Jon Bloom's Blog, page 47

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

July 4th is the day we commemorate the Continental Congress’s declaration of independence from the nation of Great Britain. People still debate over whether or not Britain’s offenses warranted colonial secession and war. Regardless, it was a bold, very risky move for the signers of the Declaration.

Looking back over 238 years, with America now an affluent global superpower, it’s hard for Americans to get a sense for just how unlikely (humanly speaking) it was that the 13 United States of America defeated Great Britain in a war and survived as an independent nation. This might be a good summer to read 1776 by David McCullough.

Self-Evident Truths

What was it that drove our national founders to seek independence? What was the Big Idea behind the United States? I think it is captured in the first sentence of paragraph two of the Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It is among the greatest sentences ever written regarding what a civil government exists to preserve and protect. In the annals of history, it truly is a revolutionary statement: every human being has God-given rights to live, be free, and pursue their happiness.

So powerful is this statement that it has, over time and through blood, sweat, and tears, fueled (and is still fueling) the overcoming of various kinds of racial, gender, and economic injustices in the nation itself. May God grant that it helps fuel the overcoming of 41 years of legalized violation of the unalienable right to life of unborn men and women.

Where Did These Truths Come From?

We know that our democratic republican form of government has its origins in Athens and Rome and various other Western democratic experiments. But where did this vision for the dignity and freedom of all human beings come from? Jerusalem — by which I mean the Bible.

Yes, Greek philosophy was influential too. But the men who constructed the United States and crafted all of our founding documents and took such great personal risks (like committing capital treason) in order to launch a nation built on the foundations of these truths were indelibly shaped by the Bible, whether or not they personally believed its claims.

Creator: It was the Bible that gave our founders their general consensus of Judeo-Christian monotheism (Deuteronomy 6:4).

All Men: It was the Bible that gave them such a strong sense of the importance of the individual — every individual (Isaiah 45:23, Philippians 2:10).

Life: It was the Bible that taught them the sacredness of human life (Leviticus 24:17, Psalm 139:13–16).

Liberty: It was the Bible that ingrained in them deeply the emancipatory theme of “liberty for the captives” (Luke 4:18) that runs through the whole of redemptive history.

Pursuit of Happiness: And it was the Bible that taught them that the ultimate pursuit of an individual’s life is to find joy (Psalm 16:11, Psalm 37:4, Psalm 73:25–26, Matthew 13:44, John 10:10, John 15:11, Philippians 1:21, Philippians 3:8).

Thank God for the United States of America

The United States of America is not the kingdom of God. Christians are citizens of a “better country, that is a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). The Declaration of Independence and its self-evident truths is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The socio-political freedoms we enjoy don’t set us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). If we sing, “I’m proud to be an American,” while invoking God’s blessing on the USA, we must remember that “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). God doesn’t like pride. And in view of some horrible national injustices and disgraces, we have cause to be humble.

But we should be deeply thankful to God for the United States, “for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1). Even with its defects, sometimes tragic defects, we should never be so critical and cynical of our government that we lose sight of the historically unprecedented freedoms we enjoy, especially the freedom we have to worship according to our conscience.

I recently shared lunch with a Christian leader who lives in a country that is among the most difficult and dangerous in the world to be a Christian. What our brothers and sisters endure there is heartbreaking. Yes, God has allowed this governing authority to exist too for purposes we don’t understand, just like he allowed Nero’s oppressive and bloody regime when Paul wrote Romans 13. We must pray for our Christian family in hard countries and ask God to grant them some of the freedoms we enjoy and advocate for these freedoms wherever we can.

So today, as we remember the American Declaration of Independence, let us thank God for the miracle of a nation that holds dear the biblical values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And let us who live here thank God — while keeping America’s injustices and disgraces in view — that he has allowed us to live under a system of government designed to preserve and protect these inalienable rights. Imperfect as it is, it is among the very best ever constructed by sinful, selfish, proud, power-hungry human beings.

More on Independence Day:

Born Again on the Fourth of July

Pastors, Politics, and the American Republic

Pilgrims and Patriots (Ask Pastor John)

So Good Things Can Run Wild

Everything God creates is good (Genesis 1:31).

We Are Out of Sync

But we must take this in large measure on faith because under the curse of the Fall, our fallen perceptions often don’t see it and our fallen natures often don’t believe it. We are disordered and pathologically self-centered. We are out of sync.

The only things fallen humans tend to believe are those that sate our appetites, increase our personal prestige, align with our preferences, pleasantly interest us, operate within our desired timetable, and are convenient and comfortable. In the scope of the created universe, these add up to only a very few things.

