Blind Man's Fancy

“And all [in the synagogue] were speaking well of [Jesus], and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from his lips” (Lk 4.22a-b).

“And all in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff” (Lk 4.28-29).

Jesus’s public ministry began with a whirlwind itinerary of preaching the arrival of God’s kingdom.  He eventually toured back to his hometown synagogue where his Sabbath text was Isaiah 61.1-2 (cf. Lk 4.18-19).  His preaching thrilled the hometown crowd.  Joseph’s son has made it big and would put Nazareth on the map.

Six verses (four Greek sentences) later, Nazareth wanted nothing to do with Jesus.  In fact, we find them responding Satanically to Jesus.  In Lk 4.9, Satan ushered a beleaguered, haggard, famished Jesus to the tippy top of the temple.  It was a sonship test.  God promised that his Son would always be protected by the angelic cohort.  If Jesus was indeed God’s son then he could hurl himself off the temple mount and watch angels swoop in to his rescue.  Jesus’s sonship, however, would not be proven by silly, superstitious games but by resurrection from the dead.  Satan would have to wait “until an opportune time” (v13).

Jesus’s encore sermon in Lk 4.23-27 was not received as well as his first one.  What do we find the townsfolk of Nazareth doing to their visiting preacher?  They led him to the top of their hill in order to chunk him down the cliff to his death.  At least Satan gave Jesus the choice of doing it himself!  These hard-hearted Nazarenes wanted to lynch Jesus. Unbeknownst to them, they were in league with Satan just as Jesus spent Lk 4.23-27 implying.

Like any upstanding Jew in Jesus’s day, the Nazarenes assumed they were part of God’s kingdom for external reasons.  They had Torah, temple/synagogue, sacrifices, Jerusalem.  They awaited their Messiah who would finally put the rest of the world to rights and restore Israel’s fortunes.  Jesus had a different agenda.  Just as Elijah bypassed all the Israelites to bless a Sidonian (Gentile) widow and just as Elisha snubbed all the Israelites to cleanse the Syrian Naaman, Jesus brought God’s kingdom to the nations.

God’s kingdom would not be recognized according to borders, walls, temples, armies or kings.  It would be recognized by repentance and faith in Jesus.  Messiah would not change the world around them, but change the world inside them.  Jewishness was irrelevant now that the new creation had dawned in Jesus.  So, whereas the Nazarenes thought Jesus to be making much of them, he was actually making much of himself despite them.  And those were fighting words.

How we like preachers who make much of us!  We love those who praise our external religion.  But if ever a word pierces through the veneer of our superficial religiosity, we turn quickly from friend to enemy.  Any suggestion that we are unfit for God’s kingdom because of our sin opens the floodgate of rage.  With a religious résumé like mine, how dare anyone question my Christianity!  Where is the nearest hill on which our city has been built?

How well do you receive God’s word?  Do you consistently consider a threat against you?  Do you regularly feel condemned  by it and therefore enraged at it?  Do you direct your anger toward the preacher rather than the message?  Is your spiritual disposition fickle like the Nazarenes, who are happy one minute and livid the next?  Can you not receive difficult, confrontational, pride-killing messages from God?  Do you react impulsively as though God (or the preacher) is picking on you, or do you seriously meditate on God’s word as a means of grace for salvation and sanctification?

For those of us who are preachers, we should take great comfort from Jesus’s ministry.  In fact, Jesus ended his ministry the same way he began.  He was welcomed into Jerusalem on Monday with cries of “Hosanna!”.  By Thursday, those same folks cried, “Crucify Him!”.  God’s word is indeed a two-edged sword which wounds as well as and as quickly as it heals (Heb 4.12).

The Gospel Coalition published yet another great post from the insightful and provocative Kevin DeYoung.  Entitled “Dude, Where’s Your Bride?”, the article addresses what DeYoung considers a paucity of marriagable Christian men.  This trend, as DeYoung cites, is part of the larger trend among all men.  There is simply a generation of men without “substance” and “plans.”    In typical DeYoung fashion, he provides helpful correctives for women-seeking-men and churches suffering anemic Christian manhood.

