Intro: A Call to Depth (Part 2/5)

There are some sections of Scripture that leap off the page in terms of their power. The one below from Ephesians 4 is such a passage.

Text:

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,  12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph 4:11-16, ESV).

Context: Paul was writing from his prison cell in Rome in A.D. 62 to believers in Ephesus (a port city on the western coast of modern-day Turkey) about the inheritance Christians have received in terms of wisdom. Christ, Paul tells us in Ephesians 4, gave us apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers (Eph 4:11). Why? To equip the saints (Eph 4:12). To be discerning/to grow deep (Eph 4:14). Again in v. 15, he labors the point by saying “we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

Why do we have such passages in Scripture? Because ignorance is to our shame. Because godly leadership entails wise leadership, and wisdom comes from God (James 1:5). Solomon writes so much about how wisdom is inseparable from sagacious leadership: “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law” (Pr 29:18).

Encouragement: There is a world of difference between information, gimmicks of entertainment, and wisdom. May we be shepherd-leaders who are characterized by wisdom, and that means by knowing wisdom’s source (John 4:26).

I read a book some time ago that said every worldview, if it is to be coherent, must answer at least (4) questions:

• Who am I? (Or, what is the nature, task and purpose of human beings?)
• Where am I? (Or, what is the nature of the world and universe I live in?)
• What’s wrong? (Or, what is the basic problem or obstacle that keeps me from attaining fulfillment? In other words, how do I understand evil?
• What is the remedy? (Or, how is it possible to overcome the hindrance to my fulfillment? In other words, how do I find salvation?)

*Two books I have found super-helpful are James Sire’s Naming the Elephant: Worldview As a Concept and Walsh and Middleton’s The Transforming Vision.

Worldviews Being Played Out via Concertina Wire, Illegals, Fentanyl, & the Will to Power:

I do not watch TV, but I do read the news in order to see what is being done to my country and to the world. If you want to see worldviews in conflict, you do not have to look long. Here’s a simple graph:

National sovereignty	vs.	Borderlessness
States’ rights	vs.	Federal fiat
Law & order	vs.	Melee/lawlessness/no prosecution of crime
Protection of life & property	vs.	Abortion/infanticide/eradication of private property rights
Traditional Western biblical family values	vs.	Secularism/nihilism/postmodernism/identity politics/victim status ‘group think’

“You will be made to care” is a cliche that is nonetheless true. To use another cliche, “ideas have consequences.” Folks can say that we don’t need borders until the thugs show up on your property and the savagery ensues. When a replay of Genesis 19 happens to your family, suddenly it’s not just sunshine and rainbows anymore. Suddenly all the bromides about everybody just getting along fine, and “It’ll not affect me” thinking dissipates with a quickness. Funny how those who live lives surrounded by bodyguards, walls, fences, security cameras, bulletproof barricades, and protective armor like to lecture the little people about their intolerance.

I do not want violence; I so don’t want it. Because it tends to escalate quickly, and can, if rendered by the morally unrestrained, stagger the mind. But we are witnessing America’s military being divided against itself via federal bureaucrats. And I am fearful for my country. Texas is symptomatic of a macrocosm. And that macrocosm is a question of worldviews. Which will we live by? One leads to life; the other leads to destruction and death. May the Lord have mercy upon us.

Issue: Dangers of Depthlessness

I have several loved ones in my family that I long to be gripped by the greatness of God, but there is some resistance. One point of resistance is that Christianity has so often been presented to them as sentimentality about God loving them, drenched in Hallmark-sounding sentimentality, that they have been dumbed-down by the increasingly vapid teaching of some Christians who are charged with leading.

Yet they see me pore over volumes of church history, theology, Bibles, and biographies, etc. They see my wife fill journal after journal of prayers from her life of intercession, but then they hear that Jesus is just waiting to enter their heart, and questions about, “Why don’t they allow him to come in?” Folks, if we know anything about God at all, it certainly is not the case that he needs our permission for anything. When’s the last time you heard a pastor preach through God’s responses to Job? Here are just (3) samples of what I mean about the greatness of God:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:4)

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?” (Job 38:8-11)  

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule on the earth? (Job 38:31-33)

Encouragement: Like countless others in the history of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, I go through the Scriptures year after year after year. I have yet to find where God ever dumbs down the greatest story ever told. Rather, when people are confronted with the actual God who is, they collapse at his feet (Luke 8:41). Or they flee out of holy terror (Jonah). Or they are struck dead because they lied (Acts 5), or they see their own sinfulness (Isaiah 6), but they have a holy reverential fear of God (Revelation 4:10).