From infancy through our elder years we so often feel frustrated. We don’t like to be told what to do, what to eat, what to wear, when to go to bed, when to get up, what to study, when to study, where to study, what to clean, when to clean, and on and on. We don’t like limits imposed on us by parents, teachers, bosses, spouses, children, neighborhood associations, government, or God. We buck against the constraints of morality, ethics, law, and even biology.

My point here is not that we shouldn’t challenge the evil that infects any authority or structure. We should. My point is that we have an indwelling evil propensity to challenge what is good. We have a bent to not believe God, that his design for us — which implies limits for us — is best for us (Genesis 3:4–6). We have a fallen desire to be autonomous, self-determining, sovereign gods.

God’s Design Lets Good Run Wild

And we must keep this in mind as we evaluate how we feel about God’s good design for manhood and womanhood. Remember, we buck and chafe against a host of structures, feeling them to be constraints, confines, even when they are put in place for our greatest joy.

God designed men and women. He made them complementary. When we as men and women trust what God says about what it means to be a man or woman and obey his instructions, the result is harmony. When we function as we were designed, the result is not constraint but freedom. G.K. Chesterton put it beautifully when he said,

. . . the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order 
was to give room for good things to run wild. (Orthodoxy, chapter 6)

That’s what this free ebook is about: the beautiful order of God’s design that frees all that is good about manhood and all that is good about womanhood to run wild.

Read it for the sake of your wild joy. And trust God’s promises more than your perceptions.

More on manhood and womanhood:

Good: The Joy of Christian Manhood and Womanhood

What’s the Difference?

50 Crucial Questions About Manhood and Womanhood

How Can Self-Denial Be Hedonistic?

The Christian life is a journey to the greatest joy that exists. But “the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14). Why is that? Because, paradoxically, as Jesus’s disciples learned in Mark 8, in order to pursue our greatest joy, we must deny ourselves.

It was a moment of euphoria for the disciples. Jesus was the Christ. Peter had confessed it and Jesus had confirmed it. The long-awaited arrival of Israel’s Messiah had come! And the Twelve relished their place alongside him.

Then, oddly, Jesus started talking about suffering many things, and being murdered by his enemies, and rising again from the dead. The disciples were confused: how could defeat be the path to the Christ’s glory? The Christ was to be victorious.

So Peter brought correction to Jesus, and Jesus called his correction satanic. Peter was stunned. What could be satanic about wanting the Christ to be victorious? Jesus’s answer was, “you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Mark 8:33).

Jesus Wants Us to Die?

Jesus knew that all the disciples, as well as the crowd following him, were thinking the same thing. So he gathered them all together and let go with one more wrecking ball to their worldview:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (Mark 8:34)

The crowd stilled, a sea of bewildered faces. A cross? They all knew what that meant: Roman execution of the most horrific, fearful kind. They were all hoping that Jesus would conquer their enemies, free them from such tyranny, and “restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6). Carrying a Roman cross did not sound like the Messianic kingdom they were longing for. It sounded like death. Jesus wanted them to die?

Yes.

Jesus’s kingdom was not of this world—not of the geopolitical world that these first followers knew (John 18:36). His kingdom was far broader in scope than any of them yet realized. And their true enemy was far more powerful and deadly than Rome. Rome was a drop in the bucket (Isaiah 40:15). Their real enemy dwelled in them and all around them. Jesus had indeed come to conquer that enemy. In just a few days, he was headed to Jerusalem to strike the decisive blow.

So now Jesus was preparing them for the cross — his first and foremost, then theirs — and the multi-millennial mission to call out true Israel from all peoples into his kingdom. Jesus was teaching them to intentionally move toward death.

All present that day would die physically, some as martyrs. But all his followers would also have to die spiritually, to themselves. They would have to die to the desire for self-glory, die to the desire for worldly respect, die to the fear of man, die to the desire for an easy life, die to the desire for earthly wealth, and a thousand other deaths. Finally, they would have to die to their desire to save their earthly lives.

A Hedonistic Death

But Jesus wasn’t calling his followers to some stoic life of self-sacrifice. He was inviting them to joy beyond their imagination. The broad road of the world was lined with seductive false promises, appealing to and blinding sinful human heart-eyes and leading many to a horror beyond imagination. So Jesus was calling his followers to deny themselves the world’s paltry, brief joys so that they might have overflowing eternal joy. He was calling them to deny themselves hell, that they might take up heaven.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mark 8:35–38)

The Christian life is hard, sometimes agonizing, but we shouldn’t be surprised (1 Peter 4:12). The Christian life is hard because denying our fallen selves is hard. Our lives are our most precious earthly possession. Nothing displays the worth of Jesus more than our willingness to give away our lives (in small and large ways) for his sake.

