Tullian Tchividjian's Blog, page 42

The Swallowable Little Man

Robert Frost, America's grand old man of poetry in the twentieth century, occasionally explored God and faith in his earlier poems. Then, entering his seventies after a decade of great personal loss—his wife's death, the death of one of his daughters shortly after childbirth, and the suicide of another—Frost wrote two poetic dramas filled with references to God. The first, A Masque of Reason, is based on Job's story of suffering and comes across as rather inconclusive. But the second, A Masque of Mercy, has Jonah as the main character and wraps up in a more aesthetically pleasing way. In creative uniqueness it tackles the conflict in Jonah's thinking, as it "explores the ancient riddle of how God can be just and also be merciful." It also pulls Jonah toward Christ and the cross.

The brief play is set late on a stormy night inside a modern bookstore run by someone named Keeper, a pagan skeptic who'll later say, "I'd rather be lost in the woods than found in church." His alcohol-loving wife, Jesse Bel, is more openly searching for faith and sees that longing in others around her as well: "The world seems crying out for a Messiah," she'll say.

The play begins with Keeper and Jesse Bel locking their shop's door for the evening, leaving inside a customer named Paul (as it turns out, it's the Paul—the apostle). But someone bangs at the locked door. As they reluctantly let him in, the harried stranger exclaims, "God's after me!"

"You mean the Devil is," Jesse Bel remarks.

"No, God."

"I never heard of such a thing," she protests.

The fugitive answers, "Haven't you heard of Thompson's 'Hound of Heaven'?"

Paul at once interjects by quoting the familiar opening lines: "I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years."

But Keeper grumbles at the fugitive: "This is a bookstore—not a sanctuary."

From this strange and amusing start, the play proceeds to an extended conversation that keeps coming back to God.

"Why is God after you?" Keeper asks. "To save your soul?"

"No," the fugitive replies. He tells them he's a prophet, and his name is Jonah. He's been sent seven times "to prophesy against the city evil."

"What have you got against the city?" Keeper asks.

"He knows," Jonah answers. God knows.

Jonah identifies himself further (though Paul has already caught on): "I'm in the Bible, all done out in story." Then he complains, "I can't trust God to be unmerciful."

Paul responds, "There you have the beginning of all wisdom."

Jonah tells them about his earlier flight from God, and the storm, and the boat, and the crew—and the whale.

Jesse Bel sympathizes: "You poor, poor swallowable little man."

But Paul recognizes a man who needs rescue. He goes up to Jonah and crosses his forearms—to illustrate the cross.

"What good is that?" Jonah asks.

Jonah tells these three that he would like to announce an earthquake to destroy "the city evil," but he's sure God wouldn't send it. "Nothing would happen," he says—but suddenly a tremor sends books crashing from the store's shelves. Meanwhile, Jonah keeps hearing noises that he suspects are from God in pursuit of him.

Paul asks Jonah what he wants to see in God, if not mercy.

Justice is Jonah's answer; justice "before all else."

Throughout Frost's play, Jonah wrestles with how God doesn't seem to live up to justice. Jonah has been taught that people should be "strong, careful, thrifty, diligent," and he's upset by God's "modern tendency" not to punish those who fail to measure up to those ideals.

The conversation inside the bookshop bounces around in history, philosophy, and theology, and finally returns to mercy. Paul directs everyone's attention to the Sermon on the Mount and the "beautiful impossibility" it portrays:

An end you can't by any means achieve, And yet can't turn your back on or ignore, That is the mystery you must accept.

It throws us by necessity onto mercy. "Mercy is only to the undeserving," Paul says, which includes all of us, in God's sight:

Here we all fail together, dwarfed and poor.

Failure is failure, but success is failure.

There is no better way of having it.

A door opens on its own to the store's cellar. Paul, who has had a cross painted on the cellar's ceiling, encourages Jonah to go down into its dark depths: "You must make your descent like everyone." It will require Jonah's abandonment and submission, essentially a yielding of self.

Jonah is hesitant. Finally he steps to the threshold, but the door slams in his face, knocking him to the floor. Lying there, collapsed and fading out, he confesses, "I think I may have got God wrong entirely." His own sense of justice, he says, "was about all there ever was to me." His last words are these: "Mercy on me for having thought I knew."

Kneeling over him, Paul speaks his own concluding words, affirming that "the best we have to offer" isn't enough. "Our very best, our lives laid down like Jonah's . . . may not be found acceptable in Heaven's sight."

