Category Archives: Bible

by

Spiritual Depression

Westminster-Chapel

I got the Kindle version of Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures by Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones a few weeks ago. Looking this morning, I no longer find it available for the Kindle. I consider it a timely gift.

I’ve heard that romance novels have thrived with the advent of e-readers, because what you read on your Kindle is, in a sense, anonymous. You can’t see the book cover. I confess that when I began reading Spiritual Depression, I was glad of this anonymity. The title is revealing. I would have felt I needed to justify myself: “Oh, no, I’m not ‘depressed.’ Not me.” But having now ingested all 24 sermons in this remarkable book, I would say, “Who isn’t spiritually depressed at some point, and in some way?”

My daughters are away this weekend, and so yesterday I took advantage of the “text to speech” feature on my Kindle to listen steadily to Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ book as I puttered around the house, doing odd jobs that required only my hands. In the past when I’ve used this feature, I found the computerized voice too distracting. This time, I wasn’t distracted, but captivated. Perhaps it’s because these sermons were originally written to be spoken…? The effect was to feel my cluttered, wearied mind was bathed and ordered by the Truth of Scripture. What a blessing to get to listen uninterrupted for several hours as various questions and observations I’ve had floating around were addressed and placed in a coherent overall picture.

I think I’m going to have to read this book once a year at least as a spiritual “reset.” Maybe I’ll read a sermon a day, or a few a week. Somehow, I need to keep this influence going. Though the title might suggest a book about feelings, this is pre-eminently a book about doctrine, and Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ preaching is wise, knowledgeable, and direct as he works systematically through a series of reasons why Christians lack joy, in every case addressing the error of understanding on which the problem is based, and then clarifying the Bible’s teaching. He preaches with an authority and a courage I really appreciated; he is not afraid to say hard things, or to face difficult teachings in the Bible.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones was originally a doctor; a brief biographical video can be found here. But when he responded to the call of God to preach, he turned his desire to heal and strengthen to matters of the soul. His own story is an interesting one, for he discovered after years of being a professing Christian that he really wasn’t one at all, and he diagnosed the reason as a lack of biblical teaching in the church he grew up in. In his own preaching (his most well-known appointment was his 30-year stint at Westminster Chapel), he was very careful to make biblical exposition foremost, even to the extent of refusing to use personal anecdotes, jokes, or headlines from newspapers.

Dr. Lloyd Jones. Photo taken by Iain Murray.

It might sound like a recipe for inaccessible teaching, but I come away from this book with the refreshed confidence that the Bible is a treasure chest — a storehouse of Truth, the source of all that we need. I’ve been rising early and reading my Bible daily for 20 years now; I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t believe it to be essential nourishment for my mind and heart. But Spiritual Depression unveiled it to me in a new way. I feel like the disciples must have felt when they saw Jesus’ glory blaze out briefly on the Mount of Transfiguration, or when the Roman soldiers fell before him when they came to get him at Gethsemene. Here I’ve been, steeping in the Word of God, for years — and suddenly its glory blazes out.

In “rightly dividing” the Bible’s teaching, Lloyd-Jones reminds us that truth does not correct or clarify or heal or change unless it is appropriated. There are many quote-worthy passages, but this is the one I’ll conclude with, because it reveals the foundational principle of all the sermons in this book:

In other words, the great antidote to spiritual depression is the knowledge of Biblical doctrine, Christian doctrine. Not having the feelings worked up in meetings, but knowing the principles of the faith, knowing and understanding the doctrines. That is the Biblical way, that is Christ’s own way as it is also the way of the apostles. The antidote to depression is to have a knowledge of Him, and you get that in His Word. You must take the trouble to learn it. It is difficult work, but you have to study it and give yourself to it. The tragedy of the hour, it seems to me, is that people are far too dependent for their happiness upon meetings. This has been the trouble for many years in the Christian Church, and that is why so many are miserable. Their knowledge of the Truth is defective. That, you remember, is what our Lord said to certain people who had suddenly believed on Him. He said: ‘If ye continue in My word then are ye My disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’ (John 8:31,32). Free from doubts or fears, free from depression, free from things that get you down. It is the truth that frees — the truth about Him, in His Person, in His work, in His offices, Christ as He is.

by

Secret Righteousness

1325793_grapes_on_vine

Courtesy of Stockxchnge

My favorite sermon so far in Lloyd-Jones’ Spiritual Depression focuses on Jesus’ parable at the start of Matthew 20. It’s about the vineyard workers, hired at different times of the day, yet all paid the same amount.

