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JD Wetterling’s MIDWEEKLY REALITY
CHECK
Truth from
a Child’s Lips Yesterday my wife and I returned home from a long Thanksgiving weekend in sun-drenched Cincinnati, the new home of our daughter, son-in-law and two small grandchildren, Colin (2.75 years old) and Anna (0.25 years old). It was my first meeting with laughing Anna and her expressive eyebrows. They were furled in a frown at the sight of a scruffy-bearded old man, but soon enough they turned to wide-eyed happy arches, occasionally accompanied with actual laughs. And precocious Colin…well, I will save the best till last. What a great blessing grandchildren are! Grandparenthood has made all the struggles of parenthood worthwhile. And watching our children parent their children, I marvel at God’s grace in making them such good mentors in spite of one lousy role model in their formative years. Catching up on my periodical reading last evening, after a scenic, sunny, seven-hour-drive south from Cincy through my beloved Blue Ridge Mountains, I was immediately disposed of my euphoric, so-grateful-to-God demeanor for all the blessings of my wonderful life. The culprit was Publishers Weekly’s Hardcover “Religious” Bestsellers list. I wasn’t on it…again…, but that wasn’t the reason for my instant depression. Atop the list are two hostile atheistic screeds by pompous professors vying for the throne of the late Carl Sagan, who boxed with God all his life but now knows the truth. Those two books are as anti-religious as books can be. I suppose whoever is in charge of the list considers atheism a religion, though both authors would deny it. Both publishers are large old line secular publishers, not Christian publishers, yet I’m sure there are some self-styled “religious” booksellers who would have the courage to sell the books anyway, the rent having to be paid and all. The #1 bestseller is The God Delusion, by the renowned British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The #2 book is Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. Both have more reviews written, 200+, and more comments to those reviews than I have very seen at Amazon.com. I gave up reading them after 40-50, but they all appeared to be choir members of the First Godless Church of the Cosmos (“it’s all there is, was, or ever will be”), whistling for all they were worth past the graveyard. I’m hard-pressed to think of any better proof of the depravity of man. Nothing I’ve read of late more negatively reinforces Christ’s middle-of-the night comment to Nicodemus: No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3:3). In the providence of God my early morning devotions today included a quote by an Englishman who does share my worldview—Martin Lloyd Jones, minister of London’s Westminster Chapel for thirty years and called by many the greatest preacher of the twentieth century. He said, “The newspapers give publicity to anything that denies the faith; they know the public palate.” We could add to that, in Dawkins’ case, the cover of Time and a feature article in US News & World Report. Publishers Weekly breathlessly declares “the debate is sweeping the country.” If so, I haven’t found the other side of it yet, nor have I ever met a soul who was debated into the kingdom of heaven. As I consider the world our five dear grandchildren will inherit, where hate abounds and hostility flourishes against those who love the Lord, I pray with all my heart that they will know God’s truth, that they will have the gift of discernment, and that they will not be of this world in this cosmic nanosecond of human life. Praise God they are learning under godly parents who are teaching them to put on the whole armor of God. My diaper-clad grandson Colin spoke more truth from the Westminster Children’s Catechism in thirteen seconds Sunday than those two bilious bestselling authors spoke in both books combined:
(audio) Mom asks, Colin answers.
Come next Sunday, Colin and his whole family will be lighting the first Advent candle at their church, commemorating the birth of the most precocious baby ever born. I am so thankful my grandson knows our sovereign God’s Son.
