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.

Do Regenerate Men Cheat On Their Wives?

“Regenerate” means “born again.” It comes from John chapter 3, where Jesus told Nicodemus, a deeply religious Bible teacher, that unless a man is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Jesus also said to him, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”

So even deeply religious Bible teachers need to be “born again,” or regenerate. We can’t assume that they already are. But how can you tell if a man is regenerate?

It is not always easy. We cannot read minds, and we don’t know a man’s secrets. Only God knows them. The Bible says that Jesus did not entrust himself to everyone “because he knew all people. He did not need testimony about anyone, for he knew all men” (John 2:24-25). The best example is Judas. Only Jesus knew that Judas was bad. He said to his disciples, “Have I not chosen you 12, and one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70). The other disciples had no idea that an evil man walked among them. Presumably Judas preached the kingdom of God as well as the rest. When Jesus said that one of them would betray him, they humbly asked, “Is it I?” (Matthew 26:22) rather than point suspicious fingers at Judas.

Sincere Christians can be fooled by imposters. I have been badly fooled myself a number of times. In many cases the deception will probably only be revealed in the afterlife, when we appear before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account to God (2 Corinthians 5:10; Romans 14:12). St. Paul said that on that day, “according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Romans 2:16). Jesus gave fair warning: “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known” (Luke 12:2).

In the meantime though, we are not completely in the dark. Certain clues reveal a man’s heart. The simplest is this: a bad man does bad things. Jesus said, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit...by their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:17-20). St. John said, “Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4). Unregenerate men reveal their spiritual condition by their disobedience to Jesus’ commands. It does not matter if they preach well, manage big churches, instruct seminarians, or write influential books. What does matter is if they obey Jesus.

Last month the Reformed Evangelical community was shocked to hear that Rev. Steve Lawson, 73, had been abruptly fired by his church and the seminary where he was academic dean. Until his firing Lawson had been highly regarded, and few within his circle doubted his integrity. This married father of four authored about 30 books and was much in demand as a speaker and elder statesman in the branch of Christendom to which he belonged. But then we learned that for the last five years he has been involved with a woman in her late 20s. His conscience never provoked a confession or repentance. He only admitted the affair when threatened with exposure by the woman’s father.

When The Roys Report gave the story I responded in the comment section with just these eight words: “Regenerate men do not cheat on their wives.”

That drew a mostly hostile response from fellow Christians, though a few agreed with me. I give no quarter on this issue. I attribute the pushback to a lack of familiarity with the Bible, a tendency to cherry-pick verses interpreted to mean that we can hold God in contempt while remaining confident of his favor, and anemic preaching that has dulled the ears of our generation. So it seemed good to make my case in fuller detail.

In the Old Testament, the prescribed penalty for adultery was death. Not “offer a lamb sacrifice and say you’re sorry and you’ll be restored,” but, “Die.” Some sins could be atoned for (symbolically at least) with the blood of an animal. But adultery was something you paid for with your own blood.

Some think that the New Testament is nicer to adulterers, but in fact it is more severe. Old Testament adulterers were merely stoned to death; New Testament adulterers are told they’re going to hell. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says that adulterers are among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21 also says they will not inherit the kingdom of God. Ephesians 5:5 says that they have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Revelation 21:8 says that they will be confined to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. If those verses frighten us, they should. They are good verses to contemplate when tempted to marital unfaithfulness. If you are close to cheating on your wife, ask yourself, “Do I want to be in the kingdom of God or the fiery lake of burning sulfur? Am I born again or am I not?”

I know the counterarguments, because I have heard them over and over again for the last 40 years. They never change, and they never seriously engage the texts cited above. Most critically, they betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what salvation is, and what born-again people are saved from. I will respond briefly to three common challenges to my affirmation that regenerate men do not cheat on their wives.

(1) King David was an adulterer, and obviously he was saved.

David took his friend Uriah’s wife Bathsheba and arranged to have him killed in battle. It is hard to imagine that a man of God could do such a thing. But it’s right there in the Bible, so, why shouldn’t megachurch preachers today indulge their dark side from time to time while still maintaining a happy, eternal fellowship with God?