Lloyd-Jones makes two basic points: first, the workers mentioned first bargain with God for a denarius. “If you strike a bargain with God,” Lloyd-Jones warns, “well then it is almost certain that you will get your bargain and no more.”

Second, they want recognition; they point out that they’ve worked “in the heat of the day.” Better to let God keep the books — he who sees in secret and rewards in secret. Lloyd-Jones goes on, “May I say with reverence, there is nothing I know of that is so romantic as God’s method of accountancy. Be prepared for surprises in this Kingdom. You never know what is going to happen.”

It reminded me of this poem I wrote several years ago. It’s called “The Art of Secret Righteousness.”

How incredible that no one notices
the monumental moments in my heart.
They are always invisible –
even those closest to me, who feel the effects the most,
don’t hear the drum roll when they occur.
No angels float down to tap someone’s shoulder
and whisper, “Look at her.”

And yet –
how much more incredible that You, God of the Universe,
always take heed.
In the darkest recesses of my inner life, You alone observe
when I really get it right.
You, Father, who see in secret and reward in secret, whisper,
“Do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing” –
“Well done, good and faithful servant” –
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for I will show you My face.”

Let my life add up to a thousand and one private choices
to love You with all my being,
to turn the current of my mind,
to honor my brother in thought and love my sister in prayer –
a thousand and one anonymous acts of kindness
that no one ever sees but You –

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
I can well imagine what it will be like
to catch Your eye across the crowded room of Heaven
and have You hold my gaze –
to look into those eyes that have seen and applauded
a thousand and one acts of secret righteousness –
a whole rich history exchanged in a single glance.

My life’s ambition is to treasure up
a thousand and one secrets with You.

– © Janet Goodrich

by

In a box

dolls

My friend Christina gave me these tiny Russian dolls when she returned from Moscow several years ago. They aren’t nesting dolls; they don’t open up so you can fit one inside the other. But they always remind me of them.

Today, they remind me of the way we talk about God. “Don’t put God in a box,” we say, with every appearance of devoutness.

But hasn’t God put himself in a box? Isn’t the whole story of God’s relationship to humanity the story of God putting himself in ever-smaller boxes, from whence he makes ever-bigger promises?

Here are some of the boxes I’m thinking of:

  • “The covenant” with Abraham and by extension the Jewish nation
  • His Word, in which he circumscribes himself in the finite language of human discourse — describing himself, inviting us to know him, making promises
  • Jesus, the ultimate box — a human body, and a human nature, holding the divine
  • The new covenant, broadened to include everyone and not just the Jews
  • My heart, where his Holy Spirit dwells in transforming power

The statements he makes from within these various boxes are, across the board, extravagant.

  • “I love you with an everlasting love.”
  • “What you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven.”
  • “Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
  • “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot be untrue to himself.”
  • “If you say to this mountain, ‘You shall be moved,’ it shall be moved.”
  • “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.”

Yet we in the body of Christ are so good at saying,

  • “Don’t put God in a box.”
  • “God knows better than we do. We don’t really want him to do whatever we ask.”
  • “We can’t treat God like a vending machine.”
  • “Humans have free will and we’re the ones who mess things up.”
  • “God is testing your love like he tested Job’s. He doesn’t want us to love him just for the things he gives us.” (What do we have, by the way, that he didn’t give us? He made us. “We love him because he first loved us.”)

We make so many excuses for God. What is this but unbelief?

Could it be that there is a sense in which God wants to be “put in a box” — spoken to as though he is, in fact, who he has taken such pains to claim to be? Could our insistence that he can’t be put in a box represent the only truly confining box — the box of unbelief?

by

Bible musings

Joseph and Potiphar's Wife (Guido Reni)

Every now and then I feel an unsought skepticism when I’m reading my Bible.