God is unchangeably great, magnificent, and grand. Even and especially at Calvary, when God the Son became sin and was made the curse on behalf of his people, he was raised bodily three days later in power and triumph, proving that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.

May we be confident to teach, preach, and herald the actual God of Scripture, and not substitute an anemic niceness in his stead. Why? Because the God who redeems sinners is the same God who named and sustained the Pleiades, laid the foundation of the earth, raised Lazarus, crushed the head of the serpent, and grants salvation to sinners. Herald that God, the actual God, who is Lord over all.

This little post is for me, to help me remember how the small things are not small. Let me explain.

This weekend was absolutely exhausting for me but it was a good exhaustion. Here’s how:

1. On Friday I was able to baptize a man that I (and others) have been ministering to for years now. He grew up in the Roman Catholic system, but he was given eyes to see that justification in an act of grace by sovereign God. He and I have spent a lot of hours together talking over doctrinal issues, and answering questions that growing Christians normally have. I could share many stories of how I have seen God grip this young man and reveal his (God’s) wisdom to him (the soldier). In short, however, I was deeply touched by the fact that this man, and now my brother in Christ, asked me to baptize him in the name of the triune God after he graduated from Ranger school recently. True to his nature, he was completely self-effacing and told me, “This whole journey has been about giving glory to Jesus.” Folks, I know and work with countless Rangers, and that is the very first time I have ever heard a man of his physical puissance and his bright military future, say anything like that. He was completely consumed by the grace of God and by his being a child of the King of kings. Blessing # 1.
2. On Friday night, my bride and I drove to Alabama. Friday evening, we had dinner with some precious friends. My bride used to work for our friend M. He is also the minister who officiated our wedding. And his wife, K., is an nationally board-certifed teacher, a woman who is the textbook definition of a loyal wife, shepherdess, caretaker and teacher of children, and just great friend. She loves the Lord, and it all oozes from the ways she treats people. She’s one of those people who, after you leave her presence, you feel like the world is a better place because you know she’s in it. She renews your hope in people. Blessing # 2.
3. Saturday night, we drove back home. I was able to sleep in my own bed for the first time this week. And I was so excited to be able to open the Scriptures to our Sunday school class at church today and look again into Matthew 5:14-16. I only got to one verse, because we had solid deep discussions. But we were together, assembled, gathered as a body, around the authoritative Scriptures. That’s the key. It is not about gimmicks or traditions or anything except hearing about the Lord and his revealed Word. We are all just partakers of the bread that descends from his table. Our class knows this, but they bring me (and my bride) a joy that makes sometimes long and lonely weeks away sweet beyond measure. Blessing # 3.
4. My younger child is a teenage son. I am an older man now, but I am not so old that I have forgotten what it was like to be a teenage boy. I erupted with hormones; I was worried about my pimples; I wanted to be bigger and stronger than I was; I wanted a nice car instead of no car (or a hand-me-down); I thought church was shallow and irrelevant to my life, at least most days, etc. But today after SS and church, my boy asked me to listen to some podcasts he had listened to about predistination vs. man’s ‘free’ will. I listened to them, as did my bride, and we offered our solicited feedback. My boy is grappling with these issues, folks. I am thrilled beyond measure. He is actually thinking, not just parroting talking points. He is wrestling with issues. He is not a bookworm like I am. He is not an introvert like I. He is almost totally opposite of this old man, his dad, but I cannot tell you how it warms my heart to see my boy, who has grown into an athlete, a thinker, a swimmer, a growing guitar player, and (I so pray) to be a Christian. That is what I long for more than anything else. I can pass him a library of theological tomes, but unless and until the sovereign God who formed Adam from the dust and breathed into him the breath of life breathes salvific breath into my boy, my libraries of theology are only so much reading. But just to have him pondering, wrestling Jacob-like with theological issues, makes me so proud of him that he is at least thinking about the things that most matter. Blessing # 4.
5. And one more: Our daughter is rocking her grades in courses she is taking. She’s found her niche. And I think God is on her and in her thinking. And I am quite optimistic that the prayers of her mom, the goofy blundering parenting I’ve labored to do, and the love of her brother, (and the love and prayers of her extended family) are soon to bear fruit. So, contrary to this blog’s title, this is … blessing # 5.

