Jon Bloom's Blog, page 42

Tell Them About Me

John Piper has often said, “Books don’t change people, paragraphs do — sometimes sentences.” This has certainly been my experience. And few sentences have been more helpful to me in grasping the heart and hindrance of preaching the gospel than these two:

“People are starving for the grandeur of God. And the vast majority do not know it.*

They Are Starving for God

That first sentence captures in beautiful, sad simplicity what is most deeply wrong about the horrible human condition — all the restless wandering, the inconsolable longings, insatiable appetites, the monstrous perversions and violent corruption of all that we know deep down to be true and right is due to the lack of God in the soul of man.

People crave God in their innermost being. And the infinite banquet of all that makes God glorious in the seen and unseen worlds would nourish them and make them happy beyond their wildest dreams if only they tasted and saw his goodness (Psalm 34:8). If only they would eat.

But They Do Not Know It

The second sentence captures the humanly impossible challenge of gospel ministry: people don’t know that the lack of God in their souls, their lack of being enthralled with all his grandeur, is what’s wrong with them. And what makes this “not knowing” such a difficult problem to overcome is that it goes so much deeper than a mere lack of information. It is a blindness; it is a deadness of desire.

People don’t want what will cure their craving. They don’t want God to be what nourishes and satisfies them. They want to be gloriously grand themselves. They don’t want to be told by God what to eat in order to be satisfied. They want to decide for themselves what to eat. They want to be like God.

“Tell Them About Me”

Into this horrible, humanly impossible famine God sends preachers — preachers in pulpits, preachers on street corners, preachers at the family table, preachers in living rooms and hospitals and Bible studies and prisons. He wants the preachers to feel the gravity that hell is real (Luke 12:5) and the gladness that heaven, the fullness of joy and forever pleasures in God (Psalm 16:11), is the free gift (Romans 6:23) to all who will believe (John 3:16).

God tells the preachers, “Tell the people about me. Don’t amuse them, don’t entertain them, don’t make me appear flippant, don’t try to impress them with your wit or IQ, and don’t tell them that I will indulge their sinful flesh or that I will feed their pride.

“Tell them about me! Tell them about my holiness and perfection (Isaiah 8:13; Deuteronomy 32:4) and about my sovereign power (Psalm 135:6; Isaiah 46:10). Tell them what is most deeply wrong with them (Romans 3:23) and how they got that way (Genesis 3).

“And tell them what I have done for them (Romans 5:8, 6:23). Tell them of my love and of my Son (John 3:16) and how I love them through my Son (1 John 4:10). Tell them to stop eating what will only leave them starving; tell them that I have the only food that will satisfy them (Isaiah 55:2).

“Go and tell them all that I have preached to you (Matthew 28:20), and preach to them in the strength that I supply (1 Peter 4:11). And by the power of my Spirit, I will make what is humanly impossible happen (Mark 10:27): I will make the blind see (John 9:39).”

To Help You Tell Them

And if you want to know how to be such a preacher, wherever God has placed you to preach, read John Piper’s newly expanded The Supremacy of God in Preaching. It was written with pastors in mind, but it will serve all preachers of the gospel. This revised and expanded edition includes four new chapters. It is a book to feed your preacher’s soul and equip you to feed the starving. Because,

People are starving for the greatness of God. But most of them would not give this diagnosis of their troubled lives. The majesty of God is an unknown cure. There are far more popular prescriptions on the market, but the benefit of any other remedy is brief and shallow. Preaching that does not have the aroma of God’s greatness may entertain for a season, but it will not touch the hidden cry of the soul: “Show me thy glory!”

So, preacher, that is your call. Wherever God has placed you to preach, feed people his glory. Give them the cure. Tell them about God.

A Book About Sin to Make You Happy

If you’re not careful, you might get the wrong idea from this title: Killjoys: The Seven Deadly Sins. I love the title! I don’t think we could improve on it. But if misunderstood, it could sound like a depressing read. Someone might think, “Oh great. Seven ways to be reminded what a loser I am. Can’t wait to dive into that.”

And that would be a terribly wrong impression. Killjoys won’t kill your joy, it will help you experience more joy!

This book is all about our pursuit of happiness and freedom. It doesn’t just give us dismal descriptions and analyses of the various pathologies of our sin disease. Killjoys beautifully reminds us what the cure (yes, the cure!) to our disease is and provides us with prescriptions and treatments for dealing with the remaining effects of this disease that all of us must fight as we wait for the cure’s full effect.

As I read the chapters on pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust, what I felt over and over was renewed hope. Yes, I saw places where all these sins “cling so closely” in my life (Hebrews 12:1), and I felt conviction. But each chapter helped me see clearly again how these sins rob me of joy, how they never deliver what they promise, how they only steal, kill, and destroy happiness. The more I read the more I wanted to be rid of them!

