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July 21 - August 18, 2019
As your pastor and a preacher of the gospel, I stand under the threat of some very solemn warnings that I’m not to say anything that will make you feel better at the cost of cheapening your lives, diverting you from the best God has for you.
there is a new fragmented inner dimension to identity. No longer is God an accepted dimension of who we are. The world has been almost totally secularized. Guilt and anxiety are characteristic. If we could pin down how we feel, it would be not so much that God has left us alone but that we have wandered off and left God, and we feel both lonely and guilty. We have gotten far from home. There is a vast distance between us and our experience of God’s presence.
Comfort, comfort my people…. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,… that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. (Isaiah 40:1–2)
We suffer when we have been separated from what is vital to our wholeness—our bodies, our homes, our loved ones, our God. All these separations, though different in seriousness and ultimacy, feel the same. And they all have some personal guilt in them, for we all have some responsibility in the separation. That guilt needs to be acknowledged, forgiven, and accepted. If we deny it in either ourselves or others, we will never find out anything worthwhile about our past that can give us comfort and strength for the present and future. And worse, we will not recognize God’s first words—note
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Friends, this is so important. Comfort is not something extra, like a soft pillow to moderate the discomfort of a lumpy mattress. It is God’s word now, personally. A strong, challenging, energetic word that builds new strength and energy in you. That is what God’s comfort does. Let Isaiah’s words reshape your imaginations into the present tense. Let my words reshape your imagination into the present tense.
Hear this word of God and be comforted. Not in a future of fantasy, not in nostalgic longings for the past, but right now in your home, your workplace, your family, your heart. Build the Lord’s highway right here. All the conditions have been met, your “warfare is ended,” your “iniquity is pardoned” (verse 2).
Your tenderness will be able to tell others what God has told you, that their warfare is ended, their iniquity pardoned. This is what happens when God comes to his people. Christ was born for this.
God comes to us, but we are distracted, busy, preoccupied. The prophet’s primary task is to pay attention to the presence of God in our world and in our lives. Before he can tell us about God, he has to get our attention that God is present, here.
God is doing something. He is never inactive or silent. But he does not receive his directions from us. He doesn’t conform his actions to our desires. But if we change our question to “What is God doing and where?” we get the prophet’s answer: “Behold my servant.” The God who in his majesty, strength, and wisdom is beyond our imaginations has chosen to work primarily as a servant who is almost beneath our imaginations, so far beneath we don’t even notice him.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law. (42:1–4)
we learn to recognize God in the unimportant and easily missed details but also so we might learn to recognize the same things in our own lives. He has called us to embrace his methods and be servants ourselves. The way of the world is to use power and coercion to get things done; the way of the Christian is to use love, gentleness, and service to redeem the race. The world uses the authority of kings and generals to compel justice; the Christian becomes a servant and provides justice.
The interruption makes me aware, too, that I am not the only character created by the Divine Mind. There are many other persons created and led by my Lord. In the reading of Scripture, I find a magnificent salvation story, a glorious beginning and a magnificent ending holding together an intricate plot of God’s love and of human sin, with all of it coming to focus and climax in the revelation—life, crucifixion, and resurrection—of Jesus Christ.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. (verses 1–2)
Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” (verses 3–4)
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy. (verses 5–6)
Every tragedy we experience will, finally, become a triumph. Every deficiency in our ability to see or hear or walk or speak will be healed by grace. Everything in our bodies that does not work will, finally, be made workable to the glory of God. Everything in our souls that does not respond to the will of God will become, through the power of forgiveness and the ministrations of mercy, an instrument of peace. The wholeness will be achieved on every level: material, physical, spiritual, personal, social.
And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way;… And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (verses 8, 10)
God not only begins, but conducts to the end, the work of our salvation, that his grace in us may not be useless and unprofitable. As he opens up the way, so he paves it, and removes obstacles of every description, and is himself the leader during the whole journey. In short, he continues his grace towards us in such a manner that he at length brings it to perfection.*2
William Cowper describes in his hymn: “Sometime a light surprises the child of God who sings; it is the Lord who rises with healing in his wings; when comforts are declining, he grants the soul again a season of clear shining to cheer it after rain.”*4
For you who have lost interest in your own story because it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, for you who are displeased with your story because it doesn’t seem to be working out fairly, for you who are tired of your story because it has gone on too long without your getting anything out of it, put yourself into the Isaiah 35 story, God’s personal gift. Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God… He will come and save you. (verse 4)
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Job, and Psalms serve as our primary witnesses to biblical wisdom. It is not as if wisdom is confined to these books, for its influence is pervasive throughout Scripture. But in these books human experience as the arena in which God is present and working is placed front and center. The comprehensiveness of these five witnesses becomes evident when we set Psalms at the center and then crisscross that center with the other four books arranged as two sets of polarities: Song of Solomon and Job, then Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
Psalms is the magnetic center, pulling every scrap and dimension of human experience into a prayerful response to God. The psalms are quite indiscriminate in their subject matter: complaints and thanks, doubt and anger, outcries of pain and outbursts of joy, quiet reflection and boisterous worship. If it’s human, it qualifies. Any human experience or thought can be prayed. Eventually it all must be prayed if it is to retain—or recover—its essential humanity. The totality of God’s concern with the totality of our humanity is then elaborated by means of the two polarities.