The only things that Jesus asks us to deny are what will rob us of eternal joy. Like Moses in Hebrews 11:25–26, we are called to deny ourselves the passing pleasures of sin and consider the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the world’s treasures. How? By looking to the reward! This kind of self-denial is hedonistic.

Years ago, in a lullaby for my oldest daughter, I tried to capture, for her and for me, the heavenly logic of this paradoxical pursuit of joy:

There’s joy beyond your wildest dreams if you will just believe:

This aching thirst for joy you feel God only can relieve,

And that eternal life is what’s in store

For all who will believe that only he’s worth living for.

More on self-denial:

The Deep Joy of Self-Denial

Staying for the Best Things

Lay Aside the Weight of Self-Preoccupation

God Makes Our Misery the Servant of His Mercy

Naaman was Syria’s foremost general when Elisha served as God’s foremost prophet in Israel. After a Syrian raid on Israel, Naaman brought back his wife a gift: a Hebrew servant girl. When she saw that Naaman suffered from a serious leprous skin disease, the Hebrew servant girl told Naaman about Elisha and the power of Yahweh. As a result, Naaman was healed.

In this story from 2 Kings 5:1–19, God’s miraculous power is clearly seen in Naaman’s healing. But in the background stands the servant girl. And in her we see God’s power to make our misery the servant of his mercy.

“The master’s returned! The master’s returned!” Shamura and her servant girl, Anyroda, were laying out fabric on the table when she heard the servant boy shouting outside. She dropped the fabric and hurried out to greet her husband. Anyroda stayed behind, busying herself with the fabric. But what she was really doing was avoiding her master.

As Shamura stepped outside, Naaman stepped out of his chariot and strode quickly toward her. She could tell he was excited, but trying to hide it. The news must be good, she thought. She walked to meet him, smiling, and he kissed her and embraced her tightly. “You are a sweet sight for longing eyes,” he said.

Shamura stepped back and said, “Well?”

Naaman pulled up the left sleeve of his robe, exposing his upper arm where one of the diseased spots had been. The skin was healthy and soft. “No spots anywhere,” he announced. “I am a leper no more.”

Shamura cupped her mouth and her eyes teared. Then she said softly, “The gods be praised!”

Naaman put his arm around Shamura’s shoulder and they began walking slowly toward the house. “No,” he said softly. “The ‘gods,’ at least as we’ve understood them, had nothing to do with this. Rimmon was powerless to cure my disease. I was healed by Yahweh.”

Shamura could tell by Naaman’s tone that more than just his skin was changed.

“Where is Anyroda?” Naaman asked.

Shamura glanced around but didn’t see her. “She must still be in the house. We were preparing fabric for a new robe when you arrived.”

“I need to speak with her,” said Naaman. He clapped his hands twice, which brought his young servant boy running. “Send for Anyroda. She’s in the house,” Naaman instructed. The boy was off.

A minute later Anyroda stepped out the door apprehensively.

“Anyroda, come! You have nothing to fear. It worked!” Anyroda had never seen Naaman smile like that. She straightened and her eyes widened. She walked over to them.

“I have something to show you,” said Naaman, and he pulled up his sleeve to reveal his healed skin.

“You’re healed?” Anyroda asked breathlessly.

“Yes,” he replied, “completely healed by Yahweh, your God — and now mine. And I would never have been healed or ever known the true God if you hadn’t told me about your prophet. Anyroda, I owe you more than I could ever hope to repay.”

Anyroda’s eyes dropped to the ground. Her master, one of Syria’s greatest men, had barely acknowledged her prior to this trip. The respect she now felt from him was hard to absorb.

“What is your Hebrew name? I’ve never asked,” said Naaman.

“Miriam,” she answered.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s the name of a great prophetess, but in Hebrew it means ‘bitter.’”

“Bitter,” said Naaman, more to himself than to her. “That’s fitting.” He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “May we call you Miriam?”

Miriam nodded.

“I thought of you many times, Miriam, on our journey back, riding through your homeland. I had never noticed how beautiful it was before. I suppose it is more beautiful to me now that I know it is the land of the true God.”

Miriam bowed her head and wiped tears from her eyes.

