‘Twas a Sunday near my affections. We gathered at Christ Covenant Church (3cs-canton.org). We sat under an elder teach on the Doctrine of Man/biblical anthropology. We heard the Scriptures and read and discussed and taught. We heard from Scripture that man is the crown of God’s creation–either male or female–created by the spoken word of God in Genesis. So much hinges upon that. Man is not mere matter in motion–some random collocation of atoms bandied about on the winds of chance or nothingness. Nothing of the sort. He is a creature formed by God to know God and to have fellowship with him. But sin . . . Sin shattered that. The first Adam failed to obey. But God the Son, being rich in mercy, became the second and last Adam in Christ Jesus. All of grace–from beginning to end–and God says to us rebels, “Come and live.”

Then I taught on “Joy Amidst Suffering,” based upon 1 Peter 4:12-19. I don’t know that anyone benefits as much as the teacher, if he cares to do the study. We don’t know something until we can teach it well. Lord, help me to be a good student–then a good teacher–in that order.

Then we went and ate Chinese food at one of our favorite restaurants. The proprietor is so friendly. She is, as is her daughter, the girl who fetches our water and brings the wonton soup. Then we ate our sesame chicken, and Hunan chicken (spicy!), fried rice, and even cracked open the fortune cookies at the end of the meal.

Afterwards we returned home, let the dog out, checked on our son who’s down with a cold, changed into swimwear, and went to the pool for a couple of hours. The sun appeared and disappeared on and off again behind the clouds that flirted with possible thunderstorms, perhaps arriving during the night.

I read for the umpteenth time more of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and my bride reclined on a lounge chair, her brown skin absorbing the sun, as if a sponge.

We had my JBL speaker on the table, too, and streamed Spotify playlists of music from the 1970s-80s, and I watched the fellow pool patrons sing along with Hall and Oates, Kenny Loggins, and Bill Withers’ tunes. A father tossed a green and black football to his lanky, pale son in the pool. A grandmother read the first volume of the Harry Potter series near the steps of the pool. An older man in a swimshirt swam laps in the middle of the pool, his shoulders brown from sun.

I put my book down on the table, watched the people, watched the trees, and snapped a photo of one of the healthy maples around the pool.

Now I’m back home. My bride is off to some friends’ house to practice music for next week. We’re meeting at a local park as part of Memorial Day weekend. We’re playing games, eating, enjoying fellowship, and we’ll once again hear the teaching and preaching of the Scriptures.

The novel at my side calls again, and I’m near done with yet another rereading of this masterpiece. Our family dog, Ladybug, is snoring atop the pink blanket in “her chair,” and all is well during this Sunday snapshot. Lord, thank you for the simple pleasures.

Text: “Whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household, but he who hates bribes will live” (Pr 15:27). Proverbs 17:23 teaches much the same thing: “The wicked accepts a bribe in secret to pervert the ways of justice.” The lesson here is to have the wisdom to say no to the bride, to be unpurchasable.

In one of my favorite songs by Roger Waters named “Too Much Rope” he has the following lyrics:

When the sleigh is heavy
And the timber wolves are getting bold
You look at your companions and test
The water of their friendship, with your toe
And they significantly edge
Closer to the gold
Each man has his price, Bob
And yours was pretty low

Bob was for sale, as it were. And it didn’t take much. Bob had his price.

It’s different strokes for different folks, as the cliche goes. For some people, it’s positional authority. They’ll compromise in order to gain it. For others, it’s money. They’ll fudge in certain areas or look the other way, if it benefits their bottom line. For others, it’s power. If they feel they can be viewed as “large and in charge,” their insecurites get validated in their spirit. Now they feel they finally have a seat at the table of importance.

This past week, someone came to me and said, “Hey, we have a soldier who needs a chaplain down at unit ______. Can you handle it?”

“Sure,” I said. “Do you have the contact info?”

I copied down the contact info, contacted the soldier, drove to meet him, spent about an hour with him, listened to him, gave him a summary of what I had understood him to mean, and offered some practical steps to help navigate the waters he was in. It was, in short, our bread and butter as chaplains–providing spiritual wisdom and religious support to soldiers. I loved it. It was “our lane” as chaplains.

Afterwards I followed up with the soldier again and then informed his chain of command that I’d gotten the soldier the help he had requested from a chaplain. Mission success.

But here’s the thing. There was nothing to be gained by me. I was just doing my job, my calling. The soldier got what he needed. The unit got their soldier back–and he was better off. There was no fanfare. The reward was simply knowing that I did my job. No money was involved. No publicity. No gamesmanship. Just doing my duty.