And the Proverbs-Ecclesiastes polarity? Pithy Proverbs sharpens our observations and insights regarding all that is going on around us so we realize that unobtrusive, undramatic dailiness is sacred: work and family, money and sex, the use of language and the expression of emotions. We are reminded in detail that there is meaning in the ordinary, in the everyday, in being responsible for and alert to what we have been given to do in this life of faith. In contrast, Ecclesiastes (or “The Preacher”) has to do with doggedly putting one foot in front of the other as we fix flat tires, wash dirty
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these wisdom writers keep us honest with and attentive to the entire range of human experience that God the Spirit uses to fashion a life of holy salvation in each one of us. God and God’s ways provide the comprehensive plot and sovereign action in the Holy Scriptures, but human beings—every last man and woman of us, as well as every detail involved in our daily living—are invited and honored participants in all of it. There are no spectator seats provided for the drama of salvation. There is no “bench” for incompetent players.
Maybe we mortals are created to love, but our experience is so unhappy and we do such a poor job of it that we remove it from the agenda. Why talk about it anymore? It reminds us of too many failures. We can talk instead about our careers, our work, our future, and our past, and we can leave the discussions on love to the dreams of poets and the confusion of adolescents.
come a time when the entire nation would experience only the
He complains that it is impossible to get an audience with God in order to prove his innocence. Sure of his innocence, he is stymied: “For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand upon us both” (9:32–33).
When his friends try to advise him, they only make matters worse. Job calls them “worthless physicians” and “miserable comforters” (13:4; 16:2). He doesn’t want their clichéd advice. He wants to deal with God firsthand. He complains that everyone is against him: wife, close friends, guests, servants, brothers, little children. They have all taken what they presume to be God’s side against him while he himself lives on the thin edge of existence: “I have escaped by the skin of my teeth” (19:20).
“I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (19:25–27).
Thomas Hardy, in one of his poems, tells about a messenger sent one day to remind God of the human race, and God cannot remember, cannot remember a thing.*2 That is the kind of God that Bildad is exalting. Bildad is an intellectual who has a head full of philosophical truths and ideas, but he has no ability to make any connection with the personal details of human life. He is all ideas and can talk about them endlessly, but he can never remember his wedding anniversary.
Not everything I did or said took place behind the pulpit or in the sanctuary. Not everything I was learning about grace and holiness was coming out of the Bible. I was also being tutored by a woman recovering from a heart attack, by a family struggling in poverty, by young people finding words to express their newfound faith honestly and unpretentiously, or, in the words of our text, by hearing wisdom crying aloud in the street (Proverbs 1:20).
It is simply this: even our so-called secular lives are permeated by grace. Even the nonreligious aspects of our lives are included in the Word of God. The Word of God to us is not only the radical invasion of our lives by Christ, not only that tremendous life-changing reconciliation that puts us in relationship with an eternal being, but also a detailed concern with every aspect of our humanity. The gospel is not only good news about the big issues and the deep realities. It is also about the time of day and the feeling you have when you get up in the morning.
Proverbs is the biblical statement that everything—ants, spouses, overeating, compliments, curiosity (see Proverbs 27:20), every detail of life—is of infinite, eternal importance. The factory is as high on the agenda as the church pew. Family life is discussed with the same seriousness as the life of the Godhead. The words of men are ranged along with the words of God for examination and contemplation. Nothing from life is excluded; everything is included.
This wisdom will give us skill in living abundantly. All we need to do is ask for it. The brother of our Lord, Saint James, made the promise: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5).
