The God Who Requires Prayers He Does Not Need

Scripture text: Genesis 20

There are many things in this story that are worthy of attention, but I am focusing on just one thing, the prayer of Abraham for Abimelek. Why was that prayer prayed? Why was it commanded? What can it teach us about prayer when compared to other Bible passages?

Abraham was an immigrant in an area that he thought was dangerous. He did not trust the locals. He had a beautiful wife, Sarah, and he felt he knew what happened to beautiful women in that area. They were taken into the king’s harem. And if that beautiful woman was married - especially to a friendless immigrant - that was no obstacle. They would just kill the husband and cart the woman away.

That is what Abraham was afraid would happen to him and Sarah. Was Abraham right to be suspicious of King Abimelek in thinking Abimelek capable of murdering him just to get at his pretty wife? Maybe. After all that is pretty much what King David did a thousand years later – he killed a guy to get at his wife. And David was a loyal servant of the Lord God of Israel. Abimelek was a pagan with no connection to God that we know of. Abraham said in verse 11, “I knew there was no fear of God in this place.”

The rest of the story shows that Abraham was probably wrong in his cynical appraisal of King Abimelek. What little information we have in this chapter suggests that Abimelek was a man of integrity relative to his time and culture. But Abraham did not know that. And that is why I am willing to cut Abraham some slack rather than condemn him as a cowardly fiend who trafficked his wife in order to protect his own hide. I have heard Abraham denounced like that by many Christian teachers. It may be a valid criticism of him. But it is also possible that Abraham reasoned like this, saying to his wife:

“Sarah, one way or another you’re going into Abimelek’s harem. I can’t stop it. But this can happen one of two ways. With me dead and unable to help you in the future, or with me still alive hanging around the outskirts, waiting for an opportunity to spring you so we can resume our life together. If you would tell people you’re my sister, I can live for another day and eventually figure out a way to rescue you from the harem.” That is possible. I don’t know. What I do know is that Abraham prayed a prayer in this story that was answered, and that is what I want to highlight.

King Abimelek took Sarah into his harem. As a result, God afflicted Abimelek’s household with barrenness. The women were unable to have children. Then God spoke to Abimelek very bluntly. God said to him, “You’re a dead man, because you have taken a married woman into your harem.”

Abimelek protested his innocence. He said, “I didn’t know she was married. Her husband lied to me. He said they were brother and sister. I’m innocent!”

Notice then what God did not say in response. He did not say, “Oh. You didn’t know? I’m sorry. My bad. Now that I am better informed, I’ll fix the situation. That sure was a close one, wasn’t it, Abimelek? Good thing you told me. I’m so glad I didn’t act rashly and kill you on the spot.”

No, Abimelek did not tell God anything he did not already know. That theme will come up again. God said, “I know you’re innocent. That’s why I did not let you touch her, just in case you were wondering why there was always some obstacle whenever you wanted to consummate the relationship with her. That was me acting behind the scenes to protect both of you. Now, return the man’s wife.”

It would seem that things could wrap up nicely right there. But they don’t. God had one more item on the agenda. He said to Abimelek, “Abraham will pray for you, and you will live.”

If I were Abimelek, and if I dared to speak back to the Almighty, I might say, “God, no disrespect, I’m not complaining, don’t get mad – but I don’t understand. Why does Abraham have to pray for me? You already know the situation. You know that I’m innocent. And I am giving Sarah back, I’m not touching her. I’m even throwing in 1,000 shekels and telling Abraham he can live anywhere he wants in my territory. Isn’t that enough? Why do you want Abraham’s prayer in addition to all that? He can’t tell you anything I haven’t already told you. And I’m more honest than he is. You don’t need that liar telling you what to do.”

One thing I cannot do is give God’s precise answer to those hypothetical questions. I don’t want to put words in God’s mouth.

But what I can do is see from Scripture that God requires prayers. Prayers he does not need. Prayers that don’t provide him with information he does not already have. Prayers that don’t counsel him so he’ll have a better idea what to do. He already knows the right thing to do. But for some reason, rather than acting directly to restore Abimelek’s household to natural fecundity, God said, “I want Abraham to pray for that. Then I will respond to his prayer.” To complete his action, God insisted on the prayer of a weak, sinful, foolish mortal.

That is not the only time this happens in the Bible. We see it again in Job chapter 42. Job suffers horribly and three of his not-so-helpful friends blame him for it. Their names are Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. Starting at Job 42:7 God says to Eliphaz, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.

In that text, God shows mercy to Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. They have committed the grave sin of misrepresenting God. They said things about God that were not true. May I say parenthetically that the possibility of my saying untrue things about God makes me tremble. And that is why for every sermon that I prepare I pray that God would help me say what is right and true and helpful. And if I say anything that is wrong or displeasing to him, that he would give you the congregation the grace to forget that and let it slip quickly from your minds. God forbid that I, standing here as God’s representative, should misrepresent him and through that do damage to your souls.

Sometimes I have heard God’s representatives ask people to imagine what God would say to them if he were present and spoke to them audibly. Almost always it is something nice and reassuring about his love and fondness of them. I don’t think I have ever heard a preacher tell his congregants to imagine God saying to them what he said to Eliphaz, “I am angry with you.” I wonder what went through Eliphaz’s mind when God said, “I am angry with you and your friends.” Eliphaz and the two others had been arguing with Job, trying to get him to see the light and repent of his sins. But then God says to him, “Job was right and you’re wrong. I’m mad at you.”

But thanks be to God - even in his righteous anger there is mercy. Of course to receive that mercy we must do what he says. God tells Eliphaz, “Take 7 bulls and 7 rams and go to Job. Offer sacrifices.” I imagine they probably also had to say something like, “Job, I’m sorry.”

But even that is not all. God isn’t done. He says, Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer. Once again God requires a prayer to seal the action. Just like in the Abimelek story. God required a prayer that did not inform him, advise him or change his mind. But God still wanted it. He commanded it even. Then upon hearing those prayers, he acted upon his promise to restore Abimelek’s household and rescind his wrath upon Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.

God still requires prayers he does not need. When I was about 10 years old, I was in the backseat of the car that my dad was driving. Mom was next to him. Suddenly, the car engine caught fire. Flames were shooting out from the under the hood. My dad pulled over immediately. He popped the hood and did his best to put out the fire, slapping at the flames with a rag. Some of the flames skipped out onto the ground and burned up some of the oil or gas on the pavement. Some of that flame singed hairs off my dad’s legs but his pants didn’t catch fire and his flesh did not burn. The fire died down. Dad put it out, and we were safe. Damaged car but we were ok.

Things got interesting the next day. My aunt Ethel, Ethel Burns – yes her last name was “Burns,” ironically enough, called my mother, her sister, and said, “Was your family in any danger last night around 7 o’clock?” My mom told her about the car fire and Ethel said, “It was right around that time that I knew I had to pray for you. The feeling was so strong that I had to stop what I was doing and go off by myself to the other room to pray for the Lundquist family.”

Here’s my question. Did Aunt Ethel need to alert God that our family was in danger? “Wake up, God, the Lundquists need your help!” Of course not. God was the one who alerted her to pray. He knew the situation, he knows everything. But rather than intervening directly, it pleased God to tap my Aunt Ethel on the shoulder and move her to pray for our protection. Then, in response to that prayer, he acted to protect us.

Why do you suppose God requires these prayers that clearly he does not need? I believe it is worth thinking about that question because it seems to me that some habits of prayer or traditions of prayer reflect a poor understanding of God and how we relate to him. Sometimes our prayers are more pagan than Christian. Jesus warned us not to pray like the pagans. In Matthew 6:7 he said, "When you pray, do not keep babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words."

When we pray, we are not telling God something he does not know. 1 John 3:20 says God knows all things. When we pray, we are not counseling God, we’re not offering him advice so he’ll do the right thing. He is wiser than we. His thoughts are above our thoughts. Paul writes, “Oh the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

And when we pray, we are not rousing God from his lethargy or cajoling him or pressuring him to do what we want through sheer force of will and a show of numbers. That seemed to be the attitude of the pagan prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. Four hundred of them prayed to Baal for hours. They shouted loudly. They cut themselves with swords and spears to get Baal’s attention. Elijah made fun of them saying “Shout louder!... Maybe he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”

But when God responded favorably to Abraham, and Job, and Elijah, and Aunt Ethel, it was just one person praying one short prayer.

Suppose you have a prayer request. Something dear to your heart. You have 10 people agree to pray for that. Is that enough or would you like to get 100 people to pray for it? Why stop at a 100 - a thousand would be even better! Go on social media and get perhaps many thousands more.

Be careful. It is good to pray to God, it is good for thousands of people to pray to God. But I am urging Christians to consider the question “Why? Why do you want many people praying repeated prayers – the same prayer for the same thing over and over again?” Because if the motivation is, “Well prayer is power, and 10 people praying – that’s not enough oomph. It’s like signing a petition drive. If the governor of Illinois receives a petition with 100 signatures he can ignore that. But if it has 500,000 signatures, then he’ll sit up and take notice. That’ll get his attention. We’ve got to get God’s attention and let him know we’re serious.”

I’m sorry, that is pagan. That is a sub-Christian view of God.

When the Apostle Paul had a thorn in the flesh - whatever that was - he prayed 3 times for God to take it away. Not hundreds of times. Three times. And when God said, “My grace is sufficient for you,” Paul did not say, “Well I’ll just have to contact the churches to put me on their prayer lists and generate more prayer power to push God past his reluctance so he’ll give me what I need.”

