Preach the Word

Next Tuesday we celebrate July 4th, Independence Day as it’s known for us in the States. And the day raises questions about national loyalty. How do we who are strangers, exiles, aliens, and pilgrims on earth think about patriotism? That was our topic back in episode 378. This year we are looking at the implications of it on local churches. And last time, on Wednesday, we talked about the place of patriotism in the local church and we heard from a pastor, a listener of the podcast, Scott, who is uneasy about what he sees in the church he inherited. In this situation, Pastor John, when a pastor has inherited a strongly patriotic church, where the patriotism is expressed in Sunday gatherings, how should a pastor — who agrees with what you said last time — lead his church. What do they do next in leading well?

In that previous podcast (episode 1060) on this question, I said that I have been in several patriotic services that seemed to me to be out of sync, out of proportion to the biblical realities related to the kingdom of Christ and our radical allegiance to him. And I suggested several biblical principles that would inform how a church thinks about such services and constructs them.
But I am very aware that it is one thing to know principles, and it is another thing to be part of a church that has a long tradition of services with extended focus on each of the military branches and corresponding songs and corresponding flags and marches and decorations in red, white, and blue.
I share Scott’s discomfort — Scott is the one who posed this question — I share his discomfort with those services for reasons that, I think, are pretty obvious from the principles. But what do you do if you have inherited such a church if you are a pastor or an elder or just a member of the church? So, here is my suggestions to the pastors who are in these churches and feel like things have, perhaps, over time, just gotten out of hand.

Preach the Word

Patiently, week in and week out, preach Bible-saturated, God-centered, Christ-exalting, man-humbling sermons that by implication so elevate the lordship of Christ over every detail of life with such majesty that, little by little, the church begins to absorb the mindset that our highest affections and our only absolute allegiance belongs to Jesus Christ, willingly, eagerly, joyfully, no regrets, no restraint.
So, don’t make the lordship of Christ over all of life an issue only on a controversial weekend. Do it all the time. If you do this all the time, within a few years, I think, you won’t be the only one who is feeling uncomfortable with those services.

Bring in Other Leaders

Discuss your concerns with your trusted leaders of the church, your fellow elders, if you have elders, or whoever. Until you get some of them on board with you, any change is probably going to be futile and may be destructive. Pray with them. Open the word with them. Share your heart with them. Be patient with them. Show them the positive outcomes, not just any losses they might perceive.

“Highlight missionaries either alive or dead throughout history who have paid the supreme price for others.”

Along with your elders, approach some of your most biblically shaped veterans — I am talking about military veterans in the church — and share with them your love for them, your appreciation and your value of their sacrifices and risks, and let them see how you relate the kingdom of Christ to all of that.
See if you can portray a vision for them and capture their imagination of what it might look like in a more Christ-exalting way. If you could get one or two of those folks advocating with you, you might be a long way towards winning the others as well.

Holy Boldness

Be a man of courage and humility and fearlessness in dealing with this issue. The last thing you want to communicate is that Christianity is somehow a wimpy religion that is afraid of risk, afraid of danger, afraid of sacrifice and death, and that is why it doesn’t want to talk about the military.
No, no, no. It is, in fact, exactly the opposite. One very practical demonstration of this might be that on one or two Sundays a year you would choose to highlight missionaries either alive or dead in the history of the church who have paid the supreme price, not to advance the American way, but to advance an even greater good; namely, the eternal salvation that comes in the kingdom of Christ. They, too, are worthy of our most focused gratitude.

Show there Is Gain

In whatever changes you pursue, show that there is gain and not just loss. When I came to Bethlehem in 1980, the American flag and the so-called Christian flag were in the sanctuary at the front on either side of the platform. Now, I never said a word about it for ten years, I don’t think.

“In whatever changes you pursue at church, show that there is gain and not just loss.”

Maybe I did, and don’t remember. But as far as I can remember, they just sat there and I didn’t say a word about that, though I felt: Hmm. What does that mean? In the sanctuary, in the worshiping place, at the front, featured, foregrounded.
Then we built a new sanctuary in 1990 and moved in in 1991, and the issue was: Will the flags be moved in there? At that point I led the charge, and the elders agreed: let’s put the flags in the commons on either side of the steps where people go in and out from the world into worship, from the worship into the world.
I argued that the rationale was simple. As you come and go from the house of the Lord, you pass from a place outside where we live, in large measure, under the authorities of this nation to a place inside where we celebrate and put all the focus on our heavenly citizenship and our submission to the supreme lordship of Christ. Therefore, if we are going to have these flags, this is a really reasonable place to have them, and we have never had a controversy about it for over 20 years. Nobody ever thinks about it, probably. But I think it is a good compromise.

