Every Thought Captive Devotionals from Joshua

Waiting Go d ’ s P r o m ise o u r p o s s es s ion

between and

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Devo ti o n a ls

from

Josh ua

by Patrick Lafferty and Jaceson Jennings

a weekly devotional

Originally published as

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Waiting…Between God’s Promise and Our Possession An Every Thought Captive devotional collection © 2010 by Patrick Lafferty and Jaceson Jennings All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America Fourth printing, 2010 Park Cities Presbyterian Church 4124 Oak Lawn Avenue Dallas, Texas 75219 http://everythoughtcaptive.pcpc.org

Contents Deuteronomy 31:8 Joshua 1:5 Joshua 1:8–9 Joshua 1:13 Hebrews 4:8–11 Joshua 2:11 Joshua 3:11 Joshua 4:21–24 Joshua 5:15 Joshua 6:2–3 Joshua 6:21 Joshua 7:13 Joshua 7:10 Joshua 8:30–31 2 Chronicles 20:12 Joshua 23:3 Joshua 23:11 Joshua 24:15 Notes

4 6 8 10 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38

August 27, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Do not fear or be dismayed.

Deuteronomy 31:8

bear one more resemblance to the structure of faith: the growth is slow—often beyond our powers of discernment—and it requires a steady deposition of substance.

Remember in middle school how your physical science teacher taught you to distinguish between stalagmites and stalactites? It was that simple mnemonic device: “Stalactites hang tight to the ceiling while stalagmites might one day reach the ceiling.” If you’ve been to Carlsbad or Natural Bridge Caverns, inevitably you’ve beheld cave after cave of towering columns, each of which began with a single drip of mineralized water falling from the ceiling.

Stalagmite in fact literally means “drip.”

With Deuteronomy and Joshua as his guide, Mark reminded us last Sunday that between a promise of God to us and its possession by us there is inevitably a wait.

The wait may vary in time and tenor, but rarely does one of God’s people not have to exercise faith in that wait. That’s why both Moses and the Lord intone, “Be strong and courageous” four times in just the few verses we heard Sunday. In between the promise and possession, Israel had to lean in to the struggle, take their blows and press on, withstand the temptation to buckle, and prepare themselves for even more formidable obstacles as their journey to the Promised Land continued. In their wait for possession, their capacity for steadfastness had to calcify into something sturdier than it was presently. Thus, for every instance of waiting there was opportunity for growing.

The life of faith bears striking resemblance to those ubiquitous rock formations. It starts out as a rather delicate thing—real, alive, but fragile and malleable.

Wherever it forms, it’s intended to grow into something solid and sturdy; only by shutting off the source of its growth or from some other external impairment will it cease to form. Faith is by design intended to mature.

Stalactites and stalagmites grow with that steady, often imperceptible process of calcite deposition through innumerable drips of water. They therefore

How, practically, does fledgling faith grow into a strong column of courageous strength born of trust in the Lord? Here are three ways.

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It grows by rehearsing the promises of God. Every command to be strong and courageous rests on a premise of God’s promise. The Lord doesn’t ask our faith to be groundless or blind, but rather informed by what He has told us. So just as the Lord recounted to Moses the reasons for him and Israel to trust, so Moses recounted those to Joshua.

Courageous strength matures as we continually review what the Lord has told us about Himself, His plan, and our place in it. Have you lost sight of His promises? It may be time for a little review.

rehearsing and relinquishing is a spiritual act. For the Lord to say He would be with them and would be their God was not just to communicate some objective reality, but to impress upon their hearts an enduring peace. Not a contrived, conjured, or concocted peace, but a bestowed peace— one they asked for. “May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Num. 6:26) Have you taken upon yourself too much responsibility to summon the courageous and peaceful strength the Lord urges? It’s time to go back to Him and ask.

Faith grows by the relinquishing of fears. Those in Canaan would be a fearsome lot, but not as fearsome as the Lord who would go before Israel. Israel therefore had to set what threatened them in the context of their greater hope and strength. Remember last week’s example1 of John Chrysostom staring down every threat with the sturdier treasure in Christ that could not be taken?

Though we do not simply repress fear, fear dissipates when we choose to see it in a fuller context.

The second contribution to growth is therefore contingent upon the first: we relinquish fears by rehearsing His promises. Have you allowed what threatens you to obscure the larger reality of His promises? It’s time to relinquish fear.

You can no more will your faith to grow than a stalagmite can.

That is why the continuity of God’s message across time, generations—even across the sins of His people—found its culmination in Christ. In Him are God’s promises fulfilled (2 Cor. 1:20). In Him are our greatest fears lifted (Heb. 2:15).

In Him is the peace of the Spirit granted (Rom. 15:13).

Robust faith also grows by the requesting the Spirit for strength. The whole work of

Though schoolchildren quickly learn the difference between stalactites and stalagmites, we never quite graduate from the lesson on how faith grows in us.

We never escape the need to rehearse the promises of God, relinquish our fears on the basis of those promises, or request strength to believe from the Spirit.

That is also why Jesus makes the bold promise, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

Patrick Lafferty

September 3, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

. . . so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.

Joshua 1:5

moon. When this happens, all radio contact will be severed, the temperature will drop to 200 degrees below zero, and an inconceivable darkness will engulf the shuttle.

“Houston, we have a problem.”

Memorialized by Ron Howard’s 1995 film Apollo 13, these words have left an indelible mark upon our culture and our conversations within it. Even if you didn’t watch the movie, I bet you have quoted astronaut Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks), at least once.

It is one of the most memorable scenes in all of cinema. Jim Lovell watches through a small shuttle window as the earth is slowly eclipsed by the relentless black behemoth. As the scene fades into blackness, the audience is gripped by a sense of utter despair, fear, helplessness. This is what it is like to be completely alone.

Apollo 13 chronicles the illfated lunar mission by the same name. Shortly after escaping the gravitational bonds of Earth’s atmosphere, there is an unforeseen problem aboard the space craft, an electrical malfunction—a fuse blows; a circuit is fried. Instantly, all hope of landing on the moon is lost, and, with it, any hope of making it back home to Earth, which is now slowly fading out of sight.

This last Sunday, Mark reminded us that there is often a long wait in between what God has promised and the possession of that promise. A long wait can be bad enough. But when that wait happens on the dark side of the moon, it can be excruciating.

In a flash of brilliance, ground control devises a last-ditch effort to save the spacecraft from floating helplessly into the deathly blackness of space. The plan is to use the moon’s gravitational pull to slingshot the shuttle back toward the earth. To do this, however, the shuttle will have to go around the dark side of the

Most of you know what I mean.

You know what it is to wait for the promise on the dark side where it is cold, black, and lonely. The wait on the dark side has its own vocabulary. There are words like chemo, divorce, addiction, or bankruptcy. There are phrases like “I’m sorry, we can’t find a

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heartbeat.” “I regret to inform you.”

Or “This time it’s inoperable.”

A wait on the dark side can be numbing. Many here find themselves having lost the joy of their salvation. They remember a time when their heart was full of love for God. But for some inexplicable reason they now find themselves indifferent, cold, and stagnant. They long for the presence of God as they once sensed Him; but try as they might, He hides His face from them.

A wait on the dark side can be embittering. In the face of great pain and long absences of His presence, numbness often turns to bitterness. For instance, consider Naomi in the book of Ruth. She lost her husband, her two children, her homeland, and any hope of a reasonable future.

To add insult to injury, God was silent. And she was angry. She warns the women of Bethlehem not to call her Naomi, which means “pleasant.” Instead, she gives herself a new name—Mara.

It means “bitter.” She exclaims, “Call me Bitter because the Sovereign One has treated me very harshly.” These are the words of a woman waiting on the dark side.

As Jim Lovell floated helplessly on the dark side of the moon, he could not see the earth. Nor could he hear it. It was as if it had ceased to exist. But, in reality, there was a whole crew of people working feverishly to bring him home.