But more than just showing me the badness and bankruptcy of sin, each chapter showed me the far more desirable beauty and bounty of Christ and the Great Cure of the gospel that he offers all who will receive it. And I found the strategies — the treatments — that each chapter provided for killing the killjoys so insightful and practical that I’m keeping my marked-up copy near me to refer to when temptation hits.

Killjoys is not a dismal look at sin, but a delightful look at Christ. Read it if you want to experience more soul-health and happiness. Read it if you’d like more freedom from the killjoys in your life. And read it for free!

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The God-man or a Madman?

You can’t be neutral when it comes to Jesus. He doesn’t give you that luxury. If you really listen to what he says, you either need to believe that he is the Preeminent Son of God and worship him, or you need to get as far away from him as you can. He demands a hot or cold response and spews anything lukewarm (Revelation 3:15–16).

The Shocking Claims of Jesus

In John chapter 5, Jesus throws down the gauntlet. First, he healed a man who had been disabled for 38 years. On the Sabbath (verse 9). On purpose. Then when the Jewish leaders objected, Jesus didn’t even attempt to correct their faulty interpretation of Sabbath work, as he did at other times (see Luke 14:1–6). Instead, he responded with this provocative statement: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

This would have drawn audible gasps. And the leaders correctly understood Jesus’s point: he really was “making himself equal with God” (verse 18). This declaration, on top of the Sabbath healing, fueled the execution talk among the leaders.

Now, that isn’t the most shocking part of the chapter. After all, the Law of Moses did make both Sabbath breaking (Exodus 35:2) and blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16) capital crimes. So any Jew who took God’s word seriously had to ponder the death penalty when evaluating Jesus’s claims.

No, the most shocking things are what Jesus said next. I’ll list them and restate them for you so you can feel the audacity of his claims. Jesus claimed:

That he was “the Son,” possessing a unique relationship with the Father (vv. 17, 19),
That he was able to “see” the Father (v. 19),
That everything Jesus did was exactly what the Father was doing (v. 19),
That Jesus’s works were themselves the Father’s works (v. 19),
That, therefore, the Sabbath healing of the man was a work of the Father (vv. 17, 19),
That the Father had a unique love for his Son, Jesus (v. 20),
That the Father showed Jesus everything that the Father was doing (v. 20),
That the Father would show Jesus, and do through Jesus, greater works than the disabled man’s healing (v. 20),
That Jesus had the same power as the Father to raise the dead and give them life (v. 21),
That Jesus had the authority to give this life to whomever he willed (v. 21),
That the Father had entrusted all eternal judgment of human beings to Jesus (v. 22),
That Jesus was due the same honor from all humans that was due the Father (v. 23),
That to dishonor Jesus was to dishonor the Father (v. 23),
That whoever believed what Jesus said de facto believed the Father (v. 24),
That whoever believed Jesus had eternal life and would escape divine judgment (v. 24),
That Jesus would someday resurrect from the dead all human beings who had ever lived and judge them (vv. 25–29),
That Jesus possessed the same divine, self-sustaining life as the Father had (v. 26),
That Jesus was the “Son of Man” (v. 27), the person Daniel prophesied about in Daniel 7:13–14,
That Jesus’s judgment and the Father’s judgment were the same (v. 30),
That the Scriptures testified to who Jesus was (v. 39),
And that Moses wrote about Jesus (likely in Deuteronomy 18:15) (v. 46).



See and Savor the Sovereignty in These Statements

In making these claims, Jesus knew what was at stake. He knew the Law and he knew the leaders. Jesus was leaving the leaders only two options: believe him or kill him. And in doing this, he was exercising divine wisdom that would have been inscrutable to any of his hearers at the time. Can you see the divine sovereignty at work in Jesus’s statements, the same sovereign orchestration that we frequently see throughout the Scriptures?

Everyone who chose to believe Jesus would accomplish the Father’s will by honoring the Son and therefore would receive eternal life (John 5:22–24);

Everyone who chose not to believe Jesus would accomplish the Father’s will by killing the Son so that the once-for-all atoning sacrifice would be made for those who believed (Hebrews 7:27, 9:26, John 3:16), resulting in believers being justly delivered from judgment (John 5:24), and unbelievers being justly delivered to judgment (John 5:29).

That’s a reason to stop and worship.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33, 36)

“Who Do You Say That I Am”

In making the claims Jesus does in John 5, Jesus draws for us a line in the sand. We must choose sides. As C.S. Lewis famously wrote,

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity, 52)

No, he did not. He has preserved his audacious claims in Scripture. And to each of us who reads or hears them, Jesus poses the same question he posed to his disciples: “Who do say that I am?” (Luke 9:20).

Related Resources

The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (interview)

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ (book)

Jesus Christ as Denouement in the Theater of God (message)

But God

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:4–5)

“But God.” These two words are overflowing with gospel. For sinners like you and me who were lost and completely unable to save ourselves from our dead-set rebellion against God, there may not be two more hopeful words that we could utter.