Come Before Winter
“Autumn is the parable of everything that fades.” Dr. Clarence Macartney, a Philadelphian Presbyterian preacher, said that back in 1915 in a classic sermon entitled “Come Before Winter,” based upon the Apostle Paul’s poignant plea to his beloved Timothy from a cold dungeon in Rome, recorded in 2 Timothy 4:21. Come before winter, and bring my cloak. Dr. Macartney deftly, movingly exegetes that phrase with the surrounding text as a call to all those who are not in Christ to come to him, to come before winter. Max McLean has narrated it on a CD just out as a “free gift from Ligonier Ministries & R. C. Sproul.” I got mine at the Western Carolina Presbytery meeting held here at Ridge Haven last weekend. The fringe benefits of my “job” are a never-ending blessing. I’ve heard over 50 sermons in this high holy season just ended at Ridge Haven, but rather than take a break from all that preaching, I listened to Max’s mesmerizing bass voice recite that sermon four times in 20 hours. I don’t know about you, but that’s a record for me. A dear friend gave me a set of Bose earphones a couple of years ago, the Rolls Royce of earphones, and they allow Max McLean to communicate God’s basso profundo truth direct to my soul from somewhere deep inside my cranium. In the providence of God I heard Come Before Winter just before winter came, as autumn faded in rusty splotches. In the providence of God, Liggonier has graciously put this truth in my hands at the appropriate season, both of the year and of my life, and at a time when I am alone to meditate upon and savor its powerful message. What follows is inspired by that message. Dr. Macartney says, “autumn engenders an urgency in me.” I share that feeling. In my case it can be a melancholy urgency, when I let it. When the leaves begin to fade from their beautiful peak, they remind me of those lost souls whom I love, who are dead like the autumn leaves and do not know it. They think that that momentary glorious flutter from branch to ground is life. They think they are flying under their own power and cleverness, when in fact they are captive to the gravity of their sin. Last Sunday afternoon, at the end of the busiest busy season we’ve seen in my tenure at Ridge Haven, I was home alone. I wandered into Robeson Hall. That is the venue of those 50 plus sermons I’ve absorbed this fall and the setting of nearly every sanctifying experience I’ve had in the last five years. In the serene silence of that cathedral ceiling-ed, window-walled holy place, empty chairs in neat rows, the podium up front with the microphone stand in place, all ready, by the sweat of my brow, for the next group of guests, and devoid of humanity but for me, I felt the knee-knocking presence of God. Yes, it is a bit bizarre, even to me, but it is not the first time it has happened in this hallowed wilderness cathedral. It only happens when Ridge Haven is empty and I am here alone. Now you know I am not a mystic or a charismatic. If I am not the most orthodox Presbyterian you ever met, then you must have known John Knox personally. Something held me there in that meeting hall, empty of everything except the solitude of the presence of God. I pulled a chair off the neat stack in the corner and placed it against the back wall, sat down, stared out the windows in the front of the room, and pondered Paul’s plea to come before winter. My saintly mother, who taught me all the important lessons in life, taught me her final lesson in the midst of winter seven years ago—how to die in peace and assurance in Christ, with literally a song, a hymn in her heart as she silently mouthed the words. She sings first soprano in the choir of the church eternal now, and when we sing her favorite hymns at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church or Robeson Hall, I can hear her angelic voice singing just a little louder that everyone else in the room. There is another one near and dear to my wife and I, whose unsaved soul has weighed heavily on me this autumn. As her health fails she is experiencing panic attacks, with soaring heart rate and blood pressure. She has heard the gospel a number of times, the last on a Sunday evening at Cornerstone Church last spring when I was in the pulpit. Not once did she raise her gaze out of her lap and make eye contact as I explained God’s grace with all the passion and plain English I could muster. After the service she made the kindest remarks about my presentation, but said nothing about my content. She has an unbelieving friend, also in poor health, and together they shuffle toward the abyss which, they convince each another, isn’t there. I know…I absolutely know that God is sovereign in the salvation of men. I am my own best proof. He chose me, purchased me his with blood, agonizingly let, and subdued me, in spite of my best efforts to resist. And I know that as long as there is life there is hope for us all. My wife and I pray without ceasing for that lost soul, and we keep trying different approaches. But, as I watch, from up close, this eternal tragedy unfold, I battle profound sadness. I got up out of my chair in Robeson and did what I do on rare occasions these days when my soul is sorely troubled. I walked over to the sound room and put Bill Gaither’s Favorite Homecoming Songs in the CD player. I turned the volume up to half-a-decibel below window shattering range, slumped back down in the chair, stared out at the faded remains of fall against a severe clear blue sky, and let Vestal Goodman, singing What a Lovely Name, soothe my tormented soul. I played it over and over and over again. I know, you’re thinking, boy is he weird, but it used to be a lot worse. Years ago, in the war zone, when breaking things and blasting souls to eternity was my daily duty, and grief was commonplace, I did this often, to different music, sometimes supplemented with copious quantities of alcohol. But God was gracious…. I do not listen to music normally, outside of church. Those of you who have ridden in my truck know I do not even have a radio…on purpose. I special ordered that truck 11 years ago without one. I did not want to pay for what I would never use. But in troubled times music is cathartic for me, I think because my mother sang all her life, and it was a great comfort to me. I have a vivid scene filed permanently in my gray matter, from back in my mandatory nap days, lying in my bed on a summer afternoon in an ancient western Illinois farmhouse, studying the dust motes floating in the sunbeam and listening to the comforting music of my mother singing hymns as she went about her housework. All the times we were together, right to the end of her life, if the conversation lagged for 10 seconds she would begin to softly sing or hum a hymn. I sat there in Robeson Hall, all alone with God and Vestal’s great lungs and golden vocal cords and nothing else, and prayed for the salvation of my unsaved loved one, and proceeded to make a mess of myself, the extent of which will forever remain a secret between God and me. My deeply held reformed theological convictions slammed head-on into my desperate wants, and I wrestled with my sovereign God. I am a blessed man. God has blessed me far beyond my deserving, but I want what I want, and what I want, with all that is within me, is for my loved ones to be with Jesus and me where we spend eternity. And that brings me back to 2 Timothy 4:21. Come before winter. In the providence of God, there is a season for everything. Spring is the planting season, summer is the growing season, and fall appears to be the dying season, but in fact it is the season of preparation, as trees, for example, prepare for winter and a time of protective dormancy, for the miraculous resurrection that follows in the spring. But unlike nature, man has but one cycle of seasons, and no resurrection to new life, unless…unless he is in Christ. You must come to Christ before winter, or there will be no glorious spring for you (John 3:16). Dr. Macartney, in his classic sermon, in a riff on a famous Jonathan Edwards metaphor, said, a spider’s most attenuated strand “is a steel cable compared to your hold on life.” And its a life that fades all too quickly, like leaves in autumn. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone, that lovely name, is the only hope, the only truth, the only way to resurrection in the spring. Do you have unsaved loved ones? Have you personally invited them to come to Christ? Do it now. Always, always, do it now. With all the love that is within you, invite them to come to Him. Come before the heart grows cold, come before the snow obscures the way, come before the door is frozen shut forever. Come before winter…..