First, it is monstrously inappropriate to compare a king from 3,000 years ago to modern-day Christians. David had none of our advantages. The New Testament had not been written. Jesus had not been born. The Holy Spirit had not been given to the church. “To whom much is given, much will be required,” (Luke 12:48), and we who live this side of the cross have been given so much more than David that it is absurd to think we will behave no better than he. We don’t compare the basketball skills of an 8-year-old to those of a Division I athlete. A third grader might be a prodigy if he can do long division and manipulate fractions, but those operations are second nature for a graduate student in mathematics. We ought not compare David to ourselves but to his peers: Iron-Age Middle-Eastern absolute monarchs. In that realm of villainous despots, the amazing thing is that David had a conscience at all.

Second, David repented immediately when rebuked. He wept, fasted, worshiped, and wrote a psalm of heart-breaking confession (Psalm 51). After that, as far as we know, he never again took another man’s wife. This is in marked contrast to today’s adulterous preachers (Bill Hybels, Ravi Zacharias, Steve Lawson, etc.) who defy God for years – decades even – and never show the slightest lament.

Third, David paid the price. He was not stoned to death as the law demanded, so in that narrow sense he was forgiven. But God made it clear that things would not go on as before. “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.” (2 Samuel 12:10). In the wake of David’s sin there followed within his household the abominations of incestuous rape, fratricide, and the usurpation of his throne by his own son Absalom that made him, for a time, a homeless fugitive. David was not welcomed to God’s side like the prodigal son of Luke 15 with a party and rings and a fattened calf and great rejoicing. He spent the remainder of his days under the dark cloud of God’s discipline. He knew he deserved it.

So enough already with these fatuous comparisons to King David every time a big-name preacher acts like a son of hell. There is a good reason why defenders of adulterous pastors always trot out the example of David rather than New Testament apostles. That is because there are no known examples of the disciples of Jesus committing adultery. They go to prison for Christ, they get beaten for Christ, and they die for Christ - but they don’t get filthy rich and cheat on their wives.

(2) Jesus forgave an adulterous woman and let her go free.

Maybe. The famous story in John 8 of the woman caught in adultery (“Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone...Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more”) is not found in any of the oldest and best Greek manuscripts. Modern translations rightly put it in a footnote, or bracket the text and put it in italics with an explanation that there is good cause to doubt that it was originally part of John’s gospel. This account should not be assumed to be authentic.

But suppose for argument’s sake that it is authentic. Even if true, no Christian should apply its seeming leniency to himself. The adulterous woman was not a disciple of Jesus – she was a stranger dragged in off the street. We have no reason to think she was born again. She made no such claim. The words “Neither do I condemn you…” are best applied to unconverted sinners who are candidates for the kingdom, not to pastors who say they have been following Christ for years.

Further, Jesus’ concluding words “Go and sin no more” (or, “Now leave your life of sin”) must be taken seriously. They match what he said to the lame man he healed in John 5:14: “Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.” One wonders what Jesus would have said if the same woman had been brought back a week later having been caught in adultery all over again. God’s grace is not a license to sin. The lesson of John 8, if authentic, is, “Even lowlife sinners can repent, be forgiven, and become followers of Jesus”; not, “Born-again pastors can cheat repeatedly and not fear a word of condemnation.”

(3) All sins are the same in God’s eyes.

No they’re not. The Bible makes this point repeatedly. Some sins are worse than others. Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11) – that is, “Your sin is bad, but his sin is worse.” In Matthew 23:23 Jesus referred to “the weightier matters of the law,” which pertained to “justice and mercy and faith.” (Lighter matters of the law in that text were about tithing.) In Matthew 12:31 Jesus distinguished between blasphemy that will be forgiven and blasphemy that will not be forgiven. I am not here trying to interpret this difficult text, but simply noting that, according to Jesus, not all blasphemies are equally severe.

While Jesus was merciful to sinners, he was not universally and unconditionally so. For example, when it came to the sin of corrupting little ones who believed in him, Jesus did not talk about how loving and forgiving God was toward these exploiters but rather how much better it would be for them to have millstones hung around their necks and be cast into the sea (Matthew 18:6).

All sins are not equally bad. In the Old Testament, some sins were atoneable, but when a person sinned “with a high hand” (or in some translations, “deliberate defiance”) that person was to be “cut off from among his people” (see Numbers 15). In the New Testament, while we are encouraged to be “tenderhearted, forgiving one another” (Ephesians 5:32) in recognition of the fact that no one is without sin (Romans 3:10, 1 John 1:8), we also understand that some sins are so outrageous that those who persist in them are to be expelled from the Christian community (1 Corinthians 5:13: “Expel the wicked person from among you.”)