Help People Understand

Perhaps you will scale back aspects of the service and weave into the services expressions of repentance and the lordship of Christ that have been missing. In the sermon you can provide repeated nuancing for the way Christians have to deal with any human allegiance. Help the people understand.
The last thing that I would say is, expect conflict on this. We probably lost a couple of people over that moving of the flags. They put the worst face on it, not the best. But after you have ministered for long enough, you win the trust of enough biblical people, and you love them.
The folks that are unhappy, go after them. Tell them you care about them. You don’t want to disrespect them. And in the long run, the winnowing effect, I believe, in the church will probably be good for a God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated atmosphere that you are trying to create.

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What Is the Will of God and How Do We Know It?

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The aim of Romans 12:1–2 is that all of life would become “spiritual worship.” Verse 1: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The aim of all human life in God’s eyes is that Christ would be made to look as valuable as he is. Worship means using our minds and hearts and bodies to express the worth of God and all he is for us in Jesus. There is a way to live — a way to love — that does that. There is a way to do your job that expresses the true value of God. If you can’t find it, that may mean you should change jobs. Or it might mean that verse 2 is not happening to the degree it should.
Verse 2 is Paul’s answer to how we turn all of life into worship. We must be transformed. We must be transformed. Not just our external behavior, but the way we feel and think — our minds. Verse 2: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

Become What You Are

Those who believe in Christ Jesus are already blood-bought new creatures in Christ. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But now we must become what we are. “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened” (1 Corinthians 5:7).
“You have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10). You have been made new in Christ; and now you are being renewed day by day. That’s what we focused on last week.
Now we focus on the last part of verse 2, namely, the aim of the renewed mind: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, [now here comes the aim] that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So our focus today is on the meaning of the term “will of God,” and how we discern it.

The Two Wills of God

There are two clear and very different meanings for the term “will of God” in the Bible. We need to know them and decide which one is being used here in Romans 12:2. In fact, knowing the difference between these two meanings of “the will of God” is crucial to understanding one of the biggest and most perplexing things in all the Bible, namely, that God is sovereign over all things and yet disapproves of many things. Which means that God disapproves of some of what he ordains to happen. That is, he forbids some of the things he brings about. And he commands some of the things he hinders. Or to put it most paradoxically: God wills some events in one sense that he does not will in another sense.

1. God’s Will of Decree, or Sovereign Will

Let’s see the passages of Scripture that make us think this way. First consider passages that describe “the will of God” as his sovereign control of all that comes to pass. One of the clearest is the way Jesus spoke of the will of God in Gethsemane when he was praying. He said, in Matthew 26:39, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” What does the will of God refer to in this verse? It refers to the sovereign plan of God that will happen in the coming hours. You recall how Acts 4:27–28 says this: “Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” So the “will of God” was that Jesus die. This was his plan, his decree. There was no changing it, and Jesus bowed and said, “Here’s my request, but you do what is best to do.” That’s the sovereign will of God.
And don’t miss the very crucial point here that it includes the sins of man. Herod, Pilate, the soldiers, the Jewish leaders — they all sinned in fulfilling God’s will that his Son be crucified (Isaiah 53:10). So be very clear on this: God wills to come to pass some things that he hates.
Here’s an example from 1 Peter. In 1 Peter 3:17 Peter writes, “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.” In other words, it may be God’s will that Christians suffer for doing good. He has in mind persecution. But persecution of Christians who do not deserve it is sin. So again, God sometimes wills that events come about that include sin. “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will.”
Paul gives a sweeping summary statement of this truth in Ephesians 1:11, “In him [Christ] we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” The will of God is God’s sovereign governance of all that comes to pass. And there are many other passages in the Bible that teach that God’s providence over the universe extends to the smallest details of nature and human decisions. Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from our Father in heaven (Matthew 10:29). “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:1). “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).
That’s the first meaning of the will of God: It is God’s sovereign control of all things. We will call this his “sovereign will” or his “will of decree.” It cannot be broken. It always comes to pass. “He does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35).

2. God’s Will of Command

Now the other meaning for “the will of God” in the Bible is what we can call his “will of command.” His will is what he commands us to do. This is the will of God we can disobey and fail to do. The will of decree we do whether we believe in it or not. The will of command we can fail to do. For example, Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Not all do the will of his Father. He says so. “Not everyone will enter the kingdom of heaven.” Why? Because not all do the will of God.
Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” Here we have a very specific instance of what God commands of us: holiness, sanctification, sexual purity. This is his will of command. But, oh, so many do not obey.
Then Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” There again is a specific aspect of his will of command: Give thanks in all circumstances. But many do not do this will of God.
One more example: “And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17). Not all abide forever. Some do. Some don’t. The difference? Some do the will of God. Some don’t. The will of God, in this sense, does not always happen.
So I conclude from these and many other passages of the Bible that there are two ways of talking about the will of God. Both are true, and both are important to understand and believe in. One we can call God’s will of decree (or his sovereign will) and the other we can call God’s will of command. His will of decree always comes to pass whether we believe in it or not. His will of command can be broken, and is every day.