A Prayer
of Dedication In the providence of God an extraordinary thing happened in our little church in the French Broad River Valley of the Blue Ridge mountains last Sunday evening. A great man of God was officially installed as the shepherd of our flock. In a denomination—the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)—that takes great pains to guard the faith, this is the most serious of ceremonies. Vows are sworn, oaths are taken, and solemn charges to keep are made, by shepherd and flock. Our new pastor’s son-in-law delivered the sermon, and his son delivered the “charge” to a dad who has been preaching longer than son has been breathing. It was not the first time son had participated in Dad’s worship service. That occurred shortly after he learned how to walk, and he found his way out of the nursery and into the sanctuary, headed for Dad in nothing but his Sunday diaper. All three men are Presbyterian (PCA) pastors, all three are powerful exegetes, all three exude the assurance that the living God satisfies their souls—grace upon grace! It is a rare thing when there are three pastors in one family, it is rarer still when all three are in the same church on Sunday, as Dad told the congregation. Dad is Dr. H. Andrew Silman, our new pastor, the son is Rev. A. Campbell Silman, and son-in-law is Rev. P. Clay Holland. (I think that middle name emphasis is a southern cultural convention—for sure it’s a family thing.) This wordsmith cannot find the words to explain how I feel. I could not sleep and sat at my computer trying to clarify my thoughts on the screen and praising God long past midnight. My eyes kept flooding but I was not sad—the opposite in fact. It was simply the most moving, meaningful worship of the living God I have ever been blessed to participate in. By “meaningful” I mean convicting…transporting…humbling…gratitude inducing to the point I want to bawl my eyes out (I’ve never seen more tears in a church that was not conducting a funeral), that the God of the universe would so bless this little flock in the boondocks, and so bless a bum like me. Admittedly, part of my feelings have to do with the fact that I sat on the search committee that called Dr. Silman, a long, stressful, wearisome, emotional roller-coaster of a task, and partly because I am an elder in this little church, a leadership burden that sometimes feels like it is about to break my back. For one night at least I was walking on air and I am most grateful. I prayed the “Prayer of Dedication” in the service. I share the deepest longings of my heart with you, dear friends, as I shared it with my church family that night:
O Lord God of all creation, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth below, keeping your promises forever and showing infinite, everlasting love to your chosen ones, who walk before you with joyful hearts. (I Kings 8:23) The highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that we have built! Hear our prayer, as we here gathered dedicate your house, your adopted family and this ministry to your glory. May this church in these magnificent mountains be a beacon of light, that light of the world that is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May Dr. Silman’s ministry be an efficacious voice of truth crying in the wilderness of this decaying culture. And may every saint in this sanctuary glow with love and throb with hope immortal for all to see in our community, bringing you glory and honor, and drawing in anxious unsaved souls. Shadows they are and shadows they pursue—longing, searching without vision for the peace and joy in Christ that we by grace have received. Guide us as we endeavor to declare, by our deeds as we move among them, that the living God satisfies our souls. Lord bless this ministry with winsome witnesses. You have already blessed us unworthies by placing us in this prelude to heaven, where there is no direction we can look without seeing your glory proclaimed to the world. Never let us stray, with our eyes, our thoughts, our words or our deeds. Keep us secure in the palm of your hand as you have promised. Fill our being with that peace which the world cannot give, and the world cannot take away. O Lord, you have blessed us with a passionate, articulate man of God to teach us and lead us in your ways. Now be pleased to bind us together with bonds of love and respect and compassion and consideration. Keep us ever mindful that we are all flawed vessels, cracked pots that leak so badly we need perpetual filling from your ever-flowing fountain of grace…and we need your forgiveness with every breath we draw. Dear God, we are your grateful elect. It is in you we live and move and have our being, and it is in you and through you, by the Holy Spirit that dwells within us, that we perform the work and worship of this ministry, knowing that whatsoever comes to pass is according to your will, for your glory and our good. Expend us as you will, and bring us to your bosom when we are spent. And we shall praise your name forevermore. In the name of him who loved us, died for us, rose from the dead—the first among many—intercedes for us and leads us to your throne with great joy, our savior Jesus Christ, we pray, Amen.