Naaman held out his hand and said, “Come, Miriam, I have something else to show you.” Miriam dried her hand and took Naaman’s. He led her behind the horses where two mules stood, each carrying two large baskets of dirt.

“These baskets hold earth from Israel, near the great prophet’s house. Never again will I sacrifice to any other god but Yahweh, for now I know that there is no other. And when I offer sacrifice, it will be on the soil Yahweh promised to give to his people, to your people.

“Miriam, I see now that I have been the source of great bitterness for you. I stole you away from your family, from your people, and from Yahweh’s land. All this time I assumed that I had done you a great favor, bringing you to a great kingdom to serve in the house of a great general. I thought I was giving you a life you would never have had otherwise. But I was a fool. I am the one who received the great favor.” Tears filled the strong man’s eyes and he said with difficulty, “Yahweh sent you to point me to him. I would never have known him, had you not come to my house. Because of you, Miriam, Yahweh has given me a life I would never have had otherwise.”

Master and servant wept together.

Naaman’s story is more than a story of God’s sovereign power over disease. It’s more than a story of God’s sovereign grace extended to the nations and to his enemies. It is also a glorious story of God’s sovereign mercy conquering human evil and heartbreak.

The Syrians abducted a Hebrew girl from her family. It was a wicked sin. The girl, her parents, and her siblings experienced a nightmare of misery from which they could never wake. It left them traumatized and scarred. They wept for grief and pleaded with God for mercy.

And God answered. But he did not answer by returning the girl home (unless Naaman later freed her). God answered by using her to give Naaman the mercy of healing and saving faith. God used her to give the Syrian people the mercy of seeing his reality and glory. And God used this displaced servant girl to preserve a testimony of his mercy toward undeserving sinners that has been retold to billions of people for thousands of years.

Behind all the great manifestations of God’s mighty mercy in history are stories of great misery. Do not miss the action in the background. It’s there to fuel your faith. God will overpower every evil you will experience in this life and make you more than a conqueror through Christ who loved you (Romans 8:37).

The evil that causes your greatest misery will one day serve the omnipotent mercy of God, not only for you, but also for more people than you ever imagined.

More on God’s grace in our suffering:

A Song for the Suffering (video with Shane & Shane)

When God Does the Miracle We Didn’t Ask For (article by Vaneetha Rendall Demski)

Preparing to Know Christ Deeply Through Suffering (message by John Piper)

Jesus Wants You to Be You

God had you specifically in mind when he created you and called you to follow him. You are custom-designed for your calling. But when you face the difficulty of your calling, you may look at others and be tempted to wonder why they don’t seem to bear the same burdens you do. Don’t be discouraged; in John 21, the Apostle Peter faced the same temptation.

“What About this Man?”

After the resurrected Jesus served his sleep-deprived fisherman-disciples a seaside breakfast of miracle fish, he took Peter on a walk down the beach. Jesus wanted to tell Peter a few important things directly before Jesus parted physically from him for the last time in this age. John trailed them, about ten yards behind.

Toward the end of their conversation, Jesus dropped a bombshell on Peter: “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” Then Jesus, as only he could do, peered right into Peter’s soul and said, “Follow me.”

Peter had already been dreading Jesus’s final departure, wondering how this small, fearful band of disciples would survive without him. Peter wondered how he would survive. Now Jesus informed him that he wasn’t going to survive. Peter was going to die for Jesus. Only this time Peter issued no over-confident proclamation like he had during the Passover meal. Now he knew how weak he really was. Left to himself, he was a coward.

But Peter remembered that he would not be left to himself like an orphan; Jesus, though gone, would somehow come to him in the future (John 14:18). Peter believed this. Jesus had never once failed to keep a promise. But how Jesus would come to him at the moment of his execution, Peter could not conceive. He already felt lonely.

And Peter wondered why Jesus hadn’t spoken of other disciples’ deaths. Was he the only one who would have to die? Peter looked around for the others and he saw John, who was walking just where the cool surf gently pushed up and bathed his feet. Peter knew how Jesus loved John, and he wondered if Jesus was going to spare John the cost that he was asking Peter to pay. Gesturing back, Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?”

Jesus’s brow furrowed as he watched two gulls quarrel over a dead fish. Then he looked at Peter and responded with his familiar tender firmness, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”

“What Is that to You?”

Jesus calls each one of us to follow him (John 15:16). All of God’s promises are yes to each one of us in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). We each get to share in Christ’s inheritance (Colossians 1:12) and as members of Christ’s united body we need each other (Romans 12:5).

But we do not all have the same function (Romans 12:4). Each disciple, each individual member of the body, has a unique role. And each of us must lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him (1 Corinthians 7:17).