Once we were dead to any real love for God at all, buried under the compounding and disorienting blindness of our sins (Ephesians 2:1), but God. Once we were deceived by our own lust for glory and self-determination; once we were unknowingly led by the pied piper called “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2), but God. Once we lived enslaved to the passions of our flesh, being driven and tossed between the impulsive waves of our flesh and mind (Ephesians 2:3), but God. Once we were God’s enemies (Romans 5:10), hating him (Romans 1:30), children of his wrath. But God.

But God being rich in mercy, but God showing his incomprehensible “love for us in that while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8) he said to us God-dead, God-ignoring, God-rivaling, God-hating, dry-boned children of wrath: “live” (Ezekiel 37:5)! Live to true beauty, live to true glory, live to true hope, live to true pleasure, live to true joy! Live to God (Galatians 2:19) and live forever (John 6:58)!

And he did so by taking our God-deadening, God-ignoring, God-rivaling, God-hating, God-wrath inducing sin and placing it on his Son, the Life (John 14:6), and said: “die” (Romans 5:8). And so he who knew no sin became our sin for us — for an infinitely hellish moment became a child of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) for us — the righteous for the unrighteous, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18). So that we might live forever (John 3:16)

These two words, “but God,” tell us that we have been saved only by God’s grace. Dead children of wrath do not become living, loving children of God but for God.

Revel in these two priceless words. Every thing, sweet and bitter, that will occur between now and the moment of your death God will work for your good (Romans 8:28), and every glorious pleasure that you will ever enjoy in your future eternal life in his presence (Psalm 16:11) because of the gospel of these two words: “but God.”

Related Resources

But God... (sermon)

Jesus Saves (article)

Preach the Gospel to Yourself (interview)

What to Do When We’re Prayerless

Prayerlessness is not fundamentally a discipline problem. At root it’s a faith problem.

What Prayer Is

Prayer is the native language of faith. John Calvin called prayer the “chief exercise of faith.”† That’s why when faith is awake and surging in us, prayer doesn’t feel like a burden or an obligation. It feels natural. It’s how faith most instinctively speaks.

Throughout the Bible, faith and prayer are inextricably linked. One of the clearest examples is Jesus’s statement in John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” “Abiding” in Jesus is faith — fully believing his words. Asking whatever you wish is prayer. The Bible tells us to “trust in [God] at all times” (Psalm 62:8) and to “[pray] at all times in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18), “believe in God” (John 14:1) and ask of God (Luke 11:9). Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.

John 15:7 also shows us that God’s Word and faith and therefore prayer are inextricably linked. Faith is a response to God’s word: “faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). As Tim Keller rightly says, “If God’s words are his personal, active presence [see John 1:1–3 and Isaiah 55:10–11], then to put your trust in God’s words is to put your trust in God”†† So if our trust is in God (in God’s promises — 2 Peter 1:4), and God says if you trust me “ask whatever you wish” (John 15:7), then the natural expression of our faith in God is prayer.

The Primary Cause of Prayerlessness

First, when I say “prayerless,” I don’t mean completely prayerless. I mean relatively prayerless. I mean that we aren’t anywhere close to “pray[ing] without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). We aren’t communing with God in prayer, so prayer feels like a burdensome, boring, perhaps futile exercise that we rush through in a perfunctory way or avoid. When we do pray, our prayers seem feeble and powerless, which just leads to less praying. We don’t have it in us to “pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).

So what’s wrong?

If prayer is the native language of faith and we’re struggling with prayerlessness, then the first thing we need to do is look for a faith problem. There’s a faith breakdown somewhere and until we get that fixed, our problem will remain.

How do we fix this? We’ll talk about that in a minute, but first let’s talk about what not to fix first.

The Role of Discipline in Prayer

Often our first attempt at fixing our prayerlessness is to try and be “more disciplined” in prayer. We look at heroes, mentors, and peers who seem to have vibrant, powerful prayer lives and figure the solution might be doing what they do or did. If we get up earlier and use a more effective list or app or acronym we’ll fix our problem. Methods are necessary and beneficial as we’ll see, but “more discipline” is a false hope if faith is the problem.

Think of prayer as a train. Faith is the engine of prayer, God’s promises are the fuel, and discipline is the rails. Prayerlessness is almost always due to a stalled engine. For prayer to get going again, we first need to fire up our faith engine again with fuel of God’s promises.

You see, discipline doesn’t power the train of prayer. Faith powers the train as you trust God’s word. But discipline will guide the train. The rails of planning, structure, and methods are necessary. But the best time to address those is when you’ve stoked your engine, because when faith is firing you want to move forward in prayer and you are more likely to be led by the Spirit to choose the rails that are best for your prayer train.

Help for Fighting Prayerlessness

So when we’re prayerless, the first thing we must address is the cause of our faith deficit. Here are a few suggestions for doing that:

1. Recall God’s past grace: I put this first because in my experience, when my faith is ebbing low and I’m not even clear why, remembering how God has been faithful to me in the past primes my faith engine to trust in God’s future grace for whatever is causing my current unbelief. “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope” (Lamentations 3:21).

