Today across the nation, millions will gather around a plastic table between conveniently placed cardboard dividers with sheets of paper and a ballpoint pen, deciding who it is they want to represent them, lead them, and make the decisions that effect their future and the future of their children and grandchildren.

No pressure.

My state, along with thirty-five others this year, are electing who will also serve as governor, alongside the usual senate, congress, and etc. We who vote, will voice our opinion on who it is that wins those races. We who vote, will decide who it is that steps into the daunting task of leadership in our state and country.

Whoever wins these races, no matter which state, which position, and which party all have one job in terms of their duty before God.

Our position as Christians in the modern western world is quite different than the position of those believers in the Old and New Testaments. In the Bible, there were no ballot boxes, no stone tablets they scribed a checkmark on, and no counting. They did not get to choose their leaders, their leaders were chose for them. Sometimes this was through revelation, like Saul and David. Sometimes this was through conquest, like Nebuchadnezzar. Some of their leaders were bad, some of them were good. Some of them were manipulative (Herod) and some of them were merciful (Cyrus.) Some of them were bloodthirsty (Domitian, and Nero.) Some of them were permissive. (Felix.)

All of them were accountable to God for how they stewarded the authority given to them.

God is the one who raises up kings and casts them down. (Daniel 2:21) God is the one who ordains the leadership of a people, be it for their benefit or for their judgment. (Romans 13:1) God is the one who uses the best and the worst to accomplish His greater plan. (Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, etc.)

Every single one of these kings, emperors, governors, and leaders, had one thing in common - every single one of them God held accountable for what they did.

This is the backdrop that all believers in the early church had to sort out how leadership works. They didn’t get to choose who their leaders were, they didn’t get to choose whether or not they liked them, they didn’t get to pick a party, or select affiliation. All they did was respond.

The Apostles gave us a grid work to operate from in that context, which was far less comfortable than ours.

• Romans 13:1-7 gives us the Apostle Paul’s framework for what a government is supposed to accomplish. Namely, to restrain evil, reward good conduct, maintain order, and recognize that all authority is given by God. Therefore, we honor them as being part of God’s plan, pay our taxes (I know, I know…) and seek to obey the laws of our land.

• 1 Peter 2:13-17 give us the Apostle Peter’s instructions to submit to every human authority whether it be emperors or governors for the Lord’s sake. In the context of exiles of God’s kingdom living in this world, we do this so that we might live as free people, honoring everyone, even those in leadership.

• 1 Timothy 2:1-2 instructs us to pray for all in authority in prayers and thanksgiving. Specifically kings in high authority that we may live “peaceably and quietly in all godliness and holiness.”

This is of course also taking into account the backdrop of Acts 5:27-29, when standing before the high council and commanded to stop preaching the Gospel, the Apostles declared their holy disobedience, “We must obey God rather than man.”

That is our framework to respond to leadership in our world. We must acknowledge that they are there because God wants them there, whether we like them or not. We are to pray for them because God has placed them there, whether we like them or not. We must honor them because God has put them there, whether we like them or not.

Why can we do this? Because we are citizens of God’s kingdom above any kingdom of this world, and our King has been given “all authority in heaven and on earth.” (Matthew 28:18)

We submit to the kings of this world because we submit to the King of all the world. We, at times, defy the kings of this world, because we submit to the King of all the Universe. We follow the laws of this world because we esteem the Law of God as greater. We pray for the leaders of this world, because they have received their authority from God Himself.

No matter who wins what race, all leaders have one job before God. They are accountable to Him because it is not their authority they receive, it is His authority. It is not their race they win, it is His will. It is not their people they govern or represent, it is His people. Therefore they have one duty before God: to submit to His plan, His purpose, His heart, and His justice. Anything short of that, anything contrary to that is not just bad leadership, it is defiance to God, and it will come with a day of accounting for it.

As Christians, we have a duty, as exiles and pilgrims in this world, as citizens of a different kingdom, to remind leaders that their duty is before God. To call them out when they are wrong, to pray for them that their hearts may be aligned with God’s purpose, and to remind them that all authority comes from God.

In my state, two candidates are duking it out for the governorship. While I have my issue with both of them, one in particular called out pastors for not speaking out on political issues. Frankly, I’d suggest this candidate stay in his lane. I wouldn’t come in a locker room and tell him how to run a football team, so he can stay out of the pulpit where the duty of pastors is to declare God’s Word. (Just to say, had the shoe been on the other foot, I’d have the same opinion, though the analogy would be a courtroom not a locker room.)

But, he asked, so here’s my opinion. Mr. Tuberville, or Mr. Jones, whichever wins. You have a singular duty before God. You will not receive your position outside of God’s will. You will not receive any authority that is not on loan to you from God. It can be taken from you just as swiftly as it is given. The Son of God is the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth, and you will answer to Him for every decision you make. I do not envy you for that.

I will pray for you, whichever of you wins. I will honor you, no matter what letter comes before your name. I will acknowledge your policies insofar as they do not go against the clear commands of God. However, please remember - you have one job, and it is to obey God alone. Not party. Not personal interest. Not national leaders. God alone. You will answer to Him, after all.

That is your one job.

We stood amid cool stone, light dimly shining through stained glass windows, the musty smell of an old building, and the quiet rumble of an empty building with shifting traffic outside.

This building is over 100 years old. It has stood as a part of the community for that long, and it’s people, shifting from one generation to the next have sat here, prayed here, worshiped here, and wept here. They have demonstrated their faith, possibly had their moments of doubted faith, despaired, and triumphed. Buildings like that, old churches in long-established communities have that kind of history. You can see it in the pews darkened with the patina of weathered hands leaning against them year after year. The creak of old kneelers as they are raised and lifted thousands of times. The floors that have been walked to and from a simple altar, to receive the Sacrament week after week.

We stood there that morning, amidst all of this, moving out. For just over a year, we too had joined that community of people who inhabited that space. Who had found hope, wrestled doubt, and sought a way forward in our own way. I had sat in the pew, and I had also stood before them. I had opened my Bible to hear the Word read, and opened it to deliver the Word that the Lord gave me that week. I had walked up and down the aisle in procession, in prayer before the service, in speaking with those who had questions, and to receive the food from the Table of the Lord.

For just over year we inhabited that space along with our Catholic friends, (at different times) to make a temporary home as we prepared a new space, just up the road.

Two weeks ago I stood behind the small lectern, opened a Bible and spoke from it for the last time in that space.

This weekend, I will open it from a familiar pulpit, to a familiar people, in a strange new place.

I remember my first time in front of people. 14 years old, asked to deliver a devotional to a group of men in the fellowship hall of a small Baptist church. I had labored tirelessly over that little ten minute devotion. I had read, researched, and written it four or five times. My hands were shaking so hard I could hardly turn the pages. Public speaking has never been something I was naturally good at, or naturally inclined to. Funny how that turned out.

I remember my first sermon. 16, in a different Baptist church. It was a flop. Easily one of the worst I have ever done - but I was nervous and off track. I rambled for too long, tried to crack jokes that didn’t land, and at the end of it had basically decided I would never do that again.

I remember the next time, filling in, at yet another Baptist church, on a Wednesday night Bible study. I opened to a Psalm, palms slick with anxiety, and began to read from a manuscript.

Finally, another first, with a clerical collar that felt strangling due to nerves, now with the phrase “Rev” in front of my name, but feeling like a total imposter, and the memories of my past disasters close to my mind. That was a new beginning, and over time, the more I did it, the more I found a way to focus less on what I was doing, and focus more on who I was doing it for. That helped.

Now we have another new beginning again. A new place, with some newer faces, in a building that my own sweat, blood, and prayers have gone into. A place that we have labored over meticulously the last few weeks. A place we have been planning for over 18 months. A place where we close one chapter, turn the next page to a new one.

I have reminded everyone more than a few times, that moving into this new place was not the end of a journey, but the beginning. Things will not be business as usual, it will be time for us to find out what is expected of us in this new area, to face new challenges, and see new victories. Leaving our old place, a place a lot of significant events had taken place in, was a bittersweet moment, but one that we all knew was the right thing.

Moving into this new one is not bittersweet, so much as it is a daunting task. Like many others, I don’t do well with unknowns - yet we are now embarking into a great unknown. We are setting off on an unprecedented journey, an entirely new phase in the life of our church and ministry.

It was a strange feeling to stand in that old Catholic Parish for the last time, moving the last of our things out of it. It had become a temporary home, a familiar place to us. Now, we were moving on.

I think back to that evening almost 20 years ago now, to that teenager who knew a lot less than he thought he did, standing in front of men who definitely knew a lot more than he thought they did, and I can safely say, that he had no idea that he would get to be a part of something like this. But then, he also didn’t understand the privilege of doing what I do for a living now.

This weekend, I get to do something I have done hundreds of times now, but again for the first time. I am honored, humbled, privileged, to stand up, open a Bible, and share in a new place the goodness and mercy of an incredible God who has brought us this far, and will not leave us alone. The God who has gone ahead of us, and guided us all along the way, even in strange new places.

Just wanted to say a quick thank you to all of those who have decided to support The Rectory as a paid subscriber over the last year. Your interest, support, and continued patronage has been a tremendous blessing to me.

I do want to remind you though that it is an annual subscription, and so if you see a cha…

Read more

The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah. In the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, while I was in Susa the capital, one of my brothers, Hanani, came with certain men from Judah; and I asked them about the Jews that survived, those who had escaped the captivity, and about Jerusalem. They replied, “The survivors there in the province who escaped captivity are in great trouble and shame; the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been destroyed by fire.”

When I heard these words I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments; let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Both I and my family have sinned. We have offended you deeply, failing to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place at which I have chosen to establish my name.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great power and your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man!”

At the time, I was cupbearer to the king.

Ne 1:1–11. New Revised Standard Version

This begins the third and final act in the overarching story that makes up Ezra-Nehemiah. This final arc is composed specifically of the Nehemiah narrative, whereas Ezra was divided between the Jerubbabel story and the first exodus, a later addition to the material of the first six chapters and the Ezra narrative of 7-10.

Some challenges emerge with reconciling the chronology of the dating between the Jewish and Persian calendars, and the timing of the Ezra narrative to the Nehemiah memoir - but overall these are not essential matters to the story, and considering how poorly we remember exact dates and times in our time of reconciled calendars, day planners, journals, and the internet, it’s not any fault of Nehemiah to have gotten a little mixed up! These are quibbles I leave to the experts, because these are things that would not have been a big deal to the original writers and readers of this story - it is the story itself that matters, and it is the story itself that is inspired and preserved by God for our example. (For some discussion on this, see H. G. M. Williamson’s commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah in the Word Biblical Commentary Series, pgs. 167-170)

Nehemiah was born into exile following Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, yet he rose to prominence as the king’s cupbearer in the Persian court much like other notable Jewish exiles like Daniel and Esther. When we meet him, he is in Susa, which was the winter residence of the Persian kings. At the end of the chapter, we are given the detail that he is there as the king’s cupbearer. The cupbearer in the Ancient Near Eastern court held an important position. This granted him direct access to the king and the possibility of great influence. Some sources identify the cupbearer as the wine taster, the bearer of the signet ring and, in some cases, the chief financial officer.