Question: Both taught and caught?

Principle: The Shining

Context & Text: Having been in education for years and years, a proverb that you cannot go without hearing is this: Better caught than taught. In other words, sometimes lecture is frowned upon. Be “the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.” The list of cliches is long for how it’s best to teach myriad audiences. There are whole libraries on how to teach children versus how to teach adults, etc.

In Scripture, we see both. That is, we see lecture and inference. Here’s an example. Exodus 34 records how Moses once again went up on Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony (the Decalogue). Moses spent time in the presence of YHWH/the LORD and interceded on behalf of the people of Israel. Moses was receiving the direct words of God to teach them to the stubborn and recalcitrant people. But here’s a line that strikes me every time I read it: “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Ex 34:29b). And in v. 35 of the same chapter, we are told “the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him [YHWH/the LORD].”

As the human leader, Moses received the lecture, so to speak, from God. Why? In order that he, before he was fit to talk or minister to others, might first be transformed, and fitted for the job to which God called him. Godly leadership is like that. So much takes place behind the scenes, away from the crowds, in the times of hard work, early mornings and late nights, in the study, in the gymnasium of the soul.

Encouragement: We remember Moses’ name today as one of the greatest names of leaders in history, a man whose bio few would dare to compete with. But Moses went it alone a lot in order that the people might see what it means to be transformed by God. Moses was not a perfect man. Far from it, he blew it on many occasions. But Moses was a man who was known by God and whose leadership carried with it the scents of having been with the LORD. Why? In order that others might not just hear of the LORD but catch it, too, via the example of Moses.

Question: What’s an Often Overlooked but Crucial Element of Godly Leadership?

Answer: Intercessory Prayer

Text & Context: It is one of my all-time favorite chapters in the Bible and is the historical basis for one of my favorite hymns. It is Exodus 33. The context is simple: Aaron, Moses’ brother, while Moses had been with God for 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain (Ex 24:18), had collected gold from the people of Israel and fashioned a golden calf. Idolatry 101. The people who had been miraculously delivered from Pharaoh’s Egyptian armies, now confessed of idols: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (ex 32:4b). Moses, of course, is furious with the people. And God is too. Why? Because God hates sin. He knows it corrupts the very nature of people. And Moses is God’s man. Moses, though a sinner himself, is God’s vessel, God’s man for the mission. God tells Moses, “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Ex 33:3).

There was a tent of meeting where God would speak with Moses. A pillar of cloud would abide over the entrance to that tent when God was speaking with Moses so that the people would know of God’s presence and of God’s mediator, Moses. Moses would plead with the Lord for God to show more of his glory to Moses: “Moses said, “Please show me your glory” (Ex 33:18). What did God do? God placed Moses standing in a cleft of the rock, and God covered him so that he (Moses) would not be consumed by God’s glory, and God passed by, so to speak, to teach Moses (and the people by extension) who God is (Ex 33:20-23). It is a spectacular and stunning scene in history.  

Encouragement & Where Godly Leadership Matters: How does this apply to those who are trying to lead in godly and good ways? Here are 5 principles:

• Recognize that only God can change a person’s heart/nature (as then, so now).
• Recognize that God has his people in place as examples of salt and light amid idolatrous cultures (as then, so now).
• Recognize that idolatry always brings with it its own costs (wandering, self-destruction, consequential judgment).
• Use the opportunities God gives us to redeem the time rather than squander it.
• Remember God’s ultimate mediator was not Moses but Christ who bore the wrath so that we might live for him in our day.

For anyone curious about the hymn I referenced, it’s “He Hideth My Soul” by Fanny Crosby, the refrain of which reads:

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life in the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
And covers me there with His hand.

Moses prayed on behalf of those he led and also for himself. God had his intercessor. May we look to him in repentance and faith.

Question: How can we wisely lead when we are tempted to think we are actually failing?

