whom they even recognize as creator of heaven and earth, as do the Turks; but as for Jesus Christ, they only know that he is and hold nothing concerning him nor his doctrine." ~ Pierre Viret, Instruction Chrétienne (1564)

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence is considered a classic of Christian devotional literature. I had never read it until recently when I took a philosophy class at my seminary. One of the major assignments for the class was to take a piece of Christian devotional literature and analyze it with respect to the philosophical climate in which the author wrote. Christian thinking about the faith and the relationship between faith and life unavoidably reflects the intellectual climate of its time period. If only because thinking takes place in human language, concepts and idioms, even the most careful Christian writers have had to wrestle with uncritically adopting the world’s categories, assumptions and values at the very heart of their devotional lives. My job in this assignment was to see how Brother Lawrence fared in managing the philosophical currents of his age along Biblical lines.

I was surprised at what I found when I read this work. I had never heard anything bad about it, so I assumed I was going to read a fairly decent piece of devotional literature. However, when I read it the one thought that kept coming back to my mind was similar to Viret's quote above--this work by Brother Lawrence could have been written by anyone who claims to "believe in God" and yet does not hold to any other tenant of orthodox Christianity. Now, as I state in my essay, I must admit that one's ability to get a full understanding of Lawrence's theology is hindered by the fact that this work is a collection of letters and recalled conversations with Lawrence. That means we have only half the conversation (Lawrence's letters only) and second-hand information (conversations recalled by Abbot Joseph de Beaufort). That does limit the ability to understand Lawrence's theology and philosophical view. However, in this work there is no mention of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or the gospel. Worse yet, Brother Lawrence seemed to believe in a method of salvation that was to a large degree dependent on his works. So even if we cannot fully know Lawrence's theology, what is in this work could be damaging to someone who does not read it critically. Needless to say, I would not recommend this book to anyone as a devotional literature.

If you are interested in reading my thoughts and critique of this work, the essay can be found in my shared Google Docs.

By His Grace,
Taylor

The Law

"We don't obey the law so He'll love us. He already does... We come before the King and say, 'I am Yours. I am Yours until I die or the world end.' That is what the law does. Then when we read the law we find out what it is that He would have us do." ~ Steve Brown, "Whoppers from the World: The Lie of Antinomianism"

I have been accused on occasion of being antinomian. (For those of you who do not know what that is, being antinomian means you teach that those who are saved can do whatever they want and violate the law because it does not matter.) I am really big on teaching grace and think that if you do not get accused of being antinomian from time-to-time then you are not really teaching grace (even the apostle Paul was accused of being antinomian). I agree completely with my friend Steve when he says, "The only people that get any better are those who know that if they don't get any better God will love them anyway." That kind of statement, however, can sound antinomian. It sounds like it does not matter what you do because God will love you anyway. It is not antinomian. The law of God is good (if you do not believe that read Psalm 119, the longest Psalm in the Bible and all about how great the law is) and it is something we should strive to obey. We do not, however, strive to obey it because we are afraid that God is going to punish or because we think we need to obey to make Him love us. God is not a policeman, He is our Father. When we love our parents and we know that they love us unconditionally, we do not strive to obey them because we are afraid of what they will do to us but because we are afraid of what our disobedience will do to them--how it will hurt them.

Steve tells a parable about a friend of his who was a pretty bad teenager. She hung around with the wrong crowd that was pretty sexually promiscuous. One day she was with these friends when her older sister walked by and saw who she was with. Her sister said to her, "If you get pregnant it will kill our father." That really shook up Steve's friend because, even though she was on the wrong track, she loved her father and knew he loved her. Later she was being pressured by her boyfriend to sleep with him and she kept refusing. Finally, he said, "You know the only reason you are rejecting me is because you are afraid of what your father will do to you." Steve's friend replied, "No, the reason I am rejecting you is because I am afraid of what me sleeping with you would do to my father."

The law is a great teacher for Christians. It tells us how God would have us live and what He expects of us. Jesus has already fulfilled it perfectly and that has been credited to our account. We are now in a safe place where we can strive to obey the law and know that even when we fail God loves us as much as He did before. The reason we strive to obey the law is not because of fear of what God might do to us if we disobey but because we are His and our disobedience will hurt Him, the one who loves us and whom we love.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Church IV

"Once we know so much about the Bible the danger is thinking that we have Him and walk with Him. This is the danger of every mature Christian." ~ Steve Brown

Steve said this on today's episode of his Key Life radio program. He hits on something I have thought about a lot for the past couple of years, particularly in reference to my seminary education. There is a great danger that I often fall into: confusing a love of knowledge about God for a love of God Himself. I sometimes feel like a man who knows a lot about a city he rarely goes to. Or, to use Steve's example, I am sometimes like a botanist who does not smell the flowers. Knowledge is necessary for personal experience but it is not sufficient for (it does not equal) personal experience. Being someone who loves academia, this is something I am constantly having to confess and ask that He help me to experience Him and increase my joy in Him, not just my joy in knowledge about Him.