2. Find the leak: Where is the leak in your fuel tank? If the fuel of faith is God’s promises, then there is a promise(s) that you are not believing. Look for fears, doubts, indulgent sinful habits, unresolved anger, bitterness, disappointment, etc. Often these don’t take long to find. But sometimes they are tricky because something has tapped into a buried past experience that is still muddled in your mind. If this is the case ask trusted believers to help you figure it out. But when you identify it, name it. Get it clear.

3. Repent of unbelief: A lack of faith is sin. It’s dishonoring to God whose every word is true (Proverbs 30:5). We must repent of unbelief. But God loves to help our unbelief (Mark 9:24) turn into belief. In fact, sanctification is largely a process of growing towards trusting in the Lord with all our hearts (Proverbs 3:5). Like he did with Thomas, Jesus holds out to us his scarred hands to remind us that our unbelief is paid for and says, “Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27).

4. Fuel your faith engine with promises: God’s promises are the fuel that fires the engine of faith. Get your eyes off of the focus of your unbelief and get them on the promises that God wants you to believe instead. This is often not as hard as it feels like it’s going to be. It’s amazing how powerful God’s promises are. You can feel completely different in a half hour after recalling God’s past faithfulness and remembering some promises without any change in your circumstances. The difference is believing.

5. Fan your faith engine fire with resources: Here are just a few of many resources that can help you tune your faith engine and build helpful rails for your prayer train:

“Enjoying Your Prayer Life”: a short booklet by Michael Reeves that you can read in 30–40 minutes. It’s broken into 14 chapters of a couple pages each, which makes it easy to incorporate into your devotions. I have found this very helpful.

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God: an excellent new book by Tim Keller that addresses in-depth both engine and rail issues. I’m reading it currently and greatly benefitting.

A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World: this book by Paul Miller has been a strength to me. He compassionately pastors all of us prayer-strugglers and helps us both tune our engines and build helpful rails.

Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit (John Piper, video or audio, 53 min): a great sermon for your engine and your rails.

Prayer as a Way of Walking in Love (Francis Chan, video or audio, 1 hr): mainly for your engine. I’ve listened to this numerous times.

George Mueller’s Strategy for Showing God (John Piper, audio, 1 hr, 15 min): mainly for your engine, but some rail help too. I’ve listened to this repeatedly.

The Ministry of Hudson Taylor as Life in Christ (John Piper, video or audio, 1 hr, 12 min): mainly for your engine. I’ve listened to this repeatedly.

†From Michael Reeves very helpful booklet, “Enjoying Your Prayer Life,” p. 12.

††From Tim Keller’s very helpful book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, p. 53.

How Involved Is God in the Details of Your Life?

Why does God give us more details about Joseph’s life than any other individual in Genesis?

Genesis has an interesting structure. It zooms over the creation account like a rocket (about 3% of the book), soars over the millennia between Adam and Abraham like a jet (about 15% — dropping speed and altitude over Noah), and cruises over Abraham (21%), Isaac (8%), and Jacob (23%) like a helicopter, hovering here and there. Then it sort of drives down the road of Joseph’s life, devoting to it nearly 30% of its content.

God is always intentional in his proportionality. More does not necessarily equal more important in God’s word economy. The epistle to the Ephesians is much shorter than the narrative of Joseph’s life, but it is not less important. However, more does imply take note. There are crucial things God wants us to see.

God has many reasons to drive us through Joseph’s life, some more obvious than others. Let’s look at one perhaps lesser obvious reason.

Sightings of Sovereignty in the Life of Joseph

On this drive, if we’re paying attention to the scenery out the windows, we see a startling and unnerving level of God’s providential involvement in the details of Joseph’s life. Here are some of the scenes (warning: some of these scenes you may find disturbing).