Text & Context: You are likely familiar with the person of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph was one of the 12 sons of Jacob/Israel. Joseph was a favored/favorite son of Jacob/Israel. Joseph was chosen by God to become a leader. But that role of leader brought with it a lot of heartache and hard times. Joseph was sold by his 11 brothers (Gen 37:27). Joseph was lied about by his brothers and they even told their father that Joseph had been killed (Gen 37:31). Later, Joseph was framed by Potiphar’s wife as if he had slept with her, but he had not (Gen 39). Joseph was incarcerated due to the ruse Potiphar’s wife concocted about him (Gen 39:19ff).

But here’s the good news and how Joseph’s experiences can help us in leadership:

• Gen 39:2 says, “The LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master.”
• Gen 39:9 records where Joseph remembered his life was always visible before the eyes of holy God; “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” he asked. In other words, he refused to sin in that way because he kept short accounts with God.
• Gen 39:21 says, “But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him his steadfast love . . .”
• Gen 39:23 says, “ . . . the LORD was with him. And whatever he did, the LORD made it succeed.”

Takeaways of Encouragement re Leadership:

• Struggle is inextricable from leadership, but remember God is most exalted by triumphing over and through tragedy.
• Keep short accounts with God.
• Remember that God delights to exalt the humble and humble the proud.
• Focus on what’s right, not what’s easy.

Question: Ever seen an ugly church or a church that looks more like a retail outlet store than a sacred space to honor the sovereign God? So have I. Too many of them. And here’s what I wish to explore: Does beauty matter to God? Does quality craftsmanship matter to God? If so, then shouldn’t Christians be characterized by their love for and stewardship of and fostering of beauty in the arts?

Text: Exodus 31:1-11 reads,

31 The Lord said to Moses, “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, ³ and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, ⁴ to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, ⁵ in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. ⁶ And behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you: ⁷ the tent of meeting, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is on it, and all the furnishings of the tent, ⁸ the table and its utensils, and the pure lampstand with all its utensils, and the altar of incense, ⁹ and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the basin and its stand, ¹⁰ and the finely worked garments, the holy garments for Aaron the priest and the garments of his sons, for their service as priests, ¹¹ and the anointing oil and the fragrant incense for the Holy Place. According to all that I have commanded you, they shall do.”

Exploration of Main Ideas: I see several significant events here in the text. Below are a few:

• God equipped and called Bezalel for the crafting of beautiful things, namely, “artistic designs to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft” (vv. 4-5).
• God is interested in the macro and the micro. Verses 7-11 of this text run the range from the tent of meeting to lampstands to utensils, the basin for washing, the altar, and even clothing. God is concerned with beauty in big, small, and every area in between.
• God finds joy in beauty and in things done well.

Why does it matter?

In short, it all matters because God is the most beautiful reality. This is one more way God communicates to his creation. He displays his glory in the things he has made and in his equipping his people to craft beauty from the provisions God has already created. In other words, we write on paper that God has provided in the trees. We make pottery from the clay and rock and water and soil God has provided. We shape bronze, silver, and gold out of those elements God has made available to us.

Isaiah 33:17 is a beautiful line: “Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty . . .” God delights in beauty because, when rightly understood, God is beauty incarnate. This is yet one more reason God’s people ought to respond to beauty, long for beauty, delight in beauty, and aim to foster beauty. It’s a way of rendering to God what is right, good, and hopefully beautiful.

A buddy of mine from church sent me a picture of a white squirrel from a region with which he and I are both quite familiar. I lived for about nine years near where the picture was taken. My buddy, too, understands beauty, that God speaks to his people through what he has made.

Question: What are characteristics of godly leadership and influence?

Follow-on Question: Ever had the experience of growing impatient and/or being tempted to resent people you are leading?

Likely Answer: Sure, we all have. Or surely, many at least have. I have certainly experienced it in church ministry. My wife loves for me to share the story of when I was a full-time civilian pastor at a rural church. I had been there a year or two, and I was teaching on the Law of God. I had taught through Job, through Mark, through James, Galatians, etc. but I was now trying to focus on the Law of God as revealed in the Pentateuch. Pretty basic stuff, I thought: Christianity 101. Well, I was teaching one night in church in an informal study and I asked the question: When we understand the Law of God, what ought to be our response? In other words, what is the overriding purpose of the Law?