Prayer is not about us getting what we want but about God getting what he wants. I don’t think Abraham wanted to pray for Abimelek and his family. That wasn’t the top item on Abraham’s prayer list. But that is what God wanted. I don’t think Job wanted to pray for his friends’ forgiveness given how badly they had treated him. But that is what God wanted him to pray. If we were to look at Job’s prayer request list, I imagine it would include things like relief from painful skin boils, restoration of lost property, a more sympathetic wife. (She had told him to curse God and die.) Maybe God wanted him to pray for those things too, I don’t know. I do know that God wanted him to pray for his mean-spirited friends. That’s in the Bible. The best prayers are the ones that God tells us to pray, the prayers that God inspires within us.

There is a wonderful verse, Ephesians 5:10, that I wish would receive more attention. It says, “Find out what pleases the Lord.” Find out what pleases the Lord. You already know what pleases you. You know what you want. But that is not what prayer is about. Prayer is about what pleases the Lord. Find out what God wants. Ask him that. Say, “God, what do you want me to pray for?” Search the Scriptures, and you will see repeated descriptions of what God wants - the will of God, the desire of God - and those are always pretty safe things to pray for.

For example 1 Thessalonians 4:3 says it is the will of God that you be holy and abstain from sexual immorality. So if I pray for holiness I know I’m praying for something God wants. Or if I pray for people to repent and be saved. 2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Or if I deliberately pray for my enemies. Jesus said, "Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." (Luke 6:28). Or if I pray for God to send out missionaries. Jesus said "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest." (Matthew 9:38)

Or if I pray the Lord’s Prayer. The disciples of Jesus said, “Teach us to pray,” and Jesus said “Pray this.”

I don’t know in advance if the things that I want are the same things that God wants. I don’t know how well those things align or overlap with each other. But I do know from Scripture that God requires prayers for the things that he wants, and that it is my duty as a pray-er to find those things out to the degree that I can, and to pray those prayers.

The question that I posed from the beginning still remains though. Why would an all-powerful, all-wise God call forth the prayers of weak, sinful, foolish mortals like us? Aren’t those prayers superfluous? What do they accomplish? I confess to you that one of my sinful temptations is to say to God, “God, you know what to do – just do it. I trust you, you don’t need my input.”

That’s disobedience masquerading as faith. God demands our input. But why?

I can think of 3 quick reasons for what it’s worth. One is just a simple matter of human reconciliation. Imagine Abimelek summoning Abraham. I suppose he’d like to give Abraham a piece of his mind. “You dirty liar. You know what you put me and my family through? Take your ‘sister’ and get out of here!” Instead Abimelek has to say, “Abraham, your God appeared to me. I need you to pray for me. Please.” They bow their heads together and Abraham prays, and there is a restoration through forgiveness and trust that would not have occurred without that prayer.

Similarly, I think of Eliphaz, shaking in his boots, pale as a ghost. He goes to Job with a bunch of sacrifices and says, “Job, I’m sorry. Look, God is mad at me. Could you pray for me?” Job is a righteous man, and he prays for Eliphaz and others. They are forgiven, and friendship is restored.

More than 40 years ago Pastor E. V. Hill from Watts Los Angeles told a group of us college students that there was a woman in his church who was antagonistic toward him, and made life difficult for him with her complaints. He said, “The feeling was mutual.” But one day she approached him and said that in her woman’s Bible study group they agreed to pray for the staff members of the church. They put the names of church leaders on slips of paper and put them in a hat, and when it was her turn she drew out the name E. V. Hill. She thought, Rats. I don’t want to pray for him. But later she told him, “Now that I have been praying for you, I don’t hate you anymore.” And he said, “Praise God for that! I guess I’ll have to try it on you.”

A second possible reason why God requires prayer for things he can do all by himself. He wants to partner with us, fellowship with us. This is a stunning feature of his character that prompted the Psalmist to ask, “What is man that thou art mindful of him, the son of man that thou visitest him?” Who are we that God should stoop down to our level and care about us and even involve us in his work?

It is one of the many indications of his love for us that he includes us in his work. We can get some idea of this in the way that we relate to our own children if we love them. A good father has his 5-year-old help him wash the dishes or rake the leaves even though the little boy’s clumsiness contributes little of value and the father could actually get the work done more efficiently if he worked alone. But efficiency is not the end goal. Love is. 1 Timothy 1:5: “The goal of this commandment is love from a pure heart.”

Perhaps my proudest moment as a father came when my son Ben was in 6th grade. His teacher divided the 24 students into 6 groups for group projects. She selected her 6 best students as leaders of the groups, and Ben was one of those, and she had the rest count off – 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc to be divided into the different groups. By luck of the draw Ben wound up with the 3 weakest students in class, including two special needs students who had been mainstreamed into the regular curriculum. The teacher told us that her other leading students would have complained about those assigned partners or just done the whole project themselves without bothering to involve them. But she said, “Ben immediately sized up the situation and gave to these weaker students tasks that they could handle so that they could contribute to the project and be a part of it.” And then she said, “I knew Ben had a good mind. But that’s when I found out he also had a good heart.”

Well in this case God is the one who has a good heart, and we are the hapless, confused special needs students to whom he stoops and says, “I have a job for you. I want to include you. And you need to do it this in order for the project to get done. Your contribution is required. Your job is to pray.”

One last reason why God wants us to pray prayers he does not really need. Thanksgiving. It is good to give thanks. Psalm 92:1 says, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to your name, O Most High.”

When we pray for something and God answers, we give thanks – or at least we should. It’s a horrible selfish tragedy if we pray for something and God grants it and then we don’t even bother to say thank you. We see that in the story of the 10 lepers Jesus healed in Luke 17. Only one of the 10 praised God and returned to Jesus to give thanks.

Answered prayer is a cause for rejoicing and thanksgiving. So God requires prayers that he wants to answer so that we can give thanks and be glad participants in his eternal joy. That is all for our good and his glory. Thankless people are miserable. But people who pray the prayers God draws forth from them and that he delights to answer will find within themselves a steady stream of ongoing joy.

I close with this thought. This is something I believe in my heart though I acknowledge that it will be hard to embrace in moments of disappointment and woe. Christians can rejoice when God says “Yes” to our prayer requests. But we can rejoice even more when he says “No.” Because that can only mean that what he has in store is better than saying “Yes” to our prayer.

Let us pray.

God, teach us to pray. Call forth from us the requests you want to hear and delight to answer. Delete by your grace our foolish requests that spring from narcissistic self-regard and have no concern for your glory. Thank you for stooping to include us in your work. Remind us to give thanks when you say yes to our prayers, and to trust your wisdom and goodness when you say no. In Jesus name, Amen.

Astonishing Hope For The Truly Wicked

Text: 2 Chronicles 33:10-13
Title: Astonishing Hope For The Truly Wicked

The LORD spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. 11 So the LORD brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. 12 In his distress he sought the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors. 13 And when he prayed to him, the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD is God.

Manasseh never should have been born. His father, King Hezekiah, was 38 years old when he got sick and the Lord told him through the prophet Isaiah, “You are going to die. You are not going to live. Put your house in order.” Interestingly enough, Elizabeth Clephane, the Scottish hymnwriter I mentioned last week, was the same age, 38, when the Lord called her home. But Hezekiah, though he was mostly a good man, was not quite the hero of faith that Elizabeth Clephane was. Because when God told him to prepare to die, he complained. He thought he deserved better because he had been so good. 2 Kings 20:3 says he prayed to God saying, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And the text says that he wept bitterly.

So God gave him 15 more years of life. And that was the worst thing that ever happened to him. 2 Chronicles 32:25 says that his heart became proud. Rather than relying on the Lord, as he had done earlier in life, he sought to rely on Babylon. He tried to form a political alliance with pagan Babylon, even to the point of showing off the temple treasures to them in a transparent attempt to say, “Look how rich I am! See what a good ally I would be.” Well, if you choose to link arms with Hitler it will come back to bite you. The prophet Isaiah told Hezekiah that future generations would pay dearly for his foolishness, and they did. Later on the Babylonians ransacked the temple and destroyed the city.

But there is something else that happened during those 15 years of extra time in Hezekiah’s life. His son Manasseh was born. The Bible says that Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king. So he was born during this 15 year window. Manasseh became the longest-reigning king in the history of Israel and Judah - 55 years. He was also the wickedest king. The Bible says he did more evil than the pagan kings who were in the land before the Israel became a nation. The Bible also says that he led the people of Judah to behave wickedly. Among other things, he was a mass murderer. 2 Kings 21:16 says that that he shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end. The streets ran red with the blood of the innocent during Manasseh’s reign. Among his victims were some of his own children. 2 Chronicles 33:6 says that he sacrificed his own children in the fire. The purpose of those sacrifices was to curry favor with a demon that was represented by a foreign idol.

Last week I mentioned that Job was probably the holiest man in the entire Old Testament (though maybe Daniel and Joseph could be mentioned in that conversation.) But today we are looking at the opposite extreme, and considering what may well be the wickedest man in the Old Testament. There were a total of 39 kings in the nations of Israel and Judah. Some of them were pretty bad, but Manasseh was the worst. You could not find two men more different than Job and Manasseh. They represent for us opposite poles of moral behavior.

Would there be any way to get through to Manasseh to turn him around? I can illustrate how difficult that would be. Two weeks ago a coworker of mine at Flavorchem, Isaac, came to me and said, “I’ve got good news.” Isaac himself has been a Christian about 5 years. Before that he was an atheist, didn’t believe in God at all, much less Jesus Christ. But God did a work in his life, and through some severe trauma and he trusted Christ. The good news he wanted to share with me was that his brother-in-law was coming to Christ. His sister’s husband. The surprising thing about that was that his brother-in-law had always been a hard-core atheist himself, very opposed to hearing anything about God or religion or Jesus.