Cheating on your wife for years in the manner of Steve Lawson and other religious hypocrites is not a regrettable misdemeanor - a “hiccup” in an otherwise blameless life - but a true spiritual felony, a fatal corruption, a stark outward manifestation of an unregenerate heart. Lawson and his ilk must be born again.

I know that some will say, “But can’t Christians sin away and still be saved? After all, nothing can separate us from the love of God. And we cannot be plucked out of the Father’s hand.”

I’m afraid that this response betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Christian faith and practice. Perhaps some of the mist of confusion may be dispelled by asking the simple question, “What do you think Christians are saved from?

“Hell,” “damnation” or “the wrath of God” is only part of the answer. The Bible says that Jesus “will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Not merely God’s wrathful response to sin, but the sin itself. What’s the point of being delivered from the penalty of sin if one remains enslaved to its practice? How could a person enjoy (or even tolerate) the presence of God if he spends his life defying God with unholy abandon?

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6), and I believe it is significant that he did not say, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for eternal bliss.” Everyone and his brother wants that. Who doesn’t want salvation from unhappiness? But the Lord favors those who seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, not those who seek pleasant security without personal cost. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” Jesus said, “for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). A wise preacher once commented, “Only the pure in heart will want to see God.”

As for the promise never to be plucked out of God’s hand (no matter what sins we commit?), it is important to note to whom that promise is given in John 10. It is given to Jesus’ spiritual sheep. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). Sheep who follow Jesus cannot be plucked out of the Father’s hand. But a man who chases skirts is not following Jesus, and so this promise has no meaning for him or application to him.

As for the promise that “nothing can separate us from the love of God,” (Romans 8:39), who are the “us” to whom that promise is given? The “us” are defined in verses 28 and 29: those who love God and are conformed to the image of his Son. But men who cheat on their wives hate God (though they might claim otherwise), and are being conformed not to the image of his Son but to the image of the devil. So they don’t meet the conditions of the promise. They don’t belong in the group that rejoices in the assurance of being united eternally to the love of God.

God loves to redeem the most wretched of sinners, save them from their sin, and make new people out of them. But they have to want that. They cannot reject regeneration and still cherish hopes of salvation. The message that must be preached to Bible experts like Steve Lawson and to vile sex traffickers like P. Diddy is the same: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repent of your sin, throw yourself upon his mercy, and beg for the grace of a new life as you are remade in the image of Christ. Marvel not that I say unto you, ’You must be born again.’”

A Christian Response to Drag Queens on the Bridge

Offense and outrage seem to characterize the Christian responses I have heard so far to the drag queen reenactment of The Last Supper at the opening festivities of the Parisian Olympics yesterday. After dancing about provocatively, participants assembled themselves into a live tableau intended to mimic Da Vinci's famous work of art. A loud chorus of denunciations across all media soon followed. The bit was a tasteless, ugly, mean-spirited, blasphemous mockery of a sacred event that Christians hold dear.

I have a word to say to my fellow Christians on this matter.

We Christians should be used to mockery. Our Lord Jesus experienced derision and contempt in spades, and set us an example for how to respond to it. 1 Peter 2:23 says, “When they hurled their insults at him he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.” Jesus was spit upon, verbally taunted, and beaten to a pulp. His enemies put a crown of thorns on his head and a scepter in his hands, and then bowed to him in mock worship: “Hail, King of the Jews!” His response was to pray, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44). So even if we regard ourselves as victims of drag queen persecution, that just means we should love them and pray for them.

The apostles of Jesus learned this lesson well and passed it on to their readers. Peter wrote, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). Paul wrote, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Romans 12:14). He also wrote, “When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly” (1 Corinthians 4:12-13).

That is the Christian way. If it is important for you that your religion be esteemed and respected, then perhaps you need to pick a different religion. Biblical Christianity isn’t for you. Real Christians carry a cross as they follow a much-despised Messiah. Hebrews 13:13 says, “Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.” Opposition along the way will come as no shock. 1 John 3:13 says, “Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.” And 1 Peter 4:12 says, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you.”