Joseph’s place in the Patriarchal birth order was part of God’s plan (Genesis 30:22–24).
This means Rachel’s agonizing struggle with infertility was part of God’s plan (Genesis 30:1–2).
Jacob’s romantic preference of Rachel and therefore his (probably paternally insensitive) favoritism shown to Joseph was part of God’s plan (Genesis 29:30, 37:3).
Joseph’s prophetic dreams were (obviously) part of God’s plan (Genesis 37:5–11).
His brothers’ jealously (note: sibling rivalry and family conflict) was part of God’s plan (Genesis 37:8).
His brothers’ evil, murderous, greedy betrayal of him, and Judah’s part in it, was part of God’s plan (Genesis 37:18–28, 50:20).
His brothers’ 20-plus year deception of Jacob regarding Joseph was part of God’s plan.
The existence of an evil slave trade at the time was part of God’s plan (Genesis 37:26–27).
Potiphar’s complicity with the slave trade and his position in Egypt was part of God’s plan (Genesis 37:36).
Joseph’s extraordinary administrative gifting was part of God’s plan (Genesis 39:2–4).
Joseph’s favor with Potiphar was part of God’s plan (Genesis 39:4–6).
Potiphar’s wife’s being given over to sexual immorality was part of God’s plan (Genesis 39:8–12, Romans 1:24).
Potiphar’s wife’s dishonesty was part of God’s plan (Genesis 39:14–18).
Potiphar’s unjust judgment of Joseph was part of God’s plan (Genesis 39:19–20).
The particular prison Joseph was sent to — the one that would receive the cupbearer and the baker — was part of God’s plan (Genesis 39:20).
Joseph’s favor with the prison warden was part of God’s plan (Genesis 39:21–23).
The high-level conspiracy and its exposure resulting in the imprisonment of Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker were part of God’s plan (Genesis 40:1–3).
Joseph being appointed to care for them was part of God’s plan (Genesis 40:4).
The dreams the cupbearer and baker had were (obviously) part of God’s plan (Genesis 40:5).
Joseph’s compassionate care for their troubled hearts was part of God’s plan (Genesis 40:6–7).
Their trusting Joseph’s integrity enough to confide their dreams in him was part of God’s plan (Genesis 40:8–20).
Joseph discerning the meaning of their dreams was part of God’s plan (Genesis 40:12–13, 18–19).
The Egyptian judicial processes that exonerated the cupbearer and condemned the baker were part of God’s plan (Genesis 40:20–22).
The cupbearer failing to remember Joseph for two years was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:23–42:1).
The timing of Pharaoh’s dreams was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:1–7).
The inability of Pharaoh’s counselors to discern his dreams was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:8).
The cupbearer remembering Joseph and having the courage to remind Pharaoh of a potentially suspicious event was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:9–13).
Pharaoh’s being desperate enough to listen to a Hebrew prisoner was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:14–15).
Joseph having discernment of Pharaoh’s dreams was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:25–36).
The miraculous amount of immediate trust that Pharaoh placed in Joseph’s interpretation and counsel was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:37–40).
Joseph being given Asenath (an Egyptian) for a wife was part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:45).
Joseph’s two sons by Asenath, Manasseh and Ephraim, were part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:50–52, 48:5).
The complex confluence of natural phenomena that caused the extraordinarily fruitful years followed by the extraordinarily desolate years, with all the resulting human prosperity and suffering, and the consolidation of Egyptian wealth and power in Pharaoh’s hands were part of God’s plan (Genesis 41:53–57; 47:13–26).
The threat of starvation that caused terrible fear and moved Jacob to send his sons to Egypt for grain was part of God’s plan (Genesis 42:1–2).
The brothers’ safe journey to Egypt and Benjamin’s non-participation was part of God’s plan (Genesis 42:3–4).
The brothers’ bowing to Joseph in unwitting fulfillment of the dreams they hated was part of God’s plan (Genesis 42:6).
Joseph’s whole scheme to test his brothers was part of God’s plan (Genesis 42:9–44:34).
Simeon’s being chosen to remain in Egypt was part of God’s plan (Genesis 42:24).
Jacob’s refusal to release Benjamin to return to Egypt causing the delay of the brothers’ return and Simeon’s bewildering experience in custody was part of God’s plan (Genesis 42:38).
The relentless threat of starvation that prompted Judah to make his personal guarantee of Benjamin’s safe return and forced Jacob to finally allow Benjamin go to Egypt was part of God’s plan (Genesis 43:8–14).
The success with which Joseph was able to continue to conceal his identity and pull off the framing of Benjamin for thievery and all the anguish the brothers experienced as a result was part of God’s plan (Genesis 43:15–44:17).
Judah’s willingness to exchange his life for Benjamin’s out of love for his father, and thus initiating his own sale into slavery like he initiated Joseph’s sale into slavery, was part of God’s plan (Genesis 44:18–34).
Joseph’s timing in revealing himself to his brothers was part of God’s plan (Genesis 45:1–14).
Jacob being told by his sons of Joseph’s survival and position in Egypt (and the exposure of his sons’ 20-plus-year deceit with all the accompanying pain) was part of God’s plan (Genesis 45:25–28).
God directing Jacob to move to Egypt was (obviously) part of God’s plan (Genesis 46:2–4).
The relocation of the entire clan of Israel to Egypt, where they would reside and grow for 430 years and eventually become horribly enslaved, thus fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:13–14, was part of God’s plan (Genesis 46:5–47:12).

If we wished, there are more sightings we could include from this drive. But these give us a lot to chew on.

Joseph’s Life and Yours

Joseph had a unique role to play in redemptive history. But God’s intricate involvement in Joseph’s life is not unique to yours. One of the many reasons God gives us a close-up of Joseph’s life is to show us how active he is, how he never leaves us or forsakes us all along the way, in both the good and the evil things we experience (Hebrews 13:5).