To all those waiting on the dark side: Your God has not ceased to exist. He will bring you safely home. In the midst of your suffering, He suffers with you.

Though you feel forsaken, He will never forsake you. In spite of your sense of abandonment, He has never abandoned you. Although you feel He has let you go, His fist is still tightly clenched around you.

To all those waiting on the dark side: Though you wait, you do not wait alone.

It is at this point that the words of our text become a wellspring of life. “I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.” This promise of God to all His children is sure, no matter how dark it gets.

Jaceson Jennings

September 10, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:8–9

are only you and I together.” Eliot penned the line after hearing Ernest Shackleton recount his own episode of being strangely accompanied while seeking rescue during his doomed expedition to the South Pole.

Geiger cites various explanations for the phenomenon, but in the end he suggests an evolutionary adaptation we fortuitously accrued in order to help us brace ourselves in dire situations.

Sunday refreshed our memory that the Lord’s earliest and most enduring promise is to be a God who is with His people. He would accompany Israel where she goes and in what she does.

Charles Lindbergh experienced it near the end of his groundbreaking transatlantic flight.

Several who have traipsed up the punishing heights of Mt. Everest attest to the same. Even the last man out of the South Tower on 9/11 speaks unabashedly of a similar occurrence—something anyone else might consider lunacy.

Here in Joshua 1, the Lord clarifies His promise: the courageous strength that comes from confidence in God’s presence is significantly bound up with the knowledge of God’s Word—of having His word as Joshua’s constant companion. Mere acquaintance with what the Lord has said would not do and would not serve, only a deep familiarity (“Let not this Word depart from out of your mouth”). A familiarity born of regular, thoughtful and prayerful consideration (“You shall meditate on it day and

These and numerous others all share the experience of sensing an unnamed, unbidden, but discernible presence with them in their most arduous moments.

John Geiger has written a book1 about those experiences entitled The Third Man Factor, which takes its title from a line from T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland: “Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there

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night”). A consideration that leads to cherishing and submitting to that Word (“Be careful to do according to all that is written in it”). The threats to Israel would not necessarily subside by virtue of her knowledge of His Word and submission to it. But the capacity to sense His being with them, irrespective of their circumstances, would rest specifically on intimacy with His Word. On those terms would they sense Him as their “third man.”

Jesus taught no differently when He promised to send a Helper who would teach them all things and would bring to remembrance all He’d said to them (John 14:26).

The third person of the Trinity would be the third man for the church, and with His help they would know a peace from Jesus vastly different from what this world provides.

Paul solidifies the relationship between our knowledge of His Word and our sense of His being with us in a single metaphor when he speaks of “the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Eph. 6:17). Only what is deeply known can be deeply felt. And if it is the Word of the Spirit that moves us to faith (Acts 10:44), why would we not think it able to move us to peace in His presence?

consider it? Is the consideration thoughtful and prayerful? Do you wrestle with its meaning and its mandate until you see its truth and submit to its teaching?

Our Reformed forbears heralded the efficacy of the scriptures to bring, with the Spirit’s aid, the knowledge of salvation, but they also acknowledged the inherent challenges to making sense of every detail of scripture.2 If in your good-faith efforts to make sense of His Word you have run into the difficulties they spoke of, have you given up in despair, or have you sought the help of others in making sense of what it says?

Whether Lindbergh or Shackleton bore testimony to a spiritual presence with them or an evolutionary-adaptation in them, what we can be sure of is man’s enduring desire “to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). The Lord Jesus is that help, confirmed

by His work on a cross outside Jerusalem—His Father seemingly far off, but with Him in His darkest hour. The peace to be had from that truth confirmed so long ago shall be confirmed in us today by companionship with His Word.

Factor that in. It will serve you in both tame and tumultuous moments.

So, would you characterize your relationship to His Word as that of acquaintance or constant companion? Do you regularly Patrick Lafferty

September 17, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Remember the word that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying, “The Lord your God is providing you a place of rest and will give you this land.”

Joshua 1:13 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

Hebrews 4:8–11

With typical evocative succinctness, C. S. Lewis orients us to our world: The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a

landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.1 In so many words, Lewis calls us to recognize both the glories and the limitations of this place.

On the precipice of war for the land promised them, Joshua reiterates what this land represented: a place of rest for the people of God. The storyline of their existence as a people teemed with tension.

Their forbears had experienced estrangement from God ever since Eden had closed. A new generation of His people emerged in several inauspicious fits and starts. Then, thinking Egypt to be a refuge from a famine, the people found themselves enslaved by the very people from whom they’d sought help. Even after their liberation from slavery, Israel’s obstinacy left them to wander in the wilderness. This was a people who longed for a home.

So the land would be a bona fide rest for the people of God. But the idea of such a land would be

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a kind of rest for the people of God long before they ever set foot there. The hope of the future rest would lighten the present burden, and, as we were reminded Sunday, would strengthen them for the battles before them.

Due to their infidelity, Israel’s rest in the land was shortlived, but that did not mean the Lord’s promise of rest had failed. The author of Hebrews appeals to David’s anticipation of a rest for those who would not harden their heart toward God (Hebrews 3:7–4:11). This is an interesting comment by David since he was king of those already in the land—a comment Hebrews notices. If David is in the land and yet heralded a rest yet to come then there must be, Hebrews argues, more to God’s promise of rest than what Joshua understood.

awaits when those threats will cease.

Joshua, the Lord Jesus, and Lewis all would have us look forward to a real rest. In the meantime, they’d have us savor the sweetnesses God gives us, and seek the righteousness that comports with the Day when we shall enter that rest. To do either of these things requires the help of the Spirit. So ask. Ask that the further horizon seen only by faith might press backward into the sense of your circumstances today. Ask also that the goodnesses He’s given you now might grant you a glimpse of the rest yet to come.

There is, in fact, another rest that awaits the people of God. It is a rest grounded in the work of the Son; a rest appropriated by faith in the Son; and a rest experienced fully once we see the Son face to face (1 John 2:28–3:3).

But even if that experience remains a future reality, its reality presses backward into the present.

Like it did for Israel, the hope in His promise of rest makes the burdens we carry a bit lighter. We know that a day awaits when those burdens will at last be lifted fully and finally. It makes the battles we face a little less threatening when we trust a day Patrick Lafferty

September 24, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.

Joshua 2:11

There seems to be a new trend in weight loss advertisements on the internet. They’re all emphasizing the same phrase in an attempt to lure your mouse to click inquisitively. It goes something like this: “I lost 450 pounds of belly fat by following this one simple rule.” Apparently the industry has recognized that most people find the task of slimming, like most things in life, to be far too complicated. Anything that promises results by way of a less convoluted regimen is certain to attract interest.

If curiosity should finally press you to discover that one simple rule, you soon find it is neither simple nor effective. This so-called “one” rule insists you buy the right combination of supplements—a mandate about as helpful and uncomplicated as saying, “invest in the right combination of mutual funds.” And considering how weight loss mantras seem to change with the seasons, anyone who thinks the one rule represents

a true breakthrough will believe just about anything. So our cynicism deepens about anything being simple or effective for our need. We conclude there are no simple truths that will free us from what weighs us down—literally and figuratively.

On Sunday, Mark set Rahab the prostitute in startling perspective: She represents us all. Whether it be to the god of approval, power, fame, or fortune, we are constitutionally oriented toward investing too much of ourselves in things that can never yield a commensurate return.

We bear another similarity to Rahab also. The only thing that will overturn what’s offensive and destructive in us is the recognition that the Lord “is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.” Only a heart melted by that truth can release the death grip on what is not worthy of the allegiance.

So then, if we are all spiritually licentious, how shall our hearts be melted so that we become convinced that the Lord—not power, approval, sex, fame, or fortune—is the God of heaven and earth? Are there any simple truths

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that might help us shed the sin that so easily entangles?

Some might say the simple truth we must follow is just to stop sinning. To muster our wills into a resolve that restrains us from doing what we ought not do.