Nehemiah served at a politically turbulent time. In the year 460 BC, a revolt broke out in Egypt that took five years to put down. Another governing official north of Mesopotamia also rebelled in 448 BC, creating a period of great instability in the empire. Most scholars place the beginning of Nehemiah around 446 BC, not very far removed from these uprisings.

It was that news that he likely heard day in and day out, as people would come and consult with Artaxerxes, but throughout this he had no news of his homeland.

Nehemiah was still a man of Judah in his heart. As Psalm 137 teaches us, the exiles had pledged that their hearts would always be with their homeland no matter where they would dwell or for how long, so when Hanani comes with news of the state of Judah, and of the Holy City Jerusalem, Nehemiah would have been anxious for any news of how it fared. It’s against this backdrop that we come into the Nehemiah memoir and the story begins.

The walls were broken down, and the city still sat ruined as it had before. The gates had been burned, and the people were in disgrace.

Some scholars speculate that there had been an event of some kind that led to fresh destruction, a newer sacking of the city that left it in its state, but the evidence is disputed on this. (Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament,) I favor the view that this is remaining from the original siege by Babylon, demonstrating not a fresh attack, but the lack of success over seventy years of the exiles to restore the city.

This news impacts Nehemiah much like the news of their sin impacted Ezra - he goes instantly to mourning, but also, most importantly, he goes to prayer.

LORD, the God of the heavens, the great and awe-inspiring God who keeps his gracious covenant with those who love him and keep his commands, let your eyes be open, and your ears be attentive to hear your servant’s prayer that I now pray to you day and night for your servants, the Israelites.

His prayer begins where all of our prayer must begin - with a confidence not in our ability, our worthiness, or our spirituality, but it is with a confidence in the character of God.

The Character of God

When we pray, we must be aware of what is going on. When we pray, we approach the unapproachable. God and God alone exists in perfect faithfulness and love, whereas we do not. We know that we are chronically unfaithful, always drifting in our love. God is pure, and we are sinful. God is good, and we are not.

Nehemiah knows that they have been unfaithful; they have loved idols; they have wandered. Yet God is faithful. He has loved them anyway, and he has been waiting for them to return.

We approach the unapproachable eternal God because He has made it so that we may approach. We pray precisely because he is faithful and loving; He is pure, and he is good. Therefore, we have the confidence that all he has said is true, all that he has promised will be made reality - our prayer is based not on our character, but on the very character of God.

Perhaps you feel as if you are unworthy to approach; perhaps you feel too afraid to presume. Perhaps you feel as though you cannot approach the unapproachable. If you are in Christ, you not only have the ability; you have the invitation to boldly approach the throne of grace. You have the welcome to reach out and have your petitions heard. You have the freedom to know him intimately. Because of Christ, your past unfaithfulness, your wandering heart, the dust of your mortality is laid aside, and you are brought into the very court of heaven where He hears you, and he will answer you, not because of who you are, but because of who he is. God’s faithfulness to us is based on his character, not ours.

The Reputation of God

Please remember what you commanded your servant Moses: “If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and carefully observe my commands, even though your exiles were banished to the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place where I chose to have my name dwell.” They are your servants and your people. You redeemed them by your great power and strong hand

Trusting in God’s character, Nehemiah reminds God of his own word, because it is on this word that he bases his request. It’s on this word that he believes God will hear and God will answer, because ultimately, if God were not to keep his word to his people, it would be his reputation on the line.

This is a theological tightrope to walk. It is a very tricky, sticky, dangerous ground - but it is one we must walk if we are to deal honestly with the Scripture. It is here in the story, so we must deal with it. So let’s parse it out.

God’s faithfulness is based on his character. His answers to us are based on his grace. His kindness to us is based on his mercy. He does not owe us any of these things. He does not owe you or me a single thing. He never has, and he never will.

Everything that God has given us has been totally separate from our deserving. Yet it is given anyway. It is promised anyway.

There’s the linchpin. Because even though God does not owe us an answer, he does not owe us faithfulness or love; he has promised it to us, and he will not go back on his word.

His reputation is on the line.

You’ll find this idea in other places as well. Moses argued in prayer, “What would the Egyptians say if you destroyed them all now?” (Exodus 32:11-14) In Numbers 14:13-16 and later in Deuteronomy, he argues that God would bring them to the promised land, because he would not let others think that his love and faithfulness were not enough. Joshua argued the same after the defeat at Ai. (Joshua 7:7-9)

“Remember what you said, Lord.” Nehemiah argues, “For your Name’s sake, you will keep your word.”

This is a hard line for us to walk. This stretches our theology and practice - but I would submit that we need to be less ruled by our pietistic preconceptions and be willing to embrace this kind of holy boldness.

Several years ago I heard about a rabbi who described the way the Psalmists and others would almost challenge God in prayer as “holy irreverence.” To take God to task in prayer. It kind of makes me a little nervous to even think about this, but then God left us the examples of those like Moses, Joshua, and Nehemiah in the Scriptures to teach us. We serve the same God they did, and we have the same confidence that he will keep his word that they did, because though times and people have changed, though millennia separate Nehemiah from us, the character of God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

When was the last time you prayed with this kind of boldness? Have you ever been so moved, so incredibly desperate in prayer that you were willing to pray that kind of prayer? To challenge God to his face?

. The first time I really prayed like this was the night that my whole world almost ended. Short version: my wife was in preterm labor with our boys, and they were trying to get it under control. What happened was that, in the process, she threw two massive blood clots. Bilateral pulmonary emboli is the clinical term, and she had to have emergency surgery to save her life. The catch was that they would not be able to monitor the boys while they did the surgery, so they would be at risk. She was, um, indisposed at that moment, so the decision fell to me, and I made one of the hardest decisions I have ever made.

We had tried to have kids for eight years at that point. The doctors had finally reached the point where they said we couldn’t without medical intervention. We had been prayed over by everyone from faith healers to an Orthodox priest - but medically we were down to interventional options. Until one day, we found out she had not one child, but two, who had come to us in what was the best miracle we had ever seen.

Then that night happened. I remember driving from Children and Women’s to University Hospital, and I remember praying. I remember telling God exactly how I felt. That he either was going to come through, or he was playing the sickest joke I’d ever seen.

In that moment, whether I realized it or not, I was counting on God’s character to show through. I was counting on the fact that He is the God who works miracles, and he is the God who answers our prayers. I was challenging him to show me that he is still the God of mercy.

That night he answered. All three of them were alive at the end of it.

I’ll confess that my motivation in that moment may not have been so pure as Nehemiah’s, or the Psalmists’, or Moses’, or Joshua’s, because I’m certainly not them. Yet at the same time, we are invited to this kind of desperate prayer. We are invited to wrestle with God. We are allowed to take God to task for his name’s sake.

Maybe you can relate to that. There is something in your life so heavy, something so challenging, some obstacle so difficult, that you are in a place of desperation. Perhaps you feel like if something doesn’t give, you don’t see a way forward. Are you willing to pray with this kind of boldness? “God, you are good, you are loving, you are merciful - help me now, not for my sake but for your name’s sake. Let this be proof to the world of who You are.”

Again, this might be a bit of a stretch for your theology and spirituality, but are we better than those who came before us? Are we more reverent than those who were given as an example for us to follow, as Hebrews 11 tells us?

Then maybe, just maybe, we need to let go of some of our pietism and get a dose of what they had. A boldness to take God to task, not for our sake, our success, our accolades, our pride, our comfort - but only by his grace, solely out of his goodness, and ultimately for his name’s sake.

“Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” - Matthew 18:21-22 NRSV

At the heart of Christianity itself is the concept of forgiveness. Throughout the Scriptures, we are told that God has forgiven us (Psalm 86:5, 103:12, Isaiah 43:25, Colossians 1:13-14, Ephesians 1:7, 1 John 1:9) and right alongside of that comes the command that we must also be willing to forgive as God has forgiven us. (Matthew 6:14-15, Mark 11:25, Luke 6:37, Colossians 3:13, Ephesians 4:32).

Many of us have been taught, or assume, that means we are to be a people who “forgive and forget.” But is that what this actually means? And how do we practice forgiveness while also not allowing ourselves or our families to become doormats for those who would exploit our desire to forgive as Christ forgave? How do we balance forgiveness with wisdom, and how do we understand forgiveness and trust?

How God Forgives

The first place we must start is by remembering how God forgives. If there is anyone who has a right to not forgive, it would be God. He is holy, righteous, pure, and all-good, all the time. He has done no wrong to anyone and is undeserving of any of our mistreatment.

Jonathan Edwards famously wrote about the idea that the magnitude of sin can be measured by who the transgression was against, and God being infinite and eternal means that our transgressions against him are of infinite magnitude and eternal weight.

The measure of our impurity is measured against his purity. The depth of our sin against the depth of his character.

If there is anyone who does not have to forgive, it is indeed God. Yet, that is not what he chose to do. He chose to forgive us. He chose to reconcile us. He chose to make us new. He chose to “remember our sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:12)

It is in that phrase that we find the solution to how to balance these things. God is all-knowing. There is not a single thing he is unaware of; there is not a single moment that has taken place in human history that is outside of his knowledge, so how then is it possible for him not to “remember” our sins? This is not like us who forget an appointment, or not remember where we placed our keys - but rather it is the idea that he will “not call to mind” our sins anymore. He does not bring them up. He does not allow the infinite wrong we have done to be held against us. He did this all, of course, by bearing the wrong done against him, and choosing to cast it away, as far as the east from the west. He chose to bear the wrong on himself, and take the dark road that led to a cross.

It is that forgiveness he calls us to. To lay down the wrongs done to us at the foot of the cross. To not retaliate in revenge, to not harbor bitterness in our hearts by constantly calling to mind the wrong done against us.

How We Forgive

Forgiveness, then, is an attitude of the heart to take on the mantle of Christ and bear the wrong. We do not seek recompense. We do not attack. We do not respond with viciousness in kind - we must forgive and not let it consume us anymore. We must be willing to forgive and move on with our lives.

That is not the same as “forget.” That is not the same as being a doormat. That is not the same as letting someone continually violate your boundaries and bring harm to your family.

The hope is always that the person who has committed the offence will seek reconciliation. That they will own their wrong and seek to make it right. There are times when that is not the case; there are times when the person refuses to see how they have done wrong.

What are we to do with those who are not interested in reconciliation? What are we to do with those who continually violate our trust and act harmfully toward us?