Calm love, thoughtful engagement, earnest prayer and humble indifference to scornful contempt are the best answers to blasphemous reenactments on display at the Paris Olympics. Who knows? Maybe some day some of those drag queens will bow the knee to Jesus Christ, and take to themselves with trembling hands the bread of blessing and the cup of hope.

In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, when young Edmund set out on a traitorous mission he came across a statued lion that he thought was Aslan turned to stone. He scribbled a mustache and spectacles on the figure and sported with it contemptuously, saying, "Yah! Silly old Aslan! How do you like being a stone?"

Later, of course, the real Aslan showed up, and submitted to death on the Great Stone Table so that the one who mocked him might live.

Eulogy For My Brother Dave

My brother’s effect on my life was only ever positive.

For example, when I was in 8th grade he gave me two vocabulary books, "6 Weeks to Words of Power" and "How to Increase Your Word Power." Such gifts epitomized his logophilic beneficence, but he was never overly conspontuous about it.

My brother knew that words are the media of thought, and the more you mastered words, the better you could absorb the wisdom of ages, and appropriate for yourself the beauties and the delights of thinkers and poets who felt grand sentiments and knew how to convey them.

Words are the carriers of thought, and my brother was never at a loss for them. He was always ready to tell you a story that just might shape your soul.

For example, at the time of our father’s funeral, when I was 17, he pulled me aside to tell me about an incident that occurred sometime around the year I was born. Our father had volunteered to paint the church basement. He finished it one Saturday and was so exhausted that the next day in church Dad fell asleep. An usher passed by and nudged my 13-year-old brother Dave, grinned and pointed at Dad, as though to say, “Get a load of your old man, asleep in the pew.” That made Dave angry. You don’t make fun of my dad. Then it got worse. Because from the pulpit the pastor thanked the man who contributed the money to buy the paint, but made no mention of dad’s donation of labor. By this point Dave was ready to hit somebody. Afterwards he asked dad, “Dad, doesn’t it bother you that the guy who gave the money gets recognized and thanked, but nobody knows what you did or thanks you.”

And Dad replied, “Son, my reward is not here.”

You can’t imagine how many times over the past 44 years those words have resonated in me, rebuked my vanity, and rejoiced my heart to know that I was not raised by a man whose mind was set on earthly things, but whose citizenship and treasure were in heaven. It was my father who said those words and lived a life worthy of their expression, but it was my brother Dave who remembered them, and put the whole account into words, and even wrote it down, and made sure it got passed along and could bear ever-ripening fruit for decades to come.

Those of you who knew Dave are aware that his delight in noble and transcendent thoughts existed side-by-side with a personality that would say, “Here, pull my finger.” I fell for that one when I was 11 years old. I remember Dave erupting with laughter when he said, “Yeah, Marsha fell for it twice.”

Quite a few times in my own marriage when I’ve been irresistibly tempted to make some comment that lacks decorum but that I find funny, I have said to my wife, “You should be glad I’m not my brother! He has no filter at all.”

Isn’t that right, Marsha?

Poor Marsha is the one who had to endure my brother’s comic flights of lunacy. Like the time he got really bored in a worship service when they were singing, slowly, over and over again, “Hallelujah, hallelujah...” Dave decided to make up his own lyrics and he sang them out loud. “This is boring, can we go now, pass the offering, this is boring…”

The rest of us when we heard Dave relate that story laughed so hard our heads hurt. But of course we didn’t have to stand next to him, mortified, while he was doing it.

So, this is as good a time as any to say publically what I have long felt in my heart. I know that my brother Dave was a great man. A great, wise and generous man. But I also know that great men can be impossible to live with. I know that from reading biographies and from personal observation. Therefore I tell you the truth, one greater than David is here. And we need not wait for a far future funeral to acknowledge that. So, Marsha, on behalf of all Lundquists, living and dead, thank you for loving, enduring, and putting up our brother Dave.

Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.” I know that my brother’s heart was not always merry. But more important, he made the hearts of others merry with his antics and wry observations and outright slapstick.

A few years ago my wife found a meme online - a poster picture of 6 or 7 apples, each with a single bite taken out. The caption read, “Life with a toddler.” It was probably put up by some exasperated parent whose child had taken one bite apiece out of several apples. And Lisa said to me, “This reminds me of your brother Dave!” She was referring to a story Dave liked to tell, where on Teacher Appreciation Day some kind soul had put an apple in each of the teachers’ cubbyholes. Dave went up and took a bite out of each apple, then put the apple back with the good side facing out. And then he sat down to watch teachers come in so he could enjoy the results of their appalling discoveries.