But you only have to go as far as Paul’s own autobiographical comment in Romans 7 to find holes in that approach: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (v. 19).

Where that approach fails, others might ratchet up the admonition by way of the Hester Prynne approach from The Scarlet Letter.

Perhaps if you can be shamed into submission there will be an end to you sinning. There’s room for godly sorrow (2 Cor. 7:10ff) as both a corrective to sin and future deterrent. But is shame to be the sum total of what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might (Deut. 6:4)?

Surely not.

If neither exercising the will nor showering you with shame works, perhaps there’s the Stuart Smalley approach to sanctification: Yes, you may have sinned, but, hey, “you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it [God loves] you.” It’s true His love endures forever, and that love covers a multitude of sins, but that truth isn’t a pretext for dismissing sin.

Each of these approaches bears a measure of truth, but none of them gets to the truth that melts the soul into believing the Lord is God. At the risk of sounding too much like the purveyor of questionable claims, there is one simple rule that you and I must continually preach and apply to ourselves in the battle against our various harlotries of spirit: What you have in Jesus can never be found sufficiently elsewhere.

The security you might seek from riches is nothing compared to that the security Jesus gives you in Himself. The stability you might desire from employment or the success of your enterprises can never match what is to be found in Jesus. The acceptance you have in Jesus outweighs whatever acceptance you might seek or obtain from the approval of others.

Wealth, work, respect—all of these are good gifts. But anytime we are fretful it’s usually because we’re trying to find in those other things what we already have abundantly in Jesus. And so we must repeatedly circle back to that one, simple truth—in our thinking and in our praying.

In what domain of pursuit have you been recently frustrated or fearful? How might this one, simple truth apply?

Patrick Lafferty

October 1, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is passing over before you into the Jordan.

Joshua 3:11

There’s something about river crossings that makes for seminal moments in history. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon on his way to eventually take control of the Roman Empire. George Washington led his Continental Army across the ice-swollen Delaware on Christmas night to fight British-aligned Hessian forces at the battle of Trenton. A hundred years later, General Robert E. Lee and his Virginia regiment would traverse the Potomac to lay siege to Washington, D.C., as a prelude to the battle of Antietam. In each case, the river represented a significant transition in the lives of those who crossed it.

Israel’s crossing of the Jordan under Joshua’s leadership bore the same significance, in a paradoxical sense. The Lord’s people did not yet possess the land promised them. Yet the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was nonetheless “Lord of all the earth” (v. 11). God’s people were not yet in the land, though God was already Lord of that land. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” the Psalmist says

(Ps. 24:1). The Jordan was a kind of boundary between expectation of the peace and participation in it.

For Israel to cross that boundary, something had to happen. In Joshua 3, three things happened that allowed Israel to cross.

The ark of God would have to go before them. The earthly representation of His presence— signified by the mercy seat atop the Ark—and His holiness— signified by the copy of the Law within the Ark—would have to lead Israel to a place it had not been.

Second, Israel would have to follow at a distance. Perhaps as an allusion to the Lord’s call for Israel to keep a distance from Mt. Sinai as He gave Moses the Law (Ex. 19:12), appreciation for the holiness of God was to be expressed by the people reverently maintaining an interval between themselves and the Ark. Third, the people had to trust the Lord’s work on their behalf. The priests who bore the ark and the Law within it would have to stand within the Jordan until the Lord stanched its flow. Then Israel could cross into the land of promise unscathed. They were powerless to remove the

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impediment between them, and so had to trust in the Lord.

In every human heart a boundary exists between the longing for a true and abiding peace and the experience of that peace. As Augustine said, “Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”1 We consider conversion to be an awakening of the human heart to the peace found only in Christ. By His Spirit, God moves us across the boundary that separates the longing for peace and the enjoyment of it.

But for the rest of our earthly lives united to Christ by faith, we repeatedly encounter boundaries like the Jordan: as with Israel on the east side of the river, there’s a sense in which the reality of God’s promise already exists but lies outside our experience. How do we span the distance between what is true and what is not yet experienced as true?

Could it be that as it was for Israel then, so must it be for us this very moment? As the Ark went before the people, so Christ must lead us to where we have not been yet, but where we’ve been told is a glorious peace in Him. As the people had to remain a safe distance from the Ark, so Christ had to “do business” with the holiness of God by taking on the wrath of His justice so that we might enter into His

favor unscathed. And just as the priesthood had to stand in the Jordan to await the work of the Lord, so we must wait upon Jesus (our high priest who bore the weight of the Law perfectly!) to gain us entrance into the forgiveness and favor of God without our help; we must trust His sufficiency to experience His promise.

All this sounds impressive, but how does it work out in practice?

Consider this day at least one thing you’re seeking, the pursuit of which has led you to anxiety, preoccupation, anger, or even despair. Those responses to your unfulfilled aspiration reveal a lost sense of what is already yours in Christ. The only way to move across the boundary separating the idea of His peace from the experience of it is to remember what He’s already done. He is your portion. He is your acceptance. He is your goodness.

He is your forgiveness. When you pause to trust that He has led you into the favor of God already, you may continue your labor, but without the gnawing fear that you shall know true goodness only by your labor.

What’s one thing you presently seek which has served to shrivel the fruit of the Spirit in you?

How might remembering how Christ has led you safely into the goodness of God serve to usher you across the boundary that separates you from the experience of His peace?

Patrick Lafferty

October 8, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

Joshua 4:21–24

In most places where people live, there’s some identifiable physical object that orients them to their location. It might be a mountain that shadows a city or township.

Or a business district teeming with towering skyscrapers. In more diminutive settings, it might be a solitary street light, a courthouse, or an enduring tree under which multiple generations have engaged in conversation, transacted business, or expressed affection.

We come to associate these objects with our sense of place.

We give directions by them (“head toward the old oak and turn left”). We celebrate occasions

near them. We tell our stories with subconscious references to them—even if they had nothing to do with the experience! And when something happens to those objects—like when Mount St. Helens exploded, or the Towers fell, or the Treaty Oak in Austin was poisoned—we find ourselves affected, as if they have become part of us in some way.

We find this human phenomenon of orienting ourselves by physical objects at work in Joshua 4. Mark led us through many reasons Israel chose to pile twelve stones following their traverse of the Jordan. The stones, as Mark put it, were to be a story to their children—a means of provoking a question that would lead to a telling and retelling of the story God had invited Israel into. The stones were to orient them to their place in His story.

One element of that story was that the Lord was mighty—a fact to be known by all the peoples of the earth. Ever since the plot of the Lord’s story had come into sharper view in Genesis 12, patriarch and prophet alike had given testimony to His one overarching purpose: that the world might know He is God. The stones on the east side of the Jordan would bear

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testimony to His might. For only that might could explain rocks once at the bottom of the vast and deep river now sitting on the east side.

But the stones did more than just allude to His might. The fury of a volcano or a hurricane demonstrates its intrinsic might as something to avoid, but the stones pointed to their dependence on that might. Verse 24 says the stones would speak persuasively to the peoples of the earth that the Lord is mighty so that they would fear Him—that Israel and all people alike would live trusting in that might. They owed their existence as a nation to a dependence on it. To have been liberated from bondage and led to a place in which they could prosper and display His goodness was inexplicable apart from His might.

That’s not as complicated as it might sound; its expressions are manifold. It includes pausing to ask for His aid, not in some ostentatious way (Matt. 6:7ff) but in humble reliance on His might. It’s connecting the dots, for those who wonder, between the significant choices you make and the underlying trust in God that motivates them. To share what anchors you in plenty and in want, in peace and tumult, in joy and sorrow exemplifies His might.

As does speaking of the mercies He’s shown (and the mercies you still long to know). Perhaps the most persuasive expression of that dependence comes when you reveal the false gods to which you’ve formerly paid homage, and how what is offered in the gospel is supplanting them.2

The Lord has not called us to ford the Trinity River as some sort of dramatic display of faith to persuade all of Dallas that He is mighty. But if His intention remains that all the peoples of the earth shall know and fear Him as God, what then can we do to dramatize His might?