We must first be wise. Forgiveness does not mean we pretend the offense never happened and continue on as before, but it means we choose to move past it; sometimes there will be long-term effects and consequences to what happened. Sometimes when someone has done terrible harm to you, or has a practiced pattern of wrongdoing toward you, despite your efforts to reconcile, that relationship must change.

Proverbs 22:3 says: “The clever see danger and hide, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” My paraphrase: “The wise protect themselves; the foolish keep jumping back into danger.” Einstein is credited with saying: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Sometimes, you have to apply that to your relationships with others. If they show themselves to be a person who brings harm to you and your family, who consistently introduces chaos to disrupt your peace, it’s not godly to continue to allow it; it’s just insane.

When Jesus was sending the 12 out in Matthew chapter 10, he said: “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Why? Because: “You will be hated by all because of my name.” When dealing with people who are harmful to us, we must be “innocent” in being willing to forgive, but also “shrewd” or “cautious” in how we deal with it.

Protecting Your Heart and Peace in Forgiveness

I have a personal example of this. A couple of years ago, there was someone who was close to us, who began to abuse our kindness. This person stole large amounts of money from us, and when confronted, doubled down, reversing it and accusing us of theft, along with a harassment campaign that spanned months. (The number grew with each telling; last I heard it reached half a million dollars, which is easily five times the value of everything I own put together.) This person filed police reports against us. Threatened litigation and even sent DHR after us. The detective on the case spoke to me, assured us that he saw through it, and we had the letter of dismissal for lack of evidence from DHR.

We were left with a conundrum: how do we forgive and protect our peace? The relationship had to change. This person has unrepentantly sought to harm us and did all they could to bring us down, even though we were the ones who were wronged. We lost a few thousand dollars and gained a lot of anxiety in that time. What we chose to do was forgive and give it over to God. We held our ground, and in the end we were vindicated. Despite our forgiveness, this person is not allowed in our lives again. We are not ruled by bitterness against this person, but we are going to be wise to protect our family and our peace.

Or, I jokingly (mostly) say, the easiest way for them to stay forgiven is for them to stay away.

If a person will not respect your boundaries, they do not respect you. If a person continually violates your boundaries, then you have a right to tell them to “leave your property.” Their continual violation of your boundaries tells you their intent and that they are not someone who cares for you; they are just seeking to control you. (See this article for more on a biblical approach to boundaries.)

Actions have consequences. You are allowed to protect yourself and your family, and it is not unforgiving to do so. The other person may not see it that way; they may see it the opposite, but who judges the heart but God alone? If you have forgiven them but they continue to bring chaos and conflict into your life, you are not unforgiving for not allowing them a place in it; you are just being wise.

Do not allow yourself to be ruled by offense, but do not allow yourself to be an easy target either. This balance is difficult to walk; it is hard to maintain, but with a heart toward God, and an ear to the guidings of His Spirit, you can keep a check on your heart to ensure a root of bitterness does not spring up. You can also do what you have to do to maintain peace in your life. The two are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are simply balanced.

You must forgive; that is the heart of Christianity - but not at the expense of being a healthy human being.

At times, the paid portion of this Substack gets intensely personal. At times I reveal more here than I am comfortable sharing with the world at large, and if I’m being totally honest, there are some people I don’t want to read these things. They are too raw, too personal, too real.

This is one of those.

The only day that …

Read more

As a pastor, I read a lot of books, and I am recommended even more books. If I could count the number of books handed to me by people who implore, “You must read this book!” I can literally fill a shelf. The only problem is, time is so limited! Despite the stereotype, the work of ministry involves a lot more than reading, so it causes us to have to be very selective with our reading time. (But parishioners, do not be discouraged from giving pastors books; it may take us a while to get to them, but they are still valuable!)

Perhaps you can relate, and the idea of another book to read, especially another book about the Holy Spirit, doesn’t really strike your interest. Let me try to change your mind.

This book is written for three people: those who are thirsty for a spirituality that extends beyond Sundays and morning devotionals, those who are suspicious because they see the excesses (and even the abject moral disasters) from the Charimsatic movment who talk a lot about the Holy Spirit, and the uninformed - those who want to know more about this Person of the Trinity that is subject to so much misunderstadning.

The first part of this book is built around familiar themes in the Bible that demonstrate Who the Holy Spirit is, and how the Holy Spirit is revealed and relates to God’s people throughout history. Namely, things like “breathe,” “water,” and “dove.”

The second part dives into the way we can misunderstand the Spirit through the stories of Nicodemus and Simon Magus.

After laying that foundation, the third and final portion of this book shows how the ministry of the Holy Spirit is essentially connected to the life and ministry of the church.

The third part of the book, to me, is the strongest. The chapters: “Prophecy,” “Witness,” “The Redemptive Power of Suffering,” and “The Way of Love” are, to me, worth the entire book. The chapter on healing is one of the best presentations of the delicate tension we walk when we practice healing ministry that I have read in a long time.

Throughout this book you will not find anything new. That is not the point of it. He is not writing to give you anything new, hence the subtitle of the book: “Re-Introducing the Holy Spirit…” but in these pages you will find that though what is said is not new, it is fresh. Sprinkled throughout with anecdotes of humor, sorrow, and triumph, the book unfolds the thesis that all we do as Christians must be connected to the Paraclete in a way that is inviting, gently correcting, and inspiring.

Tyler Staton writes not as a theologian, a faith healer, or a mystic - he writes as a pastor. It is that approach he has that makes the book stand out. He is not trying to convince you, nor is he trying to debate you, or sell you - he is trying to remind you Who the Holy Spirit is, and what that means for the church on earth. In that mission, he was highly successful.

As someone who reads many books and is always building a pile of books to read ahead of me, I can understand if you may or may not be inclined to jump on this. That’s understandable. But I do recommend you get it and add it to your “to-be-read” pile. However, if you are thirsty - and need a breath of fresh air regarding this mysterious member of the Trinity- then, in the words spoken to St. Augustine, “Pick up and read.”

I proclaimed a fast by the Ahava River, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us, our dependents, and all our possessions. I did this because I was ashamed to ask the king for infantry and cavalry to protect us from enemies during the journey, since we had told him, “The hand of our God is gracious to all who seek him, but his fierce anger is against all who abandon him.” So we fasted and pleaded with our God about this, and he was receptive to our prayer.

-Ezra 8:21-23

The introduction of Ezra so late in this small book may seem odd to some. We don’t meet him until the 7th chapter, and some 80 years after the book’s starting point. When he does come onto the scene, however, it is with a bang, and it is only when we follow him on his journey, and specifically the above passage, that I think we can make sense of chapters 1-6.

All stories are about something. They have a theme, a purpose, a message. Even when writers try to subvert this structure, like the famous idea behind the sitcom Seinfeld, which was supposed to be just "about nothing.” or when postmodern writers came on the scene and sought to subvert traditional narrative structure and flow for their own more free-flowing style. Even those stories that try to do away with conventions cannot escape that all stories, no matter how they are told, are about something. If a story has nothing to say, then it usually does not do well and is quickly forgotten.

All stories, Biblical stories in particular, are about something. Ezra is a story about many things, but primarily, it is about the hand of God.

When chapters 1-6 were added into the Ezra narrative when it was compiled, it was done so by God’s guidance and with a purpose, because all throughout those chapters we saw the hand of God moving the heart of the king, rousing the hearts of his people, preparing the way before them, empowering the prophets to speak, protecting the builders in the face of opposition, and granting favor to them above all.

In chapters 7-8, there are roughly six direct actions we see attributed to the hand of God. It is in these three verses in the middle of chapter 8, however, that seem to lay it out for us most clearly.

The setting is the Ahava River, a man-made canal that spread the water from the Euphrates River around Babylon. These are the same waters mentioned in Psalm 137, where the exiles mourned their state of being taken from their homeland into a place of strangers.

By the rivers of Babylon—

there we sat down and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There we hung up our lyres

on the poplar trees,

for our captors there asked us for songs,

and our tormentors, for rejoicing:

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

How can we sing the Lord’s song

on foreign soil?

Ps 137:1–4. Christian Standard Bible

When they gather at this river, Ezra proclaims a fast, specifically for their protection on the journey, because he dared not ask for an infantry to go along with them. (This is a way he differs from Nehemiah.)

One of the reasons he did not ask was simply this:

I did this because I was ashamed to ask the king for infantry and cavalry to protect us from enemies during the journey, since we had told him, “The hand of our God is gracious to all who seek him, but his fierce anger is against all who abandon him.”

In the Bible, the hand of God is a theme that emerges time and again; it is a theme that stretches all the way back to the beginning and indeed goes all the way to the end.

In Isaiah 48, it speaks of how the hand of God laid the foundation of the earth.

In Exodus 13, Moses says that the hand of God led them out of slavery in Egypt.

In Acts 11, it says that the hand of the Lord was with them as they did great works, and many believed.

In John 10, Jesus gives us the assurance that when we have eternal life, there is nobody who can snatch you out of the Father’s hand.

In Ezra alone, it was the hand of God that moved the king in chapter 7, then Ezra made the journey successfuly because: the gracious hand of his God was on him.” Here, Ezra proclaims his trust in that hand, and it will lead to safe arrival for them all beause of the gracious hand of God that “protected and saved us from enemies along the way,” as it will go on to say.

The hand of God is a picture of God’s intentional involvement in the lives of his people. It is a picture of the personal attention that God gives to those who follow him. Just as the world was shaped, and we were shaped by God’s hand, so also events are shaped by his hand.

One place we can find this picture as well is in Psalm 37:23-24, which says that “the steps of a person are ordained by God, and when they stumble, they won’t be “utterly cast down” (KJV), which is the idea of falling “headlong”(NRSV/NASB/ESV) or “face first.” (Note, the above is my paraphrase)

I remember one time when I was kid, running from our garden to the back door, I was going to get seeds or something, and we lived in North Carolina at that time, and the property we lived on was a neighborhood that had been built where farms once stood, and so it was a long flat stretch - and anyone who knows me knows I have three left feet. There are two I know about, and the one that pops out to trip me up at random moments, so as a kid I went face first and got a mouthful of mud and grass.

The idea of that phrase is someone taking a total faceplant.

But the people of God do not fall like that. Why? Because the “Lord upholds him with his hand.”

That picture is, to me, like teaching my son how to walk. He has cerebral palsy and autism, and so he cannot walk independently - yet - so for him to walk, we have his braces, his walker, or I have to hold him up by his hands. When I do that, he will take these steps with his feet extended the wrong way because of the autism, and his hips moving the wrong way because of the cerebral palsy, and that makes his step unsteady. But when I have him, and he starts to stumble, I have to remind him, “Dad isn’t going to let you fall.” Then he will take another step.

The hand of God with us is much like that. It is him walking with us, no matter how unsteady, how unsure, how bad we are at walking - even with three left feet - he will not let us fall face first, because of the hand of God.

That is the confidence that Ezra can have. Even when it’s scary. Even when he’s unsure, because the hand of God is on him.