There it is, life with a toddler. My brother had a brilliant mind and a toddler’s sense of fun. Few things are more joyful than hearing the laughter of a small child. Dave could cackle like a toddler well into his 70s.

And nothing was off-limits. Like the time he suffered a gruesome injury, losing a finger to a malevolent garage door. It took Dave almost no time to realize that that was comedy gold. Because for one thing, it was the same finger on the same hand at the same knuckle joint of the famous missing middle digit of Jerry Garcia. And for another thing, it gave Dave the opportunity to write some light comic poetry about now only being able to flip you half a bird.

Dave could laugh in the face of injury. But can you laugh in the face of death? Many draw the line there. Death is the ultimate taboo topic for many. There are people who pride themselves on their ability to engage any subject at all but they will shudder at the mention of death and say, “Please talk about something else! Change the subject!”

But not in our family. In-laws have noted with amazement that we are the “death family” because the topic does not phase us at all. In April of 2001, my brother came to the Chicago area for our mother’s funeral. While there he dropped in on an old friend whose wife met Dave at the door. She was in tears, distraught. She explained, “I’m sorry you caught me at this time Dave. I’m upset because my dog died.” And Dave listened for quite some time as she spilled out her grief. He sympathized with her, thinking all the while, “Boy I bet I can top this!” Finally came that magic moment when she said, “So, Dave, what brings you to Chicago?”

Once again, as Dave related that story to me with uncontrolled chortling, I laughed so hard I thought I was going to have stroke and die myself.

Now I don’t believe that it is mere morbidity or a perverse delight in dark humor that accounts for the ease with which our family broaches the topic of death. There is more to it than that. It’s a matter of our knowing something about death so glorious as to extinguish all fear of it. Hebrews chapter 2 verse 15 talks about those who all their lives were held captive by their fear of death. But followers of Christ need not fear it. Because Jesus Christ, Son of God, conquered death, rose again from it, and he gives eternal life to all who trust in him. For those who trust in Christ, the Bible says, “Nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God.” As the hymn-writer Christian Gellert wrote, “Jesus lives, and death is now but my entrance into glory. Courage then, my soul, for thou hast a crown of life before thee. Thou shalt find thy hopes were just. Jesus is the Christian’s trust.” Or as St. Paul said, on death row, awaiting trial under Nero Caesar, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

I’m sure my brother would approve my quoting John Donne at this point:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and Dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me... One short sleep past, we wake eternally. And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Over the years my brother gave me many books to read. One of them was a thick book of anecdotes, taken mostly from historical sources. When he gave it to me he opened it up and pointed out a story about Joseph Addison, 18th century British scholar and statesman. It said that on his deathbed Addison called for his stepson, Lord Warwick, and said to him his final words: “See in what peace a Christian can die.”

Ever since Dave showed that to me I have wanted those to be my final words too. They probably won’t be my final words, because if I die suddenly there won’t be time to say them, and if I die slowly my brain will be too addled and my body too wracked with pain to say anything significant. But even if the words themselves cannot be expressed, may the truth and the reality still hold: “See in what peace a Christian can die.” And for that matter, see in what peace the body of a Christian can be laid to rest.

Let us pray.

Father, thank you for the life that was Dave Lundquist. Thank you for his generosity of spirit, and for the privilege I had of growing up under his broad shadow. Thank you for the mercy you had on his soul through your Son Jesus Christ. If there are any here who fear death, and rightly fear it, because their sins have hidden your face from them, grant them even now faith by which they repent and cry out to you for mercy, and then receive the glad assurance that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And as we await the consummation of that deliverance, please give us a special measure of grace to honor and imitate everything about Dave in which he honored and imitated Jesus Christ, his Savior and ours. Amen.

Holy Communion For The Abused And Disillusioned

This is a simple communion devotional given at a gathering devoted to concerns about corruption and abuse in the Church:

Scripture text: Acts 8:26-35:

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

Thus far the reading of God's Most Holy Word.

Can you find your way to God if you have been abused?

Many have done so. The Ethiopian eunuch had suffered a sexual violence so horrific that any man would shudder to think of it, and some would rather die than experience it.

Can you find your way to God in a corrupt church controlled by evil men?

