hughbiquitous

The text for yesterday’s sermon came from Matthew 10:

¹⁶ ”Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. ¹⁷ Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, ¹⁸ and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. ¹⁹ When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. ²⁰ For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. ²¹ Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, ²² and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. ²³ When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

As Dan was considering the forms that persecution takes in modern America — which, historically and globally speaking, are not worthy of being considered “persecution” — I was reminded of a story Peggy Noonan recounted in her biography of Ronald Reagan.

Bill Bennett likes to tell the story of his own early days as secretary of education. Bennett was controversial. He’d been hired in part to get the agency in shape and in part because he shared Reagan’s views. But when he articulated Reagan’s views bluntly, he got into trouble…

“The first three weeks I was making all sorts of comments. And The Washington Post ran headlines that Bennett Favors Parents Over Education Establishment, Bennett Attacks Teachers’ Unions, Bennett Calls For More Homework. You know, terribly controversial positions…

“Anyway, I was in very serious trouble… we got The New York Times and The Washington Post and two other papers. And there was an editorial in each one of them calling for Ronald Reagan to ask for my resignation, saying that I was outrageous, a bully. On and on.

“And I went home. There was a cabinet meeting the next week and I came in the cabinet room and there was a folder — three folders. One of the folders said, Bennett. and I was sitting by myself and I thought some of my colleagues were inching their chairs a little away from me.

“And we finally got to the last item: Bennett. And the president — I was pretty isolated at this point and the president started to read aloud just the headlines. ‘Bennett, a Dunce in the Classroom,’ ‘Bennett, the James Watt of the Second Term,” “Bennett Must Be Fired.”

“And I was sinking farther and farther in my seat as the president read aloud. And my colleagues were drawing farther away. Reagan put the last clipping in and folded it up and he said, ‘Now, that’s Bill Bennett’s first three weeks in office. What’s wrong with the rest of you?’

“It was a great moment — it was an exhale moment too… but it was also one of the kindest and most considerate things anybody ever did for me… It was a moment I’ll never forget, and it taught me what a leader can do, and what it can mean to the morale of people to have done that.”

When the meeting was over, Bennett went to the president and said, “Boss, thank you. Thank you very, very much.”

And Reagan told him, “You know, they like to criticize me for being in show business. But one thing you learn in show business, there’s a difference between the critics and the box office. Don’t worry about the critics, just keep doing your job.”

Bennett later summed up Reagan this way: “He was a man in possession of his own soul.”

– Peggy Noonan, When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan, pp. 233-235

Some thoughts in no particular order:

1. What’s wrong with me?

When I consider what the early Christian martyrs endured, and what persecuted Christians around the world today are suffering, I feel like one of the guys who was distancing himself from Mr. Bennett. I fear I’ll be hearing a voice asking me, “What’s wrong with you?”

2. It doesn’t take much to draw fire.

Mr. Bennett took some serious heat because he proposed some comparatively trifling reforms. By contrast, Christ sends us out as an invading army, announcing the advance of the kingdom of God and the need for repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

3. Expect persecution, but do not seek it out.

Christ tells us to “Beware of men, for they will deliver you over,” which I take to mean that we should not seek out persecution. It’s not as though it worked some righteousness for us. Mr. Reagan’s counsel was oddly consistent with that when he said, “Don’t worry about the critics, just keep doing your job:” if we ought not worry about the critics, we ought not seek them out either.

On the other hand, “just doing your job” as a Christian seems like it should make you a lightning rod for opposition.

4. Encourage those being persecuted.

Mr. Bennett said the encouragement he got from the president was “one of the kindest and most considerate things anybody ever did” for him. We too can be encouraging and making common cause with those suffering for Christ around the world through ministries like Voice of the Martyrs.

5. Take encouragement from the top.

Mr. Bennett took courage from the words of the president; we need to be so drenched in Scripture that we will have ready access to the word of God dwelling in our hearts. It gives us all the courage we need when we face opposition.