And by “manhood,” neither DeYoung nor I mean the Bible-thumping, chin-chiseled, cliff-climbing, bungee-jumping, Sahara-trekking, canyon-hiking, snake-choking  sort. Rather, we mean “manhood” in the simple sense of men with ambition and vocation.  Men with conviction and vocabularies broader than “like,” “you know,” and “LOL.”  Men with theological sense about them and biblical maturity.  Men with stability and decisive.  Men with emotional depth and thoughtful breadth.  Men who live real lives among real people, not virtual lives among avatars.

What DeYoung doesn’t discuss, but undoubtedly can and elsewhere does, are the reasons why we suffer from anemic Christian manhood.  And certainly those reasons are complex, societal, and categorical.  As part of these complex reasons I might offer one reason why the church lacks eligible bachelors: the modern notion of “youth ministry.”  What follows is a generalization and summary of typical youth ministry experiences.  I realize not all churches, youth ministries and/or youth pastors are just alike.

I’m no youth ministry expert or authority on church history.  But, we should at least agree the church’s ministry to youth has evolved from historic family-centered, church-involved, theologically-rich instruction to family-averse, church-averse, experiential religion.  In fact, we might argue whether or not Scripture endorses or promotes our modern idea of “youth.” Generally speaking, we consider childhood to end at 12-13 years old and adulthood to begin somewhere between 18-21 years old.  In between are those awkward teenage years where you’re neither a child nor adult, but some unpredictable, hybrid creature.  You’re too old to be in “children’s church”  but much too young to handle “big church.” Besides, your parents need a  break from you so they can “worship,” too.   So, we steward you through those teenage years in a cocoon filled with pizza, “praise and worship,” and pie-in-the-face props.  Hopefully, the day will come when you get too big for the youth group and tear your way out of the cocoon into a biblically-astute, relationally-mature adult.

Now we’ve inherited a generation raised under such a philosophy, which as contributed the paucity of mature-minded Christian men.

Biblically, we find the general trajectory of a boy’s life to be childhood and then manhood.  There are certainly varying degrees of manhood and expectations therein.  But the expectation is one is either a child or else formally becoming a man.  There is no “Well, he’s just a teenager”  category, where the expectations of manhood are suspended or relaxed because he has pimples.  We’d surprised at how many of our biblical heroes came into their “own” while teenagers (David, Daniel, Mary, etc).

God’s people raise their boys into Christian manhood.  After all, subject to God’s providence, our children will be adults five times longer than they were kids.   We don’t entertain them to death with silly games.  We instill in them gospel vocabulary as surely as we do English vocabulary. We confront them early and often with the gospel and its demands.  Like Jesus at twelve, they should have astute questions about the things of God.

I’m not suggesting we rob our boys of all that goes along with boyhood.  The Cowboys should always beat the Steelers in the backyard.  There need to be some scars on chins, elbows and knees from riding too fast on a bike.  There are dragons to slay and baseballs to lose in the neighbor’s yard.

But at the end of day, when scrapes are kissed and fingernails cleaned, our boys are becoming men.  And they’re to be guided toward ambition and vocation.  They’re to learn, respond to and apply the language of the gospel.  They’re to learn the rhythm of church life and a Christianity that is “one anothered,” not whipped cream smothered.  After wrestling Dad for the world title on Saturday, our boys should imitate Dad in worship on Sunday.

As we raise our boys into men, our gals will find plenty of brothers worthy of their devotion and submission.  God forbid Kevin DeYoung’s grandson write a similar article forty years from now.

“Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.  But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Hebrews 3.12-14).

Thanks to a young brother in our church I’ve been drawn to this text for a week.  Thanks to the Spirit I have been drawn to a more hopeful and helpful interpretation of this text.

One thing is clear about this text is that Christian assurance is a community project.  One of the fundamental means of our assurance of salvation in perseverance in the gospel is the (local) church.  Every one of us is responsible to every one else of us (Rom 12.5).  That  fact hasn’t changed in my mind, but the application of it in the biblical community has.