Do your children ever see those expressions of dependence in you? Do those who’ve come to trust you as a friend ever hear what it is that orients you to your world? People—even little people—can smell a sales pitch a mile away. But if they know you love them, they cannot immediately dismiss the reference to what orients you as mere salesmanship.

We can testify to our dependence on it. Both our children and those who know us will come to see the Lord as He who governs all His creatures and all their actions1 when they hear how He orients us to our world and ourselves.

Christ is the stone the builders rejected but who is the cornerstone of our existence (Ps. 118:22, Matt. 21:42, Acts 4:11, 1 Pet. 2:7). Upon Him we rest, and by our testifying to that dependence shall all the peoples know of His might.

Patrick Lafferty

October 15, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

Joshua 5:15

Four teams remain in the quest for baseball’s annual designation of world champion. Every player recognizes he is competing at the pinnacle of a professional sport; their collective performance thus far has been unequaled. And yet the first thing they do each game day is the same thing any eightyear-old Little Leaguer does: they shag a few ground balls, limber up with the lumber in batting practice, run a few sprints up the first base line. They dare not step onto the playing field without at first reacquainting their minds and bodies with a few fundamentals.

On any given night before a performance of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, you’ll hear each musician—they, too, at the peak of professional performance—doing the same tuning and scales that any firstyear, aspiring instrumentalist does. The lithe way they conduct even their warm-up makes all that informal arpeggiation seem superfluous. But for them it would

be unthinkable to dispense with the time in the fundamentals.

The events in Joshua 5 represent for Israel a rehearsal, of sorts, of the fundamentals. Niel Nielson explained last Sunday how preparedness for life in the world as a servant of God is bound up with assurance of His presence with us. The assurance itself was bound up with a few fundamental truths Israel had to be reacquainted with—truths which you and I must reacquaint ourselves with not periodically, but daily.

What are they? What might we best remember in prayer each morning before we step onto the playing field or orchestra stage of our day?

We are His. When Joshua circumcised the generation born in the wilderness, he wasn’t out to fulfill mere ritual requirement.

It was to remind the rising generation they belonged to God. However their experience may have shaped their self-perceptions, they could not understand themselves apart from how the Lord understood them. By the covenant sign of circumcision they would remember whose they were. That’s no small point.

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How often are you tempted to define yourself by something other than your relatedness to God? We live indestructibly when we identify ourselves with Him whose designation does not fluctuate.

What person, position, or portfolio can promise that? Like the shortstop who before each game fields some fungoes, shouldn’t we be vocalizing an “I am Yours” as a necessary warm-up?

We are His at a cost to Him. Eating the Passover on the east side of the Jordan was more than for the sake of sharing a family tradition. It was to remind the people of Israel that they lived contingently upon His provision— specifically a provision of sacrifice in blood. If ever they would doubt His regard for them, the meal would be one more testimony to His expensive love. We have even more reason to trust that regard: we are the beneficiaries of a gift that cost Him His own Son. We therefore can never evaluate our worth apart from how He established it by the provision of His Son. Like the cellist who dutifully practices his scales, it’s fitting that we should rehearse to ourselves, “I am Yours at a cost to You,” as a prelude to our day.

above all, they’d been made His at His cost so that they might make His name known everywhere. They would not order their purposes apart from His purposes for them.

Neither shall we when we rehearse this truth. If the Lord is changing the world through changing men’s hearts in Christ, ought not all our pursuits become aligned with his overarching purpose for us? Take a moment and remember what you heard when you were young: “I am Yours for Your honor.”

There’s nothing innovative about these truths. You’ve heard them countless times. But you never escape the need to reflect upon what’s rudimentary. A professional athlete or musician neglects the fundamentals to his or her peril.

So do you. Considering all the things or people to whom you might feel inordinately beholden, all the ways you might superficially define your worth, and all the causes in which you might rashly find your purpose—forming a routine of remembering the fundamentals qualifies you for life in the real world. It would be unthinkable not to.

We are His for His honor. The commander before whom Joshua bowed in worship did more than remind Israel of the Lord’s presence; He braced them with their purpose. He’d led them to a land where they could prosper, to fruit that they might savor. But Patrick Lafferty

October 22, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

And the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once.

Thus shall you do for six days.”

Joshua 6:2–3

Scintillating prose it isn’t.1 With the numerous repetitions of phrase, you get the sense that Joshua 6 might be more an exercise in remedial reading than a summary of a pivotal moment in Israelite history. First it records what the Lord says to Joshua.

March around the city! Then it relates Joshua telling Israel what the Lord told him to tell them.

The Lord says to march around the city! Then it tells how Israel obeyed what the Lord had told Joshua to tell them to obey. Israel marched around the city! Think the seemingly tedious storytelling is over? Hardly.

In verse 10 Joshua does add the clarification that on days one through six, Israel is to say nothing as they encircle Jericho; only on the seventh day are they to erupt with a shout. But the narrative then repeats the very same words in verse 13 about the very same actions spoken of

in verse 8. When he gets to what happened on day seven, Joshua (mercifully!) elects to summarize the movement of the Israelite contingent rather than repeat what had been done during each of the last six days. But just when you think the repetition has come to an end, true to form, the account relates what Joshua told Israel to do upon entering the vanquished city—only to follow with an almost word-for-word recounting of Israel doing what Joshua told them to do upon entering the vanquished city.

We can account for Joshua’s narrative style here because he is addressing an oral culture. Words to be remembered were words that had to be repeated. But someone unfamiliar with scripture might find this chapter awfully tiresome in its style. Inwardly, they might wonder if the Lord couldn’t find a better copy editor for His inspired Word in order to strip it of its redundant phrases. Wouldn’t greater attention to pacing, variety of sentence structure, and more evocative language add impact to the story line? Won’t this unimaginative, just-the-factsma’am approach to narrative leave the reader so bored out of his mind that he comes away largely

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unimpressed with the historic significance of its contents?

Why take so much time to recount a simple promise of the Lord upon which He issues a simple command to be fulfilled in simple obedience?

Stop for a moment. What’s the last straightforward act of obedience you felt the Lord was calling you to fulfill, but, for whatever reason, you haven’t followed through? What simple yet significant promise has He made that explains the basis of His command? Why might you have moved onto other concerns without first doing what you know ought to be done? Truth is, we need both simplicity and repetition—the kind expressed in Joshua 6—in order to be faithful.

We tend to delight at first in the idea of obedience, but then easily let that moment fade, and with it, the motivation to obey. Consider this episode from the era of the third-century desert fathers: A certain brother was eager to have a scribe copy a book [of Scripture] for him. The old man agreed to do so, and “wrote, omitting some phrases and [including] no punctuation.” The brother noticed that some words were missing and, wishing to have the text punctuated and corrected, he returned to the old man and asked him to take care of it. The old man, however, must have discerned something

in the brother’s manner which disturbed him, for he refused to make the corrections. He simply told the brother pointedly: “practice first that which is written, then come back and I will write the rest.”2 We are that certain brother, often in need of a firm but gentle reminder to obey what we know now. More instruction may come in time, but not before we take care of this matter presently.

The Lord has made us a simple and profound promise: you are His eternally by virtue of the work of His Son. He has issued straightforward commands based entirely on that promise— commands He repeats often in His Word (John 17:17), and which His Spirit brings to remembrance (John 14:26) just as often. What is to be done today? Right now?

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” (James 4:17). It may be entirely without the fanfare of bringing down the walls of Jericho, but it is just as important to God, considering how often He’s brought it to our attention.

Now read this again.

Patrick Lafferty

October 29, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Then they devoted all in the city to complementary question we may destruction, both men and women, ask resonates with Marcion’s young and old, oxen, sheep, and issue: Does this text fit with donkeys, with the edge of the what else we know of God from sword.

