When you pray, Christian, my guess is that you declare God to be good. Often, you will do so based on the things that the Lord has done for you. He has healed a family member, allowed a friend to get a job, or brought new people to your church. God is so good.
But what do we do when the Lord does not do these things? What do we say when the family member does not get better, when the friend does not land that new job, or when the church is shrinking though the elders are faithful? What then? If God was good for giving us what we wanted in the first example, is he no longer good when we do not get what we want in the second?
Of course we know, looking at a computer screen, that God is still good and worthy of praise no matter what our circumstances. But how hard is it for us to say that when we are in a hospital room or a funeral home? Those are the places where the rubber meets the road.
We need to be ready for the good times and the bad. We need to be personally prepared to declare the Lord good whether or not we have what we want in this life. We will not figure it out and get it right in the moment of pain. WE must have it figured out beforehand. As I heard John Piper say once, the hospital room is not the place to work on someone’s theology. We need to have a biblical theology of the goodness of God and of response to sorrow and suffering worked out before we actually face the pain.
Many books of the Bible show us hard-to-understand suffering. Habakkuk, one of those minor prophets that we seldom spend time on, is a great example. When the book opens, Habakkuk is bothered that God is not taking action to clean up the world and judge those in his nation who are doing wrong. God tells the prophet that he is at work, bringing the Chaldeans to be his instrument of judgment. Habakkuk can’t believe it, knowing that the Chaldeans are even worse than the people he is complaining about. But God will deal with them too.
Eventually, as the book unfolds, as Habakkuk asks questions and realizes the sovereignty of God, he comes to a place to accept that the will of the Lord is more sure and more perfect than anything Habakkuk could come up with on his own.
Look at the prayer of Habakkuk as he gets ready to close this short book.
Habakkuk 3:17-18
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Though the world go wrong, though everything I want fails, I will take joy in the Lord. This is glorious. This is not a prayer that declares God to be good only when we get what we want. Instead, it is a prayer that truly glorifies God as the prophet says that, no matter what his earthly circumstances, God is good and worthy of praise. No matter how hard life is, the joy of the prophet will not be in whether the nation is sustained or whether things go his way. The joy of the prophet will be in the Lord, his only source of lasting joy.
What would it look like for you to grab this prayer and start making it part of your character? How valuable would it be for you to have this in your pocket as a truth before a time of suffering hits? This is a pair of verses worth memorizing and meditating on. Life is hard. It gets tough. Things do not work out always in the way we want. Will we still find our joy in the Lord?
Friends, God is good. He is good when we are full and when we are empty. He is good when we get better and when we do not. He is good when the nation is praising him and when he must judge the nation for rebellion. He is good when the world believes in him and when the world hates all who truly follow him. God is good because God is good. God is our source of joy, because he designed us so that he is the only one who truly fits our longing for joy.
Today, whether you are in joy or in pain, consider bowing before the Lord and declaring him good no matter what. Speak to the Lord and let him know that he is your joy no matter what the circumstances. Of course we would prefer pleasure and ease. And sometimes he gives us those things. But we must be ready, before the hardest times come, to declare him good at all times, in all circumstances. And this is the joyful truth: he is good. God is perfect by definition. He is holy. May we see this and let it prepare us to rejoice, not in circumstances, but in the Lord who made us.
Why My Kids Do Not Believe in Santa
My children do not believe in Santa Claus. To some, this is an obvious move. To others, this is a shock. What’s the deal? Am I some sort of anti-holiday Scrooge? Am I some sort of overzealous fundamentalist? Why in the world would I not have my little ones believe in Santa?
I am probably asked every year about what our family has decided to do about Santa at Christmas time. And, every year, I share a version of this post to try to explain the process that my wife and I went through in deciding our answer to the big question: To Santa or not to Santa.
Since you know the answer already, let me very briefly tell you the reasoning that made the no Santa policy in my home. Then, I will share with you a bit of how we deal with Santa.
Christmas is a holiday that has been highly over-commercialized in the US for years. People focus on winter, on trees, on lights, on gifts, and not on Jesus. And you know what, none of those are the reasons why my family did not tell my children that Santa was real.