Go here and left click on “The Benediction” and let your heart be warmed by a humble man of God as he accepts this awesome responsibility.
The Mean
Season This time I’m not talking about the diminishing of the fall colors that, even though now faded, are still such a spectacular testimony to the God of all creation. I’m talking about the sad spectacle of this election season. Late tonight and tomorrow I suppose very close to half the electorate will be dancing in the streets and half will be muttering with hang-dog conviction about how America is hell-bent for imminent self-destruction. I tend to the latter category, especially when Churchill’s black dog strays into my backyard. Perhaps I could blame the accumulated battle damage of six decades in a decadent world as the reason for my three-score-and-three-year-old intermittent melancholy, but it sure seems to me the culture’s descent into meanness accelerates with each election season. And like the tourist season in my old home state of Florida, it gets harder with each passing year to differentiate between in season and out. Perhaps my skin is wearing thin with age, but it seems being a Christian increasingly makes me the preferred butt of ridicule and mockery in America. I have witnessed an openly Christian American president becoming the world’s largest lightening rod for vicious charges by liberal pagan politicos. Hate is high fashion and outrage a commonplace response to differences of opinion and faith. Terrorists have become the temper trendsetters in this fallen world. A civil in-depth conversation on politics or religion with an unsaved sister-in-law whom I love is an impossible dream, absent spiritual rebirth by God’s grace (John 3:3). Ah, yes…therein lies the solution to this depressing stream of cultural consciousness: Grace. Am I suffering any more than the Apostle Paul? I don’t recall ever starting a riot by my witness to God. Although my Dad was adept with any tool within reach when needed for discipline, I’ve never been scourged once, let alone “forty lashes less one” five times, nor have I been beaten with rods or stoned (1Cor: 11:24-5). After all of that Paul ended up losing his head to a naked Roman executioner for his faith, and all the disciples save one died gruesome deaths—mentors all. If God gave them all the grace to suffer heroically for Him, can He not also freely give me the relative smidgeon of graceful fortitude needed to endure the verbal slings and arrows of life in the greatest nation in the history of Planet Earth? Christ died in the most horrible manner man could invent out of love for me. If He could die for me long before I quit hating Him, can I not muster the gratitude to tolerate some unloving name calling by lost souls so blind they cannot see the reality of God? If the world sneered at, scourged and viciously slew the Son of God incarnate, and He willingly accepted a judgment he in no way deserved, what right have I, His adopted child, an unworthy recipient of such astounding atonement, to expect a life on Easy Street? Hate and rage is not an innovation of the modern era. Jesus said, Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you (1 John 3:13), and If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you (John 15:18). In the Gospel of John, also written two millennia ago, the words “hate,” “hates” or “hated” are used ten times to describe the world’s response to the followers of Christ, and in John’s first epistle it appears five times. All three synoptic Gospels quote Jesus saying, you will be hated by all for my name’s sake… (Matt 10:22, Mark 13:13, Luke 21:17). Not a millimeter of room for doubt or quibbling there. Martin Lloyd Jones, yet another Englishman, considered by many the Spurgeon of the twentieth century, said:
…the world [does not] hate us because we are good. Let us be quite clear about that. The world does not hate good people; the world only hates Christian people. That is the subtle, vital distinction. If you are just a good person, the world, far from hating you, will admire you, it will cheer you….. The world, we are told, hates Christians, not because they are hateful, not because they are good, not because they do good, but specifically because they are Christians, because they are of God, because they have Christ within them. (Walking With God Day by Day, page 121)
And here is the consolation, here is the reward, from the lips of the Son of God incarnate: Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man (Luke 6:22)! I know I am blessed when I summon the will to quit dog-paddling in the Slew of Despond, dragging an anchor of self-pity, and open my eyes to these beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains where I am blessed to toil. I am so grateful the God who loves me with a lavish compassion beyond my comprehension allows me to live in this Wilderness Cathedral, where the density of sinners is lower than any place I have ever lived, and those that are here humbly know they are saved by grace. I am overwhelmed by a God who would chose, with no preconditions whatsoever, to wrap His truth around what Wordsworth called “the foul rag and bone shop” of my unworthy heart. When I remind myself of all this amazing grace, it becomes clearly absurd to spend a nanosecond nurturing my grudges, burnishing my bitterness, or cherishing my misery. There’s only one bona fide response—the joy that no one will take away (John 16:22b). The sovereign God who gave me faith (Eph. 2:8) and joy will provide my next elected officials, and it will all be for my good and His glory (Rom. 8:28), whether or not I understand it all right now. And one day, for those of us who love the Lord, the mean season will be no more forever. Note: If you missed the Keenagers Conference this year, or if you would care to listen to a short devotional I gave on the background to “No one…,” you may go here and listen.