The question, “What is that to you?” is one you and I need to ask frequently. How God deals with other people is often of excessive concern to us, especially if their paths don’t seem to be paved with the same pain as ours.

The fallen part of our nature doesn’t look at others and glory in how each of them uniquely bears the imago dei (Genesis 1:27). It doesn’t revel in their distinctive refraction of God’s multifaceted glory. It doesn’t rejoice in the sweet providences God grants to them. It is not grateful for the blessings of their God-given strengths. It does not want to deal gently with their weaknesses (Hebrews 5:2). Full of pride and selfish ambition, our fallen nature uses others to gauge our own significance, how successful and impressive we perceive ourselves to be.

“You Follow Me.”

But there is gospel in Jesus’s words, “What is that to you? You follow me.” Do you hear it? It’s a declaration of liberation. Jesus died to make you “free indeed” (John 8:36), and this includes freedom from the tyranny of sinful comparison and coveting another’s calling.

God had you in mind when he created you (Psalm 139:13–16). He knew just what he was doing. You, your body, your mind, and your circumstances, are not an accident. Yes, he’s aware of your deficiencies, and, yes, he’s calling you to grow in grace (2 Peter 3:18). But God does not expect or intend you to be someone else. Nor does he want you to follow someone else’s path.

Jesus wants you to be you. The faith that Jesus gives you is sufficient for the path he gives you (Romans 12:3). And the grace he gives you to face your trials will be sufficient for you when the need comes (2 Corinthians 12:9).

You are your truest you, not when you are analyzing yourself or measuring yourself against someone else. You are your truest you when your eyes are fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2), when you are following him in faith, and when you are serving others in love with the grace-gifts God has assigned to you (Romans 12:4–8).

So, no matter what today holds, be free from saying in your heart, “Lord what about this man?” For Jesus chose you (John 15:16), promised to supply all that you need (Philippians 4:19), and wants you to simply follow him.

If you humble yourself under his mighty hand, trusting him to redeem all your suffering, “thorns” (2 Corinthians 12:7) and weaknesses, he will exalt you at the time and in the way that will bring him the most glory and you the most joy (1 Peter 5:6).

More on calling from Desiring God:

Greatness, Humility, Servanthood

Consider Your Calling

Calling all Clay Pots

This May Push You over the Edge

Most of us read, see, or hear thousands of messages during the course of our lives. But only a few strike us with such force that we remember them distinctly. These messages uniquely shape us. They haunt us. We can’t shake them. We go back to them over and over.

I heard of those messages in March 2001, when John Piper spoke at John MacArthur’s Shepherds’ Conference. I’ve listened to it almost every year since. I recently listened to it again. The title is, “Live to Die,” and John’s primary text is Colossians 1:24:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

I am not even going to attempt to summarize what John says about the crazy kingdom paradox of a life of joyful suffering. A distillation would only be a dilution. I don’t even recommend that you read the transcript we provide. No, listen to it. John spoke with a peculiar unction that March night in L.A. I have no other way to describe it.

But I will say this: “Live to Die” will shake you. It gets to the core of what it means to live as a Christian in this age. It is not a comfortable message. It will confront you with your assumptions. But it teems with life — real life, New Testament life. If you’re like me, it will haunt you. It may even push you over the edge and you may make that life change that has been gnawing at you. Or it may stir you out of a spiritual sleep. The only excerpt from the message I’ll share is this:

Some of you . . . right now are hovering right on the brink of a radical decision and I’m excited for you. God sent me here for you to push you over the edge and what he’s calling you to do tonight is to make some choices in the service of love — not masochism — in the service of love . . . love that can only be explained if Christ will raise you from the dead.

Listen to it. It is an invitation to live the real adventure: a life that banks on the resurrection.

The Treasure Makes All the Difference

One of Jesus’s most powerful parables is also one of his shortest:

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field (Matthew 13:44).

Fifteen minutes before this man’s discovery in the field, the thought of selling all that he owned to buy it wouldn’t have crossed his mind. Even if it had, it would have seemed ludicrous. But fifteen minutes after finding the treasure, he was off to do it with joy. What made the difference?

The treasure.

This man suddenly found something that transformed his whole outlook on life. The treasure restructured his values and priorities. It altered his goals. The treasure revolutionized the man.

The treasure in this parable is the resurrection to eternal life. It was the same “treasure in heaven” that Jesus promised the rich young man if he would sell his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Jesus (Matthew 19:21). The rich young man, blinded by short-term worldly wealth, could not see the treasure, but the man in the parable did, and he jumped at it.