Here is my bottom line reasoning: If I tell my children to believe in a figure that they cannot see, that he watches them from afar, that he judges their motives and actions, that he has supernatural powers, and that he will visit them with gifts every Christmas, they will eventually find out that I have intentionally told them to believe in something that is not true. This fact will not do much for my credibility in telling them true things about God, who is invisible to them, who watches over them though they cannot sense it, who judges their thoughts and actions, and who will bless them with eternal blessings if they will follow Christ. So, simply put, my wife and I have determined that we will never tell our children that something is true when it is not, because it is far too important that they be able to believe us when we tell them some things are true that they cannot see.
How do we deal with Santa and Santa stuff? It’s quite simple. Ever since Abigail was tiny, we have worked to distinguish the difference between true stories and pretend ones. In our house, if a story begins with “A long time ago…,” it is a true story. If a story begins with, “Once upon a time…,” it is a pretend story. The kids have done surprisingly well making those distinctions. They can still enjoy the stories that they know are not real just as any children can.
Since my children have no trouble enjoying that which they know not to be real, my wife and I do not get all crabby when a family member wraps a Christmas gift and puts “From: Santa” on the label. We do not find ourselves upset when they want a musical Rudolph toy from Wal-Mart (well, no more upset than we are when they want any noise-making toy). We do not get bent out of shape when a Santa ornament makes its way onto a tree near us. We don’t even mind taking snapshots of them sitting on the knee of a portly, bearded guy in a red, fuzzy suit once a year.
I think that you can tell from what I’ve already written, but just in case it is not clear, Mitzi and I do not look at our decision about Santa as the only possible one. This is a matter of conscience and preference. There is not Scripture that states, “Thou shalt not ho, ho, ho.” I grew up believing in Santa, and it really didn’t harm my worldview that much (so far as I can tell). But, for me and my house, we have simply made a decision that we want our children to know that Mommy and Daddy will always tell them the truth, and that trumps our desires to have beaming little people listening for sleigh bells on Christmas Eve.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, we also try our best to keep our children from being the ones who spoil it for others. Abigail and Josiah have both been told in no uncertain terms that they are not to make it their mission to correct the Santaology of other children. They have answered truthfully when asked by other little ones, but they, to my knowledge, have never tried to be anti-Santa evangelists. So far, so good. We’ll have to see how Owen handles it when he is old enough to play the spoiler role.
Hear my heart as I wrap up this post. I am not here attempting to change any family’s plans for how to handle Christmas. Nor am I asking any person not to do Santa things with my little ones. Nor am I suggesting that, if you have just watched a Claymation special with your kids that you have ruined their spiritual chances for the future. So, please, no cranky comments defending your traditions. Santa stuff is a lot of fun. I love fun stories and the joy of imagination. (We even watch Harry Potter every year around the Christmas season simply because the music feels Christmassy to us; so obviously we are not the strict, non-fiction parents that you might be imagining.) But, since many ask, here is the answer: we have made a choice to be able to tell our children that, when mom and dad say something is real, we fully believe it to be real.
Preparing for Reproof
How easy it is to be defensive. How easy it is to turn away from reproof. How easy it is to fight back or switch off or excuse away the words we do not want to hear. But, if we desire to live godly in this hard and fallen world, we must prepare ourselves to receive reproof graciously.
Psalm 141:5a
Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness;
let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head;
let my head not refuse it.
Remember that psalms are songs and prayers. The words above are the words of a worshipful prayer. The psalmist wants the Lord to bring into his life righteous people who will reprove him. Even more, he wants to receive it well.
Why is this necessary? We are blind to our blind spots. Though that should be obvious, you’d be amazed how often it is that we do not see our own failings. Just consider how often you see someone do something or hear someone say something and then you think to yourself, “How can they not see that is wrong?” If that happens to people around you all the time, why would you think that you do not do the same? When you walk into a room, you see everyone except yourself. When you evaluate lives, you often evaluate everyone except yourself. And this is why you need others to speak into your life.