But recently a coworker of that brother-in-law said to him, “You love your sons, right?” Of course. He has two sons, both teenagers. “You would do anything for your sons, you would lay down your life for them, right?” “Yes, yes, I would die for them.” “Well,” he said, “that is how much God loves us. Jesus laid down his life for us. Jesus willingly died for us just the way you would willingly die for your sons.”

Somehow that struck a chord with this man. I don’t know that that approach will work for everyone. But the idea that he could be loved by God in the way that his sons were so deeply loved by him affected him. It rattled him in a good way, and drove him to acknowledge the God who, up to that point, he had refused to believe in.

What if we tried that approach with Manasseh? Imagine saying to him, “Manasseh, you know how much you love your children?” He would have stopped you right there and said, “Love them? I burned them in the fire when I needed a favor from Molech.”

How do you make spiritual headway with a man like that - a man so wicked that you can’t even appeal to him on the basis of something so fundamental as fatherly affection? Manasseh brings to my mind the handful of people I have known through the years who are so evil that I literally don’t want to be in the same room with them. To me these few people seem too far gone, too toxic. Like they’re the living dead. With such people you think there is no way you could make spiritual progress with them because you can’t gain a foothold in the sheer vertical wall of their stone-cold narcissism. There seems to be no humanity that you could appeal to.

The prophet Isaiah wasn’t able to get through to Manasseh. According to ancient Jewish tradition, Manasseh killed the prophet Isaiah by having him sawn in half. That story isn’t in the Bible in so many words, but it may be referred to in Hebrews 11:37, which says of certain heroes of the faith, “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword.” That might refer to what Manasseh did to Isaiah.

Nobody could get through to Manasseh. Well, nobody but God. Verses 10 and 11 of our text in 2 Chronicles 33 say, The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. So the Lord brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.

That got Manasseh’s attention. Words meant nothing to him - he wouldn’t listen to God or the prophets. But then came the moment when the Lord completely wrecked his life. God gave permission to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon to invade Jerusalem, capture Manasseh and shackle him with chains. The text says that he put a hook in Manasseh’s nose. That’s literal. It is not a metaphor. We have ancient historical records to the effect that the Assyrian king would put a hook through the nose and or mouth of his conquered rivals and attach that to a rope so that the humiliated former king could be led along like a fish on a hook. Manasseh was dethroned, tortured, humiliated, and led away captive.

As I say, that got his attention. He humbled himself before the Lord, and cried out to him. He sought the Lord’s favor. And God did what God always does when sinners cry out to him in shame and remorse and penitent humility. God had mercy on him. The text says the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God.

The Bible has a constant, consistent record of truly evil people calling out to God in their desolation, and God hears their cry and has mercy on them. Here is a rapid-fire list of 6 such individuals.

Number 1, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. At one point he set up a golden statue and decreed, “Worship this idol or you will be burned alive.” But later God afflicted him with an illness that turned him into a lunatic for 7 years. When he recovered he sought the Lord’s favor, and then he said this: Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble. (Daniel 4:37)

Number 2, the king of Ninevah. The Ninevite kings were as cruel and violent as Manasseh. But in Jonah chapter 3 we read this: When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

Number 3, the tax collector in a story Jesus told. The tax collectors of Jesus’ day were regarded as traitors to their own people. They enriched themselves by extorting money from fellow Jews so as to increase tax revenue for the oppressive Roman government. One of these human swine stood at a distance from the temple, ashamed to get near, looked down and said “God be merciful to me the sinner.” God was merciful to him. Jesus said he went home justified.

Number 4, the prodigal son in another story Jesus told. This idiot held his good father in contempt and demanded inheritance money ahead of time. Then he spent that money on liquor and prostitutes. He came to his senses, went home and in utter humiliation and shame begged his dad to take him back as a humble servant. His dad, a symbol for God in the story, received him with joy and forgave him.

Number 5, the criminal on the cross next to Jesus. We don’t know exactly what his crime was, most likely some form of terrorism. It was so bad that he himself acknowledged that he deserved to die a death by torture. In his shame he humbly begged Jesus to remember him. And as one preacher imaginatively put it, dying Jesus said, “Hold on death! I can’t die yet. There’s a sinner calling on me.” Jesus absolved him and promised him paradise.

Number 6, a man who actually confessed, “I was the worst of sinners.” That’s saying a lot. But the apostle Paul, before he became a Christian, hunted down Christians and signed their death warrants. Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus, and when Paul realized he had been opposing the Son of God who loved him and died for sinners like him, he was so overcome with shame and remorse that he did not eat or drink for 3 days. Perhaps just hours before he would have died of dehydration, he heard the gospel of Jesus, believed, was forgiven and baptized. Thirty years later he was still remembering that moment, and wrote this (in 1st Timothy 1): I was a persecutor, a blasphemer and a violent man…Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.

This constantly repeated pattern of God being merciful to the worst of sinners when they humble themselves before him in shame did not stop in the first century AD with the closing of the New Testament cannon. It has continued for 2,000 years right up to this present moment. The most famous example is probably John Newton. He was the captain of a slave ship in the 1750s. He said that earlier in his life he was so depraved that he bragged that there was no sin that he not committed. But God turned him around. He felt deep remorse for his crimes and he never forgot about them. Decades later he said, “I have lived for years with the company of 20,000 ghosts - those I made into slaves. Their blood is on my hands." John Newton became a pastor and an ardent abolitionist and labored hard to end slavery, and wrote the hymn Amazing Grace: "Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”

Moving forward to this century we have David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam” killer who terrorized New York in the mid 1970s, killing 6 people and wounding 11 others. He’s still alive. He’s 72 years old, in prison. He acknowledges that he deserves to be in prison and will never get out – he will die there. He became a Christian some years ago, and he grieves the horrible crimes he committed when he was a lunatic. My nephew was a prison guard in the New York penitentiary system who knew David Berkowitz personally. He says that Berkowitz is a model prisoner and a man of God. What I am saying to you is that King Manasseh is not the only serial killer upon whom God has had mercy. These shocking stories of God’s grace on the pages of Scripture come alive in our day before our very eyes.

One more, and this will surely blow the mind of anyone who has not heard the story. Jeffrey Dahmer. I have decided not to speak to you here this morning of the specific nature of his crimes because they are too gruesome and graphic to be mentioned in polite company. I don’t want to trigger anyone or make you sick.

At his trial, Dahmer took full responsibility for his crimes. He said in his closing statement, “I know my time in prison will be terrible, but I deserve whatever I get because of what I have done. Thank you, your honor, and I am prepared for your sentence, which I know will be the maximum. I ask for no consideration.”

In prison, Dahmer asked for a Bible. He trusted Christ, and was baptized. He repeatedly affirmed that he deserved whatever punishment he got, including death. On November 28, 1994, a fellow prisoner, Christopher Scarver, bludgeoned him to death. Scarver later testified that Dahmer did not resist or cry out. In fact his last words, according to Scarver were, “I don’t care if I live or die. Go ahead and kill me.”

Last week I told you that I would like to meet in heaven the hymnwriter Elizabeth Clephane, a godly woman and a saint among saints. I’d like to thank her for her words and her example. It’s a stunning thing to realize that also in heaven we will be able to meet with King Manasseh and Jeffrey Dahmer, and celebrate with them God’s extraordinary grace to the worst of sinners.

All of the redeemed souls I have mentioned these past two weeks - from saints like Job and Elizabeth Clephane to beasts like Manasseh and Jeffrey Dahmer – all of them have something in common.

In a word, it’s shame. Embarrassment, guilt, regret, remorse. It’s the thing that drives them to God, in whom alone there is mercy, forgiveness, welcome, and then, ultimately, joy unspeakable in the presence of God.

It is for that reason that when, back in February, I heard a heretical sermon from a guest preacher at an evangelical church in which he condemned shame as a bad thing, I contacted the pastor of that church and said, “If you don’t preach a rebuttal sermon I’d be happy to do it myself.” That bad sermon and the discussion that followed with the pastor provided the impetus for me to prepare these past two messages for you here. Because I find that the efforts to reject shame and denounce it as a demonic thing have crept into the church - and that imperils the souls of those who are deceived by this false teaching.

Therefore I say to each of you in dead earnestness, “You don’t have to beware of shame.” You have to beware of pride. The heretical guest preacher said shame is a disfigurement of who we are and a dishonor of who God is. Wrong. Pride is a disfigurement of who we are and a dishonor of who God is. I beg you to recoil from the attitude that says, “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” That’s the poison, that’s the soul killer. The Bible says repeatedly, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” I have tried to show you that great saints like Job and Elizabeth Clephane humble themselves before God. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, notorious villains like King Manasseh and Jeffrey Dahmer, when they do the same, when they humble themselves before God, they find that God’s mercy extends even as far as them.

But you must know that there remain some people who don’t want God’s mercy. They don’t think they need it. They believe they are worthy of God’s love. And they are insulted by the notion that they must penitently beg God for the grace he freely offers.

This month, July 2025, an article appeared in the liberal Christian journal The Christian Century with the title “Dear Jesus, Am I Broken Enough Yet?” It was written by ex-evangelical Mackenzie Watson-Fore. In that article she lambasts her evangelical upbringing for trying to make her feel guilty. She ends her essay by writing that she wishes now she could go back to visit her 15-year-old self and take her younger self by the hand. Her 15-year-old self says, “Don’t I need to be forgiven?” Her adult self shakes her head and says, “Nothing is wrong with you. This is the good news.” The article ends there.

