“…’Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’”
-Mark 10:47-48-

I read something two days ago which I thought was just fascinating.  Author/pastor/stud Joel Beeke, in his small book Striving Against Satan, talks about a sermon that Jonathan Edwards had once preached on Psalm 25:11 which says, “For your name’s sake, O LORD, pardon my guilt, for it is great.”  Here’s what he had to say about this particular sermon:

Edwards said we can understand David’s cry for pardon only if we realize that David expected forgiveness solely because of God’s name.  David made the greatness of his own sins a ground to plead for forgiveness.  Edwards concludes that just as a beggar begging for bread pleads the greatness of his poverty, so a man in spiritual distress calls for pity from God.  No more ‘suitable plea can be argued than the extremity of his case’, Edwards says.

I think everyone can relate to the beggar Edwards talks about.  When a person needs money, part of their argument for helping them out is relating to you just how desperately they need the money.  It’s like in college when you fail a test.  Instead of just accepting it, most likely you’re going to corner your professor after class and tell her how you haven’t been able to study this week because you’ve had five other tests this week, and your long distance high school boyfriend who you swore you’d always be with broke up with you via text, rendering you physically incapable of studying, and oh my gosh don’t even get you started on what Kim Kardashian tweeted, lol.

Isn’t it funny, though, how when it comes to our relationship with God that thinking is often reversed?  Whereas I might ask a friend to help me move because I have a short time to do it and have too much stuff to move by myself, when it comes to my exponentially greater need for a holy and just God to show me mercy because of my sin, I balk.  In this case, my desperate need becomes the reason I hide from God.  Look how terrible of a person I am.  Why would God listen to me?

Whether we express the greatness of our need or minimize it I believe depends in large part on our view of the person we’re expressing it to.  This is why Beeke brings up Edwards’ sermon in a section of his book where he talks about how Satan tries to get believers to think of God as an unnapeasable taskmaster.  The beggar who “pleads the greatness of his poverty” believes that the person he’s appealing to might possess the goodness to help him.  But when our sin (and thus our need for mercy) drives us away from God out of guilt, he’s no longer the God “who justifies the ungodly” (Rom.4:5) and who “does not deal with us according to our sins.” (Psa.103:10)  He’s the God who’s chronically angry at you for how much you screw up.  He’s the God who will only welcome you based on your performance.  But for the child of God, that’s not your Father.

This is a great example of how doctrine (how we view God) very practically effects practical living.  If you have a faulty theology about God’s mercy and justification, you’ll be miserable.  Is your view of God accurate?  As his child, he loves you and is pleased with you.  You will find mercy when you come to him and confess your sins, so feeling unworthy is never an excuse to avoid him.  Let the presence of sin in your life lead to a presence of dependence and communion with him.  Get begging.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
-1 John 1:9-

“‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’”
-Luke 11:13-

“‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’”
-Luke 6:36

The mercy that Jesus calls us to is not isolated acts of mercy, but “to a merciful disposition of heart, to lovingkindness.” (Dave Harvey, When Sinners Say ‘I Do’).  Kindness is a posture.

God’s kindness leads to repentance (Rom.2:4), meaning he is kind toward us before we ever repent of our sins (Rom.5:8).  In all our relationships, be it our spouse or other friends, we sow kindness with every little act of love and grace, regardless if it’s “deserved” or not.  As Dave Harvey writes, kindness is not a personality trait but rather a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal.5:22; Col.3:12).  Thus, kindness in our relationships (and by implication, their flourishing) is dependent on both parties growing more desperately dependent on the God who alone can grow that fruit in them (John 15:4-5).  Mercy counter-attacks the poison of bitterness.

“‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.’”
-John 15:16

This passage from an old dead guy named Charles Bridges was on my mind today, and I felt it was worth sharing.  With all the talk and debate over the last several years about how, as Christians, we are to relevant in a post-modern world (beer, UFC, and vinyl records for the glory of God, baby!), it was refreshing to read this from a guy writing in the first half of the 19th century:

The importance of studying urbanity of behaviour in our intercourse with the world, is sometimes pleaded as an excuse for avoiding the direct offense of the cross.  But let it be remembered, that God never honours a compromising spirit…

‘Doubtless’ (as Archbishop Secker reminds us)- ‘we should endeavour to make religion agreeable; but not to make ourselves agreeable by leading our company to forget religion.’

Since “religion” is a four-letter word these days, just substitute the word “gospel” for it in that quote.  The point is made though: some attempts to make the gospel relevant have the exact opposite effect. It is God’s making us different from the world that makes us attractive to the world.  If your message to non-believers focuses more on how similar you are to them rather than on how different you are, you’re conforming to the world and hindering your effectiveness.  Remember: no matter how cool you are, you still believe that a dead man rose again.  God spreads his kingdom through preaching things that the world will find ridiculous (1 Cor.1:23).