How can you be ready for reproof? First, like the psalmist, ask God to give you righteous friends who will be daring enough to speak into your life. Pray, asking the Lord who loves you to bring such people into your church and your circle of friends.
Second, be open with your friends. Do not hide who you are. No, do not revel in your folly either. Just be real. And ask honest questions. Give the godly and mature around you the right to speak into your life.
Third, be wise enough to keep your mouth shut when someone risks speaking into your life. It is so easy, so very easy, to find a way to nitpick the reproof you receive. You might get mad at them for how they say it, for when they say it, or for a minor error they make as they try to make their point. But if you do this, you will keep them from speaking into your life in the future as you miss the point that you need to learn in the present. Listen. Be humble. Be gracious. Assume that your friends who are risking much to speak into your life are wanting the best for you.
Finally, act. Be kind and thankful to friends who will speak into your life and to the Lord who would give you such friends. Then, when the heat of emotion has died down, honestly take a look at what they said. Your friends could be evaluating you wrongly. But if they are, there is probably still something wrong in your life or personality that led them to that conclusion. Be humble. Be godly. Repent when you need to repent. Perhaps even follow up with your friend after a while to see if they see a change.
It is hard to hear hard truth. But it is good. May we pray as the psalmist prayed that God would give us righteous people to speak into our lives. May we respond in a right way to honest reproof. May we prepare for it, receive it well, and react to it wisely for our good and God’s glory.
A Roadblock to a Sweet Life
What if I told you, Christian, that there is something you might be doing that is keeping your life from the spiritual sweetness you want? What if I told you that there is something about your life that you can work to change that will increase the pleasantness of your experience here on earth? Would you want it? Would you do it?
Psalm 133 (ESV)
1 A Song of Ascents. Of David.
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.
What would give us all a more pleasant life as believers? According to the word of God, there is a glorious sweetness when brothers dwell together in unity. I think it is safe to say that this is a pointer to the fact that it is good, very good, when the people of God are strongly committed to one another. If we want a sweet life in the here and now, part of how to get it is to be deeply committed to the local church.
God wants you and me to see just how sweet it is when the people of God share their lives together in a common, unified cause. This is what the church is about. We are those called out of the world and gathered together for worship and mutual edification under the word of God and in the Spirit of God.
Now, examine your own life, Christian. Are you committed to your local church? Do not think, by the way, that you are if it is easy for you to skip the gathering of the saints together for worship. Do not think that you are committed to the local body if it is easy for you to have weeks go by without you connecting with other Christians other than in passing in a church hallway on a Sunday morning. We are to dwell together. Our lives are to interconnect. This cannot happen if we are skipping church for just any old thing that comes up. Nor can it happen if we are keeping to ourselves in every aspect of our lives other than a plastic smile on a Sunday morning as we go through the motions of the worship service.
Let me urge us all as believers to be sure that we are committed to life together in Christ. That means we do not forsake the gathering of the saints for worship (cf. Heb. 10:24-25). It also means that our lives are lived in a connected fashion. So go to small groups. Go to Sunday School classes. Go to home-based Bible studies. Go to prayer groups. Get together for coffee or dinner or whatever fits your style. Speak to each other in kindness. Genuinely care. Make the people of God be a delight to your soul, and you will find that what God has shown us in Psalm 133 is true. It is a good, pleasant, fitting thing when we live together as family in unity.
The Complete Seminary Survival Guide — A Review
Mark Warnock. The Complete Seminary Survival Guide. West Palm Beach, FL: Seminary Survival Strategies, 2017. 147 pp. $9.99.
Considering seminary? Already a student? How do you navigate the waters of the seminary environment? How do you manage schedule, family, spiritual life, ministry preparation, finances, and so much more? Answering questions like these with practical, simple, but not always obvious solutions is the point of The Complete Seminary Survival Guide.
Mark Warnock is a seminary graduate with both an MDIV and PhD. He has been a student on campus and a student from a distance. Even more importantly, He has served in a variety of ministry settings and has a solid grasp of concepts to help students make things work.