The play closes with words from Keeper, who admits, "My failure is no different from Jonah's." He says they should lift Jonah's body and lay him "before the cross," just as Paul wanted. As the curtain falls, Keeper moves toward the prostrate Jonah and offers the play's final line:

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

Or as the New Testament says, "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13).

(Taken from my book Surprised by Grace pg. 174-178)

The Swallowable Little Man is a post from: Tullian Tchividjian

Gospel Tweets

About 8 months ago the media guys at Coral Ridge dragged me kicking and screaming into twitter world. I had no interest whatsoever in adding one more thing to my life. But since that time, I've come to love it. I've even been called a twitter-holic. I jokingly tell people that I've finally found my calling–that God has hardwired me for 140 characters.

In all seriousness, it's been a huge blessing for me. I love words. I love turns of phrases. I think in sentences. I once heard John Piper say that books don't change people, sentences do. I believe that. I've also heard that the Ancient Greeks believed the goal of oratory was to give a sea of matter in a drop of language. I like that–and tweeting helps me put that into practice. Twitter challenges me to communicate the gospel in concise ways–in short sentences. It's also a great tool for me personally as I've come to use it as a way to catalog my gospel thoughts and quotes. It's become a way for me to "journal" what God's teaching me about the gospel.

Anyway, thanks to DeJuan Brown you can now find a small sampling of my gospel tweets in the collection below.

If you're not familiar with twitter or aren't currently following me on twitter, click here.

I pray these sentences would change you the way they've changed me and that the Lord would use these fallible insights to help you preach the gospel to yourself everyday.

The gospel doesn't simply ignite the Christian life; it's the fuel that keeps Christian's going and growing every day.
The gospel reminds us that we become more mature when we focus less on what we need to do for God and more on all God has already done for us.
The gospel tells me my identity and security is in Christ–this frees me to give everything I have because in Christ I have everything I need
Christian growth doesn't happen first by behaving better, but believing better–believing in deeper ways what Christ has already secured for you
The gospel tells us we don't need to spend our lives earning the approval of others because Jesus has already earned God's approval for us
When you understand that your significance and identity is anchored in Christ, you don't have to win—you're free to lose
Christian growth doesn't happen by working hard to get something you don't have. It happens by working hard to live in light of what you do have
The world says that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. But the gospel tells us that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.
When you are united to Christ, then all that is Christ's becomes yours: Access to God and affection from God can never be lost
The gospel explains success in terms of giving, not taking; self-sacrifice, not self-indulgence; going to the back, not getting to the front
The gospel empowers us to live for what's timeless, not trendy–to follow Jesus even when it means going against what's fashionable
Because of Christ's finished work, sinners can have the approval, acceptance, security, freedom, love, righteousness, & rescue they long for
The only antidote there has ever been to sin is the gospel—and since we never leave off sinning, we can never leave the gospel.
Because of Christ's propitiatory work on my behalf I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, praise or popularity.
The gospel never starts with what we need to do; it always begins with what God has already done; to get it backwards is to miss the gospel
The vertical indicative (what God's done for me) always precedes horizontal imperative (how I'm to live in light of what God's done for me)
What we need practically can only be experienced as we come to deeper understanding of what we are positionally—whats already ours in Christ
When you are united to Christ, no amount of good work can earn God's favor and no amount of bad work can forfeit God's favor
Jesus came not to angrily strip away our freedom but to affectionately strip away our slavery to lesser things so we might become truly free
The irony of the gospel is that we truly perform better when we focus less on our performance for Jesus & more on Jesus' performance for us
The gospel tells us that what God has done for us in Christ is infinitely more important than anything we do for him.
The world says the more independent you become, the freer you'll be; the gospel says the more dependent you become, the freer you'll be
The Gospel frees us from trying to impress people, prove ourselves to people, and make people think we're something that we're not.
Isn't it ironic that while God's treatment of us depends on Christ's performance, our treatment of others depends on their performance?
We need God's gospel rescue every day and in every way because we are, in the words of John Calvin, "partly unbelievers until we die."
Believing fully the truth that "salvation belongs to the Lord" means that you place ultimate trust in Christ's efforts, not your own.
Daily sin requires a daily distribution of God's grace
The hard work of sanctification is the hard work of constantly reorienting ourselves back to our justification.
Grace can be defined as unconditional acceptance granted to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver.
The law tells us what God demands from us; the gospel tells us what God in Christ has done for us because we could not meet his demands.
Being justified by God and made acceptable on the basis of Christ's righteousness not only pardons us for the past but empowers us for the present
Paul never uses the law as a way to motivate obedience; He always uses the gospel.
The gospel teaches us that being a slave to Christ is the essence of freedom, while being free to myself is the essence of slavery.
When you understand God's grace, pain leads to freedom because deep suffering leads to deep surrender!
When we depend on things smaller than Jesus to provide us with the security and meaning we long for, God will love us enough to take them away.
The gospel is the good news that God rescues sinners. And since both non-Christians & Christians are sinners, we both need the gospel.
The gospel grants Christians one strength over non-Christians: the strength to admit they're weak.
The gospel frees us to realize that while we matter, we're not the point.
The Gospel alone can turn us into people who give everything we have because we understand that in Christ we already have everything we need
The gospel isn't just the power of God to save us, it's the power of God to grow us once we're saved.
When we transfer trust from ourselves to Christ, we experience the abundant freedoms that come from not having to measure up.
The gospel makes wise those who know they're foolish and makes fools out of those who think they're wise.
It never ceases to amaze me that God's love to those who are in Christ isn't conditioned on how we behave but on how Christ behaved for us.
Sin turns you inward; the gospel turns you outward. Sin enslaves you by making you big.  The gospel frees you by making you small.
In the gospel, God comes after us because we need him not because he needs us. Only the gospel can free us to revel in our insignificance.
Mt. Sinai says, "You must do." Mt. Calvary says, "Because you couldn't, Jesus did." Don't run to the wrong mountain for your hiding place.