Christ—the one said to bear the Joshua 6:21 “the exact imprint of [God’s] nature”

Remember the scene early in Dead Poets Society when Professor Keating, played by Robin Williams, instructs his astonished class to rip the introduction out of their poetry textbook? To Keating, the author’s formulaic perspective on something as majestic as poetry indicated such ignorance that it was best to remove it from consideration entirely.

Marcion, a bishop of the early second century, surmised that the whole of the Hebrew scriptures should be completely excised from the church’s Bible1. In his estimation the character of the God revealed in the Old Testament was so inferior to that revealed in Jesus that it would be best to eliminate it from consideration.

The violence of the Old Testament God did not, in Marcion’s view, square with the grace of Jesus.

(Heb. 1:3)?

Christopher Wright does not take on the role of spin doctor when he comes to the conquest of Canaan, but in his book The God I Don’t Understand he does try to set texts like Joshua 6 in context. His several points don’t mitigate the episode’s awfulness, but they do argue for its coherence with the rest of scripture.

In the background of the conquest is not raw imperialism, nor a sense of ethnic superiority on Israel’s part. Wright reminds us of the message from God in Deuteronomy 9:4–5: Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, “It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,” whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess

Mark voiced the question we all ask inwardly when we come to a text like Joshua 6:21–27: Is what God did here fair? The

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their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.2 The land Israel was to possess had the singular purpose of providing a place from which she was to bless all nations of the world; such was her mandate from Genesis 12. Any prosperity to be found there was for the sake of equipping Israel to serve the nations so that they might know the God who led them to this land.

The cynic might counter with, “So, as long as Israel could wrap herself in the flag of magnanimity, she could justify any of her jingoistic urges?” For two reasons does Wright take exception with the cynicism. For one, the instruction to possess Canaan did not typify Israelite foreign policy. Once in the land, there is no further instruction to undertake additional sorties into neighboring lands to expand Israel’s territory.

This land, and only this land, had been set aside for that aforementioned purpose. Second, what God authorizes against Jericho for their sin He likewise authorizes against His own people for their disobedience. That Israel would in time be vanquished and exiled demonstrates that God had a priority far loftier than merely prospering His adopted nation.

What priority was that? The priority that sanctioned the conquest was the same priority that sanctioned the slaughter of the Son of God: that the world may know that the Lord is God and that He is holy. What Jericho suffered for its sin, Christ suffered for ours. Justice and mercy aligned in both settings. Justice fell upon most of Jericho while mercy came to Rahab and her household for her faith. Justice fell on Jesus while mercy fell (and continues to fall) on those whose faith is in Him. The fabric of scripture is mottled with blood but seamless in its story.

We all have to be wary of a subconscious Marcionism seeping into our thinking. It’s a text like this that keeps us from recasting God in our own preferred image. It keeps us from misconstruing the love of God in Christ as detached from the wrath Jesus’ death came to reconcile. God’s love can’t be understood or appreciated without a sense of His wrath. Joshua 6, in context with the whole of scripture whose trajectory takes us inexorably to the Cross, preserves our sense of the utter holiness of God, to deepen our gratitude for His mercy at Calvary. It also inspires urgency in speaking, and demonstrating, the truth in love— truth about the salvation found in Christ.

We meditate upon it until it has those effects in us.

Patrick Lafferty

November 5, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.

Joshua 7:13

Licking her wounds from the embarrassment at Ai, Israel is crestfallen and befuddled.

Joshua voices the whole nation’s consternation when he asks the Lord, “Why have you brought [Israel] over the Jordan at all, to give us into the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us?” He rightly interprets God’s unwillingness to let Israel prevail against her enemies, but misinterprets His rationale. It’s not due to some oversight on God’s part that Israel failed at Ai. It was for her breaking covenant with the Lord. A member of the nation had disobeyed the Lord’s command by pilfering some of the spoils of Jericho—booty which had been expressly consigned to destruction.

But this was no mere larceny.

It represented an insidious precedent of unbelief in the authority and sufficiency of God. You see, Israel’s enduring weakness was that she rarely met a religion she didn’t like. Whether in close proximity to, or exiled within, a nation who worshipped some other alleged deity, Israel’s

mode of interaction was not simply to appreciate the diversity of her surroundings but to actually forswear allegiance to her core beliefs in the supremacy of Yahweh. The command, therefore, to set ablaze all the remains of Jericho was not to prove Israel’s might but to prevent Israel from becoming attached to things that might ultimately lead her to infidelity.

As we noted last week, the ruthlessness of the punishment evidenced God’s overarching interest for his entire creation: that they would know that He is God and that He is holy. The Lord had displayed His mercy to Israel on several occasions before. Here He demonstrated His singular justice. To underscore that priority, the Lord makes an unforgettable cautionary example of Achan and his family. But not before He explains what must be true for Israel if she is to exist in the center of God’s will: “You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.”

Israel would consistently fall before whatever threatened her unless one thing changed.1 She would have to relinquish her hold of the things that

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whatever threatens our peace. represented a mistrust of God’s What Achan kept back was not sufficiency. Her enjoyment of intrinsically evil but nevertheless God in whatever enterprise or represented an affection for circumstance was tied to her trust something greater than God. in what He had promised. Trusting Jesus does not hate mothers and Him would not insulate her from fathers, wives and children, but threats, but it would allow her to face them with peace and courage. He does say that unless we hate those things—i.e. value Him more Along the way we collect things. than them—we do not understand Possessions, to be sure, but what it means to follow Him also attitudes, priorities, and (Luke 14:26); we will not know His positions. Some of them seem peace in believing. entirely harmless. Over time, Not all our losses or sorrows though, some grow to become so stem from sin (cf. Job and the important to us that whenever we blind man in John 9), but some risk losing them we find ourselves do. It’s therefore worth asking the compromising something question from time to time: What important in order to preserve have I come to cherish more than them. We place their value God’s adoption of me? What somewhere above our fidelity to priority, position, or possession God and His commands. have I become so enamored When real threats to our stability, with that I would find it difficult to identity, and peace come, we relinquish if God asked it of me? find ourselves unable to face Your answer may very well reveal their onslaught. Why? Because why your heart melts before what we’ve come to entrust ourselves threatens you. to something other than the God who entrusted us to His Son (John 17:12). Like Achan buried his contraband in his tent, we hold to things we think can substitute for the promise of God. Deeply in our hearts, we stash the acceptance of a parent, a boss, or a peer group as if that were the only thing that mattered; we place a fortification around our desire for control; we place productivity over a praise-filled life and work over a worshipful soul.

And then, like Joshua, we wonder why our hearts melt before Patrick Lafferty

November 12, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

The Lord said to Joshua, “Get up!”

Joshua 7:10

Historians of science debate who discovered the property first.

Some say Galileo. Others credit René Descartes. Still others think the third-century-B.C. Chinese philosopher Mo Tzu identified the phenomenon. Irrespective of who had the epiphany first, most of us attribute to Sir Isaac Newton what he coined as the first law of motion in his Principia Mathematica: “A body persists in a state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force.” We know it as the law of inertia.

Bewildered by the defeat against Ai, all Joshua knows to do is pour dust upon his head (v. 6) and prostrate himself in lamentation.

To don the detritus of the earth was an ancient Near Eastern statement of humiliation. If you thought you’d acted insolently toward God, forgetting your entire dependence on Him, you dressed yourself in the very dust into which you would one day deteriorate.

“For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).

From the Lord’s perspective, however, this was not a time for contrite stillness. Joshua had to

be roused from his languishing, and God’s Word would be that external force to act upon him. So twice in chapter 7, the Lord issues a bracing “Get up!” (vv. 10, 13).

The first was to prepare him to hear—the second to act.

First, Joshua needed to rise to his feet to hear that Israel had placed her trust in something other than her covenant with God. Their defeat was not the result of simple misfortune. God had engineered their drubbing due to His displeasure over an Israelite’s sin.

Then Joshua needed to hear again, “Get up!” to know how to act. As we said last week, only by casting off what they’d come to value more than their fidelity to God would Israel be able to survive external onslaught. God’s curt command made plain the need for decisive action.