That’s the confidence you can have. When it’s scary, when you’re unsure, because the hand of God is on you.

There are times when you’ll be walking this Christian life and your legs will turn to jelly. You’ll feel like you just ran a marathon, or did a hard leg day workout, and you just don’t have anything left in you anymore. But you won’t be utterly cast down.

There will be days when you stumble. There will be days when you just can’t make your feet cooperate, figuratively speaking. But you won’t be utterly cast down.

There are days when the path ahead looks frightening, and you don’t know if you can do it. But you won’t be utterly cast down. Because the hand of God rests on you.

To counterbalance the idea of the resting hand of God comes the defensive hand of God, which, if we do not take time to carefully understand, we can easily mistake for the punitive hand of God.

I grew up a fundamentalist Baptist, which was very fond of the idea of a God who got angry. From there, I dabbled in Reformed theology for a while, which coincidentally also really liked to consider the idea of the wrath of God and what that meant, which usually looked a lot more like our wrath than anything you see in Scripture.

The way that these systems justify the idea of an angry God, who is just seething with wrath, is to apply our own reactions to God’s. However, the way we experience emotions is quite different from the way God experiences them. God does have emotions; he tells us that. But His are not tainted by our sin and brokenness. His are what ours were meant to be.

Our emotions are tainted by our sinfulness and our selfishness. When we get mad, usually you can trace it back to pride, jealousy, or selfishness. Our idea of wrath is unleashing that anger we have stored against someone.

Time and again in Scripture, when you read of God’s wrath in Scripture, it is simply, “fine, do what you want.” And hands off.

God does not strike out in malice and vicious anger, as we would do - he just lets things happen as they always do when we step away from him. We reap the consequences of our own actions.

Why is this important for us to understand?

Because we live in a world where we think God’s anger is as fickle as ours, and that is not the case. We live in a world where we say “Vengeance is mine”; we live in a world where our hatred is justified to ourselves by the other side doing things that we don’t like. We say, “Well, God has wrath, so I’m allowed to,” and that would be true as soon as we are God.

We also live in a world where bad things happen to us, and we are quick to believe that God is angry with us, but that is not the case. That’s just the consequence of living in a fallen world.

Ezra gives a clear distinction: his hand is gracious to those who seek him, and his anger is against those who abandon him. If you are someone who has sought the Lord, has given your life to the Lord, then his anger will never be directed at you. No matter what you did. No matter how bad a sin you think you committed, God is not punishing you.

Ask yourself: Do you believe that Jesus did all that was necessary to reconile you to God on that cross? Do you believe that if you trust in him, you are united with him forever?

Then stop trying to make the cross of no effect, and trust in the forgiveness offered to you there. There is no wrath of God against you if you are in Christ.

This idea of God’s anger against his enemies is meant not to be a thing that derives fear from us but comfort. God’s anger in this context is not against his people, but a fierce protectiveness of them.

In my backyard, I put a bluebird house up. Bluebirds are very particular about where they build their nest; it’s an instinctual thing. When they build a nest in that box, I’ll watch as I let the dog out, and the dog will get too close to that house, and the first thing that happens is that the bird will come swooping down out of the tree and right over the dog. (The dog is oblivious) Swooping in to protect those eggs and defend her nest.

That is what Ezra is talking about here. The anger of God is against them because of his people. He’s protecting his eggs.

When the hand of God rests on you, that’s what’s going on. That’s what happened when Ezra made that journey; it says in verse 31:

We were strengthened by our God, and he kept us from the grasp of the enemy and from ambush along the way

Ezra was a man who saw the hand of God resting on him, and it protected them. He was a man who saw the hand of God in action, and the hand of God in protection.

That is how the hand of God is for you. It rests on you to shield you from all harm, to keep you against the enemy. Sure, there might be some shots that get taken, but in it all you will not be destroyed; you will not be utterly cast down, because the Lord upholds you with his hand. He shields you, and nobody, nobody, nobody, can take you from his hand.

When we read this book, we see time and time again how God’s hand was at work, rousing, protecting, favoring, and empowering them.

In your life, no matter what happens, no matter how far you may go, how deep you feel you have fallen, there is always, within reach, the hand of God ready to pick you up. There is always the hand of God there to protect, favor, and empower you.

This theme of Ezra was given to us to better understand the actions of God’s providence, but also to challenge us to never fear to hold on tighter to the hand that upholds us, even when it looks like we are about to be cast headlong. It is an invitation to feel the comforting hand of God’s work in our lives, no matter how deep or how hard the struggle.

Then the people who were already in the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build. 5 They also bribed officials to act against them to frustrate their plans throughout the reign of King Cyrus of Persia and until the reign of King Darius of Persia.

Ezr 4:4–5.

One thing about going through Old Testament books like Ezra is finding the simple passages that apply to a situation thousands of years old, but remain just as applicable now to us in the 21st century.

At this point in the story, the people have made the long journey from exile to the ruins of Jerusalem to build the Temple. They have re-instituted worship, laid the foundation of the Lord’s house, and dedicated it on an occasion of mingled joy and sorrow.

The first three chapters are a victory story, one put together for us from a couple of years of information by the storyteller to give us an insight into what happens when God moves. God moved the heart of the king, then God moved the heart of the people; as a result, God’s plan moved in the world.

This is a pattern that we can observe throughout history. Often when God moves his plan forward, he moves his people forward. God does not choose to work in our world by Divine fiat, or through some external force - but he chooses to work instead through vocational engagement with his people. He calls them, enables them, equips them, and empowers them to carry out his will in the world around them.

Often though, in the ancient accounts from the Old Testament, and the testimony of people in our days, you will find that when God moves, the enemy will also move to counteract him. Just as his will is being accomplished, the adversary is attempting to thwart him.

The same is true here. The enemies of Judah were almost called to them by the shouts of joy at the end of chapter 3, and at the beginning of chapter 4, they began to work against them.

These enemies are made up of those who had been living in the land, likely the ones who were sent in by the King of Assyria to populate the area left vacant when the exile of the kingdom of Israel occurred. (See 2 Kings 17) They had come into the land and added worship of Israel’s god into their own pantheon of gods, but they did not turn away from their idols. In short, as the Scripture says, “They feared the Lord, but continued to worship their gods.”

When they approached Zerubbabel and Jeshua the high priest about helping with the new Temple, the leaders knew that it would come with the price of compromise and continued idolatry.

To keep the purity of worship of the Lord, they told them no, and refused their offer of help.

Their enemies’ initial approach of corruption from within did not work, so they are going to switch tactics to conflict from without.

Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner notes that the actions listed in these verses are a string of participles that give the sense that they didn’t just do these things once, but they were constantly doing these things.

Verses 4-5 serve as a distilled summary of the rest of the chapter. To see how they dragged this on for years, even overlapping with Esther and Nehemiah’s accounts, you can read verses 6-23; that section takes the highlights of decades of conflict and compresses them into a single portion.

For our purposes here, we will stick with the two-verse summary which gives us the essential points of their campaign against God’s work in the world. In it, we will find commonality, and even an understanding, because we see the same weapons deployed against us today. The enemy is nothing if not unoriginal.

Taking it phrase by phrase, here are three areas where the weapons of the enemies of Judah overlap with the weapons of the enemy in our day.

They discouraged them.

Rarely is there a more effective weapon than discouragement. Probably because it is so easy to prey upon. When we engage in difficult work, a difficult task of any kind, eventual discouragement is inevitable. We get tired. We get overwhelmed. We get stressed out. Those are the moments when we are open to discouragement. It’s a normal thing to wrestle with. Who among us has never had something happen that made us discouraged? Maybe it was something with your job not working out the way you hoped. Maybe it’s a wayward son or daughter. A rocky patch in your marriage or personal life. Maybe it’s a lot of things all at once, and you feel like you just can’t get ahead, and so you are discouraged, and as you are discouraged, you run out of gas, and grow weary in what you’re doing. It’s hard to step into the next place in God’s plan when you have no energy to move.

In siege warfare, the idea is to starve an enemy out. To take their food, their water, and their energy. Discouragement is the siege warfare of the enemy. If they cannot stop you, they will wear you down.

It is neither sinful or wrong to be discouraged. It is a normal human reaction. Our response to discouragement is what matters. Where do we turn when we are discouraged? Where do we seek to be refreshed? Do we turn to negative coping mechanisms to find temporary relief? Or do we turn instead to the source of life that we all need, which can be found in only one place? In this siege, do we turn to the place where we find the Bread of Life? Do we draw from the well that never runs dry?

It is not discouragement itself that is wrong or sinful, but our response to it. If we turn to the balms of this world, we will find the wound only more irritated - but if we turn to the healing source of life, we will find that even this most effective weapon is rendered useless by God’s sustaining power.

They made them afraid.

Fear is another highly effective weapon. Fear is a natural response of humans to changing circumstances. We all get anxiety when we think about a big change, or we have a large challenge in front of us. That’s normal and human; I’d be a little alarmed if those big things never made you anxious. But when fear is weaponized against us, it can have a paralyzing effect. It can stop the forward momentum; it can freeze you in place, stopping you from stepping into the next chapter God has for you.

Again, fear in and of itself is not wrong or sinful. Now before you go rushing to your concordance, hear me out.

Fear, like pain, is a necessary survival response. I remember reading in Phillip Yancey’s book, The Problem of Pain, where he talked about his time among a leper colony, and how that experience helped him understand the true nature of pain. It is a necessary function. Without pain, the body does not know where to heal. (Which is the problem with leprosy.) It is made for survival. The problem is pain when it is disordered.

The same is true with fear. Fear is a response to keep us safe. It spikes when we enter a survival situation. Fear sets off fight or flight, which has protected us from predatory situations and other dangerous circumstances in our history as a race. Fear is a survival mechanism wired into us as a gift. Like all gifts, it becomes a curse when it is disordered.

When fear controls us is when it is a problem. When we listen more to the voice of fear than the voice of truth is when we go astray.

To silence fear, we often turn to negative coping mechanisms. We rely on temporary security. Temporary soothing methods. Or worse, we just give in to it and wind up in an uncontrollable spiral of anxiety.

The experience of fear is not wrong or sinful - an improper response to it is. It is what we do with this fear that makes the difference. Will we give in to it? Will we surrender to it? Will we turn to unhealthy ways of dealing with it? Or do we seek the One who can calm even the most raging storm to ease our minds? Will we allow the spiral within, or seek the comfort of the Holy Spirit within us?

They bribed officials to act against them.

Most of us don’t live in a situation where a king or an empire rules over us, unless you have a homeowners’ association. Instead, I want to frame this rather as “external pressures.” It could be your boss. It could be a family member, any number of those things - external pressures that put the brakes on what we are pursuing. It could be circumstantial, it could be personal, any of those things, and these tie into the first two. Those pressures can discourage or cause anxiety. The system may be different, but the result is the same.