“Nothing is wrong with you.” Is that the good news?

The words “good news” are a literal translation of the Greek word for “gospel.” That’s what the word gospel means – good news. In all 76 occurrences of that word in the New Testament it never means there is nothing wrong with you. Rather it frequently refers to the fact that there is a Savior, Jesus Christ, who loves sinners so much he died for them, and rose again for them. Believe in him and you will be forgiven and saved. That’s the good news. He won’t force his forgiveness on you if you don’t want it because you don’t think you need it. But his forgiveness is there for the asking for any penitent souls who bow their heads humbly before him. That includes Job, Elizabeth Clephane, King Manasseh, Jeffrey Dahmer, and you, and me.

Let us pray.

Father in heaven, I pray that no one here would believe the devil’s lie that there is nothing wrong with us. Thank you for this opportunity to rebut the heretic who said that shame is a disfigurement of who we are a dishonor of who you are. Before this congregation I say to you publically that I am ashamed of my sin, and I am as much in need of your mercy as anyone else. God, you know how I stand in this pulpit not as a worthy saint qualified to condemn others and throw stones at them, but as a poor beggar who tells others where they too can find food. By your mercy use this spoken or written word to capture the heart of some poor sinner so that in his or her miserable shame he or she might turn to you and receive eternal grace through Jesus Christ your Son in whose name we pray, Amen.

A Curious Feature Of The Truly Righteous

Title: A Curious Feature Of The Truly Righteous
Text: Job 42:1-6:

Then Job replied to the LORD: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job was a righteous man. How righteous was he? Pretty righteous. The first verse of the book of Job says, In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.

Job was so righteous that God bragged about him twice. In Job 1:8 God said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” That’s what God said about him. He said the same about him again in chapter 2 verse 3.

Satan asked permission to afflict Job, and God granted it. Job lost his wealth, his servants were murdered, his children all died in a natural disaster. Job responded to that by saying, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And the Bible says, “In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.”

Then Job was physically afflicted with painful sores on his skin. His wife wasn’t much help in their mutual grief. She told him to curse God and die. He responded to that by saying, “Shall we receive good from the Lord, and not trouble?” And again the text says, "In all this, Job did not sin in what he said."

I think it is fair to say that you and I do not measure up to Job. I know that I don’t. Though it may be unwise to compare our righteousness to someone else’s, I know that if I were to stand next Job, spiritually speaking, it would be clear that he is a giant and I am a dwarf.

In the 31st chapter of Job, Job defends himself against false accusations. His friends have been assuming that he must have done something wrong to bring down all this misfortune on his head. He denies all charges. He says thing like, “I rescued the poor. I helped widows and orphans. I provided hospice care for dying people. They blessed me. I supplied needs of the blind and the lame. I defended victims from bullies and oppressors. I never cheated anyone. I never exploited anyone. I never even rejoiced over the downfall of my enemies.” Job goes on like that for 40 verses.

In his long list of good works that he did and bad works that he didn’t do, there are two that stand out to me because they seem to form bookends of great moral behavior. One of them involves a temptation that doesn’t afflict anyone today – no one that I know of. And the other is a temptation so universal that few men have ever resisted it. With regard to the first temptation, Job said If I have regarded the sun in its radiance or the moon moving in splendor, so that my heart was secretly enticed and my hand offered them a kiss of homage, then these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high.

Have you ever been tempted to worship the sun or the moon? I haven’t. For us the sun is a flaming ball of gas and the moon is a rock in space that that astronauts have landed on. No one here has ever offered a sincere prayer to the sun or moon. We don’t sacrifice to them or beg their favor. But that was a real temptation in Job’s day. Many people did that. Job, however, declares with a straight face, “I resisted the temptation to worship the sun and the moon. I never even blew them a kiss in secret - I swear!”

We can laugh at that. But no worthy man laughs at what he says in verse 1 of that chapter: I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. Inappropriate desire, desire for the wrong person, is not culture-specific like sun worship. Inappropriately indulged desire - lust – is everywhere. It is universal in all times and places and virtually all men understand this.

What I find striking about this covenant that Job made with his eyes is that he is the only one in the Old Testament that I know of who did this. Who else abided by this covenant? Abraham had concubines, plural, according to Genesis 26:2. So he not only looked at young women, he slept with them. Jacob had 2 wives and 2 concubines. David had 7 wives and 10 concubines. Solomon notoriously had a thousand. And none of those men, as far as I can tell, ever expressed any guilt or shame over that. They only seemed to regard it as wrong if they took a woman who belonged to somebody else – as when Reuben took his father’s concubine Bilhah, or Judah took a woman who should have belonged to his third son, or David took Bathsheba who belonged to Uriah. All these men knew that you couldn’t take someone else’s wife. But in their minds, as long as the woman was single, you could have as many as you wanted or could provide for.

Not Job though. Job went beyond the local custom that you couldn’t take another man’s wife, and realized that he also had to be faithful to his own wife. He refused to ogle other women, even if his culture told him that that was ok as long as they were single.

The point that I am trying to make is that Job was righteous from A to Z. He resisted sins that were culture-specific and sins that were culture-universal. He resisted sins of commission and sins of omission. A sin of commission is a bad thing that you do, while a sin of omission is a good thing that you neglect to do. Job not only avoided evil, he actively practiced good, and his goodness had a timeless quality. If you plucked him out of his era and plopped him down at any point in the timeline of human history, he would remain a righteous man. The same cannot be said of heroes like Abraham, Jacob, or David.

One more thing about Job’s goodness. He was not falsely humble. That is, he did not say “Oh I’m just a worthless piece of garbage – you have no I idea how bad I really am. My heart is truly dark within.” No, his self-assessment agreed with God’s assessment of him. As we noted earlier, God said twice that Job was blameless. Job agreed with that.

There is a famous verse, Job 23:10, where Job says, “When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” All my life I have heard that verse interpreted to mean, “When God puts me through suffering, it will refine me. It will make me better. These trials will burn off impurities and leave only gold behind.” That is a nice and noble thought. And there are other verses that make that point – most notably in James chapter 1.

But that is not what Job meant. What he meant was, “When I am put on trial and all the evidence is laid out, I will come off smelling like a rose. Everyone will see that I am innocent. In fact, I want my day in court. Put me on the witness stand. Call forth the witnesses. I’ve got nothing to hide. On that day when all is known and made public, I will be exonerated. I’ll be found not guilty. I will come forth as gold.” Job was not speaking of the refining power of suffering. He was talking about his confidence that he would be vindicated when his case came to trial - if only he could get a hearing in God’s courtroom. That is what he says in Job 31:6: "Let God weigh me in honest scales and he will know that I am blameless."

I hope I have established the point that Job was a good man. That is what the text says about him, that is what Job says about himself, and that is what God says about him. But these facts leave us with a mystery. Why, at the end of the book, is Job ashamed of himself? Why does he hate himself? That is literally what he says. He coats his sore body with dust and ashes as a sign of repentance and declares self-hatred. He says to God, "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

Was Job right to feel such remorse and express it to God? If so, there is a troubling follow-up question. If as good a man as Job felt such shame before God, what should I feel? If Albert Einstein fails a physics test, how am I going to do on it? If Hercules says, “This rock is too heavy,” how will I lift it? Do I need to be at least as ashamed as Job?

I am sorry to say that some preachers teach that it is wrong to feel shame before God. I cannot overstress how alarming I find that teaching. Back in February I heard a guest preacher say this: “Shame is a disfigurement of who we are and a dishonor of who God is...Shame has a heartbeat that says ‘I am not worthy,’ and that is the ultimate lie of Satan.” This preacher believed that we dishonor God by feeling shame. According to him then, Job’s shame would have been a disfigurement of himself and a dishonor to God. By believing himself to be unworthy, Job was falling for “the ultimate lie of Satan.”

False teaching like that damages the soul and must not be allowed to stand unrebuked. Therefore I say to you, in dead earnestness, if you are ashamed of your sin, you are not dishonoring God. If you say, “I am unworthy,” you are not believing a lie of Satan. Rather you are believing a truth from God – a truth that must be acknowledged in order to receive the good news of Jesus Christ.

If you read the Bible and pay attention, you will find again and again that God’s chosen ones acknowledge their unworthiness. They give full expression to a deep sense of shame. When Isaiah beheld the glory of God he said, “Woe is me, for I am undone. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” When Peter saw Jesus manifest divine power, and he fell at Jesus’ feet and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” A tax collector felt unworthy to approach the temple and was too ashamed to lift his eyes heavenward, so he looked down and said miserably, "God be merciful to me the sinner.” A criminal crucified next to Jesus said, “I deserve to die like this.” John in the book of Revelation said, “I fell at his feet as one dead.”

None of these people were ever rebuked for feeling ashamed and unworthy. To the contrary, they are held up as examples for us. Jesus said that that miserable shame-filled tax collector went home justified – but not the Pharisee in that story who felt no shame. All six of the shame-haunted men that I just mentioned are saved: Job, Isaiah, Peter, the tax collector, the thief on the cross, John the Elder. Those of us who make it to heaven will see them there. As Jesus said to the crucified thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

The heretical preacher I mentioned a minute ago who derided shame said this: “Shame blames, shame hides, shame makes you say you’re not worthy of love. The ultimate lie.” In response to that I say, yes, shame blames – it blames oneself and makes no excuses. Shame hides – yes it hides, as well it should. Can you imagine Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, if they didn’t run and hide? Can you imagine them standing around the garden calmly chomping away at the fruit? God appears, and they say, “Oh hi, God. (chomp chomp). Yeah, you told us not to do this but we’re doing it anyway. We decided that being ashamed would disfigure us and dishonor you, so instead we’ll be proud of defying you.”