Joseph knew God’s nearness when he woke from his prophetic dreams and probably when he experienced remarkable favor. But how near did God feel to Joseph in the pit of his brothers’ betrayal, or shackled in the Ishmaelite caravan, or when falsely accused of attempted rape, or stuck for years in the king’s prison, forgotten? Yet we see that God was there all the time working all things together for good for Joseph and millions of others (Romans 8:28).

Yes, God was even working the evil, heinous things people did to Joseph for good. We can say that because that’s precisely what Joseph himself said to his brothers about their betrayal of him, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

The detailed narrative of Joseph’s life, among many other things, is a loving letter from your Good Shepherd (John 10:11) — the same Good Shepherd who guided Joseph through green pastures and the valley of the shadow of death, pursuing him with good all the days of his life (Psalm 23) — to remind you that no matter what you are experiencing, sweet or bitter, good or evil, no matter how long it’s lasting, he has not left you alone (John 14:18). He is with you (Psalm 23:4), he is working all things together for good (Romans 8:28), and he will be with you to the end (Matthew 28:20).

Related Resources

God’s Sovereignty Over Evil in My Life (interview)

The Suffering of Christ and the Sovereignty of God (message)

A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God (book)

Love Covers

Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends. (Proverbs 17:9)

Some cover-ups are lies and some cover-ups are love. It depends on who’s doing the covering.

Covering with Lies and Covering with Love

When President Richard Nixon and his aides attempted to cover up the offense of the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Complex by Republican Party operatives, they were not seeking love. Why? Because they, the offending party (the Republicans), were trying to cover their own offense against the offended party (the Democrats).

When a guilty party “covers” his own offense, it is a lie. The only love involved is prideful self-love. But when justice and ethics don’t demand that a matter be “repeated” (such as sexual or other kinds of heinous abuse) and the innocent (the offended party or an observing party) “covers” the offense of an offender in order to preserve friendship, it is love — the kind of love that “bears all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

Why We Know of So Few Love-Covered Offenses

Every day we hear stories of offenders who have tried to cover their own offenses with lies. And every day we hear (sometimes from our own lips) people repeating a matter. We call this gossip and it fuels whole media industries. All around us are shattered relationships that exploded in the “repeating.”

But how many examples can you think of where a friendship was preserved because someone did not repeat — gossip about — an offense? Not many, I’ll wager. Why is this so rare?

While it’s true that lovingly covering a matter is rarer in our sinful world than repeating a matter, this is not the only reason we know so few examples of covering. A significant reason is that by definition covering hides others’ offenses from our view and therefore even the covering is concealed from our view. We don’t know about offenses or their covering because loving people haven’t talked about them.

A Gospel-like Love

The kind of love that “covers a multitude of sins” is a costly love (1 Peter 4:8). It is a humble love that “looks not only to [our] own interests but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).

This love, even when it is exercised by unbelievers, is a gospel-like love because it is a reflection of the way God so loved the world that he gave his only son (John 3:16) to cover our sins (Romans 4:7). God, the offended party, justly covered the penalty of our offenses on the cross so that he could righteously “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19) and “remember [our] sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

And to us, Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

So seek to love like Jesus today. Love in a way that few will ever know about. Cover an offense.

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God Is at Work in Your Unremarkable Days

I’m reading in Genesis now, as I often do at the beginning of the year, once again on a one-year journey through the greatest, most influential book ever published in human history. I’m in my fiftieth year, and having spent my entire adult life reading and studying the Bible, I feel like I may be in about the third grade in mastery. That’s probably giving myself too much credit.

This Book enlightens and confounds, humbles and encourages me. It has more wisdom in it than can possibly be mined in a lifetime. It speaks to me in the things that it explicitly says, and also in what it doesn’t say. This January, Genesis is speaking to me of the work of God in the unremarkable years — all the years spanning between God’s recorded historical in-breakings.

The Unremarkable Years of Genesis

Genesis covers an incredible span of time. The most conservative Evangelical scholars estimate the time between Adam and Abraham at between 2,000 and 6,000 years (possible gaps in the genealogies being the variable). Which means at minimum, Genesis alone covers approximately the same amount of historical time as the rest of the books of the Bible combined, and possibly much more.

And what do we know about those millennia? Remarkably little when you think about it. After the creation of Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:26–2:25), we learn about the fall (Genesis 3), we learn about Cain’s murder of Abel (Genesis 4), and then we are provided only genealogies with a few historical remarks tossed in until we get to Noah. How many years passed between between Adam and Noah (Genesis chapters 2–5)? A minimum of about 1,600 years, possibly much more.

Between Noah and Abraham (chapters 6–11) there are centuries (about 350 years minimum, possibly much more). And besides the flood account, the only things the Bible tells us about these years are a few events regarding Noah and his sons, more genealogies, and the story of the tower of Babel.

Then with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the patriarchs (chapters 12–50), Genesis begins to give us a lot more information. Although, considering that these 39 chapters span about 360 years, most of those years also go without saying.