What is our response to external pressure? Do we immediately buck up in defiance? Do we respond with anger? Conversely, do we just roll over and give up? When faced with this pressure, none of these will do.

“In this world you will have trouble,” the Scripture says. Throughout it all we see where external pressures work against the movement of God’s people. From Abraham to the Apostle Paul, everywhere we turn in the Scripture has the narrow group of God’s people against seemingly impossible odds - but in each of these instances, it was how they responded that made all the difference. The overriding theme of their response was almost always submission to God and defiance through obedience.

As Americans, we love the word defiance. We love the narrative of standing in the face of power and saying “no.” We love the idea of breaking off and standing against authority, and depending on the flavor of story, it will probably involve some form of violence. (Those are the good stories anyway.) The Scripture shows us something else, though. We find defiance to this world often just looks like obedience, even unto death. The three Hebrew young men were thrown into a furnace. The apostles were locked in prison. John was exiled to Patmos. History tells us James was thrown off the roof of the Temple. Nowhere did they fit our American idea of resistance.

I’m not advocating pacifism, but rather I’m saying what our first response to these external pressures we face? Is it defiance or obedience? By nature we turn first to defiance, but even when obedience means defiance, those are not necessarily the same thing.

If defiance is our first response, it is out of our rebellious nature. We may be doing the right thing for the wrong reason. But obedience means submission in the face of opposition because it is right, and that obedience may lead us to defiance.

The difference is very simple. Is it defiance against those external powers or submission to a higher power than these? Is it to rage against the kingdoms of this world? Or obedience to a kingdom that is not of this world?

From Ezra to now, we will face these same obstacles. If you are in God’s will, you will face resistance.

The enemy will throw whatever they can at you. They will find that weak point and begin to discourage you. They will find a way to make you afraid; they will find a way to pressure you.

Why? Because there is nothing more threatening to the schemes of hell than a people who are in God’s will.

So if you are facing those things, take heart; that’s a good sign. It is our response that will make all of the difference. Will we allow these weapons to turn us away from the true answer to our world’s problems? Will we allow these things to rule and control us through our responses, or will we seek reliance on the God who has called us to this task?

When God moves his purpose in our world, he moves his people to do it. When they face resistance, they do not face it alone, and they do not face it without the tools needed to answer the challenge.

Do not let discouragement, fear, or external pressure rule you. Let it be the God who encourages, comforts, and leads that you obey, and him alone.

“I want to tell you something.”

Typically, when your father-in-law says that, you don’t know which way it’s about to go.

The first time I remember him saying that was when he was on the verge of taking a swing at me early in my relationship with Hillary. (That’s a long story based on a misunderstanding and the fact that…

Read more

When the builders had laid the foundation of the LORD’s temple, the priests, dressed in their robes and holding trumpets, and the Levites descended from Asaph, holding cymbals, took their positions to praise the LORD, as King David of Israel had instructed. They sang with praise and thanksgiving to the LORD: “For he is good; his faithful love to Israel endures forever.” Then all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD because the foundation of the LORD’s house had been laid.

But many of the older priests, Levites, and family heads, who had seen the first temple, wept loudly when they saw the foundation of this temple, but many others shouted joyfully.

Ezr 3:10–12.

Preaching through the Book of Ezra with our church family has posed a unique challenge for me. When I felt us led to consider the story of the restoration of Jerusalem as we are in the middle of a replant for Christ Church, I underestimated the complexity of Ezra-Nehemiah in terms of chronology, narrative, the writing, likely editing and redaction that was done over time, and finding a way to use an often layered Old Testament narrative that is filled with numbers, geneologies, time jumps, to encourage a modern day western people who are all embarking on a journey unlike any we have gone on before.

Having said that, it is one of the most rewarding challenges I’ve undertaken in a long time. Though I am no scholar, my interactions with scholars have been enlightening. Though I am no interpreter, sifting through the various interpretations of those sticky passages has grown my understanding. The way I am approaching this, however, is mainly through the lens of who I am: a pastor. As a pastor approaching this book, I have been exhorted, edified, and encouraged.

In the latter portion of chapter 3, there is this particular paragraph that sits as the climax of the first movement of this book. The first three chapters of Ezra are, at their core, a victory story. A people under the thumb of a heathen empire are suddenly given favor with the king as God moved on his heart. A people who had been in captivity for generations were moved by God to fulfill a word spoken to them by the weeping prophet Jeremiah. And following these, some 42,000 people on the first of three returns from exile, we get to watch from overhead as God moves them from the place of captivity to the place of freedom. We see them return to the city long forsaken, and begin to rebuild in the ruins. When the foundation of the Temple is laid, we come to the climax of this journey.

At the beginning of the narrative, there was a deliberate note given to us about when the construction began on the Temple. It was the second month.

In 1 Kings, we are told about when Solomon began to build the first Temple - in the second month. It describes to us the glory of that occasion; it tells us how the glory descended, and the prayers and songs were offered.

This was intentional. They were going to restore the Temple, and so they were going to follow the pattern they had before. The writer here is deliberately linking us back to Solomon’s Temple, tying the two together. Now that the foundation had been laid, they again echoed the dedication of Solomon’s temple with a ceremony.

The priests donned their vestments and instruments; the Levites gathered around; the people set themselves into position, ordering themselves “as King David of Israel had instructed.” The temple was far from done; work had only just begun, but the beginning was there, the foundation was laid, and the people, overcome with the sense of urgency and hope for the future, gathered around, and they began to praise.

They sang of the Lord’s goodness. They sang of his faithful love. His covenant love. The love that was sworn to them at Sinai, the love that God offers to all who come to him, an unbreakable, unshakable love, no matter what they may have done, or how far they may have wandered. The love that delivered them despite their rebellion. The love that restored them after generations.

Out of their joy, they shouted praise to the Lord. That which was lost has been restored; that which had been taken away has been given back.

They didn’t feel purposeless and lost anymore; they finally found the place of God’s will; they finally found the place of belonging in God’s plan for humanity, and the joy of it overwhelmed them.

But tied into this shout of joy was the sound of weeping. The older ones there, who remembered the first Temple, who remembered how it was, saw this new day, and remembered the old.

We are not told why these men are weeping. On this, commenters are not the most helpful, but if I may, there are probably two reasons that we can surmise.

1. They may have been weeping from the regret of what was lost. They remembered the old Temple. The beauty of it. The splendor of it. The way it symbolized to them the grandeur and glory of the God they served. The way it symbolized for them God’s presence among them, God’s favor to them. It was the place of thanksgiving, the place of forgiveness, the place of promise - but it had been destroyed. Ruined. All that it meant was not a pile of rocks and ash. Perhaps when they looked on the foundation of a new Temple, all they could see was the ruin of the old.

2. Maybe they were weeping for what had finally happened. The day they had hoped and dreamed of had finally arrived, after generations of waiting. So many years in captivity had made it seem like a distant hope, a pipe dream. Now it was happening before their very eyes.

Personally, I think it’s a bit of both. Those who remembered what came before wept in regret at what was lost, but also at the hope that lay before them. The way the writer places this weeping over against the shouts of joy leads us to believe it is not part of the same action, but a deliberate contrast.

In this, there is a lesson for us: that it is okay to lament what has been lost. It is okay to acknowledge the pain of what has been taken. It is okay to grieve what was and what should have been.

In their case, it was as a result of their sin. This is a healthy response to sin. To grieve what it has done to us and to our world, to mourn the damage that it brings. We should be the first to respond with sorrow when we see what our disobedience does to us and those around us. It is a good thing to repent with sorrow.

In other cases, it may be as a result of someone else’s failure, and what that failure has taken away from you, something outside of your control. It’s okay to lament that. God doesn’t demand the stiff upper lip that we believe he does.

Furthermore, it is commendable that we do. As Christians, we believe that the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture, and so if it is preserved for us here, it is there for a reason. By preserving this reaction from these old priests, God acknowledged their sorrow. They are not condemned for this. They are not shown in a negative light because of this. They are remembered for it.

God remembers our heartaches. God remembers our lament. God acknowledges our tears, even when they may be the result of our own doing. Because he is a God who is good, and whose faithful love endures forever.

What’s important to note is that they are not left in their sorrow. That is not what stands out.

Verse 13 goes on to say:

The people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shouting from that of the weeping, because the people were shouting so loudly. And the sound was heard far away.

Joy and weeping can co-exist. Ruin and restoration can coexist. In the end, it is the restoration that rises above the sorrow. The joy is what stands out the strongest.

We are then left with a choice. We can either remain fixed on the sorrow of what has been lost and miss what God has for the future, or we can, with reverence, acknowledge the pain of the past and seek God’s restoration for a future.

Remember, it was to these people that Jeremiah 29 was written, when the Lord declared that he had “a future and a hope” for them. That future was encapsulated in the foundation of a new Temple in front of those gathered. While they wept for what sin had taken from them, they were also surrounded by the joy of what God had restored to them.

In the church where I am privileged to serve, it has a glorious past. A lot of the things from that past are gone, and they are not coming back. There are a lot of different reasons for that, but the result is all the same.

Even in that, God has a future for it. I don’t want us to miss that future for want of the past.

In a lot of our lives, there is a grief for what has happened, and what never happened that should have. We are left with the same choice there. We can become fixated on the past, trapped in our lament, and miss the future God has for us - or we can take the tears and joy together.

At the climax of this first movement in Ezra, if nothing else, I see a lesson of hope. A reminder that God sees our ruin and brings our restoration. He acknowledges our old sorrows and is the source of new joy.

He is the one who gives us a future and a hope, because he is good, and his faithful love endures forever.

“This car is going to be the death of me.” Was the thought I had 11 years ago, while my head was buried in the engine bay of a 2000 Toyota Avalon that had a whopping 180,000 miles.

In its time, it was a really nice car. High-quality interior, solid V6 engine, and air suspension that was as smooth as you could ask for. The 15 years between its birth and that moment had not been so kind to it. We were the fifth or so owners, and by that point, the smooth suspension operated more like a trampoline over bumps, giving you a feeling like you were in a boat going down the road. There was a leak somewhere that I never could find in the passenger side, filling the floorboards with water during the intense downpours we get on the Gulf Coast, and the decorative spoiler, along with the driver side taillight, had given up the ghost.

It was beat up, but we only paid $1,000 for it, and it ran. At that time, that was about 2.5 paychecks for me. It wasn’t much to look at, but it got us around.

As happens with all old vehicles, things start to break. Radiator, water pump, brake calipers (front and rear), tie rods, ball joints - you name it. If it could break, it would break. (Engine and transmission just wouldn’t quit, though. Old Toyota engineering was nearly bulletproof.)

Cars require maintenance, and depending on how handy you are (or how economically challenged you are), there was a time when most of it could be done by the owner, and as long as the automakers don’t get their way, it will stay like that.