Does shame make you want to hide your face? Of course it does! When hymnwriter Isaac Watts wrote of the sun going dark at midday during Jesus’ crucifixion, he compared the sun’s bashful modesty to our own:

Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut his glories in
When Christ the Mighty Maker died for man the creature’s sin.
Thus might I hide my blushing face while his dear cross appears.
Dissolve my heart to thankfulness and melt mine eyes to tears.

Pride struts boldly before God. Shame cowers, and humbly covers its face.

And as for shame making us say that “we’re not worthy of love”? Of course it does that. Thank God it does that! Because in direct contradiction to the preacher who said “It’s a lie to say we’re unworthy of God’s love,” the truth is, we are unworthy of God’s love. If you think you are worthy of God’s love then you do not have a clue as to what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about. Jesus died for the unworthy. The Bible insists on that. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”

God’s true saints have always acknowledged their unworthiness. Elizabeth Clephane, 19th century Scottish hymnwriter, wrote this:

From my stricken heart with tears, Two wonders I confess:
The wonders of redeeming love, And my unworthiness.

She also acknowledged her shame. She wrote,

I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face.
Content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss;
my sinful self my only shame. My glory all the cross.

Let me tell you something about the author of those words. Elizabeth Clephane was an orphan. Her father died when she was 8. Her mother died when she was 13. Her caretaker older brother abandoned the family. But despite the cruel hardships she endured, Elizabeth was known for the kind acts of charity she performed even though she herself was physically frail. She died at the age of 38.

I want to meet her in heaven so I can say thank you.

True saints of God like Elizabeth Clephane never dream of saying, “I am worthy of God’s love.” Instead, they bemoan their unworthiness. They are ashamed of their sin. It is the proud sons and daughters of hell who are unashamed, who count themselves worthy, and who think that God - if he exists – definitely owes them something.

Which brings us back to Saint Job. We have said that Job, like Elizabeth Clephane, was a profoundly good person. God said so himself. But that leaves us with this mystery. Why, at the end of the book does Job feel ashamed and in need of repentance? Why does he say, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes”?

Let me give you one general reason and one specific reason. The general reason is this. In Job chapters 38 through 41, Job has a direct encounter with God. God speaks to him at length. And I think it is fair to say that no one comes out of such a direct encounter with God unshaken. Because then you’re not merely talking about God or thinking about him or even talking to him. He is talking to you, he’s manifesting himself to you. Who can stand upright before that? All your bluster is taken away in an instant. All your posturing and self-confidence evaporate like dewdrops before an atomic blast.

When Moses asked to see the glory of God in Exodus 33, God told him, “Moses, that would kill you. I’ll cover you, and pass by, and then you can see the back trailing end of my glory. More than that you cannot bear.”

When Job heard directly from God it was more than Job could bear. Then Job was no longer saying, “God, I’m a good guy – why are you treating me so badly?” Even the best of men become conscious of their sin in the blinding white light of God’s holiness.

But there is also a specific thing that Job is repenting of. He is now ashamed of the fact that he criticized God. He had complained that God was being unfair to him. We see that several times in the book of Job. When the crises first hit him he said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” and “Shall we accept good from the Lord, and not trouble?” But later, after his friends bore down on him so unrelentingly, Job began to break. He could no longer hold on to his humble piety and he began to challenge God.

In Job 10 he said, “I will give free rein to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul. I say to God: Do not declare me guilty, but tell me what charges you have against me. Does it please you to oppress me?"

In Job 16 he said, "God has turned me over to the ungodly and thrown me into the clutches of the wicked...He has made me his target; his archers surround me. Without pity, he pierces my kidneys and spills my gall on the ground."

In Job 19 he said, "God has wronged me and drawn his net around me."

There is much more, but that will give you the idea. Job backtracked on his original commitment not to charge God with wrongdoing. He could not quite maintain the faith he had at first. It reminds me of the way that Peter stumbled in his faith when he was able to take a few steps on the water but then was overcome with doubt and sank into the sea. I also think of Peter saying to Jesus in Matthew 26:35 “Even if I have do die with you, I will never disown you.” He certainly meant that when he said it. But within 8 hours his courage gave way and he was denying that he ever knew who Jesus was.

Great saints like Job and Peter can maintain their courage and piety for a while. But they are sinners like us and they have their breaking points. All of us have our breaking points. The Bible says, “There is none that does good. No not one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

In recent years there has arisen, unfortunately, a bevy of preachers who urge us to commit Job’s folly by challenging God and questioning the wisdom of his decrees. They call this foolishness “being honest with God.” They say “Don’t sugarcoat your prayers – tell God why you’re mad at him and how he let you down. Just put it all out there.” Philip Yancey has been the poster child for this “authenticity,” and even wrote a book with the blasphemous title, Disappointment with God. I must warn you about such teachers, because they now write bestsellers that turn up in Christian study groups. My lovely wife had to endure one of these awful books in her women’s group, (Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton). Again and again throughout the book, Staton gives advice like this:

If you can’t pray in phrases of praise and adoration, don’t fake it. Pray your complaints, your anger, or your confusion.

Talk to him about the ways he has let you down or disappointed you.

Tell God your disappointments in prayer, and don’t water it down. Forget your manners. Tell it like it is.

We have to invite God – the very One who broke our trust – into the muck with us.

God broke our trust? God let us down? God disappointed us and we’re going let him have it? That is the attitude that had Job hanging his head in abysmal shame and despising himself at the end in Job 42. The fact that he had dared to challenge God and question God’s wisdom had him repenting, deeply remorseful, in dust and ashes.

This morning I have come to you with a solemn warning against that dangerous teaching running so rampant in today’s evangelical culture. Just as there are preachers who say it is wrong to feel shame – that it dishonors God, and it’s wrong to believe we’re unworthy of God’s love, it’s a lie of Satan – so also there are teachers now who urge us to commit the only sin that we know Job was guilty of, the sin of saying to God, “What’s the matter with you? Why are you doing this to me? You shouldn’t allow this.”

I want to close by giving you a couple stories of two modern day Elizabeth Clephanes. Two women who did not regard themselves as worthy of God’s love, but who trusted absolutely in his good sovereign will no matter how it affected them personally.

One was my mother. When my father died suddenly when I was a teenager, my mother grieved with sorrow unspeakable. And she was asked by a well-meaning but misguided soul, “So, are you mad at God?” The expectation was of course she would be mad at God. That would be perfectly understandable. How could God so abruptly take away the love of her life?

Mother was baffled by the question. No she wasn’t angry with God. She was sad, saddened to the point of despair, so sad she did not want to go on living. But she knew that God had the right to take her husband home, and she had no standing by which to challenge his wisdom in doing so. She trusted God. She trusted God, and in so doing set an example for her 5 children to follow including me.

Another such woman was Beth Norton. I never met her. She was the first wife of my friend Herb. She was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 30, and she made it through 10 years of treatment before the cancer took her life at age 40. Herb’s father, her father-in-law, would take her to chemo treatments when Herb had to go to work. Herb’s father was not a believer. But one day he asked his daughter-in-law, “Do you ever ask God ‘Why?’” And she answered, “Why not me?” She had a peaceful acceptance of her condition, knowing that she was no more immune to suffering and death than anyone else. She simply trusted God, whether that meant her earthly life was long or short.

Many years later, at the age of 99, Herb’s father finally yielded his life to Jesus Christ and God saved his soul. Herb firmly believes that one of the streams of influence that led to his father's conversion was his daughter-in-law’s testimony in the face of her suffering and death. Beth Norton was not a shameless woman who proclaimed herself worthy of God’s love. Nor was she an angry soul who challenged God’s wisdom in allowing her to be afflicted and terminally ill. She was a humble servant of God who knew that she was a sinner saved by grace, and who acknowledged that all her ways were directed by a good and sovereign God.

Yesterday I called Herb to confirm the details of Beth’s story. Afterward I sent him a copy of this sermon in an email. At 6:23 this morning he sent me the following text: “Paul, today is Beth’s birthday. Thank you for the special remembrance of her. I shared this with my two sons this morning. May God bless your message in a special way today to all those there. Your friend, Herb."

Let us pray.

God, if there are any here who should feel shame but do not, then please, by your grace, induce that now. Cast down the eyes of any who would dare to look upward in brash self-confidence. Awaken to wisdom fools who think they know better than you, and who believe they would act more justly than you if only they had the power. On behalf of fellow sinners who acknowledge our unworthiness, I ask you to be merciful to us, and grant us more grace, so that through your Spirit we might be transformed into the image of your Son Jesus who died to save our souls. Amen.

When God Speaks To Children

When God Speaks To Children
1 Samuel 3:1-10

The boy Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli. In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.2 One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. 3 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the LORD called Samuel. Samuel answered, “Here I am.” 5 And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down. 6 Again the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” “My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” 7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. 8 A third time the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place. 10 The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

In this passage, God speaks to a little boy.

Does that happen a lot? Does God make frequent appearances, or send messages to little boys and girls?