Last week I read the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39. I was struck by how very personal the scene is, and wonder: how did all these details get preserved? What attracted Potiphar’s wife; Joseph’s response; the climactic scene where he flees, leaving his garment in her hand. Who observed and recorded this? Did Joseph keep a diary? Did he tell the story to his grandchildren? It seems like strangely intimate fare for oral tradition.

These questions don’t occur when I read about the larger events — floods, captivities, wanderings, battles, inheritances. But with the very personal, small scale, anecdotal stories, they do. Who told about Lot’s daughters sleeping with him? Or Ham laughing at his father Noah, passed out in a drunken stupor? Or Judah’s seedy behavior toward Tamar?

Who recorded Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemene, given that those with him fell asleep — though it’s conceivable, there, that one of them stayed awake long enough to register the little bit that’s recorded. It seems heartless that they would sleep after hearing prayers like that and seeing bloody perspiration like that. But he had already plainly said his heart was “exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death,” and yet they fell asleep. I may start to criticize, till I remember that I’m surely not beyond such callousness myself.

That’s what brings me back to the plausibility of these tales. They have the crazy, mixed-grain, often humiliating ring of truth. If the patriarchs were going to fabricate stories about their own history, surely these aren’t the kind they’d come up with. They’d come up with more heroic fare. Same with the disciples: who but those with the knowledge that they are under grace, humble servants who are forgiven and loved by the only One whose opinion matters, would ever tell the tale of Gethsemene?

When we feel the temptation toward image control as believers, the Bible is a bracing admonition to the more humiliating and incredible, but ultimately more convincing, testimony of truth.

by

The Prodigal God (and golden eggs)

Timothy Keller’s Prodigal God is a short book in which Keller uses the parable of the prodigal son as a framework for discussing two different types of lost souls: the profligate (the younger brother of the parable) and the legalist (elder brother). The former rebels by breaking all the rules, the latter by keeping them. Both need Christ’s salvation, but for Keller it seems the elder brother is in a more precarious place spiritually because his sin may not be apparent to him.

Since there are plenty of thorough reviews out there, I’m not going to add much to the din. I found the book to be an interesting discussion of two spiritual “types,” though I didn’t find it novel to regard the parable as being about both brothers. I read somewhere that Keller wrote the book in an attempt to open dialogue between the churched and the unchurched, and perhaps it does this. It struck me as addressed primarily to believers, though, with its emphasis on the elder brother’s legalism.

I’m not sure I’d call it a book “about” the parable, though. The story Jesus told seems to be used here as a mere jumping-off point for a discussion about something else Keller wants to say, and I’m wary about this way of treating Scripture. Not long ago, I heard another altogether different exposition of the “real meaning” of this story as being about the economy of the Kingdom of God. This is a parable, a simple story Jesus told to convey truth to a diverse audience. Reading so much into it seems like overkill, more likely to carry us away from the “heart of the Christian faith” than to bring us home. Sometimes when you look too hard at something, you stop seeing it.

I hasten to admit that I’m not sure I understand Jesus’ reasons for using parables. It has something to do with hiding and revealing at the same time — something for which the story form is well-suited. Here’s how he explains it in Matthew 13:

13This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
” ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’ 16But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.

Stories are powerful because they cannot be fully “explained.” I find that the ones that stick with me most are the ones I don’t fully understand, but that seem to point toward a truth I need. They come clear as they haunt me through time and experience. In a sense they achieve their power in the peripheral vision; their meaning becomes most apparent when I’m looking at something else.

I’m not sure what the implications are for “teaching” the stories of Scripture, except to underscore the importance of reading them prayerfully and attentively. The few times Jesus explains a parable to his puzzled disciples (here or here, for instance), he offers a fairly straightforward meaning. Certainly his explanation is brief. It seems clear that pulling them apart strand by strand and reconstructing them in a way that leaves no ambiguity isn’t really the answer. That’s kind of like killing the goose that lays the golden egg to get at the secret — and finding that you’ve destroyed the source of your riches.

Jesus’ parables were meant not just for the experts, but for all seeking listeners. One of the ways we can guard the great gift and privilege of that is by staying in touch with the stories themselves, and having faith in their Teller to speak directly through them what we most need to hear. For me, that means acknowledging the great appeal of the Father’s generosity and grace, and accepting the invitation to emulate Him. He’s the real hero of the story. He’s the one who wins my heart.