The Preciousness of These Truths

Before I relate this to Romans 12:2 let me comment on how precious these two truths are. Both correspond to a deep need that we all have when we are deeply hurt or experience great loss. On the one hand, we need the assurance that God is in control and therefore is able to work all of my pain and loss together for my good and the good of all who love him. On the other hand, we need to know that God empathizes with us and does not delight in sin or pain in and of themselves. These two needs correspond to God’s will of decree and his will of command.
For example, if you were badly abused as a child, and someone asks you, “Do you think that was the will of God?” you now have a way to make some biblical sense out of this, and give an answer that doesn’t contradict the Bible. You may say, “No it was not God’s will; because he commands that humans not be abusive, but love each other. The abuse broke his commandment and therefore moved his heart with anger and grief (Mark 3:5). But, in another sense, yes, it was God’s will (his sovereign will), because there are a hundred ways he could have stopped it. But for reasons I don’t yet fully understand, he didn’t.”
And corresponding to these two wills are the two things you need in this situation: one is a God who is strong and sovereign enough to turn it for good; and the other is a God who is able to empathize with you. On the one hand, Christ is a sovereign High King, and nothing happens apart from his will (Matthew 28:18). On the other hand, Christ is a merciful High Priest and sympathizes with our weaknesses and pain (Hebrews 4:15). The Holy Spirit conquers us and our sins when he wills (John 1:13; Romans 9:15–16), and allows himself to be quenched and grieved and angered when he wills (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19). His sovereign will is invincible, and his will of command can be grievously broken.
We need both these truths — both these understandings of the will of God — not only to make sense out of the Bible, but to hold fast to God in suffering.

Which Will Is Referred to in Romans 12:2?

Now, which of these is meant in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” The answer surely is that Paul is referring to God’s will of command. I say this for at least two reasons. One is that God does not intend for us to know most of his sovereign will ahead of time. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us” (Deuteronomy 29:29). If you want to know the future details of God’s will of decree, you don’t want a renewed mind, you want a crystal ball. This is not called transformation and obedience; it’s called divination, soothsaying.
The other reason I say that the will of God in Romans 12:2 is God’s will of command and not his will of decree is that the phrase “by testing you may discern” implies that we should approve of the will of God and then obediently do it. But in fact we should not approve of sin or do it, even though it is part of God’s sovereign will. Paul’s meaning in Romans 12:2 is paraphrased almost exactly in Hebrews 5:14, which says, “Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” (See another paraphrase in Philippians 1:9–11.) That’s the goal of this verse: not ferreting out the secret will of God that he plans to do, but discerning the revealed will of God that we ought to do.

Three Stages of Knowing and Doing the Revealed Will of God

There are three stages of knowing and doing the revealed will of God, that is, his will of command; and all of them require the renewed mind with its Holy-Spirit-given discernment that we talked about last time.

Stage One

First, God’s will of command is revealed with final, decisive authority only in the Bible. And we need the renewed mind to understand and embrace what God commands in the Scripture. Without the renewed mind, we will distort the Scriptures to avoid their radical commands for self-denial, and love, and purity, and supreme satisfaction in Christ alone. God’s authoritative will of command is found only in the Bible. Paul says that the Scriptures are inspired and make the Christian “competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Not just some good works. “Every good work.” Oh, what energy and time and devotion Christians should spend meditating on the written Word of God.

Stage Two

The second stage of God’s will of command is our application of the biblical truth to new situations that may or may not be explicitly addressed in the Bible. The Bible does not tell you which person to marry, or which car to drive, or whether to own a home, where you take your vacation, what cell phone plan to buy, or which brand of orange juice to drink. Or a thousand other choices you must make.
What is necessary is that we have a renewed mind, that is so shaped and so governed by the revealed will of God in the Bible, that we see and assess all relevant factors with the mind of Christ, and discern what God is calling us to do. This is very different from constantly trying to hear God’s voice saying do this and do that. People who try to lead their lives by hearing voices are not in sync with Romans 12:2.
There is a world of difference between praying and laboring for a renewed mind that discerns how to apply God’s Word, on the one hand, and the habit of asking God to give you new revelation of what to do, on the other hand. Divination does not require transformation. God’s aim is a new mind, a new way of thinking and judging, not just new information. His aim is that we be transformed, sanctified, freed by the truth of his revealed Word (John 8:32; 17:17). So the second stage of God’s will of command is the discerning application of the Scriptures to new situations in life by means of a renewed mind.

Stage Three

Finally, the third stage of God’s will of command is the vast majority of living where there is no conscious reflection before we act. I venture to say that a good 95 percent of your behavior you do not premeditate. That is, most of your thoughts, attitudes, and actions are spontaneous. They are just spillover from what’s inside. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matthew 12:34–36).
Why do I call this part of God’s will of command? For one reason. Because God commands things like: Don’t be angry. Don’t be prideful. Don’t covet. Don’t be anxious. Don’t be jealous. Don’t envy. And none of those actions are premeditated. Anger, pride, covetousness, anxiety, jealousy, envy — they all just rise up out of the heart with no conscious reflection or intention. And we are guilty because of them. They break the commandment of God.
Is it not plain therefore that there is one great task of the Christian life: Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We need new hearts and new minds. Make the tree good and the fruit will be good (Matthew 12:33). That’s the great challenge. That is what God calls you to. You can’t do it on your own. You need Christ, who died for your sins. And you need the Holy Spirit to lead you into Christ-exalting truth and to work in you truth-embracing humility.
Give yourself to this. Immerse yourself in the written Word of God; saturate your mind with it. And pray that the Spirit of Christ would make you so new that the spillover would be good, acceptable, and perfect — the will of God