Revelation
on Reformation Day It’s my first day off in forty. The high holy season in this Wilderness Cathedral is over, the sleep deficit is getting made up in great gobs, and the mind is trying to digest all the nearly nonstop teaching and preaching (here’s a sample) that goes with God’s spectacular Appalachian Autumn Art Show. I am the most blessed unworthy soul of anyone I know to be a part of this. But what rocks my skull the most on this Reformation Day entered not through my ears but through my eyes in one of my long-time favorite daily devotional readings in the midst of all this sensory overload. It was a weekend reading in the October edition of Tabletalk, from Ligonier Ministries and R. C. Sproul. In an article entitled, “The Laughter of Abraham and the Joy of Jesus,” author Warren A. Gage, associate professor of Old Testament at Knox Theological Seminary in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, attributes the following paraphrase to pastor, professor and mega-selling author, Eugene Peterson:
Eugene Peterson observed that Genesis was the book of the ancient church and Augustine, that Solomon’s Song was the book of the medieval mystics, and that Romans was the book of Luther and the Reformation. He suggests that a new Reformation is asleep in the book of Revelation. That Reformation will come through a new Luther whose comedic imagination is robust enough to recognize who Babylon’s whore truly is, and who, like Abraham, can delight in God who makes all things possible. The next Reformation will recover and deepen the joy of Paul, Augustine, and Luther. It will rediscover a biblical understanding of grace so radical that many will condemn it as blasphemy. But it will sweep the world once again with the laughter of the Gospel based on an even greater understanding of just how amazing grace truly is.
As one who reads extensively about God’s grace and writes on the subject with passionate conviction, I still find this to be a jolting declaration. I set to work to learn more. I found this most excellent piece of research: The John-Revelation Project, by Dr. Gage and Dr. R. Fowler White, New Testament Professor at Knox Theological Seminary. It’s book length and it is all there at the website for the reading. Revelation has long been a mystery to me, in spite of hearing a number of sermon series and reading several commentaries about it. I even tried the Left Behind Series of end-time novels, perhaps the best-selling Christian fiction of all-time, but could not muster enough verisimilitude to get past the first chapter of the first book. It just did not begin to square with my worldview. But, hallelujah, Drs. Gage and Fowler are turning on lights all over the place! Go there this Reformation Day and spend the time you normally spend digesting my drivel. Their scholarship produces some astounding revelations. If you need more motivation, here’s the intro, and don’t let those big words scare you off…:
At the beginning of the 21st century virtually the entire American evangelical community has been captured by a dispensational, pretribulational, and premillennial eschatology. Best-selling book series and sensational movies, reinforced by endless radio talk programs, promote these fantastic interpretations of biblical prophecy as events coming to pass in our generation. Unfortunately, the response of the Reformed church to this, thus far, one-sided discussion has been to caution that fantastic interpretations of biblical prophecy, especially concerning the book of Revelation, should be skeptically received. But it should be frankly admitted that we have not offered what we could credibly claim is a defensible interpretation of the last book in the canon. This faculty forum is an attempt to rectify this omission….
Taste and see if you don’t get the first shivering glimmers of “just how amazing grace truly is.”