The Command

“‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Abide in my love.’”
-John 15:9

The “How”

“‘If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.’”
-v.10

The Result

“‘These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.’”
-v.11

This is an incredible statement.  We are to live in the love Jesus has for us, which is patterned after the Father’s love for Jesus.  People shine when they know they’re loved.  And we will shine when we live in that crazy, unfathomable love that Jesus has for us because our joy will be full (see also Psalm 16:11).  We will experience the joy of that love only by obeying Jesus’ commandments.  Obedient Christians are joyful Christians.

“…obedience is the key to abiding…The relationship between the Father and the Son is again the paradigm for the relationship between the Son and the believer.  The ideas is not that we can withdraw from the circle of God’s love by being disobedient.  God does not stop loving his disobedient children (cf. Luke 15:11-24).  It is rather that we can withdraw from the enjoyment and blessings of His love.  John stressed Jesus’ obedience to His Father in this Gospel…Now Jesus called His disciples to follow His example.”
-Tom Constable

“…my eyes are not raised too high…”
-Psalm 131:1

“It…goes with the territory that we are opinionated, routinely judging and belittling others: haughty eyes.  Pride is not just about ME.  It’s also about you.  I must look down on you in some way.  Our absorption in judgmental opinions runs very deep.  Pride says, ‘I’m right in myself.’  Haughty eyes say, ‘I’m right compared to you.’  Have you noticed that even people who feel lousy about themselves are judgmental toward others?  When you feel inferior to others, you don’t respect them or treat them with mercy.  Instead, you envy, hate, grumble, and criticize.  Even self-belittling tendencies- ‘low self-esteem,’ self-pity, self-hatred, timidity, fears of failure and rejection- fundamentally express pride failing, pride intimidated, and pride despairing.  Such pride, even when much battered, still finds someone else to look down on.

A friend of mine once vividly described this problem.  She said that she had almost no true peers, people with whom she related eye-to-eye.  Her relationships were not characterized by generosity, candor, or trust.  There were a few ‘pedestal people’ in her life, people she thought could do no wrong.  There were many, many ‘pit people’ in her life, people she looked down on for one reason or another.  The two categories were connected only by an elevator shaft!  A person could fall off the pedestal and end up in the pit.  She had a long history of disappointment in every relationship.  Unsurprisingly, she was a woman with a lot of inner noise: fretful, self-absorbed, easily offended, depressed, competitive.  But as she grew in Christ, she grew in composure.  As she learned to live in the way of peace, lo and behold, she began to discover peers and to build friendships.”

-David Powlison

But it is not only that we are to say no to self, which is what denying self is all about.  We are also to say yes to God, which is what taking up the cross involves.  Some speak of cross-bearing as if it means enduring the inevitable.  But that is not it at all.  There are all kinds of things that cannot be avoided: a physical handicap, a deficient academic background, a drunken husband, a profligate wife.  People sometimes refer to such inevitable things as “my cross,” but they are not crosses.  They are just inescapable limitations, trials.  Real crosses involve the will.  They mean saying yes to something for Jesus’ sake.

Cross-bearing involves prayer and Bible study.  These take time and must be chosen and pursued, rather than other pastimes that we might humanly prefer.

Cross-bearing involves the items Jesus listed in Matthew 25:31-46- feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, receiving the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the one who is in prison.  These are not easy things to do.  They involve denying oneself time, money, and convenience.  At times these efforts seem utterly fruitless, because the gifts are abused, and the one giving them is slighted even by the one he helps.  We are to continue in this anyway.  Doing so is saying yes to Jesus.  

Cross-bearing involves witnessing.  It means putting oneself out for the sake of the ones God sends into our lives.

Essentially, cross-bearing means accepting whatever God has given us or made us and then offering it back to Him, which is “your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1, KJV).  That phrase from Romans 12 is in a passage that describes us as God’s priests making sacrifices that are “holy and pleasing” to Him.  What is it that priests offer?  They offer only what they have first received.  They take the gifts of the worshiper and then offer them up.  You and I are in that position.  The gifts we receive are from God.  We take these gifts- whatever they may be- and then offer them up to God with thanksgiving.  

-from Christ’s Call to Discipleship by James Montgomery Boice

Boo-yah.

I thought this was powerful.  So much so that I wrote “powerful” in the margins of the book it was in so that people who flipped through it would know I meant business.  It comes from Thomas Brooks.  In it, he’s describing how to fight Satan when he attempts to make sin look appealing and desirable.  Here’s the fourth “remedy” he offers against that tactic, one which does an incredible job showing just how horrible sin is as well as doing a great job of convicting me about how lightly I often treat it:

Seriously to consider, That even those very sins that Satan paints, and puts new names and colours upon, cost the best blood, the noblest blood, the life-blood, the heart-blood of the Lord Jesus. That Christ should come from the eternal bosom of his Father to a region of sorrow and death;
that God should be manifested in the flesh, the Creator made a creature;
that he that was clothed with glory should be wrapped with rags of flesh;
he that filled heaven and earth with his glory should be cradled in a manger;
that the power of God should fly from weak man, the God of Israel into Egypt;
that the God of the law should be subject to the law, the God of the circumcision circumcised, the God that made the heavens working at Joseph’s homely trade;
that he that binds the devils in chains should be tempted; that he whose is the world, and the fullness thereof, should hunger and thirst;
that the God of strength should be weary, the Judge of all flesh condemned, the God of life put to death;
that he that is one with his Father should cry out of misery, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt.27.46);
that he that had the keys of hell and death at his girdle should lie imprisoned in the sepulchre of another, having in his lifetime nowhere to lay his head nor after death to lay his body;
that the head, before which the angels do cast down their crowns, should be crowned with thorns, and those eyes, purer than the sun, put out by the darkness of death;
those ears, which hear nothing but hallelujahs of saints and angels, to hear the blasphemies of the multitude;
that face, that was fairer than the sons of men, to be spit on by those beastly wretched Jews;
that mouth and tongue, that spake as never man spake, accused for blasphemy;
those hands, that freely swayed the sceptre of heaven, nailed to the cross;
those feet, ‘like unto fine brass,’ nailed to the cross for man’s sins; each sense annoyed:
his feeling or touching, with a spear and nails;
his smell, with stinking flavour, being crucified about Golgotha, the place of skulls;
his taste, with vinegar and gall;
his hearing, with reproaches, and sight of his mother and disciples bemoaning him;
his soul, comfortless and forsaken;
and all this for those very sins that Satan paints and puts fine colours upon!
Oh! how should the consideration of this stir up the soul against it, and work the soul to fly from it, and to use all holy means whereby sin may be subdued and destroyed.

After Julius Caesar was murdered, Antonius brought forth his coat, all bloody and cut, and laid it before the people, saying, ‘Look, here you have the emperor’s coast thus bloody and torn’: whereupon the people were presently in an uproar, and cried out to slay those murderers; and they took their tables and stools that were in the place, and set them on fire, and ran to the houses of them that had slain Caesar, and burnt them.  So that when we consider that sin hath slain our Lord Jesus, ah, how should it provoke our hearts to be revenged on sin, that hath murdered the Lord of glory, and hath done that mischief that all the devils in hell could never have done?
It was good counsel one gave, ‘Never let go out of your minds the thoughts of a crucified Christ.’  Let these be meat and drink unto you; let them be your sweetness and consolation, your honey and your desire, your reading and your meditation, your life, death, and resurrection.

-Thomas Brooks
from Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices

“I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe…”
-Ephesians 1:16-19

Through Scripture, God has been crazy-encouraging me over the past months and year.  As I’ve started to see increasing victories over sin in my life, I’ve had an increasing desire in my heart to share with others what I’m learning about how to mortify sin so that they too might experience victory and joy.  Through my church I lead a community group consisting of myself and three other guys.  They’re a pretty obvious outlet for me to impart some of what God has been sharing me, and I have the burden to do so.  Very recently though, that burden became almost a discouragement. I began to feel completely insufficient to reproduce in their hearts the comfort that God has been producing in mine through Scripture.  “What can I do to make sure they get it? How can I help them to understand everything they have in you?”

The answer was pretty obvious and liberating: I can’t do anything.  What was even more liberating was to remember that Paul, the Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson of Christianity, felt this same burden in his letters to those whom he wrote to.  He felt the burden to help them grow.  He could “water” them, but only God could give the growth.  His powerlessness to produce growth in believers’ lives forced him to focus on the one who could give that growth, hence prayers like the one in Ephesians 1 listed above.

Whether we’re talking about believers or non-believers, all we can do for them (all we were ever meant to do for them) is to preach the Gospel faithfully.  We aren’t meant to make them believe it.  We aren’t meant to make them take truths into their hearts that would free them from so many of sin’s lies.  Only God can grant the spiritual wisdom and insight needed for people to grow in their knowledge of him (not just knowledge about him).  Only God can flood their hearts with light so that they can understand the hope he’s given to believers.  Only God can help them understand the depth of the power he has worked in believers by bringing them to spiritual life, which is the very same power that rose Christ’s body from the grave.  In other words, only God can help believers to understand just how much of a miracle it is for them to be saved.  And only God can truly help believers appreciate everything he’s given to them in bringing them to salvation.

It is right for Christian workers to feel a deep burden for those they minister to (see 2 Corinthians 11:28).  But it’s also pretty nice to know that the growth we desire to see in others’ lives is not something we can produce.  That relieves a lot of undue pressure and leaves us only with the pressure of doing things we can control: preach the Gospel to them, comfort them, teach them, rebuke them, encourage them, and pray for them.  How they receive this stuff is outside our control.  Taking on God’s responsibilities will only burn a Christian out.  Even our own responsibilities will wear us out, but we can rest knowing that by pursuing God’s agenda in our lives and the lives of others, our work will never be in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)  There is no failure in preaching the Gospel.  The only failure is in failing to do so.  So do your part and preach, and then pray and wait for God to do his.

(See also Paul Tripp’s article Parenting: The Joyful Impossibility for similar thoughts from a different perspective.)