I don’t think it happens a lot. It didn’t happen a lot in Samuel’s day. Verse 1 says “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.” So it is not necessarily a common occurrence. But it does happen. No one can make it happen. No boy or girl, no man or woman, can twist God’s arm into making a miraculous appearance. Many people have tried to force God’s hand in that way and dared him to show up. I do not recommend it. The Bible says, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Many years ago I met a young man, 18 years old at the time, who had just become a Christian. He told me that when he was an atheist he would send out prayers like this: “God, if you really exist, let the next car that comes down the street be a blue Toyota.” And it never worked. All those prayers failed. But after he became a Christian he realized why those prayers had to fail. Because in his case he was an extraordinary intellectual. He went on to Harvard, eventually got a Phd in mathematics, became a professor at Wellesley College, and then became an authority on game theory. And he told me that he realized that if any of his testing prayers had worked, and 30 years later someone asked him, “So, Robert, why are you a Christian?” he knew it sound awful if he answered, “Well I prayed to God to send a blue Toyota down the street, and there it was!” He knew that such an answer would invite contempt in the academic environment in which he lived. If he were to become a Christian, his faith would have to be grounded on something more solid and reasonable than a weird little experience like that.

That being said, sometimes, for some people, God breaks through the clouds of ordinary mundane existence, and reveals himself in a pretty spectacular way. He even does this for children.

I’m going to tell you 5 true stories, arranged chronologically. The dates are approximate to within a year.

1963. An 11-year-old boy named Lee had a dream in which an angel told him about heaven, and Lee said to the angel, “I’m going to go there some day.” The angel replied, “How do you know?” Lee thought, “What kind of a question is that? What do you mean, ‘How do I know?’ I’m a good kid, I obey my parents, I get good grades at school. I’ve been to Sunday School a couple of times.” And the angel looked at him and said, “That doesn’t matter.” Lee said, “A chill went down my spine. I said, 'How can that not matter? My efforts to be a good kid – how can that not matter?' And the angel said, 'Someday you will understand.'"

In recounting that story years later, Lee said, “I suppressed that. I thought, ‘That was nothing, that was just a dream.’” He went on to become an atheist. He did not believe in God at all. But then 16 years later, when he was working as a newspaper reporter, his wife became a Christian. She invited him to go to church. There he heard the gospel of Jesus. And for the first time he understood that the door to heaven is not opened by our goodness, but by the goodness of Jesus Christ, who laid down his life for sinners. Lee learned that through faith in Jesus we are welcomed into the presence of God. Lee became a Christian, and then realized that the prophecy that angel gave him when he was 11 years old had been fulfilled: “Someday you will understand.”

Next story, 1966. A five-year-old girl, Linda, is playing in her living room. She becomes aware that someone is looking at her. She looks over her shoulder out the window and sees a face in the sky. She said later it was not a cloud formation or someone walking by the window or her own reflection in the glass. It was a miraculous face in the sky. And while she was looking, the face broke into a smile. She ran to get her mom, “Mom, Mom! God’s in the window!” But when she returned to the window the face was gone.

Little Linda’s family was not religious at all and she grew up far from God. In high school she experimented with many different things and regarded herself as very open to all systems of thought and belief – everything except for Christianity. Definitely not that. Anything might be true but not that Christian Bible stuff. And then around the age of 18 she became a Christian. She eventually became a missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators and served an indigenous tribe in Colombia. In reflecting on her experience as a 5-year-old she came to interpret it this way. She said, “I saw God smile on me when I was 5. And then I walked from him and was disobedient and went my own way. But when I came back at 18 I had the sense that his smile had never left. I walked away but he didn’t. He was waiting for me to return.”

1973. Another girl, 12 years old, Lisa. She also was being raised in a non-religious troubled home. She got invited to church where she heard about God and God’s love for her. It seemed too good to be true. She wondered, “Is there really a God who loves me?” Now the weather had been awful. So as she walked along outside she prayed a child’s prayer. “God, if this is really true, could you let the sun shine through?” It had been cloudy for a long time. But the moment she asked for sunshine the clouds parted ever so briefly, and the sun burst through. And then just as quickly it clouded over again and remained cloudy for days.

Lisa became a Christian, as did her whole family. And not long after that, her father, mother, sister, brother and herself, all 5 of them, were all baptized on the same day.

1985. An 6-year-old Iranian girl, Dina Nayeri, was with her Muslim family as they stayed with some relatives in London. In a tragic event, Dina nearly lost a finger. It had to be sown back on, re-attached. It was a traumatic event for her and her extended family. When she got home from the hospital she went to sleep in one of the bedrooms. She emerged from her nap and came into the family room where the relatives were gathered. And she was positively radiant. And she said that when she woke up she saw a man sitting on the rug. She did not know him. But she said he was dressed in white robes, and he had kind eyes, brown hair, and glowed like a TV in a dark room. And he said just 4 words: “It will be ok.”

An older Christian relative said, “You saw Jesus!” And Dina said, “Yeah.” The Muslim relatives were furious that that this 6-year-old girl was now calling herself a Christian. But later on some of her family members became Christians too. (From the book Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri.)

One more story. 1986. Another Iranian child, this time a 9-year-old boy named Nima. Nima and his twin sister Nagmeh had seen terrible suffering and death in their homeland because of Iran’s war with Iraq. One day their father was fiddling with a radio trying find a certain program, couldn’t find it, but left the radio on for them, and the twins listened as a man spoke in their native language, Farsi. The man was evidently a preacher. And he said, “God loves you. He will reveal himself to you if you will only ask.” Then the preacher invited his listeners to repeat after him this prayer: “God, I want to know who you are. Please show me who you are.”

Nima and Nagmeh repeated that prayer. Soon afterward the family moved to America. One spring morning, Nagmeh said, her brother Nima came barreling toward her “Nagmeh! I found the God that we have been looking for, and he loves us!” He said, “I saw him, Nagmeh. He came to me. I found the God we have been looking for. His name is Jesus. I was just sitting in the room, and Jesus appeared. He came into the room with me, and I wasn’t scared. All I felt was complete love.”

Then Nima and Nagmeh joined hands and ran out into the housing complex from the townhouse where they lived, and they started asking random people, “Can you tell us who Jesus is?” But since they could not speak English at the time, no one understood them. Eventually they did hear about Jesus and became Christians. Their Muslim parents were horrified and outraged, but later they became Christians too. (From the book I Didn't Survive by Nagmeh Abedini Panahi).

Miraculous occurrences like these do not happen to all children, but there are children who have “Samuel” moments where God taps them on the shoulder, calls them by name, gives them a message, smiles upon them, or assures them of his love.

What are we to make of these occurrences? In my mind, they serve as windows into the heart of God concerning children. Just as for Lisa, when the sun broke through briefly on a cloudy day, so also there are these moments where the goodness of God breaks through the universal fog of suffering and sin. The sun itself is always there whether or not we see it. We may not see it because it’s cloudy or it’s nighttime and the earth is facing in the opposite direction. But it’s still there. It didn’t go away. Likewise, God is always there whether we see him or not.

When I was 10 years old I flew on an airplane for first time. I did not know what to expect. I remember that we took off on a day that was completely overcast. It might have been raining. And I had such a feeling of joy when we broke through the clouds and suddenly there was sun and blue sky coming through the windows of the plane. And I said to my mom, “Mom, every day is a sunny day. It’s always sunny above the clouds!” She liked that.

In the clear blue skies of Holy Scripture we learn this important lesson: God values children. They matter to him even when they don’t matter to us. For example, when people brought children to Jesus, and the disciples tried to keep the kids away, Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t hinder them. The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Mark 10:16 says he took the little children in his arms and blessed them.

He even used children as examples when he needed to put the disciples in their place. The disciples, I’m sorry to say, were ambitious men who wanted to be great. They even had discussions among themselves as to which of them was the greatest. I think they would have been eager to attend those yearly leadership summits in South Barrington. I think they would have taken careful notes as the captains of industry and other celebrities at those conferences told them how to be important and influential. But when they asked Jesus, “Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” he called over a little child. Matthew 18:2-5 says, “He placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

That’s a breathtaking statement. When you welcome a child, there is a sense in which you welcome Jesus. On the other hand, if you mistreat a child, then God have mercy on your soul. Because the very next verse says, “But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to stumble, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

That too is a breathtaking statement. People who abuse children, who draw them into their own circle of depravity – those people are better off dead. It would actually be better for such depraved abusers to die suddenly and horribly. That would be better for them, because what awaits them in hell is so much worse.

God values children. It may even be the case that children have what we call “guardian angels.” I don’t know if we adults have angels. Maybe as we get older we lose them because our sins drive them away. In Matthew 18:10 Jesus said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” Did you catch that – Jesus said “their angels”? Do all children have angels? I wonder if I had an angel until about the age of 9 or so when he got sick of my obnoxiousness and left, and then only God himself could still tolerate me.

I know some Christians will grant that God values children, but only after they pass through the birth canal, or only after they reach a certain stage of development. Before that, these people claim, God doesn’t have anything to do with them as individuals, as people. Before those later stages they’re just things, and we can remove them and throw them in the garbage like a bad appendix if we want.

It is impossible to be a reverent student of holy Scripture and maintain that belief. King David does not say to God, “You started noticing me after I had developed to a certain point.” No, God is the one who did the developing. David says in Psalm 139:13: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” “Your eyes saw my unformed body.” And Jeremiah quotes God as saying “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart.” (Jeremiah 1:5).