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Never Read the Bible Simply to Know

I have spent virtually all of my adult life encouraging people to pursue their supreme satisfaction in God. I have argued that saving faith in Jesus Christ does not just bear the fruit of joy, but in fact, even more profoundly, is itself a species of joy. Saving faith at its root means being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.
I have celebrated the way George Müller — that great prayer warrior and lover of orphans — approached the Bible, when he said, “I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord” (Autobiography).
Though he was a thoroughly doctrinal man, with a strong commitment to Reformed theology, he was never content to find doctrine in the Bible. Unless some unusual obstacle hindered him, he would not rise from his knees until sight had become savoring.

True Illumination Before Proper Affections

To be sure, Müller agreed with his contemporary and friend Charles Spurgeon that seeing precedes savoring. And we must read the Bible with a diligent pursuit of right understanding before there are to be right emotions.

Certainly, the benefit of reading must come to the soul by the way of the understanding. . . . The mind must have illumination before the affections can properly rise towards their divine object. . . . There must be knowledge of God before there can be love to God: there must be a knowledge of divine things, as they are revealed, before there can be an enjoyment of them. (Sermons)

Yes. Illumination precedes and warrants and shapes the affections. But Müller agreed just as much with John Owen that the “ravishing joys and exultations of spirit that multitudes of faithful martyrs of old” have tasted came “by a view of the glory of Christ” (Works). Therefore, neither Owen, nor Spurgeon, nor Müller were satisfied with “mere notions” about the glory of Christ. They read their Bibles not only to see but to savor. Owen put it like this:

If we satisfy ourselves in mere notions and speculations about the glory of Christ as doctrinally revealed unto us, we shall find no transforming power or efficacy communicated unto us thereby. . . . Where light leaves the affections behind, it ends in formality or atheism; and where affections outrun light, they sink in the bog of superstition, doting on images and pictures, or the like. (Works)

Two Great Dangers

These men understood — and we should understand — the double dangers of intellectualism and emotionalism. Intellectualism stresses the use of the intellect and its discoveries without the corresponding awakening of all the emotions that those discoveries are meant to kindle. Emotionalism stresses the energetic stirring of the emotions that are untethered to truth as their warrant and guide. Owen gives sound counsel about how the emotions of the heart should be rooted in and shaped by the truth that the mind sees in Scripture.

When the heart is cast indeed into the mold of the doctrine that the mind embraceth, — when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us, — when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the things abides in our hearts, — when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for, — then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men. (Works)

I love this vision of how we seek and contend for truth. Is it not a beautiful prospect to “have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for”? How different our Bible reading and our Bible discussions would be if we refused to speak of our insights until they were sweetened by the real communion of our souls with God in them.

Quest to Savor

In all our effort to see more and more of the glory of God, we are aiming, by that seeing, to savor the God we see. That is, we are always aiming to experience spiritual affections in our heart wakened by the spiritual sight of truth in our minds. We are taking upon ourselves the same goal for our Bible reading that Jonathan Edwards had for his preaching when he said,

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with. (The Works of Jonathan Edwards)

We read our Bibles to “raise the affections.” Yes. But we aim to be affected by truth. And we aim that our affections accord with the nature of the truth we see.
We should aim in all our seeing to savor his excellence above all things. Seeing the glory of God as we read the Bible should never be an end in itself. We read in order to see in order to savor. We seek insight in order to enjoy. We seek knowledge in order to love. We seek doctrine for the sake of delight. The eyes of the heart serve the affections of the heart.

Savor Bitter, Savor Sweet

One corrective is needed immediately to clarify the meaning of savor. I have treated savoring as though it were all positive — enjoying and loving and delighting. The reason is that this is how the peculiar glory of God does its deepest transforming work. We see it. Then we are profoundly satisfied by it. And then, by this satisfaction, we are changed at the root of our being.
But it is also clear from Scripture that God uses not only pleasant emotions in response to seeing his glory, but also painful emotions. These too come from seeing the glory of God in Scripture. And these too are meant to be transforming, in their own way. They are meant to bring about change in a more indirect way, driving us away from destructive sins, in the hope that we will be drawn positively by the superior satisfaction of God’s holiness.
God does not cease to be glorious when he disciplines his children. Yet this glory leads us first to sorrow. And then, through sorrow and repentance, to joy.

“The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” . . . For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:6, 11).

God aims at “peaceful fruit,” not pain. But he may cause pain for the sake of the pleasant experience of peace.