I have written several times before here, here, and here about why I love the Church. This is another reason why I love the Church. Being a part of a local body, talking with them, fellowshipping with them, worshiping with them, and seeing the love of Christ in them reminds me of my tendency to treat God as a puzzle to be figured out and helps me to return to joy in Him, personally.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Nothing

"Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off... The only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy... Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one..." ~ Screwtape in C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters


To understand this quote from Lewis' famous work it is essential to remember that this book was written from a demon's perspective. In the book Screwtape (a senior demon) is writing letters to his nephew, Wormwood, who is a "junior tempter". Since it is from a demon's perspective "the Enemy" is God. Here Screwtape is advising Wormwood not to do more than he has to when tempting "the Patient" (an unnamed British man). The chief purpose of a tempter, Screwtape reminds Wormwood, is to separate the man from God. The young demon need not go to all the effort of tempting the Patient to murder if simply distracting him with idle pleasures will get the job done.

Nothing is very strong. It is one of the simplest way that our enemy tempts us to evade responsibility. If it successfully separates us from God then the enemy has succeeded and he has literally used nothing to do it. I never thought "nothing" could be a sin until I read this. This, of course, does not mean that "nothing" is always a sin, but it does make me think about the "nothing" parts of my life. It makes me wonder if there were times where I could have made our enemy work a little harder at his job.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Not Quite as Bad?

"Let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed, as in the greatness of the Person sinned against." ~ 'Humiliation', The Valley of Vision

I think this is something that we all need to be reminded of from time to time. We are constantly comparing sins to other sins in an attempt to classify them as "not quite as bad" as others. I think this leads to us misunderstanding sin and, in turn, not appreciating grace as much as we can and should. Certainly some sins have more harmful consequences than others because of how they affect our relationship with God as a Father and our fellowship with Him, however, the eternality and atrociousness of sin comes not so much from the nature of the sin itself, but from the fact that it has been committed against an infinite, holy, and eternal Being. Fortunately, from Him Christians also receive "grace upon grace" (John 1:16) through the eternal sacrifice of Jesus, the theanthropos (God-man). An eternal sacrifice atones for our sin against an eternal Being. It was this beautiful balance of understanding that led Paul exclaim, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Romans 11:33). May we do the same.

By His Grace,
Taylor

It is Hard to Hug a Stiff Kid

"It is hard to hug a stiff kid... It is easier to hug a dirty kid." ~ Steve Brown

Steve used this analogy when talking about prayer. He was pointing out that a lot of us avoid coming to God in prayer because we think we are not good enough or think that we need to get it together and then come to God in prayer. It is the "God helps those who help themselves" mentality. What he is pointing out here is that God does not expect us to have it all together when we come to Him, actually He knows it is the opposite and wants us to realize that. What actually keeps us distant from God is not our sin, but our self righteousness (or a desire for it) that stiffens us.

I am not a hugger, anyone who knows me knows that and knows that when they try to hug me it is probably a pain because I stiffen up. Think of what it is like when we come to God that way, trying to be strong and righteous. When we are stiff like the the brother of the prodigal son (Luke 15:25-32) we cannot accept the Father's love for us as His children, we feel like we have to earn it. But when we come to God, dirty and knowing that we are not "worthy to be called [His] son" (Luke 15:21) that is when He can kill the fattened calf for us, clean us, put a robe on our backs and a ring on our finger and say, "this son of mine was dead and is alive again" (Luke 15:24). It is when we know we are dirty and recognize that we are not even worthy to be a servant in His house that we, ironically, find out what it means to be His child. It is easier to hug a dirty kid.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Knowing God

"The width of our knowledge about [God] is no gauge of the depth of our knowledge of Him." ~ J.I. Packer, Knowing God Through the Year

Packer makes a great point here. Knowledge of God is vitally important (and Packer is not denying this at all) because without it we cannot love God with all our minds (Mark 12:30). We cannot truly worship God if we do not know Him and the glory of His perfections. However, having pure knowledge about God is not knowing Him. If we do not love God with all our hearts and souls (Mark 12:30) we do not really know Him. We can have every commentary and systematic theology book memorized, but if that mental knowledge does not take root deep in the heart then we do not truly know Him.

God interacted with humanity in a very personal way. The second Person in the Trinity, the very Image of the Father, condescended to personally deal with us, struggle with us, and struggle for us. How much more personal can the invitation be? The God who has dealt so personally with us cannot be truly known by raw data but must also be dealt with personally as He opens up to us and as He opens us up to Himself. Our dealings with Him should be as our dealings with any other person we want to know well. I can know many facts about my wife, there are some who may know as many facts as I do, but I believe I can confidently say few (if any) have the depth of knowledge of her that I do because I live with her, interact with her throughout the day, glory with her, and struggle with her (the reverse is also of course true).

May we pray as Augustine prayed in Confessions, "Let me know Thee, O my Knower; let me know Thee as I am known."

By His Grace,
Taylor