The world changes, fashions change, culture changes, and social structures change. The one thing that doesn’t change is the living God and his way of loving and saving us. The one thing that doesn’t change is the word train in the act of training an infant to live in safe and affectionate intimacy with the source of life in this place where he or she has just been delivered from a nine-month voyage to Liverpool or Baltimore or whatever is stamped on the birth certificate. Every person that knows anything of this from his own experience—and that, by definition, means every Christian—can, by
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It means that every time you engage in an act of faith in Christ, you are training another person. Every time you love another in obedience to Christ’s command, you are educating someone else. Every time you forgive someone because Christ forgave you, you are assisting materially in the Christian growth of that person. Every time you hope because Christ has promised his help, you are opening up new possibilities of growth in another person.
One of the tasks of Proverbs is to create within us an imagination that is affirmative, that grasps the life that is given to us and makes the most of it, not making the most money, not having the most fun, not making a big impression, but entering into the life on God’s terms and living it well.
Wisdom expands our imagination to realize that the base of it all is that we become skilled persons on the way to becoming artists of everyday life.
The aspect of God that enables us to do this is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God moving in us to live God’s life. In Proverbs this Holy Spirit is given a name: “Lady Wisdom” (1:20, MSG). What that does is personalize this aspect of God so that Wisdom is not just items of information or direction, not just good advice or a brilliant idea. Wisdom is God’s Spirit working within us to fashion our lives into wholeness in the actual environment in which we find ourselves: in these circumstances, in this neighborhood, in this family. The Holy Spirit is involved in everything we are at the
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Still, the primary message shouted and sung in this passage by Lady Wisdom is that life is good. Don’t settle for anything less than the whole thing. Don’t end up with any “unspent youth.” Don’t permit anyone to rob you with a counterfeit substitute. Don’t drop out of the race. Don’t negligently daydream when you could be attentively experiencing.
God creates, Christ redeems. Then what? We have this magnificent creation; we have this great salvation. But who is going to build them into the individual personal history that is you? That is Wisdom’s task. Lady Wisdom is a personification of the Holy Spirit. God assigns himself to you to fashion in you an individual history, including all your days, all your environment, all your circumstances—a life lived to his glory in which you enjoy him forever—“the Master Workman.”
God doesn’t only make a world for us to live in. God doesn’t only provide for our salvation. In the guise of Lady Wisdom and the Master Workman, God enters into the actual living with us, guiding and instructing and accompanying us as we live by faith. She corrects our mistakes, guides our choices, forgives our lapses, encourages our efforts.
Now the task is to do something with it. There are many people for whom life is downhill after the great youth years. There are many others who go from strength to strength, finding in each year of life a new level of intensity, a new dimension of blessing, a fresh experience of love.
The human task is to live completely, to live out the unspent youth that is still in us. We are unfinished creatures when we are born. Growth is the task set before us, learning how to use our muscles and emotions and thoughts. Deep within us are instincts to have a complete and expansive life. As the biological phase is completed, there is a transition to something more inward. The skillful use of what is given to us is developed into relationships with God and our neighbors, relationships that are whole and complete. We are placed in an existence, ruled and loved by God, that includes other
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A very appropriate conclusion, for the gospel of Jesus needs to be answered, responded to with prayers—the prayers of David for a start—for the gospel is not just information about God. It is the life of God for us to live ourselves.
We can only understand the danger by understanding the situation. When we enter the realm of the life of faith in God, we open ourselves to an existence characterized by God speaking to us, promising to order our lives in love and to redeem us in his mercy. We are set in dimensions of eternity. We are creatures of God, so we are taken with absolute seriousness by him. He knows our names. He bears our burdens. He gives his life for us so we might live.
Jesus in the course of his life came across a great deal of “religion in the wrong place,” what the Preacher lampooned as “the sacrifice of fools.” He entered our history to exhibit the reality of God, the power of creation, the miracle of forgiveness, the drama of mercy, the thrilling pulsations of wisdom lived out in daily discipleship.
The verbal part of their religion was faultless, but the bodily part was worthless. They talked a lot; they taught a lot; they pontificated a lot. But they did not live the majesties. They did not experience the realities. They did not share the mercy. They did not move under the omnipotence.
When we take the truth of God and use it in superstitious or manipulative or prideful or selfish ways, that is religion. Its opposite is gospel: the truth of God heard in all its originality and power in the person of Jesus Christ, listened to in faith, responded to in faithful discipleship. People are always taking the gospel and trying to turn it into a religion. And God keeps calling us back, back into the wide-open country of gospel where, in the Preacher’s words, “God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few” (Ecclesiastes 5:2).
For as long as people try to make a religion without God and achieve wholeness without faith, the Preacher’s work must be repeated. His is the primary biblical voice insisting that religion taken out of context is vanity. He will admit no pleasure, possession, or piety to an independent existence. He strips us of religion so we might be dressed for God.