Candy Man In 5+ years at this Wilderness Cathedral, I’ve never had the Monday morning blahs. And this clear crisp colorful autumn morning is as far from blah as you can get on this earth. The Master’s fall canvas is full of spectacular fluorescent colors set against knock-your-eyes-out blue sky. I spent the first half of the first morning of the “work” week at Inspiration Point, my favorite spot in this Conference Center. Nothing speaks to me like silence in the midst of the mountains. Nothing more profoundly expounds Psalm 46:10a than a few mute moments perched on a half-log pew in my outdoor chapel: Be still, and know that I am God. The seasons have a typology all their own in God’s perfect design. Autumn is just full of symbolic scripture for one in the autumn of his years…and I think three score and three years is considered autumn for humans, even if it doesn’t feel like it. The beauty of dying leaves is not unlike the beauty of a saint approaching death serene in his assurance of God’s promises. My brother in Christ, Emery, is in that category. I prayed for him this morning at Inspiration Point. I think he would agree that he and I are not the most beautiful leaves that fluttered in the autumn breeze, but he has a God-given faith that outshines the most fluorescent fall color. He ran the candy stand for summer campers here at Ridge Haven for a generation of covenant children. He heard, “Hey, Candy Man,” in some surprising places in his travels when former young customers spied his unforgettable face. He finally had to give up that volunteer work a year ago when congestive heart failure left him too out of breath to climb the stairs to the second floor candy counter. A few Sundays ago we worshiped the Lord without him, as doctors in the emergency room fought to keep him alive. They succeeded, and when I saw him the next day, wired up in intensive care, his serene, smiling demeanor belied the life and death battle he had just fought. The only indication of his ongoing trauma was the digital readout of his pulse on the heart monitor—steady at 147. A week later, the angiogram showed a heart artery blockage in a nearly inoperable spot. The decision was his—take a high risk chance on bypass surgery or put his life in the Lord’s hands and go home to live out his allotted days. He chose the latter, moving out of his Ridge Haven home with his wife to a retirement center in South Carolina near his son, a brand new widower who’s spouse was recently released to glory while playing the organ for a Sunday worship service. Nothing speaks louder, nothing is more profound, nothing demonstrates true faith in a way that glorifies our Lord more than the comfort with which a child of God faces death. This morning as my eyes feasted on faded flowers, falling leaves, withered grass and multicolored mountainsides, I was filled with awe and overwhelming gratitude for a gracious God who planned the seasons of all life down to the precise landing zone of every leaf that falls…and in amazing love chose to save a no one like me, lead me to a suburban heaven like this and give me friends like Emery. And I prayed that if I am blessed to see my death coming, that I will, by His grace, be able to witness to my faith with the serene assurance of the Candy Man.
RUTH One of several great blessings of my calling as Resident Manager of Ridge Haven is that every week is like a family reunion. Believers are, after all, the family of God. Our “clientele” is very loyal, returning year after year. I get so much practice remembering names I should be a whiz at it. However, being an incorrigible kid in a codgers’ body, I am far from a whiz. Once in a while, though, a guest’s witness to God’s grace is so powerful that I could not forget his/her name if I were lobotomized. Ruth is near the top of that short list. She home schools two young sons and loves to sing. Her angelic singing voice has blessed me as sound man in the meeting hall when she’s done solos in years past. And her leadership gifts put her in the vanguard of ladies from her large church group who always come a day early to set up and decorate the meeting room. This year, as I spied Ruth across the large room, headed my way, she looked more radiant, even from a distance, than I recalled from the year before. As she got closer, something else was different. She was a bit thinner, a bit older, and I thought I noticed a bit of distortion in her facial profile. When she greeted me, her voice led me to believe that perhaps her dentist had just pulled a molar. She said the kindest things about my writing and my new book, adding, “It’s on my wish-list.” Then, perhaps because there was a quizzical look on my face, she explained that since I saw her last she’d had cancer surgery and part of her jaw had been removed. (Only later did I learn about the feeding tube and the “ongoing, graciously unceasing” pain she’ll live with for the rest of her days.) I am sure my countenance clouded as she spoke. My heart went out to her. Then she said, “I can’t sing any more.” I choked into speechlessness…me, the writer who is never stuck for words. Ruth came to my rescue. She tilted her head, raised both arms with palms up and out in a giant victory sign, and through her new saintly smile said, “I can still sing in my heart.” This combat veteran who thinks he’s so tough melted into a puddle on the carpet. Ruth got a free copy of “No one….” Inside the front cover the inscription reads, “Ruth, your witness is so much more profound than this little book.” At the end of the weekend Ruth gave me a DVD entitled “Testimony” and a card with her Caringbridge URL. I guess she knew this former fearless fighter pilot couldn’t handle all her testimony in one conversation. Spend some time there and learn how a real witness lives. And be amazed at the Grace of God.