I’ve recently rediscovered this while getting an old 2003 clunker back to road-ready. I bought it with the owner telling me it “just needs brakes” and found out that it 100% needed brakes…and spark plugs…and wires…and fuel filters…and throttle body cleaning…and front-end suspension work that also required an alignment…and repairing a leak…

In my time working on this vehicle over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had time to reflect on how this mirrors many things in life. Life, in itself, is somewhat mechanical, and the way we maintain our lives determines the quality of it.

This is also true in terms of our spiritual lives. The way we care for our souls will determine how far we will go.

In theology, we call the process by which we are being transformed and shaped into the likeness of God sanctification, and we break it down into three ways.

• We are sanctified.

• We are being sanctified.

• We will be sanctified.

When God moves on our hearts, and we surrender to Him, we are born again into new life and sanctified. “Set apart.” This is an act of grace, something that is done to us by the Holy Spirit, based on the merits of the Son, and to the glory of God the Father.

When we are growing in this grace that has been deposited in us, it is both being done to us and with us. We are “being sanctified.” This is an act of the Holy Spirit within us, guiding and directing us to put away the sins and habits that draw us away from God, and bringing our hearts more in line with God’s will and ways.

As the Spirit does this (salvation from beginning to end, in all aspects, is indeed the work of God), we are not passive, however. We are called to keep in step with the Spirit, to seek the renewing of our minds, to desire the sincere milk and meat of the Word, to put away the sins that beset us, and look to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

We do this together, by walking as the Body of Christ in unity, observing and partaking the sacraments God left to us, sharing in the transforming power of the Word of God read and proclaimed, and the active work of the Holy Spirit. Corporately and personally, we seek to grow by prayer, obedience, and conforming our minds to God’s ways.

The Christian life is not just a once-done thing. It is a life of maintenance and finding problems as they reveal themselves. Sometimes that means there is an emotional or spiritual wound that needs to be healed. A relationship that needs to be repaired. A habit that needs to be changed. Sometimes, it means you need to dig in to remove the old and replace it with the new.

Sometimes it means sitting with the issue and waiting to find out the solution.

There are also times when we find that things are running smoothly for a long season. Then there is catastrophic failure and a need for repair. Sometimes, it is those little things that we ignore that become the catastrophic problems later down the road. This is why we are called to keep a watch on ourselves and be aware of our constant need for God’s grace.

Sanctification, much like mechanical maintenance, is a lifelong thing. It is not always easy. It is not always glamorous. It is often dirty, hard work - but it is necessary, and it is always for the better.

Whenever I have worked on a car in the past, there has been a deep satisfaction that comes at the end of it. Sure, arms are bleeding from scratches, torso bruised from crawling around on concrete, and maybe a few knuckles got bruised and burned on the engine block, but there is no better feeling than knowing the problem has been solved, and the work is over, and it’s time to put the tools away and enjoy having the job done.

When we hunt down those things within us that keep us from reaching the likeness of Christ, and we seek the restoration God can give us, we find everything works better on the other end. It may have taken a blown gasket, but once it’s fixed, how much better are things going forward? When we are broken, by sin, circumstance, or trial, we often find that we are better at the end of the repair than we began.

Sanctification is a position, a process, and it is also a destination. We are going to reach that place where it’s time to put the tools away. There will be a day coming when we are fully restored, fully healed, fully alive. There is a day when all of the hard work, the heartbreak, the pain, the anxiety, the blood, sweat, and tears will be worth it. At the end, we will find that when we see Him, we will be like Him, because we shall be as He is. Then the work will be over, and we will find that it was, indeed, worth every second.

Upkeep of the Christian life is part of walking with Jesus. It’s part of what it takes to keep our souls growing and moving ever more toward our mark. It’s part of what it takes to make us more into what God would have us to be.

So take that time. Do not neglect your maintenance. Reflect on the Word, commune in prayer, gather with the Body, rest in the Sabbath, and step into God’s grace.

Life takes all kinds of different shapes. Sometimes these shapes are predictable, familiar circles that run around each other, made up of different stages of work, life, and leisure. Sometimes in those circles, we find other entries, joy, sadness, loss, and victory. Sometimes, it is a strange mixture of all of them.

The last few weeks, we have found our …

Read more

Post-COVID, it has accelerated dramatically. The thing that many who were watching cultural trends had said was going to happen jumped forward about five years in response to the pandemic. The repercussions have followed us through the years since. Those two years changed everything and revealed even more.

Barna, Pew Research, and others have documented these trends extensively. James Bell summarized them especially well in his essay “The End of Christian America.” In reviewing this data, I have had to pause, reflect, and consider the cause of the decline and the change that it demands from us.

One of the things that I’ve come to realize in looking at this issue is that it is one of our own making. Despite our tendency to blame the Enemy, apathy, atheism, secularism, and the like, the decline of the American church is at our feet. The gates of hell have not prevailed; our systems have failed.

We have been operating on a model that is designed for a world that no longer exists, and everyone else but us has caught on to it. People are not leaving the church out of rebellion; they are leaving out of realization. They realize that they no longer fit in an organizational structure that was not made for them.

How did we get here?

The highest level of growth ever recorded for churches was between the years 1955 and 1960. Gallup’s numbers put American church attendance records at 49%. This was due in large part to cultural trends. The population exploded, the “baby boom” taking the population from around 150 million to 180 million in ten years. Those families, now moving into suburban areas, with the American dream of the house, cars, kids, dog, and white picket fence, fell into the model that was designed for respectable society. If you were a nice family, you went to church, simple as that.

To compensate for this rapid expansion, churches began to expand. New churches opened, new denominations formed, bringing with them a veritable smorgasbord for religion in the United States. All of these churches began to follow a particular model, a model designed to handle the demand that suddenly appeared in this explosion of growth.

This is natural and not wrong. Institutions exist to support systems, and systems are created to solve problems. The early church did this as they grew in the early chapters of the Book of Acts.

The systems began to develop in churches to sustain the load that they found flooding their way. In time, those systems began to be the thing that defined the church.

If we take a closer look, it is still what defines churches today.

Sure, there have been changes. The Charismatic Renewal movement of the 70s and 80s. The Seeker-Sensitive movement of the 90s. The Emerging Church of the 2000s. The Young, Restless, Reformed of the 2010s. With each decade, changes have come. Most recently, I think the trend toward Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy in Millennials and Gen Z is the most notable. What did not change was the model upon which all of this was built.

Churches began to be run by principles different from those they were meant to. Though few will ever acknowledge it, and even fewer will ever admit it, the church began to be defined by different metrics than we say we believe it should be measured by.

Churches are now defined by three “B’s.” Buildings, budgets, and bodies. Those same three things are what built this model to begin with. The number of bodies in the pews expanded the budgets and required bigger buildings to fit everyone in, which they could afford because those in the pews provided the budget for it.

Before we realized it, this pyramid became what defined a church as successful or not.

For a church to be considered successful, it needed to have the numbers, the budget, and the building to show for it. As numbers began to decline, the budget did as well, so the model adapted slightly to drive growth. Stages became more elaborate, music louder and faster, sermons shorter and catchier, pastors tried to be cooler (the level of success in this regard is up for debate), but in time the decline became unstoppable.

Now, this pyramid that we have had for the last 70 years has become impossible to sustain. No longer did the building and budget exist to serve the people in the pews, but the reverse occurred. The people in the pews began to be necessary to sustain the building and the budget.

Over time, people came to realize that, and they walked out.

The problem before us is not simply a theological or spiritual one; it is a sociological one. Institutions intended for good became top-heavy and failed to meet the needs of the people they were meant to serve. Like the businesses that dominate the marketplace, people in churches began to feel more like cogs in a machine than people who belonged.

That is our fault. That is our mistake. That is our downfall. God help us, it took us this long to see it.

Our times demand that the church deal with its failure and find a way forward. And I believe this is possible. In fact, I believe it is happening now - the decline was part of the process. To reveal the wound, we had to rip off the band-aid.

Does this mean that it is all over? Does this mean that we need to jettison everything and begin again? I think there is a balanced approach to that, one that we will explore more in part two - but for now I want to make one thing clear.

I believe in the church. As the Creed of ages past states: “I believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” I believe that the church is God’s answer to a splintered world. I believe that despite the days that we are in and the challenges we may face, God is not done with us. Through thousands of years, under persecution, pressure, natural disaster, and spiritual warfare, the church has remained, and no matter what may come, it will remain. I don’t believe it’s time to throw in the towel just yet, but I do think we have an unprecedented opportunity before us to answer the needs of our times in a way we have not for many years.

It will not be easy. It will not be simple. But it is necessary, and by God’s grace, it is possible. We need only be willing to face it together.

See, you have instructed many;

you have strengthened the weak hands.

Your words have supported those who were stumbling,

and you have made firm the feeble knees.

But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;

it touches you, and you are dismayed.

Is not your fear of God your confidence,

and the integrity of your ways your hope?

- Job 4:3–6 (New Revised Standard Version)

For years, like many others, I have read this passage and never understood. I have read the words of Job in chapter 3, noticing the trend of his speech, his great despair, his intense pain, his loss, and his longing for meaning in the middle of it.

Then come his friends, who, for a time, keep their silence, but then decide to insert their opinions, one after the other, in a series of monologues that flow chapter by chapter through this book.

I had read Job dozens of times, but on a spring morning in 2023, I began to read it again, and this time I read it differently, and this passage began to take shape in my understanding. I would need that in the days that would follow.

Job is probably the oldest written book of the Old Testament. It is a poetic book, written in the style of tragedy. If I had to give you a framework to read it in, I’d say read it like a Shakespearean tragedy. These characters walk onto the scene, responding to what is around them, and then, as with Shakespeare (or if it’s more your preference, like a bluegrass band show), they step forward from the back, and their monologues begin. (Or, in the case of bluegrass, their solo begins.)

The first of these friends to speak is Eliphaz. Writers note that Eliphaz seems to take the place of the gentler, older friend. His speech is not so cutting, his dialogue is not as harsh, and he seems quicker to remind Job of the past fortunes that he had, and how he ministered out of his fullness then, but now that he is empty, he does not remember the ministry he had given.

His speech begins here in chapter 4, and these words, easily lost in all of the long sections of dialogue, easily passed over in a cursory reading, simply missed for want of seeing what happens next, have more meaning for us in understanding the redemptive work of God in pain than we can possibly comprehend.

If you were to go back up to chapter 3, you would read Job’s lament to his friends. He, like they, is unaware of the divine contest between the devil and God. He, like they, has no understanding of the cosmic implications of this testing, no understanding of why all of this incredible misfortune has befallen him. His only guess is that God Himself is against him. If you read his words, especially toward the end of the chapter, Job is very much in the territory that modern psychology would describe as “passive suicidal ideation.” He has not said he would end his life (active suicidal ideation), but he has wished that his life would somehow cease to be, or better, that it had never begun in the first place. It would be better to be dead, in his eyes, than to have endured this tragedy.