Many have done so. Acts 8:27 says that this eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship. What would he have found there? At the temple he would have seen a sign in Latin and Greek warning Gentiles like him to proceed no further under penalty of death. He would have heard the shouts of greedy vendors who no doubt set their tables up again soon after Jesus had driven them out. Murderers led temple worship - foul fiends of darkness who had delivered Jesus up to Roman crucifixion.

How can one find God in a place so spiritually decadent that, as Jesus prophesied, it would soon be destroyed under divine wrath, and not one stone would be left upon another? By God’s mercy, the eunuch extracted from that depraved house of worship an ancient holy book with truth about Jesus Christ. He could not understand it. But in the mist of his confusion he read these words: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth. The eunuch wondered, “Who is the prophet talking about?”

Philip explained that it was about Jesus, who stepped into our corrupt world and took upon himself its most severe abuse: death by torture. Jesus bore the wrath of man, but much more important, for us and our salvation, he bore the wrath of Trinitarian God. God, in love, bore the penalty for our sin against him.

For those of you who have been abused, remember that Jesus is no stranger to brutal treatment. Poet Edward Shillito wrote,

The other gods were strong, but Thou wast weak.
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne.
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak.
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.

For those of you who have been the abusers, know this: if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Songwriter Bob Bennett wrote,

There are those who are among us who believe they are not worthy.
We offer you the Word of Life, we bid you come and dine
Upon the mercy we have tasted, and the love given so freely.
Come take your place at table now; Jesus in our time.

And for all who have grown weary and cynical because of false brothers, wolves in shepherds’ clothing, corrupt and compromised fellowships - fix now your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He committed no sin, nor was any guile found in his mouth. Jesus is holy. And he swears by himself to render his loved ones holy as he conforms them to his image through sorrow and joy. You who love Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected Son of God, come now, partake of bread of wine as you remember him in reverent worship. Let us pray.

Lord God, by your mercy, remove every impediment of sin, confusion, disillusionment and unbelief, and shine the light of your Son so brightly in our faces that we can do no more than fall down before you and give thanks. Amen.

Evangelicals Are Wrong Concerning The Most Important Thing About You

I disagree with a quote so widely accepted in evangelicalism that I’m beginning to wonder if I am the lone living Christian who opposes it. Hating my isolation, I write now in hope of persuading somebody to dismiss with me a thoughtless cliché that has gained creedal status in our tradition.

I refer to the words of A. W. Tozer: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” If you don’t go to church or listen to Christian radio or read Christian literature then you may not know what I’m talking about. But if you do those things then you are probably familiar with that quote. It is regularly cited with warm approval in Christian settings.

But what comes into my mind when I hear it is, “Oh no – they have not read C. S. Lewis’s ‘The Weight of Glory’!” Or worse, they have read it and disagreed with it. If you have not read “The Weight of Glory,” please stop reading this and go read that. Or listen to a recording online. After you take in Lewis’s sermon you won’t want to read anything else soon after. You will need time to ponder, weep, rejoice perhaps, and bow the knee to God.

Welcome back.

Near the beginning of “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis says:

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us.

There it is. The most important thing about you is not what you think of God but what he thinks of you.

There are individuals who have accurate thoughts about God but it does them no good. Demons are orthodox monotheists. James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one. Good for you. The demons believe that too, and shudder.” One of the first affirmations of Jesus’ identity came from a demon: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). The devil was so knowledgeable about God’s redemptive plan in Christ that he tried to derail it (Mark 8:31-33). I would bet that the devil could even explain subtle differences between infra- and sub-lapsinarianism-- whereas as I, a Bible major, forgot what both words mean a long time ago.

Don’t get me wrong. It is good to have right thoughts about God. But Lewis is certainly correct in saying that what is infinitely more important is what God thinks about us.

And that is a problem. How can we possibly know what God thinks of us? We have ready access to our own minds, but “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Romans 11:34). The Bible quotes God as saying, “My thoughts are not your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). Job’s friend Zophar asked him, “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know?” (Job 11:7-8).

Faced with the difficulty of discerning the mind of God, many people simply project larger-than-life images of themselves onto deity and assume that he is like them. Psalm 50:21 exposes this folly. God says to the wicked, “These things you did and I kept silent. You thought I was just like you.” Few sins are more beguiling than that of extrapolating our corruptions onto God and convincing ourselves that he is as indulgent of our behavior as we are. I see other people do this all the time. How do I know I’m not doing it myself?