Our frenzied pace often belies a spiritual inertia. Kathleen Norris warns of the ancient and insidious sin of acedia, that spiritual indifference that slowly nests in our souls: “We appear to be anything but slothful, yet that is exactly what we are, as we do more and care less, and feel pressured to do still more.”1

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someone from whom you need We can be lulled into languishing to ask forgiveness? Someone for any number of reasons. to whom you need to offer it?

Forgetfulness of our identity (Matt. 6:23–24) Is there some in Christ. Cynicism that our act of generosity calling for your efforts will be of no effect. Fear Christ-centered participation of what might happen if we (2 Cor. 8–9)? Distracted by much, do listen and act. But each of we often need a divinely authored, those tend to be effects of our “get up!” to move us on to those more everyday habits. As Norris good works prepared in advance puts it, “In this hyped-up world, for us to do (Eph. 2:10). What broadcast and Internet news good work has He consecrated media have emerged as acedia’s you for that remains undone? perfect vehicles, demanding that we care, all at once, about Near the end of Paul’s letter to the a suicide bombing, a celebrity church at Ephesus, he quotes a divorce and the latest advance fragment of what many scholars in nanotechnology”—all of which believe to be an early Christian “makes us impervious to caring.” hymn: Awake, O sleeper, and rise They can drain us of any vitality for from the dead, and Christ will listening to and heeding the word shine on you (Eph. 5:14). Christ of God. Brought to a standstill, we alone is sufficient to rouse us from need something to rouse us either our spiritual slumber, because only from our inattention or inaction. someone who loves us like that is able to compel loving attention Have you lost your edge in and service. listening for God? Paul Miller’s instruction for cultivating a praying life begins with the simple exhortation of “get to bed” and (ironically!) “get up” to pray.2 What you do in the evening, he argues, correlates to your readiness to pray in the morning. Hearing again what is true from God keeps you from the spiritual torpor the culture can inflict; it can also rescue you from a bewildered disorientation, like it did for Joshua.

Once you hear from Him, you might be reminded of what the next holy thing you need to do is. Is there a neighbor or a colleague you have yet to meet and befriend? Is there Patrick Lafferty

November 19, 2009 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

At that time Joshua built an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the people of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, “an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.”

Joshua 8:30–31

You’ve likely heard the cynical adage “good enough for government work.” In so many words it connotes that when you consider the recipient of the labor, only minimal attention and effort is required; meticulousness would be a waste of energy. The same jaundiced attitude finds its way into most domains of labor; sometimes you even hear it voiced “good enough for religious work.”

With Ai now lying in ruins, its king dangling from a tree, Israel builds an altar upon which to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving. Joshua and his men gather stones in gratitude for the Lord’s renewal of their strength and restoration of their purpose. Not just any stones though. These were to be “uncut” stones “upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.”

Why give such detailed instruction

on the nature of the stones that would comprise the altar of thanksgiving? It’s an instruction with a long history.

Before they’d entered the land, Moses commanded Israel in Deuteronomy 27:4–6, “When you have crossed over the Jordan . . . you shall build an altar of stones to the Lord. You shall wield no iron tool upon them; you shall build an altar to the Lord of uncut stones.” So Joshua’s motive here in chapter 8 is to follow precisely the instruction given Israel. But it still doesn’t explain why the stones must be uncut and why no iron tool may be applied to them.

For that you have to venture back further in Israelite history.

With the Ten Commandments still echoing in Moses’ ears, the Lord turns his attention to the issue of altars. In Exodus 20:25 the rationale for uncut, unhewn stones materializes: “If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it.” There it is. Cleaving a stone by the blows of an iron tool would for some reason render the altar unfit for sacrificial use. It would be profaned.

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Scholars debate why the application of an iron tool would have profaned the stones. The medieval French rabbi Rashi intuited a reason from the juxtaposition of iron tool and altar: “The altar was created to lengthen a man’s days and iron was created to shorten a man’s days; it is not fit that the means of shortening should be brandished over the means of lengthening.”1 A few centuries later, Rashi’s fellow Frenchman John Calvin understood the prohibition to be against establishing a permanent altar formed by iron-hewn stones.

Since Israel had not yet settled in a permanent locale, an unmarked, unsupervised, yet enduring altar of worship might “entice superstition.”2 Others advance alternative theories, but in the end, why iron tools would profane the stones remains a mystery to us (Deut. 29:29). What is crystal-clear, though, is Joshua’s, Moses’s, and the Lord’s ultimate concern: that offerings of worship not be profaned. Bringing blemished sacrifices (e.g. Exod. 12:5), offering worship in pretense (Isa. 29:13), or making sacrifices without corresponding love (Hosea 6:6)—Each represented a profound desecration worthy of sharp rebuke.

to God” (Rom. 12:1). Christ Jesus sacrificed Himself for us, so that we might live for Him (2 Cor. 5:15) and be “poured out like a drink offering” (2 Tim. 4:6).

What tends to profane our offerings most often? Hypocrisy?

Prejudice? Licentiousness?

Perhaps. Consider another likely suspect: stinginess—that is, giving what’s left over in us rather than what’s first and best from us. If all things were “created through Him and for Him,” and “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16–17),” then He is worthy of first position in all things we have and create.

Our first attention of the day. The firstfruits of our labors. Giving first consideration to His purposes for us as the basis for all our choices.

What might it look like to set down your iron tool in the fashioning of your own kingdom in order to give first attention to the building of His?

In view of God’s mercies to us in Christ, Paul exhorts, we ought to offer our bodies as “living sacrifices, holy and acceptable

Patrick Lafferty

January 7, 2010 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You” 2 Chronicles 20:12

In fact, though the imperialistic urges of Assyria and Babylon eventually carried the nation away into exile, scripture is GPS technology hasn’t been clear on the ultimate reason for with us so long that we can’t Israel’s dislocation: infidelity to remember a time of being lost. her God through entanglements On a hike or drive in unfamiliar with nations who worshipped territory, we came to a bend and other so-called deities. Scripture did not find what we expected. calls those entanglements by a We thought we knew where we different name—idols. Ezra 5:12, were and where we were headed, in speaking of the nation’s final only to discover neither was stage of exile, puts it bluntly: true. That feeling of disorientation “Because our fathers had angered sometimes manifested itself in the God of heaven, He gave them frustration, or even fear. We were into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar not sure whether to sally forth until king of Babylon… who destroyed we found something that looked this house and carried away the familiar or to retrace our steps. people to Babylonia.” Having placed too much of their trust in In the Chronicles of Israel, we find what could not bring them life, the nation was often disoriented they had lost their way and come for one of two reasons. Menacing upon exile. assaults from marauding nations would strike fear into her people.

This last year has plenty of us Our text last Sunday catalogued reeling for one reason or another. one such episode. But more often Disorientation is perhaps the most than external threats, Israel’s euphemistic way of characterizing stability was compromised by her our condition. Some of us have misguided allegiances. Alluring been blindsided. Fear tempts us promises of strength, wealth, because we, like Jehoshaphat, are and prestige led the nation to under siege from forces outside align herself with peoples that our control. eventually led her astray. Even our humble hero of 2 Chronicles 20, Others of us, though, have come King Jehoshaphat, was later to find that we have placed so chastised and disciplined for a much importance on what we foolish alliance (vv. 35–37). have lost, or on what we might

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yet lose, that our entire sense of stability has also come under siege. Forces outside our control threaten us, but it’s because our hearts have made misguided allegiances with wealth, or reputation, or strength that we find ourselves in a lost and fearful frame. Pensions, promotions, prospective fiancés, and projects— they’re all good things worth pursuing—but if they’re lost, and we find ourselves embittered, it’s ultimately because we made a Faustian deal with them. Having placed too much of our trust in what could not bring us sustained life, we’ve lost our way and come upon what feels like a kind of exile. Peace and joy are at a great distance, not soon to be rediscovered.