6. Labor to remain God-centered.

Those who dispense persecution do so in an attempt to dislodge the martyrs from the bedrock of their confession. In yesterday’s sermon, Dan exposed what’s going on in the feeble moments of persecution we endure at work or in school: it’s a war of values that’s being waged. If we’re not on our guard, it will dislodge God’s glory from the center of our value system in favor of something else. Anything else. And nothing else is worthy. Labor to live a life that reflects His worth.

7. This is not Mission: Impossible.

Remember Mission: Impossible? The mission would be handed down with a cold warning: “If you or any of your team should be captured or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

Not so here! If Mr. Reagan stood behind Mr. Bennett, how much more will our holy God stand behind us?

As Jesus said: “When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”

Lately I’ve been listening to the biographies John Piper has presented at the annual Bethlehem Conferences for Pastors over the last twenty years or so.

So far, I have taken in the stirring stories of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Simeon, David Brainerd, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, William Cowper, J. Gresham Machen, and John Owen.

I find myself rebuked and abased for the way I have played at piety all my Christian life.

There are two features to this humiliation that give me pause:

1. These men were driven by a perception of God’s holiness so much clearer than my own that I might as well be blind.

2. The clear perception of God’s holiness of which these men were possessed created in them a horror of their own sin that is entirely unfamiliar to me.

But the horror of their own sin was not created by beholding themselves more clearly; it came about by beholding the Almighty more clearly.

And so it is with great fear and trembling that I pray for as clear a perception of his holiness as God shall condescend to grant me.

“Anyone who knows anything at all about Puritan Christianity,” J.I. Packer writes, “knows that at its best it had a vigour, a manliness, and a depth which modern evangelical piety largely lacks. This is because Puritanism was essentially an experimental faith, a religion of ‘heart-work,’ a sustained practice of seeking the face of God, in a way that our own Christianity too often is not… we cannot but conclude that whereas to the Puritans communion with God was a great thing, to evangelicals today it is a comparatively small thing. The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not. The measure of our unconcern is the little that we say about it.”

Dr. Packer, however, does not have little to say on the matter. Here is a 1,000-word excerpt from his book, A Quest for Godliness, that calls for lengthy quotation: (more…)

Christians who get to know God well do not, as a rule, spend a huge amount of time on [theodicy]… Not long ago, I was preaching through Nehemiah. And as I was preaching through Nehemiah I came to the great confession in Nehemiah [9], and what struck me about it, something I should have realized long before, it’s the same in Ezra 9 and elsewhere, these great confessions, what struck me is that all the things that the Israelites had suffered, all that they had endured, all that they had undergone, was not bringing them back to God and saying, “Oh God, I wish you’d explain that to us; I know we were pretty bad, but you know, the other nations were even worse and God, the theodicy here is really quite difficult, would you explain to me the mysteries of providence?” I know there’s some passages in the Bible that talk about those sorts of things. But when the people of God are right on the edge of reformation and revival, that is simply not how they think. Rather, there is massive corporate contrition. “We have sinned. Our fathers have sinned. We deserve all that you have sent us. O Lord, will you not have mercy upon us?” Isn’t that the case? Again and again and again in Scripture? Both voices are found in Scripture! But when you are on the edge of reformation and revival, it’s not theodicy that is everybody’s concern. It’s contrition. One of the things that strikes me about contemporary Western evangelicalism is that we are producing scores and scores of books on theodicy. I’ve written one of them, I know. And almost nothing on contrition. May God have mercy on us. Let us pray.

– D.A. Carson, Being Prepared for Suffering and Evil, Part 2

Dan Phillips imagines a picture of true repentance:

I saw two men standing before God. God says to both: “Go your own way.”

The first man leaps to his feet with a surprised, happy shout. “All right!” he cries. “Now that is exactly what I wanted to hear!” He dances a gleeful little victory-dance, then shoots out of God’s presence faster than Satan heading off to do Job misery. You can hear his joyous laughter and whoops of delight fading in the distance.

But at the very same moment, the second man also leaps up. “Oh, dear God, no! No, God, no—anything but that! Have mercy, Lord! Do anything, but don’t leave me to myself!”

…The rebel’s greatest fear is that he would be denied the desires of his heart. The saint’s is that he would be abandoned to his.

HT: Tim Ake