We ought not underestimate our ability to self-deceive. The Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Saul the Pharisee thought he was doing good when he tried to extinguish an upstart religious sect. His conscience affirmed him, and his understanding of Scripture made it clear that God was on his side. But then Jesus knocked him down and turned him around with such compelling force that he became a zealous advocate of the Way he once despised. His proud opposition became his deepest shame, and drove him to acknowledge that he was the worst of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15).

So how do you know that you are not now as deceived as he once was? How do you know that you are not - from the perspective of the Eternal and Holy – a foul villain and a moral outrage?

I’m afraid there is objective data to suggest that we view ourselves much more highly than we should. In 1997, U S News and World Report asked a thousand people, “Who do you think is most likely to go to heaven?” Celebrities were ranked. Sixty-six percent thought Oprah Winfrey was going there. Michael Jordan was close at 65%. Bill and Hillary Clinton came in at around 50%. Dead last was O J Simpson at 19%. First overall among popular figures was Mother Teresa, whom 79% of respondents tagged as heaven-bound.

But there was one obscure, unknown person who clobbered Mother Teresa in the ratings. And that was...whoever was responding to the survey! When asked, “Are you going to heaven?” 87% said yes. That is, the average person felt more secure about his favorable standing before God than that of any public figure, sinner or saint, on planet earth.

If you listen to modern evangelical preaching, you would never guess this tendency to “think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think” (Romans 12:3). Today we are told the opposite – that we beat ourselves up with guilt and shame and need to learn how to rest in the confidence that God is tickled pink with us. A few days ago I heard a preacher say to his congregation, “You’re one of those that says, ‘Pastor, if you knew what I’ve done or where I’ve been, what’s gone on in my life – God could never love someone like me.’” I've heard that line countless times from dozens of preachers in the last few decades. Preachers today assume that their listeners are racked with guilt, doubtful of God’s love, and in desperate need of assurance. But I'm afraid that far more people are racked with pride, presumptuous of God’s love, and in desperate need of warning.

The songs we sing in church attack self-doubt like it was sin, and assure us that God has only nice thoughts about us. A couple Sundays ago at my church we sang,

What if I saw me the way that You see me?
What if I believed it was true?
What if I traded this shame and self-hatred
For a chance at believing You?

Wait a minute. The lyrics assume that my shame and self-hatred are bad things, and that they can be traded for a reassuring faith that God sees me in a favorable light. That is not biblical. In the Bible, better men than I hated themselves more, and felt far deeper guilt. Righteous Job, confronted by God, said, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). The prophet Isaiah saw the Lord and said, “Woe is me – I’m ruined!” (Isaiah 6:5). St. Peter said to Jesus, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). St. Paul said, “I know that nothing good dwells in me” (Romans 7:18). St. John said, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man” (Revelation 1:17).

I cannot for the life of me understand how “seeing myself the way God sees me” could be a comforting rather than dreadful thought. I'd prefer not to know what he sees. God sees all, and he is holy.

Despite my sin and that of my fellow congregants, modern evangelicalism beats into our heads the notion that "God is for us, not against us!". In one popular Hillsong worship anthem we sing (over and over and over again),

You are for me, not against me, I am who you say I am!

What pops into my mind when I hear that monstrously presumptuous affirmation are Bible passages where God says the opposite. For example:

Jeremiah 50:31: “Behold, I am against you, O proud one," declares the Lord God of hosts, "for your day has come, the time when I will punish you."

Psalm 34:16: The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

1 Samuel 12:15: If you will not listen to the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the command of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you.

God isn't for everybody. He is for some people and against others. The Bible says that many, many times. The most important thing about you is which category you're in, and that is something God knows for sure and that you can be deceived about. Therefore be humble. Quiver. Doubt yourself. Repent of known sin, and beg God to reveal to you those sins which alienate him but have yet to alight on your malfunctioning conscience. Presume nothing, but cast yourself upon the mercy he has made available through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. I don't know, right now, if God is for you or against you. But I do know that God "opposes the proud, yet gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). Be the kind of person to whom he gives grace rather than the kind of person he opposes. Remember that his evaluation of you is the only one that matters. As for you, well, it would be better to fear you're going to hell and wind up in heaven than to assume you're going to heaven and wind up in hell.