Whether embroiled in an assault from without, or entangled in an allegiance from within, the way back to life is a matter of worship.

We may not know precisely what to do, but, like Jehoshaphat, we must set our sights back on the One who is our peace—the only One capable of securing it: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For He himself is our peace.”

(Eph. 2:13–14). And He is the only one capable of sustaining it: “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:27).

What allegiances have you made whose loss, or threatened loss, has you lost? Acute and chronic bouts with anxiety, anger, anguish, and ennui evidence such an allegiance. As Tim Keller puts it in his book Counterfeit Gods, the way forward is to identify and replace your idols by retracing your steps back to the one true God, most clearly seen in His Son, Christ Jesus (Heb. 1:3). Learning to worship Him is the way out of the entangling allegiance.

As we said Sunday, this world is magnificently efficient at eliciting anxiety, anger, anguish, and ennui. Any of those can emerge in response to external forces.

Usually, however, they’re the result of an internal allegiance we’ve made with some finite thing.

We’ve come to hope so deeply in them and define ourselves so much by them that when they’re “Give thanks to the Lord, for His taken away, we’re lost. No one steadfast love endures forever,” is exempt. It’s the experience of the Israelite choir sang on the CEOs and cashiers, housewives verge of that remarkable battle in and horticulturists, policemen and 2 Chronicles 20. You know you’ve point guards—and pastors. found your way back to the path to life when that praise becomes And like Jehoshaphat, we sit there more than just words on a page. at an impasse and say candidly, “We do not know what to do.”

Patrick Lafferty

January 14, 2010 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

It is the Lord your God who has fought for you.

Joshua 23:3

You cannot call him a friend of the Reformation in England. As one of his first acts after reclaiming the vacant throne of England, Charles II rescinded the reforms to the Church which had been outlined by the Westminster Assembly not 12 years earlier.

Yet in the Great Fire of London in 1666, Charles II did an extraordinary thing—a most unkingly thing. Forsaking royal privilege, he took to the streets himself to fight the fire. He left the protection and comfort of the palace and entered into his people’s tumult to render aid.

Seen building a firebreak with the Duke of York, Charles was found “filthy, smoke-blackened and tired.”1 He hadn’t donned his robes for a photo op. He came to fight for his people.

In the winter of his life, Joshua gathers Israel to remind them of the Lord’s intervention on their behalf. Like Charles, the Lord had refused to remain above the fray as His people faced insurmountable odds. The Lord, Joshua says, had fought for them.

But he doesn’t recapitulate recent history for the sake of storytelling.

He means to endear the Lord to Israel and to elicit a response. In view of God’s help, they’re to keep the Book of the Law (v. 6). They’re to cling to Him alone (v. 8), being vigilant to keep Him as the Lord of their lives. And then in verse 11, Joshua summarizes and amplifies what it means to keep the Law and cling to the Lord: “Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.” He does not solicit a slavish obedience from them, but a loving one.

Blaise Pascal, in his Pensées, said, “What a long way it is between knowing God and loving Him,” to which Peter Kreeft in his commentary adds, “The length of the gap is infinite. The most brilliant theological mind in the universe is also the one with the least love: his name is Lucifer.”2 How easily we content ourselves with a knowledge of God that does not translate into joy in Him or love for His people! How pitifully we fool ourselves into thinking that the ability to articulate the truth of God is proof of our love for Him! So how does one bridge the gap between merely knowing God and actually loving Him? You find your

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love for Him in His loving fight for you. You can celebrate the beauties He’s authored in creation.

You may delight in the glories of His manifold gifts. But His battle against what has threatened you foremost must form the capstone of your love. You must continually look into that truth.

That is why Joshua recounted Israel’s history the way he did.

translates into love for God, does your sense of Him today feel more like bare knowledge? If it does, then for now, as Joshua told the people, listen closely to what the Lord has said in His Word, cling tightly to what He says is good, then consider (again) deeply the cost and outcome of His fight for you.

That is why Mark reminded us Sunday of how God fought most deftly for us in His Son. Our very conversion centers on apprehending that God in Christ vanquished sin, death, and hell on our behalf. Our ongoing sanctification demands a continual reflective recapitulation of His loving fight for us—lest we fall prey to less substantial overtures of love. All sin is a failure to trust that His love for you is true. Our perseverance in the work He lays before us is sustained by a sense of His fight for us. “Peter, do you love me?… Feed my sheep” (John 21:17).

It is, in a sense, a fight to traverse that distance between the knowledge of God and the love of God. Yet even in that fight, you aren’t left to your own devices.

You are not alone! He fights for you in that too. Why else would Jesus be interceding for us if not to marshal the Lord’s strength in our fight? (Heb. 7:24–25).

Though one might say true knowledge of God necessarily Patrick Lafferty

January 21, 2010 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. Joshua 23:11

Vulpes vulpes. It’s the Latin name for the common red fox. Wes Anderson has taken Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book Fantastic Mr. Fox and overlaid it with a poignant adult theme.

Mr. Fox, or “Foxy” as his wife calls him, had made a promise early in his marriage. Now that he’d betrothed himself to someone and had the prospect of becoming a father, he vowed to forsake his former thrill-seeking.

But later in life, with an awkward son stumbling into adolescence, Foxy finds his conventional life too constraining. Outside his window he sees a way to rise above it: three prosperous and eccentric farmers by the names of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean possess immeasurable stores of chickens, turkeys, and apple cider, respectively. Foxy convinces himself it’s almost a moral imperative to dig his way beneath their lands and abscond with a measure of their bounties.

The tension of Anderson’s retelling emerges when Foxy’s thievery elicits the ire of the farmers. For

all his ingenuity and courage his plans have imperiled him, his family, and the nearby animal population. During a brief respite from their flight from the vengeful threesome, Foxy’s typically calm and collected wife moans, “Why’d you have to get us into this, Foxy?”

Never to be found flat-footed—or flat-pawed, as the case may be—in justifying his actions, Foxy quickly deduces what has brought them to this moment: “I think I have this thing where I need everybody to think I’m the greatest—the quote-unquote fantastic Mr. Fox—and if they aren’t completely knocked out, dazzled, and kind of intimidated by me, then I don’t feel good about myself.”1 There it is. The core of the matter.

It’s fear. Fear of how he might be thought of—by himself or others— if he doesn’t take matters into his own hands to establish his own fantasticness. It’s not the love of danger, or the desire to improve his family’s station, or even the indignation that the three clownish farmers have more than they can ever need. It’s the fear of what he thinks he might be that drives him to imperil everyone else.

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For the last two weeks we’ve heard Joshua’s gravest concern for the Israel he’ll soon depart from in death. He admonishes them to “Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.” Why? Because if they did not love their Lord, they would end up loving, so to speak, the next closest authority—the priorities enshrined in the deities of neighboring nations. Sadly, Israel eventually defied Joshua’s warning. Into a ruinous exile they went, imperiling their place in the outworking of God’s intentions for them (Gen. 12:2).

In a sense, Mr. Fox displays the same error Israel did, and the same consequence. Not being confident in God, Israel sought her own good in what was not of God—surely an homage to the first sin in the Garden—and found herself compromised. Foxy sought his own good without confidence in what really did make him good, and found himself compromising all he loved. Which brings me to my point.

If you do not trust what makes you righteous and beloved of God (in Foxy’s language: fantastic) you will take measures to establish your own fantasticness. In so doing you will inevitably imperil all you know and love because you’ll be acting out of the same fear Foxy did.

Coming to terms with what makes you fantastically beloved of God is the process of spiritual formation.

It’s laboring to have the truth of

the gospel of Jesus Christ inform and shape your every pursuit.

Specifically, it’s about deeply internalizing the truth that while you were incapable of overcoming your greatest problem (sin) and obtaining your greatest desire (God), God sent His Son to resolve both at great cost to Himself.