But what Solomon is driving at here is that some people don’t want to do the work; they want notoriety. They want the applause of men. They want to be seen as the savior-figure but they don’t want to put forth any effort. They want to be seen as caring and concerned, but they don’t actually care or demonstrate concern. They have the appearance of godliness but lack the character of such godliness. Paul says they go about “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people” (2 Tim 3:5). They dupe sheeple. They pimp the undiscerning for their own selfish gains.

A recurring theme in Christianity is wisdom–to understand the times and what God’s people are to do. Christians are commanded to seek wisdom and live wisely. A crucial part of wisdom is learning to discern the true from the false, to see through optics to the reality, to distinguish between mere appearance and the genuine. Lord, grant eyes to see, I pray, for blindness is pervasive.

This coming Sunday at Christ Covenant Church (3cs-canton.org), I am teaching the end of 1 Peter 4. This section of Peter’s first epistle is about fighting for joy amidst suffering.

Here is the last verse from chapter 4: “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Pt 4:19).

About this theme of godly joy amidst sufering Richard Sibbes wrote the following:

It is the work of the flesh and blood to depart from God, but when a man goes to God it is a sign he has more than flesh and blood in him, for this cannot be done without a supernatural work of faith, which alone will make a sinful conscience fly to God, look to him as a father in Christ, and desire him by his almighty power, whereby he created heaven and earth, to create faith in the soul. And when you have cast your soul into the arms of the Almighty, labor to settle it there and to quiet yourself in the discharge of your duty; say thus, “Now I have done that which belongs to me; let God do that which belongs to him. I will not trouble myself about God’s work but in well-doing commit my soul to him alone with the rest.” Christians should not outrun God’s providence and say, “What shall become of me? This trouble will overwhelm me!” But serve his providence in the use of the means, and then leave all to his disposal. Especially this duty is needful in the hour of death, or when some imminent danger approaches; but then it will be a hard work, except it be practiced aforehand.

Suffering as a Christian is ordained to deepen our faith in the sufficiency of God. Pain is part of the providence of God whereby the Christian both sees his situation for what it is but simultaneously sees that it is temporal and designed to sanctify the believer, deepen his trust in the providence and sufficiency of God, refine him, purify him, shape him into a vessel fit for the potter’s hands.

Peter says we are to entrust our souls (v. 19). To whom? Does it say we’re to entrust our souls to happy-clappy psychological bromides and self-talk? No. He says we’re to entrust our souls “to a faithful Creator.” In other words, we’re to cast the nets of our trust onto the rock that is everlasting: God.

Pain and suffering as a Christian are ordained by God not that we would shake our fists at God in anger or resentment or despair, but that we would develop deeper understandings of the sufferings of Christ on our behalf, that we would grow more Christlike in faithfulness, humility, and service in the kingdom, knowing that God sees all and that the judge of all the earth does only that which is right.

For weeks now I have been reflecting upon Psalm 90. It is a prayer of Moses. Verse 2 reads, “Before the mountains were brought forth,/or ever you had formed the earth and the world,/from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

From everlasting to everlasting, God remains. From everlasting to everlasting, God is constant. From everlasting to everlasting, God is steafast and sure. Amidst cancer, amidst leukemia, amidst bulging discs in the spine, amidst wayward children, amidst family strife, amidst false friends, amidst isolation and betrayal and corruption, from everlasting to everlasting, God is there–unchanging, holy, and certain.

Each week at our church we send out a prayer list. It is normally full of people requesting prayers for loved ones battling cancer of some kind, or back surgery, or some such. The focus is on bodily health. And that is understandable. Sickness is bad; no one that I’m aware of longs to be sick or to suffer.

Verse 9 of Psalm 90 reminds us that we are finite: “For all our days pass away under your wrath;/we bring our years to an end like a sigh.” The people recognize their sins and God’s anger and wrath towards that sin. They feel God’s just judgments against them. We don’t want to go too far, like Job’s three friends did, and imply that sickness is a direct result of an individual’s unconfessed sin. That would be presumptuous for fellow sinners to do. After all, God was the one who ordained Satan to afflict Job, in order to show Job’s genuine faith in the covenant faithfulness of God to his people. God was there throughout all of Job’s suffering, and God rewarded Job in the end and rebuked the shallow theology of Job’s three friends.

In Psalm 90, Moses prays in verse 12, “So teach us to number our days/that we may get a heart of wisdom.” This is one of those lines of Scripture that is burned into my soul. Learning to accept the reality of our finitude is to lead us to wisdom. And wisdom is to drive us to God, the fountain and spring of all wisdom.