Honestly, though we read it with a strong emotional detachment in our days, as we sit comfortably sipping coffee in our quiet time, if we apply empathy to Job’s plight, we can understand. He has lost everything. His livelihood, his home, his health, and even his children.

In the ancient world, it was possible to lose any one of these things at any time, not so different from our own world. But in those days, losing those things was more common. Perhaps that is why we have such a detachment. But to lose all of them at the same time, even in the ancient world without the medical care, alert systems, and social safety nets we enjoy, was unthinkable.

Beleaguered by such inexplicable loss, Job has come to the end of himself. He is mourning. He is grieving. He is leaning on his friends, but they, as it turns out, are not so steady to lean on in this dark hour of his.

But that does not mean that what Eliphaz says here is necessarily wrong. Here he is reminding Job of something very important. Job has not lived a life that has never seen hardship. Job has not lived a life of luxury, unaware of suffering. He has observed it before, even if in the lives of others. He has encouraged them. Job was a light to people; he “strengthened weakened hands, supported the stumbling, made firm the feeble knees.” Job was an encourager! Job had ministered to those who had undergone hardship and made a real difference in their lives.

Those who felt as if they could not find a firm hold were given a place to hold on to; those who were broken down by life had been lifted up by his words; those who felt as if life was about to throw them down to the dirt had been strengthened to stand - and by Job himself!

But now it is Job whose hands are weak. His strength is gone. His knees are shaky. Now it is Job who faces the hardship of life, but it seems almost as if he has forgotten the hope that he used to build others up. His confidence and hope have been shattered by what was most likely the same things that had befallen others he had built up.

It’s this rebuke, this reminder, delivered so gently from Eliphaz, so accurately and succinctly put, that has so much to teach us.

Though Job’s friends were “miserable comforters,” they were not always wrong; they just had a really bad sense of timing in some cases.

On that spring morning when I began to understand this text, I had just finished a sermon series with my associate through the Book of Ruth. “Redemption from Ruin” was the name of the series. In my heart was the pain that many of those in the congregation were feeling. Financial ruin. Children sick. Health on the rocks. PTSD. Aging parents moving into long-term care. I preached a message out of Ruth 4, the title message of the series “Redemption from Ruin,” and I poured my heart into it, assuring them that no matter what happened, no matter how dark it would get, God would redeem their pain, that what they see as their ruin, God would use to make something beautiful.

Two weeks after I delivered that message, my wife went into pre-term labor at 23 weeks. The twin boys in her womb, boys we had prayed seven years for, boys who the doctors had told us we could not conceive on our own, were the answer to so many prayers. It was a Sunday morning, right before the service. She sent me a text message, and I saw it on my Apple Watch. “The doctor wants me to go to the hospital.” I left, and we went.

The next five days were a peculiar, adrenaline and caffeine-fueled nightmare, culminating in my wife almost dying, while still in labor from a pulmonary embolism, and then the next day, the birth of our two premature sons, who had very slim chances of survival. We didn’t even know if they were going to make it out of that operating room.

Ten days later, one son had to have bowel surgery, and despite slim odds, he had survived. He was 14 ounces.

A month later, our secondborn had to have the same surgery. He did not survive the next few days.

My wife has long-term damage from that cardiac event. She had PTSD from the night of the event, and the surgery that followed while awake, compounded with holding the hand of our firstborn as he fought to survive, and kissing the head of our secondborn as he passed from this world.

There are parts of those days I have never told anyone aside from my therapist. The fact that my sleeping pills, which the doctor gave me, didn’t work, but for a couple of hours at a time. The night they gave me my departed son’s things - his blood pressure cuff, his first hat, his footprints, his blanket still stained with blood, and I sat at a table in the room we were staying in, staring at them, holding them long into the night.

There was a time I was pulling out onto the road, and was almost T-boned by a large truck. Part of me wished it had hit me. I sat on a bench in the middle of the night, walking in the park, trying to clear my head, and had the wish to just disappear.

I almost quit ministry.

I fought to hold onto my faith.

I wanted to quit life.

My words had strengthened others. I tried my best to strengthen the weakened hands, to support the stumbling, and make firm the feeble knees - but just like Job, my confidence and hope were shattered.

The ugly truth is, until we walk through a season like that, where all that we hold dear is being taken away from us, we do not have the right to judge Job, because we are not any different.

The other part of that ugly truth is that, especially for a pastor, Eliphaz is right.

With time, I would see this. With time, I would understand this. God has a way of redeeming your pain by reminding you of where your confidence and hope belong. With time, He even makes a way for you to take that pain and make something beautiful out of it.

Since that season, once people know our story, my wife and I have had the opportunity to minister to many others who have walked a similar path, those who lost a child, but had to go on and could not find a sympathetic ear. Those who had felt the deep pain of losing the most valuable thing in their lives, but did not have anyone to share it with who understood. They have come out of the woodwork, out of seemingly nowhere, led by none other than the Lord into our path. As we have met with these people, spoken with them, and listened to them, we have found something interesting.

Out of our pain, our words have instructed others. Strengthened weakened hands. Supported the stumbling. Braced the feeble knees. Not because we are great or strong people, but because we are weak, broken, shattered people that God has put back together. Not because we handled every moment perfectly, but because we faced every moment like humans who had nowhere else to turn but to Him.

If you keep reading Job, you’ll find great encouragement at the end of it. Job’s testimony of what God brought out of his pain is astounding and uplifting. Our story, though it’s still being written, has much the same ups and downs, but God is redeeming all that was lost, one piece at a time.

No matter what your pain has been, no matter how much you have lost, there is a lesson for you as well. Though despair is the natural reaction, though sorrow is the allowable human response, though we all sometimes feel as if it were better to have never lived in such times, we have a hope and confidence that will show through in the end.

God makes broken things beautiful in His time. He brings redemption from ruin. Unlike that spring Sunday morning in 2023, I can say this with more confidence now, because I have seen it firsthand.

He did for Job, and He has for me.

I never sleep in.

With the exception of sick days, I usually wake somewhere between 5:00 and 6:30, depending on the day. (Weekends are more lenient)

Friday, for the first time in years, I slept till after 10. The last time I remember sleeping that late was the day after we found out Theo was sick. It was the day that, in the afternoon, would be the day of…

Read more

I watched a video the other day that I didn’t expect to relate to so much. I also didn’t expect it to help me the way it did.

In the video, a group of families was outside, and Easter eggs were scattered all over the ground, a horde of kids running amok in the yard, gathering them up. A scene that played out thousands of times across the US over the last…

Read more

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to view the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, because an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and approached the tomb. He rolled back the stone and was sitting on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards were so shaken by fear of him that they became like dead men.

The angel told the women, “Don’t be afraid, because I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. For he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has risen from the dead and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; you will see him there.’ Listen, I have told you.”

Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Mt 28:1–7.

One of the things I love about the four Gospel accounts that we get to visit year after year for this, the most remarkable part of the story of Jesus, is how each one of them, though all describing the same thing, brings a fresh take to it each and every time.

They all center around the empty tomb, the focal point of the entire scene, but what surrounds it differs. The number of women looks different between all four; the number of angels mentioned is different, the places where Jesus meets them afterwards are different - but all agree on one thing, and Matthew, above them all, points us directly to it: what happened that Sunday morning was a stunning act of God that left them all speechless.

This heavy stone had been moved by an angel of the Lord, sent directly to open it up. Angels are usually in the Scripture there to deliver a message, and here the message is clear - this tomb is open because it is vacant.

His appearance shot through the darkness of that morning, he appears like lightning, stunning the guards, and the women who were there stand thunderstruck before him.

Then the angel begins to deliver the message, and in this message there are four answers, answers to questions that, just like those women, we are still asking today - answers that touch the need of all human hearts.

First, he tells them: “Don’t be afraid, because I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.”

If I may paraphrase, “I know what you are looking for.” If there is one universal truth that crosses every cultural barrier, every ethnic divide, every partisan line, every socio-economic class - it is this: we are all looking for something, and we don’t know how to find it.

The philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal famously said of this need that “there is a God-shaped void in the heart of every man.” It is a void that operates as a vacuum, endlessly pulling at anything and everything it can, looking for something to fill that void. Following the rule of supply and demand, this world tries everything it can to try to fill that void. It offers us entertainment, wealth, power, sex, and substances distributed to the masses who eat it up and try to fill the void within. But like a child’s shape puzzle, we cannot make a round object fit into a triangular hole, and we cannot fill the longing for the eternal within us with temporal objects.

What is it this morning that you are looking for? What is it that you have tried to fill the void with? What is it that this world has tried to sell you to silence the sound of the wind whistling through, as you try and fail to fill it with the wrong shapes, time and again? There is something that can fill that void. There is something that truly can satisfy. There is a way to find what you have always been looking for.

The second answer he gives to their unasked question: “He is not here. For he has risen, just as he said.”

All of us, like those women, are looking for something. All of us, like those women that morning, when we look for it in this broken and fallen world, will find only a place filled with death.

The one you seek cannot be found among the dead. Many have come and gone who thought they had the answers we seek, and all of them you will find among the dead.

Those who have declared themselves prophets have brought their revelation to the masses, but you still will only find them among the dead.

Science has given us the keys to the mysteries of the universe. It has been explained through chemistry, biology, and physics, but those will only lead us to a world that is gradually decaying and will eventually die.

Philosophy has given us a framework for pondering the great questions of the world, but in it, we will find no solution to the impending reality that we all must face death.

If I may paraphrase the angel again, “I know what you are looking for, but you won’t find it here.”

His third answer: “Come and see the place where he lay.”

What they gazed upon that morning was nothing but a pile of empty grave wrappings. What they found in that tomb, there among the dead, was nothing but the evidence of the temporal, fading away. If it were any other man, there would be a corpse there, decaying like every man who had ever come before, and all of their hopes and dreams would be dead with him.

“See for yourself.” The angel says. “He is not here.” See for yourself, he says to you today. Because what is in that tomb that morning is a pile of empty graveclothes. The signs of mortality have been eclipsed by the eternal. That which you are looking for cannot be found among the dead, because it is not of this world, it is of a different, new world, a world that was born the day that the man who was lying in that tomb got up and walked out of it.

See for yourself, there is nothing in this world that is of the same value, there is nothing in this world that has that kind of power, there is nothing in this world that will last - there is only one thing that will last, there is only one thing that will satisfy - and it is the resurrection life that is found in Jesus. Look, my friends, and see for yourself that the tomb is empty!

The fourth, and final answer: “He has risen from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; you will see him there.”

If I may, he says here: “Go and find Him.”

There is a promise given to us in the Scriptures, time and time again. It is given to those who are looking for something, those who do not know where to find it, those who realize there is this void within, that nothing in this world can possibly satisfy. The promise is this:

‘You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

In these four sentences, the angel has spoken to the women there, and by the testimony of Scripture, he has spoken to us, this message on this Easter morning, thousands of years later.