At Christmastime we relate the story in Luke chapter 1 of Mary going to visit her relative Elizabeth. Elizabeth is 6 months pregnant. Mary is a few days pregnant with the Christ child. Elizabeth says her, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear...As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” It is worth noting that Elizabeth’s baby, John the Baptist, weighed about 2 pounds, was the size of a Nerf football, and in that day was probably not viable outside the womb. And Jesus, the Savior over whom John rejoiced, was a blastocyst made up of about 200 cells.

God values children, even the tiniest ones, and he values them from the get-go. And he accepts their worship as soon as they are able to express it. When Jesus entered Jerusalem a few days before his crucifixion, it says in Matthew 21 that children shouted his praises, saying “Hosanna to the Son of David!” The religious leaders were angry about that and wanted Jesus to put a stop to it. Jesus didn’t put a stop to it. Instead he quoted the Scripture that says, “From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth praise.”

I have – I’m not sure what to call it – a theory, an inclination, a hunch, that children tend to know that there’s a God. I am not saying this is universal or exceptionless. I am saying it tends to be innate, something that we just know. Atheist parents have reported being disturbed over the fact that their little children believe in God. And they ask, “Where in the world did she get that? She didn’t get it from us. We taught her there’s no God from the beginning.” And they hope that their kids will grow out of their silly childhood superstitions once they are properly educated.

I have noticed an intriguing trend among who many who say they don’t believe in God. Quite a lot of them converted to atheism in their mid-teenage years as they emerged from childhood. They didn’t start out that way. C. S. Lewis is a great example. He became an atheist at 14 and then came back to the faith in his early 30s. Not long ago I saw an interview with a British agnostic, a man who didn’t think there was a God but he was willing to read and listen. And very tellingly he said, “C. S. Lewis ticks me off!” The interviewer asked why and he said, “Because he messes with my 13-year-old atheism.” The arguments for atheism that he found so compelling at 13 began to look pretty shallow when he read Lewis.

Paul Jones is another one. He was the lead singer of Manfred Mann (of “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy dum” fame). He converted to atheism I think at 15, and became very hostile to Christianity – even to the point of debating Christian pop star Cliff Richard on TV, and doing his best to try to make Cliff Richard look like a fool. When Jones returned to the faith around the age of 40, one of the Scripture passages that spoke to him was Romans 1:18, where St. Paul talks about people who “suppress the truth by their wickedness.” Jones realized that that is exactly what he had been doing for years, suppressing the truth. Internally he knew it, but he had been stuffing it down deep in his subconscious so it wouldn’t bother him.

That word “suppress” is the same one that Lee used about the dream he had when he was 11 where an angel challenged his hope of heaven. Lee said later, “I suppressed that.”

I believe that the awareness of God is something stamped deep in our psyche by God our Creator, and I think it is there even for people who have never had a supernatural experience. However, with some effort, and aided by sin, that knowledge can be beaten down, resisted, suppressed, and forgotten.

Now I can imagine a skeptic responding this way: “Well I don’t see myself as actively suppressing a knowledge of God. I just haven’t had an experience of God like these children you’ve mentioned. I wish I did! I wish I did have that experience. Because that would settle it for me.”

And my response to that is, “Be careful what you wish for.” And I say that for 2 reasons.

First of all, a direct encounter with God may not be the wonderful, ecstatic, peaceful experience you desired. It certainly wasn’t for Moses or Job or Isaiah in their encounters with God. A good case in point is the text we just read in 1 Samuel 3. When little Samuel said to God, as instructed by Eli the priest, “Speak, for your servant is listening,” do you know what God said to him?

God did not say, “Samuel, I want you to go back and tell Eli that I love him unconditionally, and nothing he can do can make me love him more or less.” That’s the kind of shallow rhetoric I hear from countless pulpits today and that makes me despair over the pathetic state of American evangelicalism. No, God said to little Samuel that he was about bring down judgment upon Eli and his family and that there was nothing they could do about it. God said to the boy Samuel, “I told Eli that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God and he failed to restrain them. Therefore I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’” (1 Samuel 3:13-14).

The next morning Eli called little Samuel and said to him, “What was it the Lord said to you? Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you.” (v.17)

How would you like to stand in little Samuel’s shoes in that moment? He was terrified. Verse 15 says he was afraid to tell Eli the vision. But he did it. He did not lie, he told the truth. And for the rest of his life he continued to speak only as the Lord directed him - whether the news made people happy or sad, exultant or angry. I can’t imagine what a burden that was on poor Samuel. It makes me wonder, if Samuel knew what was coming, instead of saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” he would have said, “Shh! Be quiet, Lord. Please go speak to someone else.”

But Samuel listened and was obedient and told the truth, and the Bible says in verse 19 of that chapter that God let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. We still read those words today, 3,000 years later.

I said I have 2 reasons for saying, “Be careful what you wish for,” in case in you’re thinking, “I wish God would speak to me the way you said he did to these children you’ve referred to.” The first is, it might not be quite so pleasant. The second reason is simply this. Hearing from God directly and miraculously does not guarantee anything about the security of your soul or the favorability of your standing before God. All it does is make you more responsible for the light you have received. It does not guarantee your perseverance and salvation.

I can best illustrate that by giving you the follow-ups to the 5 accounts I related earlier of children’s encounters with God.

Lee, the 11-year-old boy who heard from an angel in a dream. He not only became a Christian in his late 20s, but he went on to write The Case For Christ and The Case for Faith and The Case for Creator and several other very good books and you should read all of them.

Linda, the 5-year-old girl who saw the face of God in the sky and became a missionary linguist to the Arhuaco people of Colombia renounced her faith in Christ in her 40s. She left the church, abandoned her husband, divorced him against his will, and went on to pursue a lesbian lifestyle. Somehow she managed to forget about the face of God she claimed to have seen as a child.

Lisa, the 12-year-old girl who asked if God would let the sun poke through - and he did - has served God faithfully for over 50 years, and the sweetness of her godly character so overwhelms me with joy that I can’t believe my good fortune in being given the grace to be her husband these last 15 years.

Dina, the 6-year-old girl from a Muslim family who nearly lost a finger and later saw Jesus sitting on the carpet. Even though family members of hers later converted to Christ and suffered terrible persecution for their Christian faith, Dina herself went on to become an atheist. This little girl who saw Jesus has now rejected him.

What about the last one, Nima, the 9-year-old Muslim boy who burst in on his twin sister Nagmeh and said, “Nagmeh, I have found the God we’re looking for. His name his Jesus.” What happened to him? Well I know that his sister Nagmeh is still a follower of Christ. She wrote one of the most heart-wrenching books I have ever read in my life. It has the provocative title, I Didn’t Survive. And I can’t recommend it highly enough. This book will blow your mind. But what about her brother, Nima, who actually saw Jesus. Is he still a follower of Christ?

I don’t know. I’ve looked him up. Maybe he is. I don’t know. Let us pray.

God, with some inward trembling I pray the prayer your Son prayed in Matthew 11:25-26: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.” God, thank you for revealing yourself to children. May those children to whom you have revealed yourself remain faithful like Samuel the prophet and Lee Strobel and Lisa Krausfeldt-Lundquist. And may those of us who lack their experiences learn wisdom from them, so that we too might serve you with love and gladness till the day you call us home. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Rules For Preaching

(1) Aim for 30 minutes. Nearly all sermons today are too long. I have heard countless sermons that were very effective for the first 25 minutes, but then the preacher ruined everything by going on for another 20 minutes till I got bored and restless and had forgotten what he said in the first 25.

(2) Start preaching with the very first words that come out of your mouth. Do not talk about what a wonderful time of worship we’ve had, or what happened that morning on your way to church, or the weather, or your kids, or grandkids, or what sports teams you’re a fan of, or any other triviality, or utter some inane nothingness like, “Good morning everybody, how are you all doing?” Shock your audience by having your very first sentence be part of the sermon.

(3) Do not introduce yourself. Not even when you are a guest preacher and nobody knows who you are - and perhaps you are even culturally expected to say a few words about yourself and your ministry. Again, when you get up to the pulpit just start preaching. If people want to find out who you are they can ask later.

(4) No titles. When a speaker introduces himself as “Dr.” So-and-So, I know that I’m in for a bad sermon. (Usually his doctorate is from a DMin anyway, and I don’t regard that as a legitimate degree.) Spurgeon eschewed the title “Reverend.” Good for him. You can’t help what other people call you, but you can help what you call yourself. It is best not to call yourself anything – but if you must say something, just giving your name will suffice.

The disciplined habit of not talking about yourself (even to the point of not mentioning your name!) puts the focus where it belongs: on Christ and Holy Scripture.

(5) You only ever need 2 words to begin a sermon: “Our” and “In.” If the Scripture passage has not been read, begin with “Our Scripture text is…”. If someone else has already read the text before you get to the pulpit, you can always begin very simply with the word “In.” For example, “In verse 6 of our text, the Apostle Paul expresses dismay over the fact that…”; or “In verse 19, opponents of Jesus look for a way to arrest him.”

(6) Do not begin with a story, anecdote or illustration. Yes, I know that famous preachers like Chuck Swindoll and David Jeremiah do this with every sermon, and it’s what I was taught to do in seminary. It’s wrong. Begin with the text and exposition of the text. When you begin with a story you upstage the Scripture, because the Bible passage itself will not be as interesting as your story – especially since, for many people in the congregation, the text will be something they have heard many times before while your story is brand-new.

(7) You may have heard the advice, “You have to start by grabbing their attention.” No you don’t. This is false. You already have their attention just by virtue of the fact that you have stood up to preach. The important thing is not to gain their attention but not to lose it. That is why stories and anecdotes and illustrations are more effectively placed later on in the sermon when attention begins to flag and people need to be snapped back into focus with an illustrative example.