Christ is called “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24) in the New Testament. In sum, this beautiful prayer of Psalm 90 is to lead us to the person and work of Jesus, the Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Moses was a man who was likewise afflicted and acquainted with grief. He knew suffering. He knew frustration with the wickedness of the world system. He knew the loneliness of leadership. He knew rebellious and fractious people. Yet he endured. He persevered. He prayed that God would instruct him in how to number his days so that he would get a heart of wisdom. Why should we do any differently, if we are seeking to honor the Lord in the ways we live?

Text: “You led your people like a flock/by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Psalm 77:20).

Context, Context, Context: Psalm 77 is a psalm of lamentation. It begins with a cry out to God: “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me” (Ps 77:1).

That repetition in Hebrew poetry is important to note. He repeats the word “aloud” for emphasis. The cry is audible. It’s a cry of anguish. But the great encouragement that follows is that God hears and responds to the cries of his people.

As Francis Schaeffer wrote, God is there is he is not silent. God is personal. He relates to his creation and to his people in covenant faithfulness.

And how does God do that? By way of a shepherd. By way of a mediator.

The writer ends the 20 verses of the psalm this way: “You led your people like a flock/by the hand of Moses and Aaron” (Ps 77:20).

That is so important. Why? Because it reminds the writer and the covenant people of God that God cares. And God provides shepherds. True shepherds will smell like the sheep. They’ll work themselves on behalf of the sheep. They’ll lay down their lives for the sheep. They’ll equip the sheep. They’ll guard the sheep from invaders. They’ll lead the sheep to the water of life.

Jesus, of course, is THE great shepherd, the ultimate shepherd. But God also calls fallen men who love and know the Lord to shepherd God’s people in the here and now.

The question is, do you have godly shepherds? Do you have a shepherd who is not there to be served but who serves? Sadly, we hear regularly of men who are in ministry not for the people but for self. They isolate themselves. They are not available to God’s people. They want benefits but evade hard work. Run from such people. Find the shepherds who pour themselves out for you–who serve you, equip you, visit you, pray with you, teach you, but most of all, who model the Good Shepherd himself.

The U.S. Army Chaplain Corps officially has as one of its core values the following:

• Spirituality
• Accountability
• Compassion
• Religious Leadership
• Excellence
• Diversity

It is an acknowledgement that all soldiers and worldviews include some understanding of the sacred. Literally, sacred means “something set apart as holy, dedicated to a deity, or worthy of profound respect and reverence.”

We acknowledge that man is a spiritual being. He is not just material. He has a body, but he is not just a body. Were that so, “values” would be a nonsense category. Man is not just material. He is a body but simultaneously more than a body. He is also mind/soul/spirit.

When I reflect on my two-and-a-half decades of military service, I often discover that certain faces come to my mind’s eye. Oftentimes the faces are of men who embodied a quiet strength I respect and long to emulate. I think of a chaplain and friend of mine who is now retired and serving humbly in his local church. He seeks no fanfare. He longs only to finish his course well and meet the Lord face to face.

I think of a MSgt. Smith, an Air Force NCO with whom I served in Iraq. He helped me immeasurably in chapel services on a deployment in the desert for a year. He mentored men in Bible studies and became a brother in Christ to me those years ago.

I think of civilian pastors from different Christian denominations who came alongside me in Afghanistan and played music, preached, taught, and loved the people while we were there. They sang in completely different styles from my own tradition and yet I witnessed God grip people through gospel spirituals in a way I’ll never forget.

I think of my Christian brothers from Uganda and Kenya who’d come to my chapel very early on Sunday mornings and say, “Chaplain, Let us clean the chapel. We want to worship the Lord.”

“No, brothers; I’ve got it,” I’d protest.

They’d smile those big beautiful bright smiles and insist: “Chaplain, we are here to worship the Lord. Please let us clean. And we will worship the Lord together.”

For the next hour, we’d take plastic water bottles, poke holes in the top with our knives, squirt water on the plywood floor inside the chapel tent, then get on our hands and knees and wipe the floors with brown trifold paper towels, and wipe down the wooden benches.

I’d make coffee, and the brothers would bring more water and coffee that the soldiers had purchased for the chapel. And the brothers would sing songs to Christ in their beautiful Ugandan and Kenyan rhythms.

I’d preach, the congregation would sing, and we would pray.

And S.A.C.R.E.D. was manifested by the people from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language. It was beautiful. It was something you can’t forget once you’ve seen what Christ’s church is to be. One might go so far as to say it’s a foretaste of what’s to come, something set apart, something sacred.