“I know what you are looking for. You won’t find it among the dead. See for yourself. Now go and find him.”

What is it you are looking for this morning? Is it faith for the first time? Have you always had this longing inside and never could find anything to satisfy it? Have you looked at everything this world can offer, every distraction, every pleasure, every success, every idea and philosophy, and still have not found it? Are you willing this morning to stare with these women into that tomb, and see that there is nothing to be found in a world filled with death?

Are you ready to go and find him?

Are you a believer, one who claims Jesus as your own, but you still feel empty inside? You have reached success, you have reached your dreams, you have accomplished all that you ever wished, but still, you feel something is missing. Go and find HIm.

Are you struggling this morning? You feel as if you’ve tried everything, you have exhausted yourself in trying to find your way out of the mess, to dig your way out of that pit that you have fallen into - but no matter how hard you try, you still feel as if you are trapped in a tomb, with no light, and no way out. There is one who has the answers you seek, there is one who can bring joy out of your pain, life out of death - so go and find him.

Draw near to him, and he will draw near to you. He knows exactly what it is you are looking for this morning - so go, and take it to him.

Amen.

If there is a single point in the Gospels that summarizes for us the mission of Jesus, what do you think it would be?

We may point to the Birth of Christ, the moment when God became Man in the form of a baby born to a virgin in a faraway land. When we look at that story, the voices of angels, the testimony of shepherds, the wonder of wise men, the spite of kings, and the quiet confidence of a young woman point us to the wonder of what is occurring.

Some would point to the baptism of Jesus, when the Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove, when the Father spoke those words of affirmation over Him, pronouncing His delight and love for His only begotten Son as He began His mission in the world.

We may also point to the cross, the day we are observing tomorrow, when the Son of God suffered under the injustice of man, bearing our wrongs and defeating the powers of death, hell, and the grave.

I would point elsewhere, though. Even though all of those things point us dramatically to the reality of what was going on in the life of Jesus, all of them declaring who He is, and what He came to do - if we wanted a picture, a moment captured in time like a polaroid freshly printed of what Jesus was doing I think we find it best illustrated in John 13.

As only John could do, the scene is set for us in verse one:

Now, before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end

The final hours have finally come. The lead-up of three years of Jesus’ ministry has culminated in the miraculous healings, the demonic exorcisms, the opposition of the religious elite, the mysterious parables, the narrow escapes, and even raising the dead - all of it has led to this moment. A moment spent in a quiet room with a small group of men, gathered to observe a yearly ritual.

The end has come. The final movement has begun. Gathered around that table are those He loved, and He would love them to the very end.

Immediately following this framing, John inserts another layer, drawing our attention to the detail in the corner of this portrait he has painted. Judas is there. Verse 2

The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray him.

Among those Jesus loved is one who does not love Him; in fact, here, in this corner of the picture painted for us, is a dark figure, the one who would betray Him. The plot was already in motion. He had already cut his deal, and now all he had to do was deliver.

Jesus knows this. He knows exactly what is going to happen. Yet still, He does something remarkable. He gets up from dinner and gathers supplies, things left for honored guests, where the servants would come and wash the dirt of the road from the feet of the guests. The disciples dared not abase themselves that far, and in this borrowed room, they chose to ignore this custom.

Jesus did not.

He wrapped Himself in a slave’s garment. He grabbed the bowl and went around that table to each of them, doing the unthinkable. He did the job of a slave and washed their feet.

He went to every single one of them, even the shadowy person in the corner of this picture, who had already made his deal with the devil.

It’s that moment where I want us to focus. It’s that point I think the polaroid should be snapped - there’s the theme we need to lock in on to get the full meaning of Jesus’ mission.

Though yes, we can certainly see the significance of a lowly birth in a borrowed crib. We can affirm the voice of the Father at His baptism. We can certainly see the immense weight on His shoulders as He hung on the cross - but it is here I think we must look to understand the mission of Jesus. There, in that room, knowing it is His last hour, knowing that the man in front of Him has already planned His destruction, He washes the feet of Judas.

There are some who have tried to argue that Judas did not receive this, but I think they are going to have a hard time working around John’s chronology. If you are curious, look around online; you will see people vehemently denying that Jesus even touched the feet of Judas, unable to agree that this ever happened, unable to come to terms with the fact of what’s in front of them.

Why is that? Because there is something in us that cannot come to terms with the kind of Savior who washes the feet of His enemies. We are fine with the idea of forgiving our enemies; we may even accept the words of loving our enemies, and we can accept the fact that Jesus may have died for them, but this only goes skin deep. We miss the heart of the matter; we miss the depth of what’s happening here.

We can forgive from a distance. We can love in theory. We can even sacrifice in generalities - but Jesus showed us how it’s done. How do you love your enemies? How do you forgive your enemies? How do you count their life as more than your own? You humble yourself, go all the way down to your knees, and you wash their feet.

I wonder about those people who deny that this happened. I wonder about those who cannot accept that Jesus would wash the feet of Judas Iscariot. What do they really think of the Gospel?

Why is it so important for us to see this moment in time? Why do I want us to stare at it? Why do I implore you to look at this moment and crystallize it in your mind? Because it is the very Gospel itself.

In washing the feet of Judas, Jesus is washing the feet of us. We are all Judas. We were His enemies. We were in hostility against God. We were participants in the chaos and confusion of this world. We were giving ourselves over to every desire that may have struck our fancy; we were the ones who valued gold above life.

Why does this picture portray the mission of Jesus? Because when He came to us, humble, taking on the form of a servant, He emptied Himself, and took up the role willingly, to serve a people who had long ago turned their backs on Him.

Maundy Thursday, the day when we recall the Last Supper, we are called to look in and see the Gospel itself at work in a small, crowded room, around a table with bitter herbs, bread, and wine, surrounded by a motley crew of men who didn’t yet understand what was happening.

We are called to look and see, as the Son of God Himself washes the feet of those He created, and in particular, washes the feet of the one who betrayed Him.

We are called to look and to see, as He looks in our eyes, and washes us free of our sins, and offers us a chance to be clean inside and out. We are turned from enemies to friends; we come from the outside and are given a seat at the table.

We who were hostile to God experience the disarming experience of God’s love.

He loved His own, to the very end, and He loves you, to the very end.

Two things in the same week, both somehow connected and disconnected. The first is the birthday of my sons, marking three years since we said hello to them both, and 35 months and one day since we said goodbye to one.

The second was someone I know dearly who lost their baby.

Though I know these are two very different, very distinct griefs, there are aspects of them that are shared. Things that you can only really understand when you’ve walked through it.

I reached out to them this morning to let them know I am around and available if they need, because I know this is a particularly lonely road to walk. In the time since we lost Theo, I’ve had this discussion with a lot of people, ones who, once they know about our loss, finally feel like there is someone who can understand theirs, if at least only slightly.

When you lose a child, I think especially when you lose a baby, many will come out and say, “I understand” or “I know what you must be going through.” They are well-intentioned, sure. But they are lying through their teeth without knowing it. This is a road that you can only understand if you have walked it.

If there is something I would say to this person above all, it would simply be this: for them to accept, grieve, and at the same time hold tight to the dream of what should have been.

When we choose to become parents, we choose a lifetime. We choose a direction that will shape the best years of our lives. We choose the costs we will pay, the hours we will spend, the plans we will make, and we choose to make them all around the little lives that we bring into this world until we kiss them goodbye and watch as they embark on the journey themselves. When we choose to become parents, we choose the rest of our lives.

When we make a decision of that magnitude, it comes with all kinds of peculiar hope, of waking dreams, of delighted planning. We see the next two decades of our lives ahead. We see the joys that are still to come, and we gladly trade the challenges that will accompany them for the value of those joys. We begin to envision it all, with every ultrasound, every report, every exam, the dream begins to build, and the process feels like this rapturous journey of anticipation, an endless welling of hope and expectation.

We have a dream of what will be.

When we lose a child, either before birth or shortly after, that dream is snatched away.

This is a disorienting thing, especially when you lose them so early. Because all you really have of that child is that dream. What you have envisioned of them and for them, what you have hoped for.

The dream of what will be has been cruelly twisted into the dream of what should have been.

How do we handle that? In my estimation, after three years of wrestling with this very thing, here is what I have come to.

We must first accept the dream. We dream this dream subconsciously. It is made up of all of the little thoughts we have, the conversations we have with the child in utero, the questions of what they will be like, what they will enjoy, and what they will look like. Who they will take after in music, books, and media. What they will prefer on the dinner table and what they will abhor at the dinner table. These tiny details that are being sorted out in the back of our mind, whether we are aware of them or not. This is the beginning of the dream. We form the person while they are being formed. We attribute personality to them before they are even here.

We must accept that this is a dream. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. That doesn’t mean it’s untrue, but we must accept that we have made this dream of what should have been.

Second, we must grieve this dream. When you lose a child, all of those things are snatched away from you. Questions will never be answered, surprises will never be had, and discoveries about this precious life will never be made. All of those moments that you anticipated are now gone. The person you dreamed of has been taken away.

Please know that the person you have dreamed of is just as real as the person who was lost. The dream was built on a person you intended to meet; the dream was specifically for that person, so they could come and show you what parts you got right and what parts you got wrong. Losing the dream of what should have been is part of losing the child it was attached to. So make time for that too. Make time to grieve the dream being lost. Make time to grieve the hopes, anticipations, expectations, surprises, and delights.

Third, hold on to the dream. Grief is memory. We cannot grieve what we do not remember, and we cannot grieve without remembering. It’s okay to grieve. That grief will be painful at first; in fact, it will be painful for a long time. There are times, though, when that grief turns into something else, and the pain of it dulls. It will still ache from time to time, like an old injury, but that ache will be bittersweet. In time, the memory will not be only pain, but it will be a fond one. Remembering the good that was in this world, even if only for a small time.

So as time passes, and it will. As the pain fades, and it will. The dream of what should have been becomes the memory of what was.

The dream was real because the person was real, and though you didn’t get to see how they were similar or different from the dream, you still have something of a memory about them, even if it is only yours. You will have those moments when you see something, and you’ll think: “I wonder if they would have liked this.” With the power of the dream, you can know. You will wonder what they would have looked like. In that dream, maybe they did.

Just because it is a dream doesn’t mean it’s not real. So when you think of this little person who has passed on, don’t be afraid to include the dream of what should have been. Hold on to it, breathe it in when you think of them. In essence, it’s them, at least to you. That whole little person who was formed in your mind before you even met. They are always a part of you, even your dreams.

Dreams do not have to die, even though they will never come true. We can grieve the loss of their reality without letting go of the fact that they were there. When you think of your little one who was gone too soon, hold on to that part of you that allowed itself to dream of who they were. Let the person who decided to be a parent hold onto the lifetime decision that you made. Don’t let go of the lifetime just because you will not see it.

The person you lost lives on with you, and you can carry them with you every day, even if only in the reality of the dream of what should have been.