Before now my sense of the text was one that created a Christian police-state.  Like elementary school nuns, each of us wields our rulers so as to snap everyone else into submission.  We see to that none of us has an evil, unbelieving by constantly pointing out how close someone is to sin and how quickly they should flee it.  ”Watch out for this!”  ”Watch out for that!” “You dare not step that way; in fact, I’d be careful of stepping anywhere because you just may fall away from the living God!”  Before long, our whole energy is spent terrified of the ubiquitous evil, unbelieving heart rather than assured of Christ.  We grow spiritually paralyzed and unfruitful.

I am not suggesting there is no place for exhortation or warning in biblical community.   There are sins to flee and flee we must.  When a brother or sister eyes the precipice of apostasy we must warn them and command their return with all spiritual force.

But it seems like the normal, day-to-day remedy against the evil, unbelieving heart is encouragement (v13).  The way we guard one another from an evil, unbelieving heart is not necessarily, but certainly not always, scaring each other away from sin.  Rather, we encourage one another toward Christ of whom we’ve become partakers (v14).  The hardening, deceiving effects of sin are powerless in light of the gospel and what God has done to make us part of Jesus.

The word translated “encourage” combines two Greek words: para (alongside) and kaleo (call).  It carries a far more positive tone than that of “warn.”  Taking care of our brothers such that they avoid an evil, unbelieving heart is not hollering from distance, “Hey, you’d better not do that!” or “Hey, don’t go there!”  Helping our sisters from sin’s hardening and deceiving effects is not sitting in the stands telling them where not to run.  It means coming alongside them, sharing in the same call of God to Christ.  It means coming alongside, holding up the precious value of Jesus so that we’re overcome by his glory rather than abject fear.

Imagine explaining someone directions to your house by telling them where they’re not supposed to turn.  Would they ever be quite sure they’re on the right road?  Would they ever have confidence that they’ll get to the right destination?  Holding fast the beginning our assurance firm until the end (v14) isn’t gauged by how much sin we’re always avoiding.  In fact, organizing our life around not sinning will most often lead to prideful, self-righteousness.

The measure of our assurance is gauged by how precious Christ is to us.  For example, assume a Christian brother is addicted to pornography and we don’t want to ruin his marriage. We could, and probably should, warn him from any practical avenues to it.  We could, and should, say, “Stop doing this or you’ll lose it all.”  But, it’s not that easy. He must be thrilled by a greater beauty than the centerfold.  His heart must be won to another “model.”  So, we come alongside him and say, “Stare at your wife.  Contemplate what God has done to unite you two.  Consider that she still puts up with you.  Consider that she is the one who has been with you through hell and back, while that airbrushed fantasy doesn’t care that you exist.  Consider this woman who has given you everything.”  Stopping the sin doesn’t necessarily stop the hardening of the heart.  But, contemplating grace does.

In contemplating Christ and his beauty our hearts are necessarily softened.  I am far more helped away from an evil, unbelieving heart by being “called” again and again to Christ and the gospel.  God has made us partakers of Christ and what better deterrent from sin than to see God’s glory in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4.4-6).  Yes, I should be warned early and often, but that warning must come through the whispers of my brothers rather than a megaphone from the sidelines.

As our gaze is constantly fixed more and more on Jesus, we find entangling sin coming unraveled from our feet (Heb 12.1-2).  We lay aside our sin by focusing our attention on our Christ, of whom God has made us partakers.  The ultimate reason we avoid sin is not because how bad it is, but because how great Christ is (Rom 6.20-22).

So before we feel the urge to call out and announce a brother’s sin in the name of keeping him from an apostate heart, let us first come alongside and help his gaze Godward. Rather than sit in the bleachers telling him where not to run, let’s enter the race beside him so that he not get distracted from Jesus.  Compel him to what God has done in Christ for sinners, sinners just like us.  We are sons, not slaves.  And Christ is a faithful Son over God’s house, whose house we are (Heb 3.6)!  In light of that, how can we harden our hearts?