The Gospel Coalition

“When I go to bed, the devil is always waiting for me.  When he begins to plague me, I give him this answer: ‘Devil, I must sleep.  That’s God’s command — work by day, sleep by night.  So go away.’  If that doesn’t work and he brings out a catalog of sins, I say, ‘Yes, old fellow, I know all about it.  And I know some more you have overlooked.  Here are a few extra.  Put them down.’  If he still won’t quit and presses me hard and accuses me as a sinner, I scorn him and say, ‘St. Satan, pray for me.  Of course, you have never done anything wrong in your life.  You alone are holy.  Go to God and get grace for yourself.  If you want to get me all straightened out, I say, Physician, heal thyself.’”

Martin Luther, quoted in Roland Bainton, Here I Stand (New York, 1950), page 362.

“Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?  The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C.  Presumably someone is minding the ship, correcting the course, avoiding icebergs and shoals, fueling the engines, watching the radar screen, noting weather reports radioed in from shore.  No one would dream of asking the tourists to do these things. . . . The wind seems to be picking up.

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?  The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.  For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York, 1982), pages 52-53.

“What is the chief end of preaching?  I like to think it is this.  It is to give men and women a sense of God and His presence.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, quoted in John Woodbridge, editor, More Than Conquerors (Chicago, 1992), page 209.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  Proverbs 1:7

Why the fear of the Lord?  Because he is not safe, but he is good.  Therefore, we long to be “fully pleasing to him” (Colossians 1:10).  Not moderately pleasing.  Fully pleasing, with “that affectionate reverence by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law,” according to Charles Bridges, Proverbs (Edinburgh, 1987), pages 3-4.  An atheist observer of Christians recently described what she saw in them: “. . . a constant internal pat-down of conscience.”

The fear of the Lord takes us way beyond technical compliance with biblical law.  It’s possible to obey the Ten Commandments while resenting them deep inside.  Fools who despise wisdom and instruction might also go along with it, for their own reasons.  Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (New York, 1990), page 22: “There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.”

But the fear of the Lord creates a heart of total openness: “Father, I am yours.  How can I actively, fully please you right now?”

“It is a growing conviction of mine that no parish can fulfill its true function unless there is at the very center of its leadership life a small community of quietly fanatic, changed and truly converted Christians.  The trouble with most parishes is that nobody, including the pastor, is really greatly changed. . . .

We do not want ordinary men.  Ordinary men cannot win the brutally pagan life of a city like New York for Christ.  We want quiet fanatics.”

John Heuss, Our Christian Vocation (Greenwish, 1955), pages 15-16.

“Jesus was transfigured, the passive form of the verb serving to emphasize that what he experienced was something granted to him by God the Father. . . . The mysterious change was not from without, as though some giant spotlight became focused on him, but from within.  His countenance was affected first, then his garments. . . . What appeared to the sight of men as light expressed the inward perfection that could be described in terms of fullness of grace and truth.  We read that Satan tries to transform himself into an angel of light, but there is no correspondence between the outward guise he assumes for the purpose of beguiling the unwary and the inner diabolical reality.”

Everett F. Harrison, A Short Life of Christ (Grand Rapids, 1968), pages 154-155.

On the day he died in 2007, this was my dad’s final message to me. The particular relevance of it is narrated here.

“Seek him!  Seek him always.  But go beyond seeking him; expect him.  Do you expect anything to happen when you get up to preach in a pulpit?  Or do you just say to yourself, ‘Well, I have prepared my address, I am going to give them this address; some of them will appreciate it and some will not’?  Are you expecting it to be the turning point in someone’s life?  Are you expecting anyone to have a climactic experience?  This is what preaching is meant to do.  This is what you find in the Bible and in the subsequent history of the church.

Seek this power, expect this power, yearn for this power.  And when the power comes, yield to him.  Do not resist.  Forget all about your sermon if necessary.  Let him loose you, let him manifest his power in you and through you. . . . This unction, this anointing, is the supreme thing.  Seek it until you have it; be content with nothing less.  Go on until you can say, ‘My preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.’  He is still able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think.”

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids, 1971), page 325.

“Take.” Matthew 26:26

“Nobody at the table said, ‘Lord, I dare not take.’ But when Jesus said, ‘Take,’ they took. Nobody said, though perhaps everybody felt, ‘I am not worthy to take,’ but as Jesus said, ‘Take,’ they took. . . . .

And I do not suppose that the Master stood holding that piece of bread to Peter for half an hour. He said, ‘Take,’ and Peter took it. ‘Take,’ he said to John, and John took it. ‘Take,’ he said to Philip, and Philip took it at once. . . .

I anticipate that someone will say, ‘Am I then to have Jesus Christ by only taking him?’ Just so. Do you need a Savior? There he is. Take him. Do you desire to be delivered from the power of sin? He can deliver you. Take him to do it. Do you desire to lead a holy, godly life? Here is One who can wash you and enable you to live thus. Take him.

He is as free as the air. You have no more to pay for Christ than you have to pay for the next breath that goes into your lungs. Take him in. Take him in. That is all you have to do.”

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1950), I:363, language slightly updated.

“Let the wise hear and increase in learning.”  Proverbs 1:5

The opening paragraph of Proverbs states the purposes of the book.  Those purposes address both a beginner (“the simple . . . the youth”) and a veteran (“the wise”).  To quote Bridges, Proverbs, page 2: “A truly wise man is one, not who has attained, but who knows that he has not attained and is pressing onward to perfection.”  He cites Paul: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12).

Principle: The further we advance in Christ, the more we marvel at his untapped riches.

Corollary: The more we feel people need our opinions, the more obvious it is they don’t.

Another corollary: The more we feel we have to learn, the more we might have to offer.

So, how to become a sage?  “Let the wise hear . . . .”