Peculiar Glory of God’s Word

God does not cease to be glorious when he says to those who are entangled in sin, “Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:9–10). His aim is that we enjoy the experience of “he will exalt you.” But on the way there, God’s strategy may be rebuke. It is fitting.
Together with all God’s ways and purposes, it too is part of his peculiar glory. It may stretch the ordinary meaning of language, but this too we should “savor.” “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2–3). There are foods that blend the sour and the sweet in such a way as to make the sweet all the richer.
What this means for our reading the Scriptures is that seeing the glory of God may not always awaken, first, the sweetness of his worth and beauty. It may awaken the sorrows of remembered sin and remaining corruption in our hearts. “Savoring” this painful truth would mean welcoming it rather than denying it or twisting it. It would mean being thankful and letting the rebuke and the correction have its full effect in contrition and humility. And it would mean letting it lead us to the mercies of God and the sweet relief that comes from his saving grace in Christ.

Read in Pursuit of Passion

So, we never read the Bible merely to see the glory of God. Never merely to learn or merely to know or merely to amass doctrinal truth. We always see and learn and know in the pursuit of affections, and feelings, and emotions, and passions that are suitable to the truth we have seen.
The range of emotions in response to reading the Bible is as broad as the kinds of truth revealed. The truth may be horrible, like the infants being slaughtered in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16), and our emotions should include revulsion and anger and grief. The truth may be precious beyond words, like the words to a lifelong thief who hears, just before he dies, “Today you will be with me in paradise!” (Luke 23:43). So, our emotions should include wonder and thankfulness and hope.
The divine fingers of Scripture are meant to pluck every string in the harp of your soul. We never read just to know.

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Do You Serve God or Man?

Slavery has horrible connotations in our day — and for good reason. In this lab, Pastor John reminds us that servitude to God gives life instead of taking it away.

Principle for Bible Reading

Word Searches
Word searches are important for deep study of the Bible. To conduct a larger search, look for a particular word throughout the Bible. To do a smaller search, look for a particular word in the book you’re studying. In this lab, John Piper shows how a word search can enhance Bible reading and provide a deeper understanding of the text by looking up the word “servant.”

Study Questions

1. What does it mean to be a servant of man? A servant of God?
2. Paul calls himself a “servant” (Philippians 1:1) and not an “apostle.” Why do you think he does this? Does the second use of the word “servant” in Philippians 2:7 help?
3. Read Philippians 2:5–11. What was Jesus willing to forfeit for you in humble service? What do you need to surrender to Jesus for the sake of God and others?

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Does God Balance Blessings with Hardships?

“The universe always balances things out.”
As I sat there watching the TV, I shook my head. Of course, I don’t expect perfect theology from every TV show I watch, but this line in particular seemed to stick out. It was not a hopeful line.

“Maybe it is hard for you to enjoy the sweet sunshine today because you fear a storm will come tomorrow.”

In fact, it was precisely because things were going well in the character’s life that he sensed trouble was probably right around the corner, that the universe was about to balance his good fortune. It stuck out to me not because it was an especially scandalous or shocking idea — in fact, just the opposite. Though the error rang loudly in my own ears, I knew how commonly people think this way, whether they realize it or not.
But not a week later, the shock did come. I heard an echo of the same sentiment, but this time it wasn’t coming from my TV screen, or from the mouth of a non-Christian friend. This time, it came from me. I was marveling over the blessings God had given me and how he answered longtime prayers in a big way. As I considered these blessings, my first thought was “I wonder what trial lies around the corner?”

When You Anticipate the Worst

It wasn’t exactly the same thinking as the character in that show, but it was similar nonetheless. I assumed that God needed to round out the blessings in my life with something hard, as though there were a limit to how many blessings he gives. As though there were a formula to how God works in my life. As though he were an impersonal God who gives out blessings and trials for no other reason than to keep the scales balanced.
I am an Eeyore by nature. I tend to see the dark side of things and assume the worst. I see the glass as half empty rather than half full. I tend to view God’s interactions with me as an angry father doling out punishment. And so it comes as no surprise that I would barely take the time to enjoy the gifts I’ve been given before I anticipate their being taken away.
But I don’t like living life that way. It sucks the joy right out of me. Not only that, but it’s wrong to think this way. It is inconsistent with who the Bible says God is, who we are to him, and how he works in our lives.
Perhaps you also tend to see the dark side of things. Maybe it is hard for you to enjoy the sweet sunshine today because you fear a storm will come tomorrow. When we find ourselves anticipating the worst, we need to remind ourselves of the truth. We need to transform our thinking through God’s word. Here are four ways the Bible describes how God relates to his children.

“In each and every moment of our lives, God gives us whatever we need to make us more like his Son.”

1. God Is Good

God is good and only does what is good (Psalm 25:8; 119:68). That is because he is holy, righteous, and just (Exodus 15:11). We can trust that whatever he gives us is not a random balancing of the scales, or a rash response to something we’ve done. He is not an impersonal God who merely works to even out the blessings in our life. Rather, he is the God who gave up every blessing in heaven to take on human flesh and live in this fallen world so that he could endure the worst suffering on our behalf. And by his blood shed for us, he gives us the greatest blessing of all: eternity with him.