Riding the
Tide to Perdition I’m not the most buoyant person who ever jumped into the river. Skin and bones don’t float like avoirdupois. To keep my face above water when I float I must arch my back as much as I can, keep my lungs as full of air as possible, and take small breaths. As I write this I can vividly see in my mind’s eye a bright full moon above me as I lie immobile on my back on the surface of the mighty muddy Mississippi. It was great middle-of-the-night summer fun in my teenage years growing up on a farm in western Illinois, when my friends and I overnighted at a friend’s family cabin on the river. Though I had no sensory perception of movement, we were actually going with the flow, moving downriver at a pretty good clip. To take the work out of getting back to the cabin, one of the guys rode in a small open boat which floated with us. When we’d had our fill of fun, we’d all climb into the boat, fire up the outboard and motor home in the moonlight. Only then did we realize just how far down the river we’d been swept. Sin is like that. An unbelieving sinner doesn’t feel like he’s being swept down a river that will pitch him over a disastrous cataract into an eternally dark, moonless, starless void—eternal damnation. He is blind to the kingdom of God and the crisis caused by his sin, and oblivious to the hell-bound current he rides. Just like the Mississippi, it feels pretty good, just going with the flow, or going on gonads, as we said in those days of raging testosterone. The water is mesmerizing, the effulgent moon is beautiful, the company is great, just swimming in sloth with the guys. Sin? Not me, man. I’m better’n most. Repentance? What’s to repent? That’s often the reaction, is it not, when you witness to an unsaved person. A lost soul has no perception of his or her personal sin against a Holy God, no realization of his desperate straits. You tell him he must believe that Jesus Christ is who He said He was—the Son of God who died to pay for the sins of His chosen—and that he must repent of his sins to be saved…and he just gives you a blank look, if he’s polite. There is only one way your witness will have a positive impact on a lost soul, no matter how polished, persuasive and passionate your presentation. God must work a miracle. And he must work it FIRST…or what you say will make no sense to one who is perishing. It must be a miracle of sovereign grace in the heart of a sinner before the good news of the Gospel can be effective. That miracle is spiritual rebirth. Jesus told Nicodemus, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3:3). Unless God miraculously generates a spiritual rebirth in a sinner, he cannot see God’s reality. Nonetheless, the majority report in Christianity today is that God puts the offer of salvation on the table and the “seeker” either accepts it or rejects it. They say the choice is his. If he accepts it then, according to their scenario, God does his part, leading to spiritual rebirth. That, however, is clearly NOT what Jesus is saying here. He is saying, in mostly monosyllable simplicity, that no one can see the reality of God, let alone choose to believe in Him unless he is born again . God must choose first (Romans 8:29, 1 John 4:19) ) to give a sinner the spiritual rebirth which opens his eyes to see His holiness and infinite love and mercy, and his own desperate need for a Savior. A person cannot choose what he cannot see and does not know. Jesus says, as clearly as words can convey, that rebirth must precede the seeing, and just as we had no choice or control over our physical birth, likewise we have no choice or control over our spiritual rebirth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. Yes, this is indeed hard to understand the first time you hear it. As Nicodemus, a bright guy and a leader in his church, said, “How can this be?” The Greek word translated “born again” is literally “born from above,” or spiritual rebirth. And it makes perfect sense in hindsight to the recipient of such an amazing miracle, so plain you want to exuberantly shake your unsaved loved ones and shout, “Can’t you see what is so obvious?” One has to reinvent grammar and redefine words to get any other meaning out of Christ’s plain-spoken declaration. I think this has significant implications for the way we witness. It seems to me we should therefore focus first on what God does rather than what a sinner must do. The gift of faith (Eph. 2:8) and repentance are essential to our salvation, but to the one who is perishing there is neither the gift nor the understanding of what sin is or why he needs to repent…unless God opens his eyes to the truth. Thus we must pray that God will do His miraculous work in a stone cold heart first if our witness is going to be efficacious to a lost soul. Talk to God about the man before you talk to the man about God. Unless our audience can see the kingdom of God, our words are just so much incomprehensible scare mongering. The warning of that bottomless abyss at the end of the river of sin is just so much Chicken Little chatter to those who cannot see. Then tell, with humility, passion and plain English, what a merciful God has done for your soul. (Psalms 66:16). And rather than the sinner’s prayer, why not first lead him in a prayer for spiritual rebirth? Ask our merciful God for a new heart in your listener, and vision to see the truth, to understand why a Holy God hates sin. Lord willing, an understanding of the awfulness of sin in the eyes of a loving God we owe everything will lead a sinner to true repentance, and a prayer from the depths of a contrite heart. Spiritual rebirth, as the phrase implies, is just the start of a pilgrimage to heaven that is generated, guided, guarded and guaranteed by a sovereign God. It requires swimming against the current in a culture that makes the muddy Mississippi look like a crystalline mountain stream by comparison. In spite of some dark nights when the moon doesn’t shine, and ridicule from the clueless lemmings riding the tide to perdition, victory is never in doubt. Our strength is in the Lord, who never changes, and neither do His mind or His promises. Deo volente, in the joy that is set before us, we’ll convince some of those lemmings to roll over on their bellies and swim to glory with us grateful former lemmings rescued by Grace. Think on these things as you pray with me for those lost souls who are near and dear to us.