Gospel Tweets is a post from: Tullian Tchividjian

Ongoing Oneness

We are now five weeks into our one new worship service at Coral Ridge. If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, click here and here.

I wanted to do a follow up post because so many people from all over are asking good questions about what we're doing and how we're doing it.

First of all, we're thrilled at the response from people both inside and outside the church.

People inside the church are ecstatic about our new found unity. Many have been waiting a long time for this. The response has b...

Pray For Unction

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In his book on the preaching of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Sacred Annointing, Tony Sargent describes unction well. He writes:

[Unction:] is the afflatus of the...

Christ-Centered Preaching

Yesterday I began a 10 week sermon series on the massive book of Job. God launched our church remarkably into this Gospel-centered exploration of pain and providence, suffering and soveriegnty.

I began by showing the place of Job in the overall redemptive plan of God. I made the point that the Bible tells one story and points to one figure–that the whole OT predicts a Person and the whole NT presents that Person. As we read the Bible, we discover the central figure in God's plan, the hero of G...

Unriddling Our Times

In my book Unfashionable, I wrote that the Bible makes clear that Christians must be people of double listening—listening both to the questions of the world and to the answers of the Word. We're to be good interpreters not only of Scripture but also of culture. God wants us to be like the men of Issachar, "who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do" (1 Chronicles 12:32). Faithfulness to Christ means we can't afford to leave our culture unexamined. We're to...

The Value Of Everything Will Be Altered

Sobering words from Bishop J. C. Ryle (Practical Religion pg. 40):

A day is coming when banknotes will be as useless as rags, and gold will be as worthless as the dust of the earth. A day is coming when thousands will care nothing for the things for which they once lived, and will desire nothing so much as the things which they once despised. The mansions and palaces will be forgotten in the desire of a "house not made with hands." The favor of the rich and great will be remembered no more...

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(Below is my latest back page column for Leadership Journal.)

Martin Luther was once approached by a working man who wanted to know how he could serve the Lord. Luther asked him, "What is your work now?" The man replied, "I'm a shoemaker."

Much to the cobbler's surprise, Luther replied, "Then make a good shoe and sell it at a fair price."

He didn't tell the man to make "Christian shoes." He didn't tell him to leave his shoes and become a monk.

As Christians, we can serve God in a variety of...

Desiring God And The White Horse Inn

Two ministries I've admired for a long time are the ministries of John Piper (Desiring God) and Mike Horton (Modern Reformation and White Horse Inn). Both of these ministries work tirelessly to provide theologically sound and gospel saturated content for the church.

Recently I had the privilege of being interviewed on Desiring God Live and The White Horse Inn. Both conversations were deep and wide, stimulating and enjoyable.

You can watch the Desiring God Live interview here.

You can listen to t...

God's Evacuation Plan?

When I came back from vacation five weeks ago, I started a six week series that I entitled, ONE. Knowing we were going to be doing away with the "traditional/contemporary" split in worship in favor of a blended format (you can read about it here and here–please do!), I thought it would be wise to spend six weeks preaching on the various dynamics of unity–providing a Biblical, theological rationale for what oneness is and why it's so important to God.

The final sermon in this series is...