2. God Gives Out of Grace

To those who trust in Jesus, everything God gives is an overflow of his grace, whether an answer to a prayer, a hard day, a dream come true, or a difficult trial. In each and every moment of our lives, God gives us whatever we need to make us more like his Son. In both the blessings and the trials, he is refining us and preparing us for eternity. There is a redemptive purpose behind every circumstance we encounter, and all is used for our good and his glory (Romans 5:3–5; 8:28–29; James 1:2–4; Titus 2:11–12).

3. God Is for Us

God is for us, not against us. He is for our good. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), prepared good works for us to complete (Ephesians 2:10), saved us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8, 10), brought us from death to life through the Spirit (Romans 8:10; Ephesians 2:4–5), and enables us to walk in obedience (Philippians 2:13) — all abundant evidence that he is for us. And nothing and no one can stop the good he has for us. “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31–32).

4. God Is Not Out to Punish Us

We don’t have to walk on eggshells or anxiously await inevitable punishment. All God’s wrath was poured out on Christ at the cross. For those who are united to Christ by faith, there is no wrath left (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 5:9). In fact, for those who are in Christ, God loves us as much as he loves the Son (John 17:23).

“We can’t lump our circumstances into piles of good or bad. In Christ, everything God gives us is ultimately good.”

We are children of God, and as our Father, God gives us just what we need (Matthew 6:25–33). Any hardship or difficulty that might come our way is the discipline of a loving Father to his children for the purpose of training us in righteousness (Hebrews 12:5–11).
The truth is, there is no two-sided scale that must be balanced. We can’t lump our circumstances into a pile of good things or bad things. Because we are in Christ, everything God gives us is ultimately good. So, whether a blessing or a hardship lies ahead in your future, both are a gift of God’s grace and will serve to transform you into the image of his Son. This means, rather than anticipating the worst, we can always anticipate good from our good God.

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WEAKNESS IS A CHOICE

 
Weakness is a choice.
The darkest night produce the brightest stars those means that for every situations and challenging you face within your life there is a hope within it. What we need in that situation is courses to believe that within yourself is power to make change with your current situations.
the power to believe yourself and all that you know that there is something inside you, is greater than any obstacle. Life is too short to wait, you have come this far, don't give up now.

Weakness is a choice.
Life is full of selection the selection you choices make you to become stronger or weak for example most of the success people in the world they have been choiced the life they have right now. this world is like single you either fight or bin forever.
were we are now normally a Renault at our own actions and our own choices. Sure there are some things that we can't control yet we still can control our reaction to even those things.
pain is not sign of weakness , but bearing it alone its your choice to grow weak.
No body can give advice than yourself sometimes you need to give up on people not because you dont care but because they don't.

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4 Psalms to Help Heal a Broken Heart

You thought you had it right this time. You thought that, this time, it was forever. You just didn’t realize forever would end this soon.
Your friends try to comfort you. They tell you it wasn’t your fault. They say you couldn’t have done anything to change what happened. They encourage you to pick yourself up and “get out there” again.
But you’re still reeling. You’re still thinking of ways to get back to the love you two once had. You blame yourself for the little things you should or shouldn’t have said. You think, Maybe if I had listened more. Maybe if I had tried harder. Maybe if I had been different—maybe then I would have been enough to make them stay.
It’s easy to feel like an abject failure when relationships fail. It’s tempting to sink into dark spirals of self-doubt and hopelessness. You might wonder if you’ll ever find true love.
Amidst your pain, God’s Word offers you hope. The Bible doesn’t promise that you won’t still feel pain. It doesn’t say that you won’t struggle with the ache of a shattered heart. But it does tell you these wonderful truths about God’s love and care for you:

1. God is with you in your pain, even in the depths of your despair. Even if I go through the deepest darkness,
         I will not be afraid, LORD,
         for you are with me.
   Your shepherd’s rod and staff protect me. — Psalm 23:4 (GNTD)
2. Although life feels uncertain, God is in control. Your word, O LORD, will last forever;
        it is eternal in heaven.
   Your faithfulness endures through all the ages;
        you have set the earth in place, and it remains.
   All things remain to this day because of your command,
   because they are all your servants. — Psalm 119:89-91 (GNTD)
3. God’s love for you is good. The LORD is loving and merciful,
        slow to become angry and full of constant love.
   He is good to everyone
        and has compassion on all he made. — Psalm 145:8-9 (GNTD)
4. God’s love and care for you will not fade. Where could I go to escape from you?
        Where could I get away from your presence?
   If I went up to heaven, you would be there;
        if I lay down in the world of the dead, you would be there.
   If I flew away beyond the east
        or lived in the farthest place in the west,
   you would be there to lead me,
        you would be there to help me. — Psalm 139:7-10 (GNTD)

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Don’t Waste Your Life

As we meet tonight on this 29th of December, 2003, the body count of those killed in the earthquake in Bam, Iran, stands at about 25,000. That’s a lot of human beings snuffed out in one morning. You feel the personal magnitude of it when you read of a father digging for his family and passing out when he uncovers the hand of his dead teenage daughter, or when you read of an infant found alive in the arms of his dead mother.
What gives this year-end calamity an added apocalyptic feel is not just its magnitude — almost ten times the human loss as our own 9-11 disaster — but the other catastrophes that happened in the last several days in addition to this earthquake: thirteen people swept away in a mudslide in California, six buried in an avalanche in Utah, 111 killed in a plane crash in Benin, 198 poisoned by a gas leak in China. And those are just the ones which made the news. We would be stunned speechless if we watched the car accidents in which 50,000 people died in America this year.