Just
Something That Happened One of the great blessings of writing a book is the feedback from folks who read it. When the feedback is kind, laudatory and appreciative, the challenge is to remember who really is responsible, and who gets the glory for any heart or worldview that is changed. Then there’s the other kind of feedback, not so pleasant, and by grace that can be a learning experience too. In line with C. J. Mahaney’s teaching in Humility, I will try to remain silent on the ego strokes and blog a bit about the latter kind of feedback. A reader, who received “No one…” as a gift from a friend, wrote that friend (and mine) a letter with a self-addressed, stamped envelope included, to be passed along to me, the author. It was an inducement to answer a query that cast aspersions on my literary endeavor: How did I know I was saved? Hmmmm. You see, from first to last “No one…” is an apologetic—a defense of my faith, resting on God’s sovereign grace alone. This little book is all about God’s plan of salvation for sinners, using six of the simplest, most unequivocal statements from Christ’s own lips. But, at least through page 26 (and I suspect he stopped there), it had no impact on one reader. With no further explanation whatsoever, Jesus’ words are simple enough for an adolescent to understand and profound enough to stagger the mind of an intellectual.
No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again
(John 3:3).
I admit it takes some chutzpah to presume these plainspoken words by Christ could be further clarified by this flawed vessel’s wordsmithing, but obviously I convinced one publisher to take a chance. And at least one reader, while professing saving faith, remains a skeptic as to my explanation of the how and why of salvation. He told our mutual friend, “I started to read Mr. Wetterling’s book, and for the first 26 pages I was breezing along. Then a question kept popping into my little pea brain. He would say something to indicate he was saved, and then say something else to lead me to think it’s just something that happened to him.” He then asked me to please use the enclosed envelope to send along a letter explaining to him how I knew I was saved. Well…uh…after the endorsement pages, title pages, preface and introduction, page 26 was only 4 pages into Chapter 1. My first thought was sinful, a snotty retort—suggest you read the rest of the book…with particular attention to Jesus’ “No one…” quotes. Then I turned to page 26. The same thing that stopped Nicodemus in his tracks stopped my inquiring reader. In response to Jesus’ first “No one…” quote above, Nicodemus asked “How can this be?” (John 1:9). I think my reader is as perplexed as Nicodemus was. But in his incredulous comment the reader spoke a mighty truth—my spiritual rebirth just happened! No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3:3). One cannot control one’s birth…or spiritual rebirth. And if Jesus said it, he meant it. My reader apparently thinks that because it was just something that happened I cannot be saved, as if I have to initiate the process of salvation or it doesn’t count. Then he enthusiastically painted a vivid word picture of the actions he took on the day he chose to believe. Not once in all his exuberant self-assurance did he give God any credit for anything that happened. It appeared he believes his salvation rests on his choosing to believe in Christ. As I read the first “No one…” quote, it seems unequivocally clear to me that God did the choosing before I could even see what my choices were. And He did not just kick start this process and leave the rest to capricious me. The rest of the “No ones…” clearly indicate that God, in His immutable will, is the prime mover and guarantor of every step of my salvation, from my rebirth to eternity with Him. This is not an original interpretation of Holy Writ. I’m standing on the shoulders of some icons of orthodoxy here—the Apostle Paul, Augustine, John Calvin, Martin Luther, the 130+ theologians who authored The Westminster Confession, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitford, and Charles Spurgeon, to name a few of my favorites. I wrote my friend’s friend back. “This may come as a shock to you, but it did just happen.…” I then explained, I hope with Christian charity, how Christ’s “No one…” quotes reveal that my salvation was through a loving God’s sovereignty. It was His initiative, not mine. God did the choosing. He chose to open my eyes and change my heart (John 3:3), then chose to draw me irresistibly to faith in Christ alone (John 6:44, 14:6), chose to pay the horrible ransom for my hell-bound ways (John 10:18), and chose to guarantee my salvation (John 10:28) and eternal joy (John 16:22). All six steps are inseparable in our sovereign, unchangeable God's plan of salvation for sinners. I love Him because He chose, for no good reason that exists in me, to love me first (1 John 4:19). Then I challenged my friendly skeptic to carefully consider over 200 scripture quotes in that little book in support of the self-evident truth of these six “No one…” quotes: God is in charge of every step in His plan of salvation for sinners, and no one else. What a foundation on which to stake one’s eternal destiny! Joy indeed! If God doesn’t make it happen, it doesn’t happen. The “just something that happened” is something indeed—a miracle of Amazing Grace! Wow! I like that thought! Profound! Thank you, skeptical reader! God willing, when this snail mail exchange is over we’ll be theologically kindred spirits and best of friends.
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