As Martin Luther said, “The truth of the Gospel is the principal article of all Christian doctrine…

Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually.”2 That headbeating is spiritual formation. And, as Mark reminded us Sunday, the formation that leads to the confidence of our belovedness is accomplished through not merely reviewing, but possessing, the Word of God. God surely forms our souls through a variety of means, but not without what He has already said and preserved.

Wes Anderson doubtless ruminated long and hard on the simple storyline of Dahl’s classic tale before he brought forth something wonderfully creative and particularly poignant. He made the film for the joy of filmmaking, and, let’s be honest, for the $14.6 million the film has made already. If he committed himself for those reasons to that kind of consideration of a fox’s search for fantasticness, should we do less in our consideration of what confirms our belovedness?

Patrick Lafferty

January 28, 2010 a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Choose this day whom you will serve.

Joshua 24:15

You don’t know if you’re more enthralled by his intellect or his coiffure. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biological and neurological science at Stanford University, has spent years analyzing the behavior patterns of baboons, and his research has focused on primatology.

Sapolsky is also a selfproclaimed strident atheist, sans the acrimonious air typified

by Richard Dawkins. Yet in a recent commencement address,1 Sapolsky appealed to theology as the basis for his argument for the uniqueness of the human race.

He devoted most of his address to establishing the commonalities of humans and other primates.

Aspects of human behavior like culture, cultural transmission, communication, empathy, and aggression were all shown to have complements within other primate species. All that distinguished humanity was the degree to which those aspects had been developed.

But near the conclusion of his comments, he conceded that

one feature of humanity set it dramatically apart from all other forms of life: the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory truths in mind simultaneously, and to find the proof of the possibility of something in its apparent impossibility.

Mercifully, he provided two examples to rescue his thesis from abstraction. The first was from the Danish Christian and existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who said that Christian faith “persists in the face of its own impossibility.” In other words, from a human perspective, part of what catalyzes faith is the acknowledgment of how impossible it seems. Sapolsky gave one more example, from Sister Helen Prejean. (You may remember her from Dead Man Walking, the film based on her ministry to death-row inmates.)

When asked what would motivate her to care for the most deplorable of our society, according to Sapolsky, Prejean said, “The less forgivable the act, the more it must be forgiven; the less loveable the person is, the more you must find the means to love them.”

For Prejean, recognizing how impossibly difficult it would be to forgive someone made forgiving

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them not only possible but necessary. Believing someone to be unlovable made it morally imperative to love them. Humanity distinguishes itself, Sapolsky argues, by how it can powerfully believe what seems unbelievable.

This he considered “the most irrational magnificent thing we are capable of as a species.”

As we heard Sunday, Joshua pressed Israel to trust in the Lord despite plenty of reasons not to.

Prospering civilizations built on many alternative conceptions of the divine surrounded the fledgling nation. Their presence presented ample rationale not to trust the one, true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even Israel’s own experience revealed a world full of chaos and sorrow that made it seem impossible to believe in a sovereign God. Yet Israel, in a Sapolskian sense, did the most human thing possible by believing.

This feature also finds expression in anyone who believes the gospel of Jesus. All living things will one day die. Yet foundational to our faith is the belief that God brought a man back from death, and that in Him began the overturning of death. This absurd tenet is critical to our believing. “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19).

That’s not the only pillar of our faith that requires this capacity Sapolsky identifies. For the implication of Christ’s death

and resurrection reveals another apparently irresolvable tension: that we are more deplorable than we care to admit, and yet more prized than we can imagine. Jesus’ suffering proves that. Those truths seem impossible to hold simultaneously. Yet their apparent irreconcilability yields a more profound and believable truth: this eminently just God is undeniably for us. That’s why the “love of Christ controls us” (2 Cor. 5:14).

His love—not the preference for absurdity—is what explains Kierkegaard’s and Prejean’s faith.

It must also be what explains ours.

What point can be made from Sapolsky’s observation that humans have the unique capacity to believe quite strongly in the face of equally strong reasons not to believe?

Has your zeal for God waned?

Have your circumstances begun to cripple the confidence you once had in the goodness of God? Finding renewed faith may require circling back to the most absurd foundations of our faith.

Considering the salutary effects of holding to the ethical demands of godliness is helpful. But ethics must be buttressed by the deeper truths that motivate it: that Christ rose again and that, despite your unholiness, this Holy God is for you. If such impossible things be true, then hope shall find its way into all other concerns.

Trust Him. You’re only human.

Patrick Lafferty

a weekly devotional

every thought captive from Park Cities Presbyterian Church

Notes August 27, 2009 1. See Song and Story, August 20, 2009.

September 10, 2009 1. Michael Ybarra, “Ghostly Companions.” The Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2009, http:// online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424 05297020488440457436163158882 7614.html.

2. The Westminster Confession of Faith, I. vii, http://www.reformed.org/ documents/wcf_with_proofs/index. html.

September 17, 2009 1. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2000).

October 1, 2009 1. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions (Leadership University Cyber Library), http://www.leaderu.com/ cyber/books/augconfessions/bk1. html.

October 8, 2009 1. The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q.11, http://www.iclnet. org/pub/resources/text/m.sion/ cmshct04.htm.

2. Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York: Penguin, Dutton, 2009).

October 22, 2009 1. What might be interpreted as a critique of inspired scripture should be understood by the reader as a somewhat jocular way of setting up the author’s intended point.

2. Patrologia Graeca [65:320BCD], quoted in Douglas Burton-Christie’s Word in the Desert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 154.

October 29, 2009 1. To be precise, the books comprising the Bible were not validated—or “canonized’’—until the mid–fourth century. Marcion, ironically, catalyzed the church to come to agreement about which documents were most credible.

2. Christopher Wright, The God I Don’t Understand (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009).

November 5, 2009 1. Why refer to all Israel as complicit in Achan’s sin? This Sunday will address how the consequences of sin are rarely confined to the one who commits it.

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November 12, 2010 1. Lynell George, “Kathleen Norris Battles ‘the Demon of Acedia.’” The Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2008, http://www.latimes.com/ entertainment/la-ca-kathleennorris21-2008sep21,0,5579909. story.

2. Paul Miller, A Praying Life (Colorado Springs, NavPress: 2009).

November 19, 2009 1. cited in Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses (New York, Norton: 1996).

2. John Calvin, Commentaries.

January 14, 2010 1. Ned Crabb, “Risky Business.” The Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB100014240527487036838045745 34224109083380.html.

2. Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans (Fort Collins: Ignatius Press, 1993).

January 21, 2010 1. Wes Anderson, Fantastic Mr. Fox screenplay, http://www. foxsearchlight.com/scripts/fmf.pdf 2. Martin Luther, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Philadelphia: Smith, English, 1860), 206.

January 28, 2010 1. Robert Sapolsky, “The Uniqueness of Humans” (lecture, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, September 2009), http://www.ted. com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_ uniqueness_of_humans.html.

About Every Thought Captive Every Thought Captive is a weekly e-mail devotional based on the previous Sunday’s sermon at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. Most often, senior pastor Mark Davis delivered the sermons that are referenced in these devotionals. Other speakers referenced include Niel Nielson, president of Covenant College, and Pete Deison, associate pastor at PCPC. You can sign up to receive these e-mails at www.pcpc.org.

About Patrick Lafferty Rev. Patrick Lafferty is Pastor of Spiritual Formation at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. He is a graduate of the University of Texas and Dallas Theological Seminary.

Patrick and his wife, Christy, live in Dallas with their two children, Seamus and Savannah, and a dog named Boomer.

About Jaceson Jennings Jaceson Jennings is a pastoral Intern at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. Originally from West Texas, Jace is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. Jace and his wife, Beth, have two girls, Emersyn Grace and Hadleigh Elizabeth, along with their major and minor prophets—two pug dogs named Ezekiel and Obadiah.

When you can’t find him studying theology, you can find him brewing beer.

Park Cities Presbyterian Church 4124 Oak Lawn Avenue Dallas, Texas 75219 214-224-2500 www.pcpc.org