God Does Not Waste Time or People

Now, just for the sake of contemplation, let’s assume about 2,000 years between Adam and Abraham, and let’s assume solar years (365 days). That would be approximately 730,000 days that passed with only a handful of them containing events that God decided to record.

What was God doing during all those unremarkable years — all those years we know nothing about and all those people who were “eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage . . . [and] buying and selling, planting and building” (Luke 17:27–28)? All those years of wonders and horrors, some of which we’ve unearthed in archeological tells? Were they throwaway years and disposable people?

No. Every single one of those 730,000 days was a unique, priceless, irreplaceable creation of God (Psalm 118:24). And every single person was a unique, priceless, irreplaceable creation of God, each bearing God’s image (Genesis 1:27), however marred and distorted, each a unique story, each playing a role in the Story whether for good or ill (Romans 9:21), and each having meaning to God, though they lived and died anonymous to us. The destiny of each, whether resulting in mercy or judgment, we entrust to the Judge of all the earth who only does what is just (Genesis 18:25). Many wasted their lives, but God did not waste theirs.

God was not wasting time or people during these unrecorded days. He was holding all things together by the word of his power every moment (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3) and he was working in every detail of history and human experience (John 5:17; Acts 17:26–28) so that in the fullness of time he might enter history and human experience as the second Adam and complete his plan to redeem what had fallen on that horrible, remarkable day in the garden (Galatians 4:4–5; Romans 5:17). God was not absent or deistically distant (Acts 17:27–28), neither was he silent (Romans 1:20).

God Does Not Waste Your Time or You

Let the unremarkable years of Genesis speak to you. A few days of your life are remarkable, containing events and experiences where you see God’s providence with startling clarity and when your faith and life course are indelibly and memorably shaped. But the vast majority of your days — likely a day like today — will pass into obscurity unrecorded and irretrievable to your memory. But though today may be unremarkable, it is not unimportant. It is unique, priceless, and irreplaceable.

Today God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). Today God is at work in you to advance toward completion the good work that he began in you (Philippians 1:6). Today, though unseen and unfelt by you, God is at work in every detail of your history and experience and the history and experience of possibly thousands of others, to bring about answers to your long-requested prayers, to open the door that seems impossibly closed to you, to turn the prodigal homeward, to save your hard-hearted loved-one, to deliver you from the affliction, or to make you an unexpected, remarkable means of grace to someone else.

Today is a day that the Lord has specially made (Psalm 118:24). He has planned it for you. It has a purpose. No matter what it holds, give thanks for it (1 Thessalonians 5:18). For God does not waste a day and he will not waste you. And if you love and trust him, you will one day discover that today, unremarkable as it now seems, will do you remarkable good (Romans 8:28).

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Ask Whatever You Wish

This promise that Jesus made to us is so sweeping in its scope and seems beyond the experience of many of us that it can strike us as unbelievable:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)

We don’t even attempt to cash this check at the bank of heaven. There must be insufficient funds in our account. Whatever we wish will be done for us? Having desired and asked God for so many things that haven’t been done for us, we figure either 1) Jesus is using hyperbole or 2) this promise is only for super-saints who experience a kind of connection with God that we don’t seem to have.

Neither is true. Jesus doesn’t exaggerate and he chooses weak, foolish people (1 Corinthians 1:26), people whose faith is small (Matthew 14:31), people just like us, to be his disciples.

No, this promise is real and Jesus is making this promise to us. It is not to be passed over with a shrug. It is a check to be grasped, taken to the bank of Heaven where there is no lack of treasure, and cashed. Jesus wants us to cash it.

But there are two conditions we must meet for the check to be valid. The first is that we must abide in Jesus. Remember the context of the previous six verses. We are to abide in Jesus just as branches abide (are embedded) in a vine. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing (verse 5) and, in fact, we wither. Abiding branches have the sap of the Holy Spirit running through them, which means that the branches receive and share the affections and wishes of the vine.

The second condition we must meet is that Jesus’s words must abide in us. What this means is all of Jesus’s words, not just the words in John 15:1–6. We know that because of what Jesus says in verse 10: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” Jesus loves us by telling us the truth (John 17:8, 26) and we love him by believing and therefore obeying/living what he says (John 14:15).

So by these two conditions — staying in Jesus and having Jesus’s words stay in us — he shapes our desires and our thoughts through the Holy Spirit so that our wishes and his are increasingly the same. You see, it is only natural that a branch should receive exactly what it needs from the vine.

The only times our prayers seem to go unanswered are when 1) we don’t share Jesus’s wishes because we aren’t abiding in him (James 4:3) or 2) we don’t share Jesus’s timeline, or 3) we don’t recognize Jesus’s unexpected answers.

This is a promise that Jesus wants you to believe and one he loves to fulfill. Because through it we discover that our joy doesn’t spring from Jesus giving us what we want but Jesus being what we want.