What Does Jesus Want Us to Learn about Our Lives from These Calamities?

One answer is given in Luke 13:1–5. People asked Jesus about a calamity in which Pilate had killed people while they were worshiping and mingled their blood with their sacrifices. Jesus answers:

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Jesus could weep over people’s heartbreaking losses (Luke 19:41; John 11:35). And the Bible tells us plainly, “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). But when the racking emotions are eased a bit, the questions come, and Jesus does not settle the issues with sentimentality. He deals with ultimate reality. He deals with God and sin and judgment and salvation.
He says in effect: “Are you astonished at the death of the Galileans? Are you astonished at the deaths of those who were crushed when the tower of Siloam fell? I will tell you what to be astonished at: be astonished that the tower did not fall on you.” If Jesus were here tonight, and we came to him with the death toll from the earthquake in Iran asking him to give an accounting for God, one of the things he would say is: “Be astonished that this hotel has not collapsed with you in it. For unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Which means all of us deserve to die right now and to perish forever.

Our Lives Belong to God

Which leads to this conclusion and sets the stage for my message tonight: Your life is in God’s hands and hangs by a thread of sovereign grace. God owns every soul. He made us and we belong to him by virtue of his being our Creator. He can give and take life as he pleases according to his infinite wisdom, and he never does anyone any wrong. He created human life, and he decides what human life is for.
When Job lost his ten children in an Iran-like calamity (the house collapsed), the Bible says: “he tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. . . . And said . . . ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’” (Job 1:20–21). The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away! Or, as Job says later, “In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:10).

“Our lives belong to God, and he has the right to take us any time he chooses.”

When Hannah was thanking God for her son Samuel after years of barrenness, she said, “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:6). And God himself said in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”
If any of us lives through this message tonight, it will be a sheer gift of grace. James, the brother of Jesus, put it like this:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13–16)

If the Lord wills, you and I will live through this message. And if he does not, we won’t. Our life is not our own. It belongs to God. I have no right to take your life. And you have no right to take mine. But that is not because our life is our own, but because our lives belong to God and he has the right to take both of us any time he chooses. Your life belongs to God, and he decides what life is for.

Don’t Waste Your Life!

Oh, how jealous Jesus was, therefore, that people not waste their lives. Most of you are students here, and your lives are very much in front of you. At least you feel that they are. They may not be. You may have already lived most of your life. But if God wills, many of you have several decades to live on the earth before you die and give an account of what you did with your life. And how jealous Jesus is that you not waste it.
If he were here, he might make this point with these words: A person’s “life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Accumulating things is not what life is for. And then he might tell this parable:

The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, “What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?” And he said, “I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:16–21)

Oh, how jealous Jesus is that none of you here tonight be called a fool by God because of the way you used the gift of life! Life is not for the accumulating of things. This night your life will be required of you, and then whose will these possessions be? No sane person on his death bed ever was comforted by his possessions.
Oh, hear the words of Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Matthew 16:24–26)

It is possible to waste your life. Few things make me tremble more than the possibility of taking this onetime gift of life and wasting it. Every morning when I walked into the kitchen as a boy I saw hanging on the wall the plaque that now hangs in my living room: “Only one life, twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.” And now I am almost 58, and the river of life is spilling over the falls of my days with tremendous speed. More and more I smell eternity. And oh, how I want to use my life well. It is so short and so fragile and so final. You get one chance to live your life. And then the judgment. I speak as a father who has children your age, and I am jealous with Jesus that they and you not waste your life.

“Few things make me tremble more than the possibility of taking this onetime gift of life and wasting it.”

One of the great tragedies of American culture is the way billions of dollars are invested to persuade people my age to waste the rest of their lives. It goes by the name of retirement, and the entire message is: you’ve worked for it, now enjoy it. And what is the “it”? Twenty years of play and leisure. While the world sinks under the weight of millions of healthy older people fishing, cruising, puttering, playing golf, bridge, bingo, shuffle board, and collecting shells. All of this in preparation for meeting Jesus Christ face to face with nail scars in his hands.
And that is exactly the way you will waste your life in fifty years if you do not make some radical decisions now, and set your face like flint to walk another way. Oh, that you might all come to age 65 with fire in your bones, and say, “Now! Now! With my simple pension and my remaining energy and my new freedom I will pour out my life for Christ and his kingdom, so that when I meet him — which I will do any day now — I will smile at his words, ‘well done, good and faithful servant,’ instead of those awful words, ‘Fool! How did all that pointless play put my glory on display?’”