Now, there was a cost to obtaining the treasure. Viewed one way, the cost seemed high — it cost him everything he owned. But viewed another way, the cost was very small. Standing in the field, the man did a quick cost-benefit analysis. It didn’t take him long to realize that selling all his possessions was going to make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. He would have been a fool not to do whatever was necessary to buy that field.

The Treasure of Treasures

Now, when the man bought the field and obtained the treasure of eternal life, what specifically did he get? This is an important question, because the Bible makes eternal life a central focus for the Christian, yet provides few descriptions about what it will be like. When the Bible does describe eternal life, it often uses similes, metaphors, and symbols. Why?

One reason is that we simply are not yet equipped to comprehend the reality we will experience in the new age, for “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Through figurative language, God helps us transpose the glories we now see and understand into glimpses of future greater glories.

But I believe there is a more important reason God doesn’t give us more details: Eternal life is more about a Person than a place. What will make the kingdom of heaven so heavenly to us will not be the glorious phenomena of the new creation or the rich rewards we will receive, as inexpressibly wonderful as they will be. The heaven of the age to come, the Treasure of treasures, will be God himself — knowing and being with the One from whom all blessings flow.

Jesus himself said, “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). And Paul expressed his deepest longings like this: “I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ… that I may know him and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:8, 10). What we will enjoy most about the resurrection is having the dim mirror of this age removed and finally seeing Jesus face to face, finally knowing the triune God fully as we have been fully known by him (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Remember Why You Sold Everything

The resurrection from the dead is the single greatest hope of the Christian. It is the only prize that ultimately matters, and we make it our one great life goal to obtain it (Philippians 3:14). It is the culmination of the gospel (1 Peter 3:18). The whole reason Jesus came into the world was to give us eternal life (John 3:16). He died for us, that we might live with him (1 Thessalonians 5:10). Jesus did not come to give us our best life now. He came to “deliver us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4) and bring us safely into his heavenly kingdom (2 Timothy 4:18).

Jesus is longing for this day with all his heart. He expressed this yearning to his Father when he prayed, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

Jesus’s great longing is that you will be with him. And when you are finally with him, “he will wipe away every tear from [your] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things [will] have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). Never again will you know any kind of separation from him (Romans 8:39), for you will always be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

That is the treasure you have discovered in the field of this fallen world. Jesus has paid for it all, and it costs you everything you own in this age to have it. Yet it is such a small payment for such an everlasting, never-ending treasure that only a fool would pass it up.

The treasure makes all the difference.

More on treasuring Jesus:

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ (book by John Piper)

Seeing and Savoring the Supremacy of Jesus Christ Above All Things (message by John Piper)

The Kingdom of Heaven Is a Treasure (sermon by John Piper)

Let Darwin Teach You

Charles Darwin loved his scientific studies. They were his “chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life.” However, as the years passed, Darwin experienced a tragic atrophy. He described it near the end of his life in his autobiography:

Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds … gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare…. Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music… I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

What a devastating loss. All that time abstracting theories from facts so conditioned Darwin’s mind for analysis that he lost his enjoyment of beauty. He lost the forest to the trees. He lost the poetry of life to the dry prose of life data.

We Become What We Behold

Darwin’s increasing agnosticism during this period of his life must have contributed to his loss of wonder. Lose the Maker and we lose meaning; lose meaning and we lose marveling.

But this is not the only explanation for Darwin’s experience. A similar atrophy can occur in Christians too. We can all learn from Darwin.

The principle is this: Whatever we observe, study and contemplate most shapes our thinking and trains our affections. As John Piper says: We become what we behold. This is right from the Bible. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18,

We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

The more we meditate on true glory, the more true glory we will see and enjoy. The more we meditate on lesser things, the less we will see and enjoy glory. We become what we behold.

Darwin is a warning to us that if we spend too much time meditating on lesser things, someday we may wake up to find that we have lost our ability to find glorious things delightful or even interesting. This adds urgency to the Bible’s command that we meditate on whatever is true, just, honorable, pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent (Philippians 4:8).