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Seven Resolutions to Pursue Love in 2015

Among the Devil’s chief strategies is destroying relationships of love between Christians by eroding their trust in one another. It is highly effective and highly destructive. As we ponder new resolves in 2015, we would be wise to consider increasing our vigilance against this very subtle tactic, since we are likely to face it repeatedly.

What Mirkwood Can Teach Us

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and his 13 dwarf companions must travel through the forest of Mirkwood on their way to the Lonely Mountain. The forest had once been known as Greenwood the Great, but the evil Necromancer had crept in and infected it with fear, corruption, and the shadow of death. Just before the company sets out, they are warned not to stray from the path because the disorienting evil influence in the forest is so strong that they might never find the path again.

Sure enough, as they trudge through Mirkwood they fall under an oppressive discouragement. This is powerfully portrayed in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation (the 2nd film of the trilogy) where we see each character’s perception of reality become warped. Evil plays on their minds. They not only become more disheartened than they should be, they also become distrustful of each other. Conflicts break out. Bad decisions are made. The quest nearly ends in tragic disaster.

Mirkwood gives us a helpful picture of what it’s like for us to journey through life together in a world that lies in the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19). We are walking through a dangerous, deceitful place. Many things we perceive and feel are distortions of reality, but they can feel so real.

What Satan Targets to Kill Love

Among the most painful and destructive of our “Mirkwood” experiences are when doubts and distrust develop between our “traveling companions” and us. Something happens — a sin or a perceived sin occurs — an offense is taken, relational tension builds, trust deteriorates, and the result is relational alienation. Often it’s not clear why or how things became so toxic. And that’s because more is in play than meets the eye.

Relationships of love trade on the currency of trust. If trust can be broken, love dries up and the church will split, the small group will fall apart, the marriage will break up, the friendship will disintegrate, and the professing Christian will walk away from the faith. When love dries up, Christianity dries up. So to destroy love, Satan targets trust. It's the quickest way to kill love.

Satan may not like when faithful churches are planted and passionate Christian marriages commenced and vibrant Christian friendships formed, but he is willing to bide his time. He knows that a strong start can still end badly and do a great deal of damage in the collapse. He knows how to play on our fears and our pride. He knows that the journey through the Mirkwood of this world is long and the evil influence is strong. And he knows how to wait for an opportune time (Luke 4:13). He will endure a happy beginning in the hope that an unhappy ending will produce that much more disillusionment and cynical unbelief.

For this reason, we must be prepared to remain alert and keep our wits throughout the long Mirkwood march.

What We Must Resolve

Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). This love — John 15:12–13 love, 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 love, 1 John 3:16–18 love — is the single greatest evidence that we belong to Christ. It surpasses spiritual giftedness, social justice action, and martyrs’ boldness in importance (1 Corinthians 13:1–3).

This is precisely why Satan seeks above all to destroy such love between Christians. And it’s why we find it so difficult to love — our love is under assault. And in the middle of it all, it appears like we are wrestling one another when we’re really wrestling with cosmic powers of darkness that are attacking Christ’s kingdom (Ephesians 6:12).

So if Satan seeks to destroy our love for one another, and he routinely seeks to do that through corrupting our trust in one another, then we must redouble our resolve to vigilantly protect our love by guarding our trust. Here are seven resolutions:

1. Resolve to remember Mirkwood. Because we are journeying through a treacherous realm under the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19), we must have a healthy suspicion of our perceptions. Our indwelling sin, limited perspectives, and past experiences make us vulnerable to deception, easily misinterpreting others’ motives or intentions.

2. Resolve to assume the best in others. Sometimes the worst happens. I have friends who have been horribly abused by professing “Christians.” But far more often we think worse of others than we should, inflating an offense through speculation. Rather, we should assume the best motives in others until proven otherwise.

3. Resolve to pursue reconciliation quickly. Jesus tells us to go quickly to someone who has been offended by us and be reconciled to them (Matthew 5:23–24). Most issues that erode trust between Christians would be resolved if both parties humbly talked them through as soon as possible following an offense. This habit will save us hours of fruitless stewing in speculative and sinful anger.

4. Resolve to not gossip. Offenses and resentment are contagious (Proverbs 26:20). Don’t pass it to others and make trust rebuilding harder.

5. Resolve to forgive offenses. When an offense has really occurred, the Bible is very clear: We are to bear with one another and forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven us (Colossians 3:13). We live the gospel when we let love cover a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).

6. Resolve to kill the weed of resentment (Ephesians 4:31). If we allow resentment to grow it will choke love to death. When we recognize that it has taken root, we must kill it through confession and doing all we can to pursue the peace of reconciliation (Romans 12:18).

7. Resolve to remember the gospel. The cross of Jesus reminds us of how much grace has been shown to us, settles all accounts of justice, and frees us to serve our enemies (and much more offending friends) in love (Romans 12:19–20). If the great King forgave our debt of 10,000 talents, we can forgive our fellow servant a debt of 100 denarii (Matthew 18:23–35).

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