What Is the Essence of the Unwasted Life?

So if you ask me tonight, All right, tell us then, what is the unwasted life? What does it look like? What is the essence of the unwasted life? I just mentioned it: A life that puts the infinite value of Christ on display for the world to see. The passion of the unwasted life is to joyfully display the supreme excellence of Christ by the way we live. Life is given to us so that we can use it to make much of Christ. Possessions are given to us so that by the way we use them, we can show that they are not our treasure, but Christ is our treasure. Money is given to us so that we will use it in a way that shows money is not treasure, but Christ is our treasure.
The great passion of the unwasted life is to magnify Christ. Here is the text that, perhaps more than any other, governs what life is really about: Philippians 1:20–21. Paul says, “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”
Paul’s all-consuming passion was that in his life and in his death Jesus Christ be honored, that is, that Jesus Christ be made to look like the infinite treasure that he is. The reason you have life is to make Jesus Christ look great. There is one central criterion that should govern all the decisions you make in life and in death: Will this help make Jesus Christ look like the treasure he is?
You can see this in the way Paul talks about the two halves of his statement in verse 20. He says that his passion is that Christ be honored (or magnified, or made to look great) whether by life or by death. There is the life half of the verse, and the death half. How does Paul show that Christ is his treasure by life?
The answer is given in Philippians 3:7–8:

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”

In other words, Paul displays the worth of Christ by counting everything else as loss for Christ’s sake. “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of Christ.” Which means that the life that displays the worth of Christ — the unwasted life — is the life that uses everything to show that Christ is more valuable that it is. Money is used to show that Christ is more valuable than money. Food is used to show that Christ is more valuable than food is. Houses and lands and cars and computers are used to show that Christ is more valuable than they are. Family and friends and your own life are a place to show that Christ is more valuable than any of them.
The way we display the supreme worth of Jesus in our lives is by treasuring Christ above all things, and then making life choices that show that our joy is not finally in things or even in other people, but in Christ.
And the same is true in the second half of what Paul said in Philippians 1:20, namely, his honoring Christ by the way he dies. “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” How is Christ honored — how do we make much of Christ and display his worth — by our death? He gives the answer in the next verse (21): “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

“We display the supreme worth of Jesus in our lives is by treasuring Christ above all things.”

Why is death gain? It’s gain because verse 23 says, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” Death is gain because death means more of Christ. It means to depart and be with him — with him! — and that is far better.
How do you show that Christ is a treasure in death? By experiencing death as gain. Christ will be most magnified in you, in your dying, when you are most satisfied in him, in your dying. When Christ is more precious to you than all that life can give, then being with him through death will be gain. And it will be plain to all that Christ is your treasure, and nothing on the earth.
Here is the essential lesson for living the unwasted life and dying the unwasted death:

1. Life and death are given to us as means of displaying the supreme value of Christ.
2. The supreme value of Christ is displayed when you treasure him above all earthly things and all other earthly persons.
3. This treasuring of him above all earthly things and persons is most clearly seen in what you are gladly willing to risk, or to sacrifice in order to enjoy more of him. Here is the radical way Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10, where Christ refused to remove Paul’s painful thorn in the flesh:

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” [There’s more of Christ!] Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Magnifying the surpassing power of Christ in his own weakness and pain was Paul’s supreme passion! I will rejoice in whatever makes Christ look magnificently satisfying — including all my pain.

Are You Going to Throw Your Life Away?

So I ask all of you now, are you going to throw your life away with the rest of the world by striving to minimize your suffering and maximize your comforts in this life? Are you going to work for the bread that perishes? Build bigger barns? Lay up treasures on earth? Strive for the praise of man?
Or will you see in Christ crucified and risen, bearing the sins of his people — will you see in this God-Man the all-satisfying treasure of your life? Will you say with Paul, “To live is Christ and to die is gain . . . I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”?
I believe with all my heart that when God raises up a generation like this — and I pray that you are that generation — the completion of the Great Commission will come to pass. Because it will not come to pass unless a generation is joyfully willing to lay down their lives. The remaining unreached peoples of the world are almost all in dangerous places. If your generation buys into the American mindset of preserving comfort and safety and security and ease, you will be passed over, and God will get his work done another way. And over your generation — as over much of mine — will be written “Fool! Whose will these things be?” And the tragic word: “Wasted!”
But if your passion is to display the worth of Christ, and thus to treasure him above all things, and thus to risk and sacrifice for the display of his supreme value, then I do not doubt that God will use you mightily and that the commitments you make to the hard places of East Asia or the Middle East or North Africa or post-Christian Europe or urban America, will be fulfilled. And in those places the glory of Christ will shine through you and thousands of people will see and put their trust in the Lord.
And over their lives and over your life will be written the words: “This life was not wasted. This life gladly displayed the glory of Christ, both in life and in death.”

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