Make Words Windows to Glory

In his new book, Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully, John Piper defines meditation as “getting glimpses of glory in the Bible or in the world and turning those glimpses around and around in your mind, looking and looking” (74). If you want to think through ways to do this, then make this book part of your summer reading. Looking through the lenses of the lives of poet George Herbert, preacher George Whitefield, and professor C.S. Lewis, Piper illustrates how,

Groping for awakening words in the darkness of our own dullness can suddenly flip a switch and shed light all around what it is that we are trying to describe — and feel. Taking hold of a fresh word for old truth can become a fresh grasp of the truth itself. Telling of beauty in new words becomes a way of tasting more of the beauty itself. (144)

We don’t have to be poets, preachers, or professors to make words windows to glory. But Herbert, Whitefield, Lewis, and Piper all inspire and instruct us to put forth “the effort to say beautifully [as] a way of seeing beautifully” (74) and point to the reward of deeper joy for those who do.

Darwin’s eye for beauty atrophied over time because of what he meditated on. Learn from him. Herbert, Whitefield, and Lewis all saw more beauty over time because of what they meditated on. And a significant way they saw more beauty was through their efforts to say beautifully. Learn from them.

Seek to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8) by seeking to “[tell] of [the Lord’s] beauty in new words.”

More on seeing beauty:

Saying Beautifully As a Way of Seeing Beauty: The Life of George Herbert and His Poetic Effort (message by John Piper)

Alive to Wonder: Celebrating the Influence of C. S. Lewis (ebook by John Piper)

10 Resolutions for Mental Health (Clyde Kilby)

Why Was Judas Carrying the Moneybag?

Jesus put a thief in charge of his moneybag. Has that ever struck you as odd?

Last week we focused on Mary, who poured a year’s wages on Jesus’s feet, and Judas, who saw Mary’s worshipful act as huge waste, because “he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6).

But this fact raises the question: Why was Judas carrying the moneybag in the first place?

Jesus could have given the moneybag to Nathaniel, “an Israelite indeed, in whom there [was] no deceit” (John 1:47), or to John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20), or to Levi, who had extensive financial experience (Luke 5:27). But he didn’t. Jesus chose Judas to be the treasurer of his itinerant nonprofit.

One is tempted to offer the Lord some consulting on good stewardship. Donors were supporting this ministry financially (Luke 8:3), and Jesus appointed the one guy he knew was a “devil” (John 6:70) to manage the money. But this was not poor judgment on Jesus’s part. It was deliberate; Jesus knew Judas was pilfering. Why did Jesus allow it?

Putting Jesus’s Money Where His Mouth Was

I believe Jesus was putting his money where his mouth was.

Jesus had said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where . . . thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19–20). In letting Judas carry the moneybag, Jesus showed us by example what he meant.

Jesus said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). In Judas, Jesus showed us the heart-hardening, heart-blinding, heartbreaking end of treasuring the wrong thing.

And Jesus had said, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). In Judas, Jesus showed us an alarming example of what loving money and hating God can look like.

What Is So Unnerving About Judas

Shockingly, for quite a while loving money and hating God can actually look to others like devotion to God. This is what is unnerving about Judas.

For a long time, Judas’s reputation was as a student and close companion of Jesus. Judas lived with Jesus and the other eleven disciples for the better part of three years. He traveled long, dusty roads with these missionary comrades. He ate with them, sat around evening fires with them talking about the kingdom of God, and he prayed with them. He heard more of Jesus’s sermons than almost anybody. He received personal instruction from Jesus. He witnessed Jesus’s incredible miracles and saw the Father provide for their needs over and over again.

All during the time Judas was part of the Twelve, he mostly said and outwardly performed the right things. It’s astonishing that none of Judas’s fellow disciples perceived his deceitfulness. Even when Jesus finally sent Judas off to carry out his betrayal, the others didn’t seem to suspect him (John 13:28–29). It was a stunning and grievous blow to them all when in the end he sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15).

Judas’s masquerade is a lesson for us. Wolves can look and sound almost exactly like sheep. And sometimes Jesus, for his own reasons, allows the disguised wolves to live among the sheep for a long time and do great damage before their deception is exposed. When this happens, we must trust that the Lord knows what he’s doing. Judas reminds us that even ravaging wolves have a part to play in the drama of redemptive history.

What Not to Trust

But in knowingly giving dishonest Judas the moneybag, Jesus specifically modeled for us where not to put our trust: money. Jesus trusted his Father, not money, to provide everything he needed to fulfill his calling. He slept in peace every night, knowing that Judas was embezzling.

Judas, on the other hand, became the archetypal model of 1 Timothy 6:10: “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” In Judas’s example, Jesus warns us that the love of money can be so deceptive that we can wander to the point where we are willing to sell eternal Treasure for a handful of coins. The seductive power of wealth must make us tremble.

Not all parts of this story have direct application for us. Jesus doesn’t intend for us to follow his example in appointing thieves as treasurers. Only God is wise enough to do that.