What you should love about this book is the practical approach that Warnock offers his readers for seminary survival. The author is not foolish enough to think that he can offer a one-size-fits-all approach to how you should handle your own personal navigation through seminary. Instead, he offers multiple, practical, and useful bits of counsel. Often he will offer several options, and then simply tell students to pick one and see if it works. This practical and personalizable approach makes this book a help to students from a variety of backgrounds and in a variety of life situations.
Another beauty of this work is the author’s sometimes unconventional approach to seminary. While encouraging students to get all they can from their classes and to take advantage of the glorious opportunity afforded them, Warnock knows that not all classes will be of equal value and equal weight to every student. Thus, he can tell students—perish the thought—that settling for a B in a less important class is worth it in order to succeed in a more important class, in ministry, or in marriage. One would think that such counsel would be obvious, but as a seminary graduate myself, I can say that this simple principle is often overlooked by eager students who are slaves to their GPA.
One final positive that I will mention is Warnock’s focus on real ministry. The book contains some incredibly valuable advice to students about doing real ministry while in seminary. The author suggests to students that they should take advantage of the opportunities around them to serve in churches, to do real ministry, to learn from experienced pastors, and to simply not waste their time in seminary sitting in Sunday School classes full of other seminary students. The author points out that seminary students need to learn to love people, and this is not going to happen in the classroom. That piece of counsel alone would make the book worth far more than its purchase price for any student who would take it to heart.
No, as a student, you will not always agree with the advice Warnock offers in his book. He suggests that you avoid living on campus in order to relate to people outside of the seminary bubble. This is good counsel for many, but it will not work for all. Warnock understands that even as he will prod students to consider things from a fresh perspective.
I would happily and strongly recommend The Complete Seminary Survival Guide to any students presently in or presently considering seminary. Beyond that, however, I would also recommend this book to simply any student. The priorities that Warnock sets forth for seminary students should ring true for students in any degree program. His counsel on time-management and life priorities is invaluable. This would be a great book to pick up for someone you know headed to seminary or perhaps even for someone starting another type of graduate program. Many of the chapters on academics would even be a great help to high-school students. If you are a student, give this book a try. If you are a parent or pastor of a student, do not hesitate to make this a valuable gift.
A Missing Balance
Consider the question of whether or not God should forgive you? If your answer is an automatic, “Of course God should forgive me,” there may be a problem. If you doubt even the potential need for forgiveness, there is a huge problem.
On the other hand, if your response is a thought that God could never forgive you, your problem is just as big as the person who thinks they need no forgiveness. And if you think that you have to do a lot of work to earn forgiveness from God, you are tragically misled.
Psalm 130:3-4
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
Look at these two verses from the Psalm side-by-side. They give us the balance we need. Verse 3 shows us how desperate we are for forgiveness. We are sinners. WE need grace. If God is not merciful to us, we are dead. There is no way out. We have no excuses we can make. Left to ourselves, we are without hope. WE must know this if we are going to get a relationship with God right.
But then verse 4 comes in and marks the forgiveness of God. He is merciful. He is gracious. He is willing, even eager, to forgive those who repent of sin and turn to him in faith. That is why he sent Jesus.
Put those two concepts together, and you will have a right view of our need for grace. WE are hopeless on our own. That keeps us from the presumptuous view that God obviously must forgive us no matter what. But the look at verse 4 shows us that God is merciful, which keeps us from the fear that we could never be forgiven, no matter what. That balance is key to right thinking. And if we get it right, we approach God humbly, confessing our sin, and seeking his mercy in Christ.
Intentionality
Sometimes, when we read the story of Scripture, we get caught up in the drama. We see events come to pass, and we feel the unfairness of it all. We bemoan the fact that wrongs are done, that corners are cut, and that evil things happen.
Reading through John’s account of the life of Jesus, I find myself reminded that Jesus did not have the cross happen to him. The Lord Jesus shaped his life and his actions to very intentionally go to Jerusalem and to the cross. Yes, he was treated wrongly. Yes, the Jews broke any number of their own laws to try him and send him to Pilate. Yes, Pilate pronounced Jesus not guilty on several occasions. But the Savior was in charge and he was not going to fail to get to the cross.