I paused for responses from the congregation. I didn’t have to wait long. A lady shot up her hand and spoke quickly, “Well, Brother Jon, I’ve kept the Ten Commandments.” I am sure I would not have been surprised at that moment to have seen a little green Martian come rip my liver from my body, tap dance in the chancel, and then high-five Lucifer as they both boarded the Enterprise 666 back to their regions; that’s how shocked I was at what this woman had said. She had actually professed that she had no need of forgiveness, that she was not a sinner, was not a debtor to grace, and that, doggone it, she was a pretty good person.

Listen, folks: I have had a lot of theological education; I have read shelves and shelves of theological books; I have heard and preached more sermons than I care to admit. But there are some moments in ministry where you think: Lord, help me not to laugh in this woman’s face, but to be gracious.

So, I did my best. I looked at her and said as kindly as I could, “I understand what you have said, but according to God himself, no one has kept the Law except Christ alone. That is why the Father says, ‘Behold, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased’ (Mt 3:17), and again as Jesus nears the cross, the Father speaks of Christ only when he says, ‘I have glorified it [God’s name], and I will glorify it again’ (Jn 12:28). The evidence is consistent: Only Christ kept the Law. That’s why we look to Christ alone, by faith alone, by grace alone. That’s the whole point of Ephesians 2:8-9. Sinners will boast if they don’t understand themselves to be prideful sinners.”

1 John 1:8-10 ran through my head like a scroll: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not is us” and then John writes, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (v. 10).

But the woman crossed her arms and looked at me as if I was a real meanie. Yes, there are some lessons in ministry that seminary and books don’t equip you for, things like pride-filled women on a Wednesday night Bible study who say aloud that they really view themselves as quite righteous, thank you very much.

Encouragement: If you are a leader, you will encounter folks that resist you and resist the truth. But God ordains these moments to strengthen you, to shape you, to teach you how patient God has been with us. Resentment is not the right response of the good leader. Rather, he is to “endure suffering” (2 Tim 4:5), fight the good fight (2 Tim 4:7) and entrust himself to God who always does what is just (Gen 18:25; 1 Pt 4:19). 

Introduction: Moses was tasked by God with “speaking truth to power,” to use the cliche. God told Moses to tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go in order that they might worship him. We are told why in Exodus 2:24 where Moses records, “And God heard their groaning, and God rememembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel–and God knew.” Then Moses is told up front that Pharaoh will not listen: “But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand” (Ex 3:19).

Warning After Warning (10, in fact):

• God turned the Nile to blood (Ex 7:14-15)
• Frogs across Egypt (Ex 8:1-15)
• From the dust, gnats (Ex 8:16-19)
• Swarms of flies (Ex 8:20-32)
• Death of livestock (Ex 9:1-7)
• Boils on the skin (Ex 9:8-12)
• Hail from heaven (Ex 9:13-35)
• Locusts (Ex 10:1-20)
• Darkness (Ex 10:21-29)
• Death of the firsborn (Ex 11-12)

Again and again, Pharaoh hardens his heart and refuses to bow to the true and living God, despite all the evidence of his sovereignty. Via the LORD’S PASSOVER (Ex 12:11), Pharaoh again witnessed the covenant faithfulness of God to keep his promise.

But it’s not just Pharaoh and Egypt who are to learn lessons. It’s Moses, too, and all who would be godly leaders. Will you notice how God stresses the centrality of remembering God?

• “This day shall be for you a memorial day . . .” (Ex 12:14)
• ” . . . and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD” (Ex 12:14)
• ” . . . throughout your generations” (Ex 12:14)
• ” . . . as a statute forever” (Ex 12:14)

Think God was clear enough? The emphasis is constant: Don’t forget. Remember. Memorialize this. Commemorate it. Remember God. Don’t get over this. Remember, remember, remember. Why? Because if you forget God or abandon God, judgment follows.

Encouragement: The godly leader does not forget where he came from or the God who raises up leaders and humbles leaders. The godly leader knows he is a servant of righteousness, not a puppet for transgression. Remembrance keeps the godly leader humble in order that God may exalt him at the proper time.