But Jesus does intend for us to follow his example in seeking the kingdom first, believing that all we need will be given to us by our Father (Matthew 6:33). His word to us is “fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Our Father can easily out-give what any thief can steal.

More on faith from Desiring God:

What to Do When Faith Dies (post by Steve Fuller)

Living by Faith in Future Grace (sermon by John Piper)

A Whole World Hangs on a Word (post by John Piper)

When Wasting Your Life Is Worship

We all are happiness hunters. We are all treasure seekers. And as Judas and Mary illustrate, there’s one sure way to measure what we treasure: what we’re willing to spend to obtain it.

The dinner table was buzzing with happy conversation. As Lazarus fielded a stream of questions about what it was like to die and Martha cleared empty plates and filled empty wine bowls, Mary quietly slipped away into another room.

When she returned she was carrying a large wooden bowl with a small alabaster jar inside. Mary knelt down near Jesus’s feet, placed the bowl on the floor, and began to remove her headdress. The talking trailed away as Jesus turned toward her and sat up. Soon everyone was straining or standing to get a better look at what she was doing.

Mary removed the small jar and then reverently placed Jesus’s feet inside the bowl. She picked up the jar, removed the stopper, and poured its contents slowly on Jesus’s feet. The room was wordless as she gathered her long hair in her right hand and used it to wipe Jesus’s feet. An exotic, breathtaking fragrance wafted across the table. The guests exchanged wide-eyed glances. Everyone knew this was a rare perfume.

Jesus was moved. His eyes were full of intense affection as he watched Mary work.

Judas was moved too, but not with affection. He was irritated. He simply could not fathom Mary’s wasteful extravagance. That perfume had to have been worth nearly a year’s wages. Never once in three years had Jesus’s disciples had that amount of money at one time. And there it sat, a contaminated, worthless puddle in a bowl.

His indignant objection shot through the silence: “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

This question turned the atmosphere tense. Mary stopped and looked sadly at the floor. All other eyes turned to Jesus. To a number of the disciples this seemed like a fair question. Jesus typically instructed them to give any extra money in their collective moneybag to the needy. Often “extra” meant beyond what they needed that day. Mary’s act did seem a bit indulgent.

Jesus said nothing for a moment and continued to stare at Mary. He knew what they were all thinking. And he knew that Judas had questioned her “not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and being in charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6). Judas’s noble sounding protest was no more than a disguise for his greed. Jesus grieved and seethed over Judas’s duplicity and how he had contaminated Mary’s worship.

Then Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you,” and turning his piercing eyes to Judas said with potent sorrow, “but you do not always have me” (John 12:7–8).

Judas and Mary are contrasts in treasuring. They both had hedonistic motives. Neither acted out of stoic duty. Both pursued the treasure they believed would make them happy. To Mary, Jesus was the priceless Pearl (Matthew 13:45), which she loved more than anything and she spent what was likely her greatest earthly possession to honor him. To Judas, thirty pieces of silver was a fair price for the Pearl.

Judas’s sin wasn’t that he was hunting happiness. His sin was believing that having money would make him happier than having Christ.

O Judas, the tragedy of your value miscalculation! The Pearl worth more than the entire universe sat in front of you and all you could see were perfume puddles. You grieved the squandering of a year’s wages while you squandered infinite, eternal treasure!

Jesus leads all his disciples to watershed moments like Mary’s and Judas’s when choices we make, not words we say, reveal the treasure we want. These moments are designed to make us count this cost: “Whoever loves his life loses it. And whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). These moments force us to choose what we really believe is gain, whether we value the Pearl or puddles.

If we choose the Pearl, we hear in Judas’s objection the world’s appraisal of us. They watch as we pour our valuable time, intellects, money, youth, financial futures, and vocations out on Jesus’s feet. They watch them puddle in the bowls of churches, mission fields, orphanages, and homes where children are raised and careers are lost. And what they see is foolish waste. Expect their rebuke, not their respect.

Jesus wants you to waste your life like Mary wasted her perfume. For it is no true waste. It is true worship. A poured out life of love for Jesus that counts worldly gain as loss displays how precious he really is. It preaches to a bewildered, disdainful world that Christ is gain and the real waste is gaining the world’s perfumes while losing one’s soul in the process (Matthew 16:26).

Are you wasting your life?

More on the life of worship:

All of Life As Worship (sermon by John Piper)

Praise: The Consummation of Joy (post by Sam Storms)

Failure to Live on Mission Is a Worship Problem (post by Trevin Wax)