Consider this scene at Jesus’ arrest. Was the Savior taken advantage of? Or was the Savior in total control? Did the scheme of Judas catch Jesus? Or did Jesus do exactly what he had planned all along?
John 18:4-8 – 4 Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” 5 They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. 6 When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. 7 So he asked them again, “Whom do you seek?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” 8 Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.”
Jesus, on the night of his arrest, already knew Judas intended to betray him. So what did Jesus do? He went to a garden that Judas knew well. He did not hide. And Jesus waited there until Judas and the soldiers arrived.
When the soldiers arrived, how would they identify Jesus? It was dark. There were at least 12 men in the garden, Jesus and 11 disciples. Judas had worked out a secret, sneaky signal. He would go up and greet his master with a kiss on the cheek as was common in that culture. But what does Jesus do? He walks forward, does not wait for Judas to kiss him, and he asks the soldiers whom they seek.
When the soldiers say they seek Jesus, he could have said all sorts of things. He could have said, “You know, Jesus was just in Jerusalem a little bit ago. Hurry that way and you might catch him.” Jesus could have tried to hide. But Jesus did not use any sort of subterfuge. Instead, Jesus boldly identified himself.
But Jesus more than identified himself. He used the “I Am” that points to his own deity. And when those words came from Jesus’ lips, the entire group of soldiers fell to the ground. Jesus showed that he was totally in control. He could flatten that group of armed men with a word and simply walk away.
But what did Jesus do? He asked the question again, insured his disciples could walk away, and went with the soldiers to the mockery of a trial that he was soon to face.
The point is that Jesus very intentionally went to the cross. He knew that his mission on earth was to go to Jerusalem, suffer, die, and then rise from the grave. Jesus went to the cross because he was born to go to the cross. He was born to be the perfect sacrifice for all of the sins that God would ever forgive. Jesus came for that purpose, and he would not let anything stand in his way.
Abiding
What does it look like to live as a Christian? Get practical. What does the week of a Christian look like? What do you do from day-to-day?
Years ago, that question was easily answered, though the answer could smack of a form of legalism or moralism. We all knew that good Christians went to church on Sunday morning and again on Sunday evening. They also would attend Wednesday night prayer services, and perhaps would meet with believers again in the week for fellowship, visitation, Bible study, or something else.
Today, many of our churches have thrown off that template of defining solid Christianity by attendance every time the church doors are open. And we must understand that there is a good to calling people to focus on their family lives and to freeing them from arbitrary, man-made standards of holiness. But, what have we lost in the process? What have we let go of when we threw out the old church schedule?
I wonder, if we are honest, if we have not let go of too much when we let go of the old-style schedule. Is it possible that, in freeing people from an arbitrary schedule, we have also, unfortunately, allowed ourselves to spend too much time in our given weeks apart from the people of God?
All of this hit my brain as I read through John 15, and as I repeatedly came across the word, “abide.”
John 15:4-6 – 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.
Now, first-things-first, to abide in Christ is to live in faith and repentance as a child of God in Jesus Christ. This passage is about unity with the Savior and living life in him before the face of God. Yet, with that said, what else must be a part of abiding in Christ?
What I think we must consider is that God calls us to abide in Christ, to center our lives in Christ. We are to live each day focused on Jesus in much the same way that we live in our houses. The idea of living in my house but never actually being in it is silly. Similarly, the idea of abiding in Christ while only worshipping him or talking about him once per week is silly. If I am to live as a Christian, I must center more and more of my focus on the person of Jesus Christ. I have to make him my home from day-to-day, not merely as the point of salvation, but also as the step-by-step growth of sanctification.
Here is what I think we have lost. In doing away with the old church schedule, a schedule I’m not trying to reestablish, we did away with regularly meeting together throughout the week for the purpose of worship, prayer, study, accountability, and fellowship. And what Jesus wants us to know is that we cannot survive like that. Once per week is not enough to abide in him. We need to abide, to live in him. That includes daily time in the word and prayer. But it also must include regularly getting together with other believers to grow together. We cannot make it on our own. We cannot live this life in our own strength. We need each other to assist one another in abiding in Christ. And we need to make that community Christian living a high priority.