(8) No jokes. There is a distinction to be made here. Casual humor in the course of the message is fine – Tertullian, Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, Harry Ironside, Warren Wiersbe and Stuart Briscoe were all very funny men. (Spurgeon, accused of being too comic in the pulpit, protested that he deliberately held his humor in check!). But while natural humor - wry observations, deadpan irony, amusing wordplay and such all have their place (if one has the gift for it), you must never tell an actual joke to warm up the audience. (E.g. “A priest, a rabbi and a Buddhist monk walk into a bar..."). To be clear, no one loves silly jokes more than I (my lovely wife can attest that all who dwell in my presence abide under the shadow of insufferable buffoonery). But never in the pulpit! For that matter, I also love eating French Silk pie and delighting in the ecstasies of conjugal embrace – but I engage in neither while preaching earnestly the Word of God.

(9) Your seriousness of purpose will receive a needed boost if you keep before your mind the sober truth that it is a statistical certainty that some who hear you speak will spend an eternity apart from God.

“Seriousness of purpose” (or John Piper’s excellent phrase, “blood earnestness”) is not to be confused with an unhappy, grim, whining, shrill, or brow-beating manner of expression. In every sermon that John MacArthur preaches he sounds like he wants to strangle you. Mike Fabarez has been sounding like that too. Your congregation should not come away thinking, “Why is he so angry all the time?”

(10) Do not adopt a “preacher voice” or “preaching style” that is distinct from the way you normally communicate important information. The poster child for this mistake is, I’m sorry to say, John Piper. To his credit, Piper is the best question-answerer I have ever heard. If you listen to his “Ask Pastor John” series you will hear exactly the right tone: respectful, patient, earnest and thoughtful as he gives spot-on Scriptural responses to difficult questions. But when he gets into the pulpit, for some reason he tends to transform into such an animated cartoon of preacherly affectations that he can become unlistenable. Preach with a normal voice.

James Montgomery Boice is an outstanding role model for what earnest but unaffected preaching sounds like. So is Tim Keller.

(11) Never say “Repeat after me” or “Say this out loud.” Lots of preachers are doing that these days. It’s patronizing. I’m afraid I just stare dully at a preacher whenever he orders me to say something. Classy grown-up speakers never command their audiences to repeat after them. (Can you imagine C. S. Lewis doing that?)

(12) Never elicit affirmation. A preacher friend of mine peppers his admonishments with the trailing tag-question “Amen?” It’s awful. Ditto for “Are you with me?” or “Right?” or the embarrassingly desperate “Somebody ought to say amen to that!” Instructing your congregation to affirm that you have just said something compelling is a surefire way to degrade your authority and weaken your message.

(13) If a congregation ever applauds some line of yours, it is a sign that you have failed. It is impossible simultaneously to applaud and repent. I have heard countless preachers (Tony Evans and Jack Hayford come to mind) who would deliberately build up rousing crescendos of rhetorical flourishes until people literally stamped their feet with enthusiasm. No one ever comes to Christ that way.

If people applaud you, it means that you are preaching to the choir and not saving anyone’s soul. Erwin Lutzer in later years developed the truly wretched habit of thundering out crowd-pleasing power blasts of rhetoric (several times a sermon!), and then pausing to wait for people to clap.

No one clapped when Jonathan Edwards preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” They wept instead, and asked, “What must I do to be saved?”

(14) With regard to tone: Keep in mind that you love people and earnestly desire their ultimate good. This will help to provide a humble, godly contour to the manner with which you speak. You are not there to entertain, scold, impress, or get people to like you. When priorities like that overtake a love for God and people it will definitely show through in one’s bearing and tone.

(15) Voice: Do what you can to speak with quiet, humble but uncompromising authority. Not all preachers are blessed with a natural, fatherly baritone. (Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest speechmakers of all time, had a notoriously thin high voice). But try your best to sound like a grownup. To me, Mark Jobe’s vocal styling and phrasing frankly makes him sound like a 7th grader. Francis Chan and Crawford Loritts regularly fall into an odd rhythm of hollow wispy squealing that I think is meant to convey earnestness but to me is just off-putting.

Some recordings of C. S. Lewis’ voice are available online. In listening to him you will instantly know that this is an adult who expects to be taken seriously.

(Don Carson, as he aged, wisely eliminated the whistle-tone shrieking that characterized his earlier messages. Of course, even back then when he would go into that excited register that only dogs could hear, the content itself was always rich and deep.)

(16) Be reverent. People need reverence, and long for it even if they don’t know that’s what they’re longing for. Never start a sermon with a funny YouTube video to kick things off. Read Lewis’s sermon The Weight of Glory for a shining example of reverential treatment of sacred themes.

(17) Never tell a supposedly “true story” whose details you cannot verify. The fact that some other preacher related it, or it appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, does not count as verification. I have heard the following emotional taglines in dozens of sermons over the years, and they all come from stories that are 100% fictional.

“I was John Harper’s last convert.”

“The little boy had thought that by donating blood to his sister that he himself was going to die!”

“The estate auction is over. The mogul’s will stipulated that whoever received the (portrait of) his son would inherit the whole estate.”

“Coach, today was the first time my father saw me play.”

“The judge concluded, ‘Evidently, the tavern owner believes in the power of prayer, but the church does not.’”

“The chalk dropped from the atheist professor’s hand, rolled down the sleeve of his jacket, down his pant leg, rolled off his shoe and landed on the floor unbroken.”

“Ma’am,” he responded, “I myself wrote that hymn. I would give anything to feel now what I felt when I first penned it.”

“As the two Moravian missionaries sailed off into a slavery into which they had willingly sold themselves and from which they would never return, they shouted to their friends on the shore, ‘May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering!’”

Keep in mind the sober fact that your audience knows how to Google. You will kill your credibility with sincere skeptics if you pass along stories that they research and find to be false.

(18) Outlines may be helpful but are not strictly necessary. If you need a 3-point outline to organize your thoughts and help you structure the meaning of the text, by all means use one. But many great speeches of the past (The Gettysburg Address, I Have a Dream) did not use bullet points. Outlines work best as handy tools, but as inhibiting chains they must be discarded. If a sermon has internal cohesion and every sentence proceeds logically from the previous one, then imposing an outline on it (just because your homiletics teacher insisted on it) will only be a distraction.

No one will remember your outlines anyway. They may remember certain insights, interpretations of passages, a quote perhaps, and your stories. But I personally cannot reproduce even one outline from all the thousands of sermons I’ve heard over the years.

(19) It is impossible to address the needs of everyone. In your audience there will be some victims who need comfort, some villains who need rebuke, some weary souls who need relief, some apathetic sluggards who need rousing, some rebels who need to repent, and some legalists who need to chill. The danger is in assuming that everyone in the congregation falls into one of those categories. Alan Redpath preached as if everyone was lazy and complacent. Tullian Tchividjian preached as though everyone was trying too hard already. In today’s evangelical climate, the disturbing trend is to address everyone as though they are already saved. Take for example this recent howler from J. D. Greear: “Right now look at that person to your right or to your left. You may or may not know them...That is a child of the King!” Really, Mr. Greear? All 12,000 people at your megachurch are children of the King? Jesus called Pharisees sons of the devil. I can't believe you don't have at least some of those in your congregation.

Watch your wording lest you imply that everyone you’re talking to is saved rather than damned, or a victim rather than a victimizer, or a lazy wretch rather than a conscientious saint.

(20) Some preachers insist on preaching without notes, some prefer an outline, some use a full manuscript. To your own self be true. Only preach without notes if you are extraordinarily gifted (e.g. George Mattheson, Stuart Briscoe. Spurgeon used very sparse notes.) I don’t recommend it for ordinary mortals. Mortals become wordy, repetitive and cliché-driven when they try to preach noteless.

My case for a full manuscript (a la Jonathan Edwards, David Jeremiah, John Piper, Philip Ryken):

-It keeps the sermon tight. You are less likely to waste words. It makes it easier to limit yourself to about 30 minutes.

-It prevents errors. You have time to look up everything beforehand so that you don’t confuse Elijah and Elisha, or misquote a key verse that you half-remembered on the fly.

-You never lose your place or train of thought, or make your audience feel sorry for you as you scramble out of a tough spot and try to be coherent.

-When preaching extemporaneously it’s almost impossible not to resort to stock phrases and stale means of expression. Noteless preachers also become annoyingly repetitive, regularly spouting 50 words when 8 will do. A manuscript allows you to be fresh, concise and compelling.

=You can use the sermon again when preaching in another location (and editing it to actually get it right this time!).

Of course, having a manuscript does not mean that you stare at it, looking down and reading it the whole way. Go over it several times beforehand so that it is well enough in mind that you are relatively free from it.

When preparing a manuscript sermon, constantly keep in mind that written and spoken communication are inherently different. You are not writing an essay but a sermon, something not designed to be read but to be heard. As you prepare, speak your sentences out loud and write down what you speak. Take dictation on yourself. This will help you to avoid sounding stilted and formal.

(21) Conclude your sermon with a prayer that you have written out in full. (The eyes of your congregants will be closed so they won’t see you reading it.) Preachers who “wing it” with their concluding prayer nearly always, in my experience, flail about and go on way too long. That hinders effectiveness. In messages that conclude evangelistically, I like to pray a simple conversion prayer and invite people to pray along silently with me if they want to trust Christ.

(22) My lovely wife read the above and said, “If someone follows your advice, he will never be a megachurch pastor.” Yes. Good. I have no problem with that.