So, maybe you do not need a twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday schedule. But you do need more than once per week to live the Christian life with other believers. You need people to ask you hard questions. You need people to get into your life. You need people to tell you that an idea you are having is a good one, or a bad one. You need people to remind you to focus on living daily before the face of God. We must work and live together as we abide in Christ for the glory of God.
The Way
In John 14, the Lord Jesus told his disciples not to be troubled. He was about to leave them, to return to the Father, and to prepare for his church their eternal home. The disciples were not to be troubled because this in fact had always been the mission of the Savior. Without Jesus going to the cross, there would be no heaven for the children of God.
Jesus also told his disciples that they knew the way to go where Jesus was ultimately going. They knew the way to heaven. And that causes a bit of an odd question from Thomas. Thomas wants directions, since he does not think he knows the way. But Jesus has something far better than a map for Thomas.
John 14:4-6 – 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What is the way to get to God? How do we become right with God? The way is Jesus. Verse 6, of course, is a verse that highlights the exclusivity of Christ. No person gets to God other than through the person and finished work of Jesus. And sometimes we focus on that aspect of what the Savior said so much that we miss the import of the first thing he said to Thomas. Jesus is the way.
How do you get to God? Go with Jesus. You do not need a set of directions. There is no series of ceremonies that you have to work through to make it to heaven. There is no secret handshake or mystery to unveil. No, if you want to be with God, you simply follow the way. The way is not a path, but a person. The way is Jesus. Follow Jesus, and you will arrive. Follow anything other than Jesus and you will miss.
How do we follow Jesus to heaven? We follow what he has told us in his word. Believe in the Lord Jesus in repentance to be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Son of god who lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the grave, and promises to return. Believe that he is your only hope for forgiveness. Entrust your very soul to the person and finished work of Jesus. That is the way to God.
And once we are saved, we still follow Jesus as the way. He has shown us how to please the Lord. He has revealed himself and his purposes in the Scriptures. So we worship, we unite with the church, we serve the Lord, and we do it all based on the inspired word of God, the revelation of Christ to us. WE pray. We trust God to lead us through his Spirit. And we follow Jesus. We do not follow a map or a dead set of directions. WE follow the Lord, via his Spirit, through his living and perfectly inspired word.
I’m Glad It’s not Just me
It may be shallow of me, but there are times when I am comforted by the fact that I am not the only one with certain flaws. It’s nice to know that I am not the only crazy one in the world who makes certain mistakes. Is that true of you too?
Here is one that I found comforting while reading through Matthew. Jesus and his disciples were having a conversation. Of course, the disciples missed something that Jesus was saying, and they got worried. They thought he was rebuking them for forgetting to pack supplies for a trip. The Savior, of course, was talking about something completely different.
But in that exchange, there is a failing that the disciples have that I think we often have too. Look at the story, and see if you can find yourself in it.
Matthew 16:5-12 – 5 When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. 6 Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 7 And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, “We brought no bread.” 8 But Jesus, aware of this, said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? 9 Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 10 Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 11 How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 12 Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
For the purposes of this post alone, don’t think about the religious implication of the Pharisees and Sadducees here. Instead, look at the other failing of the disciples. They were worried about their bread supply. This worry comes even though the disciples have twice seen Jesus miraculously feed crowds of thousands with only food enough to feed one or two people. They have seen Jesus’ power. They have seen Jesus’ kindness. They have seen Jesus’ provision. But, when they are looking at a potential lack, they forget.
Forgetting the great faithfulness and provision of the Lord is something that I think is a common Christian failing. It is an ugly one, to be sure, but it is common. For some reason, we can see that the Lord provides for us at points in our lives. WE can rejoice in that provision. We can even tell others about the great faithfulness and power of God. But when the next struggle comes, if we are not careful, we will look like the faithless disciples wondering if we are going to go hungry.
Dear friends, let us not be like the disciples here. Let us not be like we often are. Instead, let us remember the faithfulness of god in the past. Let us remember his promises in his word. Let us remember how he has always cared for us. And let us trust the Savior, knowing that he will always accomplish his will in our lives for his glory and our good.
Pastor Travis Peterson 